MOUNTAINS MEET NOT
135
—will you, Chief? Not while she can see you. She—she ’s—”
“That’s all right,” Babbing interrupted, with a sudden gruff kindliness. “We ’ll fix everything all right for her. You trot along down to Careyville now, and Sam ’ll pick you up there later. Go ahead, Sam.”
The car started with a jerk. Barney dropped back to the road, and ran away limping, his lips trembling, pale with a self-pitying shame. He had seen that Babbing knew and understood.
What he did not guess was that Babbing had foreseen and—in the broken handcuff and the story that went with it—had prophetically “planted.”
