"My God!" he winced, with his elbow across his eyes.
"Why, it isn't lightning!" laughed little Eve Edgarton. "It's the moon!" Quick as a sprite she flashed to her feet and ran out into the moonlight. "We can go home now!" she called back triumphantly over her shoulder.
"Oh, we can, can we?" snapped Barton. His nerves were strangely raw. He struggled to his knees, and tottered there watching the cheeky little moonbeams lap up the mystery of the cave, and scare the yellow lantern-flame into a mere sallow glow.
Poignantly from the forest he heard Eve Edgarton's voice calling out into the night. "Come-Mother's-horse! Come-Mother's-horse H-o-o, hoo! Come-come-come!" Softly above the crackle of twigs, the thud of a hoof, the creak of a saddle, he sensed the long, tremulous, answering whinny. Then almost like a silver apparition the girl's figure and the horse's seemed to merge together before him in the moonlight.
"Well-of-all-things!" stammered Barton.
"Oh, the horse is all right. I thought he'd stay 'round," called the girl. "But he's wild as a hawk-and it's going to be the dickens of a job, I'm afraid, to get you up."
Half walking, half crawling, Barton emerged from the cave. "To get me up?" he scoffed. "Well, what do you think you're going to do?" Limply as he asked he sank back against the support of a tree.
"Why, I think," drawled Eve Edgarton, "I think-very naturally-that you're going to ride-and I'm going to walk-back to the hotel."
"Well, I am not!" snapped Barton. "Well, you are not!" he protested vehemently. "For Heaven's sake, Miss Edgarton, why don't you go scooting back on the gray and send a wagon or something for me?"
"Why, because it would make-such a fuss," droned little Eve Edgarton drearily. "Doors would bang-and lights would blaze-and somebody'd scream-and-and-you make so much fuss when you're born," she said, "and so much fuss when you die-don't you think it's sort of nice to keep things as quietly to yourself as you can all the rest of your days?"
"Yes, of course," acknowledged Barton. "But-"
"But NOTHING!" stamped little Eve Edgarton with sudden passion. "Oh, Mr. Barton-won't you please hurry! It's almost dawn now! And the nice hotel cook is very sick in a cot bed. And I promised her faithfully this noon that I'd make four hundred muffins for breakfast!"
"Oh, confound it!" said Barton.
Stumblingly he reached the big gray's side.
"But it's miles!" he protested in common decency. "Miles!-and miles! Rough walking, too, darned rough! And your poor little feet-"
"I don't walk particularly with my 'poor little feet,'" gibed Eve Edgarton. "Most especially, thank you, Mr. Barton, I walk with my big wanting-to-walk!"
"Oh," said Barton. "O-h." The bones in his knees began suddenly to slump like so many knots of tissue-paper. "Oh-all right-Eve!" he called out a bit hazily.
Then slowly and laboriously, with a very good imitation of meekness, he allowed himself to be pulled and pushed and jerked to the top of an old tree-stump, and from there at last, with many tricks and tugs and subterfuges, to the cramping side-saddle of the restive, rearing gray. Helplessly in the clear white moonlight he watched the girl's neck muscles cord and strain. Helplessly in the clear white moonlight he heard the girl's breath rip and tear like a dry sob out of her gasping lungs. And then at last, blinded with sweat, dizzy with weakness, as breathless as herself, as wrenched, as triumphant, he found himself clinging fast to a worn suede pommel, jogging jerkily down the mountainside with Eve Edgarton's doll-sized hand dragging hard on the big gray's curb and her whole tiny weight shoved back aslant and astrain against the big gray's too eager shoulder-little droll, colorless, "meek" Eve Edgarton, after her night of stress and terror, with her precious scrap-book still hugged tight under one arm striding stanchly home through the rough-footed, woodsy night to "make four hundred muffins for breakfast!"
At the first crook in the trail she glanced back hastily over her shoulder into the rustling shadows. "Good-by, Cave!" she called softly. "Good-by, Cave!" And once when some tiny woods-animal scuttled out from under her feet she smiled up a bit appealingly at Barton. Several times they stopped for water at some sudden noisy brook. And once, or twice, or even three times perhaps, when some blinding daze of dizziness overwhelmed him, she climbed up with one foot into the roomy stirrup and steadied his swaying, unfeeling body against her own little harsh, reassuring, flannel-shirted breast.
Mile after mile through the jet-black lattice-work of the tree-tops the August moon spotted brightly down on them. Mile after mile through rolling pastures the moon-plaited stubble crackled and sucked like a sheet of wet ice under their feet, then roads began-mere molten bogs of mud and moonlight; and little frail roadside bushes drunk with rain lay wallowing helplessly in every hollow.
Out of this pristine, uninhabited wilderness the hotel buildings loomed at last with startling conventionality. Even before their discreetly shuttered windows Barton winced back again with a sudden horrid new realization of his half-nakedness.
"For Heaven's sake!" he cried, "let's sneak in the back way somewhere! Oh Lordy!-what a sight I am to meet your father!"
"What a sight you are to-meet my father?" repeated Eve Edgarton with astonishment. "Oh, please don't insist on waking up Father," she begged. "He hates so to be waked up. Oh, of course if I'd been hurt it would have been courteous of you to tell him," she explained seriously. "But, oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like your waking him up just to tell him that you got hurt!"
Softly under her breath she began to whistle toward a shadow in the stable-yard. "Usually," she whispered, "there's a sleepy stable-boy lying round here somewhere. Oh-Bob!" she summoned.
Rollingly the shadow named "Bob" struggled to its very real feet.
"Here, Bob!" she ordered. "Come help Mr. Barton. He's pretty badly off. We got sort of struck by lightning. And two of us-got killed. Go help him up-stairs. Do anything he wants. But don't make any fuss. He'll be all right in the morning."
Gravely she put out her hand to Barton, and nodded to the boy.
"Good night!" she said. "And good night, Bob!"
Shrewdly for a moment she stood watching them out of sight, shivered a little at the clatter of a box kicked over in some remote shed, and then swinging round quickly, ripped the hot saddle from the big gray's back, slipped the bit from his tortured tongue, and, turning him loose with one sharp slap on his gleaming flank, yanked off her own riding-boots and went scudding off in her stocking-feet through innumerable doors and else till, reaching the great empty office, she caromed off suddenly up three flights of stairs to her own apartment.
Once in her room her little traveling-clock told her it was a quarter of three.
"Whew!" she said. Just "Whew!" Very furiously at the big porcelain washbowl she began to splash and splash and splash. "If I've got to make four hundred muffins," she said, "I surely have got to be whiter than snow!"
Roused by the racket, her father came irritably and stood in the doorway.
"Oh, my dear Eve!" he complained, "didn't you get wet enough in the storm? And for mercy's sake where have you been?"
Out of the depths of her dripping hair and her big plushy bath-towel little Eve Edgarton considered her father only casually.
[Illustration: "Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make four hundred muffins."]
"Don't delay me!" she said, "I've got to make four hundred muffins! And I'm so late I haven't even time to change my clothes! We got struck by lightning," she added purely incidentally. "That is-sort of struck by lightning. That is, Mr. Barton got sort of struck by lightning. And oh, glory, Father!" her voice kindled a little. "And, oh, glory, Father, I thought he was gone! Twice in the hours I was working over him he stopped breathing altogether!"
Palpably the vigor died out of her voice again. "Father," she drawled mumblingly through intermittent flops of bath-towel; "Father-you said I could keep the next thing I-saved. Do you think I could-keep him?"