"Here, Andy, skin out of that sweater and get into that extra buckskin in
my electric," he said, and forthwith began without ceremony to assist
Andrew Sevier in peeling off a soft, white, high-collared sweater he
wore, and in less time than it took to think it he had slipped it over
Caroline's protesting head, pulled it down around her slim hips almost to
where her kilts met her boots and rolled the collar up under her eyes.
Then he immediately turned his attention to the arrival of the mongrel
sleuths, each accompanied by a white-toothed negro of renowned
coon-fighting, possum-catching proclivities, whom he had assembled from
the Old Harpeth to lead the hunt, thus leaving Caroline and Andrew alone
for the moment on the far side of the fire.
"Indeed, I'm not going to have your sweater!" she protested, beginning to
divest herself of the borrowed garment, but not knowing exactly how to
crawl out of its soft embrace.
"Please, oh, please do!" he exclaimed quickly, and as he spoke he caught
her hand away, that had begun to tug at the collar.
"I wouldn't keep it for the world--and have you cold, but--I can't get
out," she answered with a laugh. "Please show me or call for help."
And as she pleaded Andrew Sevier towered beside her, tall and slender,
while the cold breeze with its pine-laden breath ruffled his white
shirt-sleeves across his arms. Caroline Darrah in the embrace of his
clinging apparel was a sight that sent the blood through his veins at a
rate that warred with the winds, and his eyes drank deeply. The color
mounted under her eyes and with the unconsciousness of a child she
nestled her chin in the woolly folds about the neck as she turned her
face from the firelight.
"Well, then, get David's coat from the car," she pleaded.
"Will you stand back in the shadow of that tree until I do?" he asked.
He had caught across the fire a glimpse of the restive Hobson and a
sudden mad desire prompted him to snatch this one joy from Fate, come
what would--just a few hours with her under the winter stars, when life
seemed to offer so little in the count of the years.
"Why, yes, of course! Did you think I'd dare go out in the dark alone,
without you?" and her joyous ingenuous casting of herself upon his
protection was positively poignant. "Hurry, please, because I--don't want
anybody to find me before you come!" After which request it took him very
little time to run across the lot and vault the fence into the road where
the electric stood.
"It's so uncertain how things arrange themselves sometimes, some places,"
she remarked to herself as she caught sight of the movements of the
foiled Hobson, whose search had now become an open maneuver.