"Don't I know Baldy?" he retorted. "We're just on another side of it from the others, I told you. Come on, Ri-Ri--we'll soon smell the coffee boiling."
She wished he had not mentioned coffee. It put a name to that gnawing, indefinite feeling she had been too intent to own.
Coffee . . . Fragrant and steaming, with bread and butter . . . sandwiches filled with minced ham, with cream cheese, with olive paste--sandwiches filled with anything at all! Cold chicken . . . salad . . . fruit. Food in any form! _Food!!_
She felt empty. Utterly empty and disconsolate.
And she was tired. She had never known such tiredness--her feet ached, her legs ached, her back ached, her arms ached. She could have dropped with the achingness of her. Each effort was a punishment.
Yet she went on with a feverish haste. She was driven by a compulsion to which fatigue was nothing.
It had become terrible not to be reunited with the others. She thought of the hours, the long hours, that she and Johnny Byrd had been alone and she flinched, shivering under the whiplash of fear.
What were they saying of her, those others? What were they thinking?
She knew how unwarrantable, how inexcusable a thing she had done.
It had begun with deliberate loitering. For that--for a little of that--she had the sanction of the new American freedom, the permission of Cousin Jane's casual, understanding smile.
"It's all right," that smile had seemed to say to her, "it's all right as long as it's Johnny Byrd--but be careful, Ri-Ri."
And she had loitered shamefully, she had plunged into the woods with Johnny in that thunder storm, she had let him take her on the wrong path.
And now it was growing dark and they were far from the others--and she was not sure, even, that they were upon the right way.
But they _must_ be. They could not be so hideously, so finally wrong.
Panic routed her exhaustion and she toiled furiously on.
"You're a pretty good scout--for a little Wop," said Johnny Byrd with a sudden grin and a moment's brightness was lighted within her.
She did not speak--she could only breathe hard and smile.
Nearer and nearer they gained the top, rough climbing but not dangerous. The top was not far now. Johnny shouted and listened, then shouted again.