More Tish | Page 7

that some
one was looking down at me. The fire was very low and Aggie was
sleeping with her mouth open. I got up on my elbow and stared round.
There was nothing in sight, but through the trees I heard a rustling of
leaves and the crackling of brushwood. Whatever it was it had gone. I
turned over and before long went to sleep again.

At daylight I was roused by raindrops splashing on my face. I sat up
hastily. Aggie was sleeping with the flap of her bag over her head, and
Tish, under an umbrella, was sitting fully dressed on a log, poring over
her road map. When I sat up she glanced over at me.
"I think I know where we are now, Lizzie," she said. "Thunder Cloud
Mountain is on our left, and that hill there to the right is the Camel's
Back. The road goes right up Thunder Cloud Glen."
I looked at the fire, which was out; at Modestine, standing meekly by
the tree to which he was tied; at the raindrops bounding off Aggie's
round and prostrate figure--and I rebelled. Every muscle was sore; it
hurt me even to yawn.
"Letitia Carberry!" I said indignantly. "You don't mean to tell me that,
rain or no rain, you are going on?"
"Certainly I am going on," said Tish, shutting her jaw. "You and Aggie
needn't come. I'm sure you asked yourselves; I didn't."
Well, that was true, of course. I crawled out and, going over, prodded at
Aggie with my foot.
"Aggie," I said, "it is raining and Tish is going on anyhow. Will you go
on with her or start back home with me?"
But Aggie refused to do either. She was terribly stiff and she had slept
near a bed of May-apple blossoms. In the twilight she had not noticed
them, and they always bring her hay-fever.
"I'b goi'g to stay right here," she said firmly between sneezes. "You cad
go back or forward or whatever you please; I shad't bove."
Tish was marking out a route on the road map by making holes with a
hairpin, and now she got up and faced us.
"Very well," she said. "Then get your things out of the suitcase, which
happens to be mine. Lizzie, the canned beans and the sardines are yours.

Aggie, your potato salad is in those six screw-top jars. Come,
Modestine."
She untied the beast and, leading him over, loaded her sleeping-bag and
her share of the provisions on his back. She did not glance at us. At the
last, when she was ready, she picked up her rifle and turned to us.
"I may not be back for a week or ten days," she said icily. "If I'm longer
than two weeks you can start Charlie Sands out with a posse."
Charlie Sands is her nephew.
"Come, Modestine," said Tish again, and started along. It was raining
briskly by that time, and thundering as if a storm was coming. Aggie
broke down suddenly.
"Tish! Tish!" she wailed. "Oh, Lizzie, she'll never get back alive. Never!
We've killed her."
"She's about killed us!" I snarled.
"She's coming back!"
Sure enough, Tish had turned and was stalking back in our direction.
"I ought to leave you where you are," she said disagreeably, "but it's
going to storm. If you decide to be sensible, somewhere up the valley is
the cave Charlie Sands hid in when he ran away. I think I can find it."
It was thundering louder now, and Aggie was giving a squeal with
every peal. We were too far gone for pride. I helped her out of her
sleeping-bag and we started after Tish and the donkey. The rain poured
down on us. At every step torrents from Thunder Cloud and the
Camel's Back soaked us. The wind howled up the ravine and the
lightning played round the treetops.
We traveled for three hours in that downpour.
III

Only once did Tish speak, and then we could hardly hear her above the
rush of water and the roar of the wind.
"There's one comfort," she said, wading along knee-deep in a torrent.
"These spring rains give nobody cold."
An hour later she spoke again, but that was at the end of that journey.
"I don't believe this is the right valley after all," she said. "I don't see
any cave." We stopped to take our bearings, as you may say, and as we
stood there, looking up, I could have sworn that I saw a man with a gun
peering down at us from a ledge far above. But the next moment he was
gone, and neither Tish nor Aggie had seen him at all.
We found the cave soon after and climbed to it on our hands and knees,