"We're going to the capital next?" Sally leaned over the counter to ask the hot-dog man.
"Sure, kid. Didn't you know? I heard you come from that burg. Old home week for Eddie, too. You and him going out to give the old homestead the once-over?"
Sally did not wait to answer. Although it was almost time for the last show the little red sandals flew toward the side-tracked show train--and David. Her jealousy, even her just-realized love for him, were forgotten. There was only fear--fear of iron bars and shameful uniforms, iron bars which would cage David's superb young body and break his spirit; fear of the reformatory, in which she would again become a dull-eyed unit in a hopeless army, but branded now with a shameful scarlet letter which she did not deserve.
They couldn't go to the capital city where they were both known; they would have to run away again, walk all night through the dark, fugitives from "justice."
"Poor kid!" David consoled her after her first almost hysterical outburst. "I can't talk to you now, and you shouldn't be here. You've got to go back for your last performance. The show has to go on. They've been decent to us, and we can't throw them over without warning."
"But David, we've got to run away again!" Sally whimpered, clinging to both his arms, bare to the shoulders in anticipation of his work in helping to load the carnival for its thirty-mile drag to the capital. "We can't go back to Capital City! We'll be caught! Listen, David--"
"Go back to your show tent," David commanded her sternly. "I'll be working pretty late helping to load up, but I'll whistle a bar from 'Always' under your Pullman window. We all sleep on the train tonight, and pull out for Capital City some time before morning. We pick up the engine at three o'clock, I believe. Plenty of time then to decide what to do." He shook her a little to make her stop shivering and whimpering with fear. "Buck up, honey! I'm not going to let the police get you; neither is Pop Bybee. Dear little Sally!" and he stooped from his great height to brush the tip of her short, brown-powdered nose with his lips.
During the last performance in the Palace of Wonders a village constable, his star shining importantly from the lapel of his Palm Beach suit, sauntered leisurely through the tent, eyeing the freaks with skeptical amusement and asking all the Smart-Aleck questions which the more timid members of the carnival crowd longed to ask and did not dare.