Glimpses of
her neck and bosom revealed a skin of the thinnest, whitest
texture--quite milk-white, with pink showing through on account of the
heat. She had little strong brown hands, and the foot which she put on
the dashboard was a very trim and graceful foot like that of a
thoroughbred mare, built for flight rather than work, and it swelled
beautifully in its grass-stained white stocking above her slender ankle
to the modest skirt.
A great hatred for Buck Gowdy surged through me as I felt her beside me
in the seat and studied one after the other her powerful
attractions--the hatred, not for the man who misuses the defenseless
girl left in his power by cruel fate; but the lust for conquest over the
man who had this girl in his hands and who, as she feared, was searching
for her. I mention these things because, while they do not excuse some
things that happened, they do show that, as a boy who had lived the
uncontrolled and, by association, the evil life which I had lived, I was
put in a very hard place.
2
After a while Virginia looked back, and clutched my arm convulsively.
"There's a carriage overtaking us!" she whispered. "Don't stop! Help me
to climb back and cover myself up!"
She was quite out of sight when the carriage turned out to pass, drove
on ahead, and then halted partly across the road so as to show that the
occupants wanted word with me. I brought my wagon to a stop beside them.
"We are looking," said the man in the carriage, "for a young girl
traveling alone on foot over the prairie.
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