On a sudden impulse she started to enter the office and ask if he had returned, stopped, blushed, turned and hurried home with a new fear mingled with a strange joy beating in her heart.
John Vaughan had secured a loose horse on emerging from his friendly swamp. The shadows of night had given him the chance to escape. His horse was fresh, the rain had begun to fall, the heat had abated and he made good time.
He reached the office before midnight, took his seat at his desk, pale and determined to tell the truth. He wrote an account of the battle and the panic in which it had ended so vivid, so accurate, so terrible in its confession of riot and dismay, the editor refused to print it.
"Then the less said about it the better. Let's hush it up."
"I'm sorry. I would like to see that thing in type just as I saw and felt and lived it. It's a good story and it's my last--it's a pity to kill it----"
"Your last? What do you mean?" the chief broke in.
"That I'm going into the ranks, and see if I am a coward--" he paused and scowled--"it looked like it yesterday for a while, and my curiosity's aroused. Besides, the country happens to need me."
"Rubbish," the editor cried, "the country will get all the men it needs without you. You're a trained newspaper man. We need you here."
"Thanks. My mind's made up. I'm going to Missouri and raise a company."
The chief laid a hand on John's shoulder. "Don't be a fool. Stand by the ship. I'll put your damned story in just as you wrote it if that's what hurts."
"But it isn't. You may be right about the stuff. If I were editor I'd kill it myself. No. My dander's up. I want a little taste of the real thing. I saw enough yesterday to interest me. The country's calling and I've got to go."
The boys crowded around him and shook hands. From the door he waved his good-bye and they shouted in chorus:
Arrived at his room, he wrote a note to Betty Winter. He read it over and it seemed foolishly cold and formal. He tore it up and wrote a simpler one. It was flippant and a little presumptuous. He destroyed that and decided on a single line:
"Can I see you a few minutes before leaving to-night?
He sent it and began hurriedly to dress, his mind in a whirl of nervous excitement. His vanity had not even paused to ask whether her answer would be yes. He was sure of it. The big exciting thing was that he had made a thrilling discovery in the midst of that insane panic. He was in love--for the first time in life foolishly and madly in love. Fighting and elbowing his way through that throng of desperate terror-stricken men and horses it had come to him in a flash that life was sweet and precious because Betty Winter was in it. The more he thought of it the more desperate became his determination not to be killed until he could see and tell her. Through every moment of his wild scramble through woods and fields and crowded road, up that tree and down again, his heart was beating her name: