the start. He wouldn't care to be responsible for a concussion of the
brain or anything like that. Besides, he couldn't waste time fooling
with a fool kid when the real thing might be along any minute. He
glanced anxiously up the broad white ribbon of a road that gleamed now
in the moonlight, and then pulling out his pocket flash, flooded it
swiftly over Billy's upturned freckled face that lay there still as
death without the flicker of an eyelash. The man was panic-stricken. He
stooped lower, put out a tentative finger, turned his flash full in the
boy's face again, and was just about to call to his helpers for aid
when Billy opened a large eye and solemnly winked.

Pat shut off his flash quickly, stuck it in his pocket backed off with
a low relieved, "All right Kid, you'll do. I guess you're all right
after all, now you jest lay--!" and slid away down the slope into the
cypress clump.

Billy with upturned face eyed the moon and winked; again, as if to a
friend up there in the sky. He was thinking of the detour two miles up
the road.

It was very pleasant lying there in the cool moonlight with the evening
breeze blowing his rough hair and playing over his freckles, and with
the knowledge of those twenty-four bucks safely buttoned inside his
sweater, and that neat little gun in his pocket where he could easily
close his fingers about it. The only thing he regretted was that for
conscience sake he had had to put up that detour. It would have been so
much more exciting than to have put up this all-night camouflage and
wait here till dawn for a guy that wasn't coming at all. He began to
think about the "guy" and wonder if he would take the detour to Sabbath
Valley, or turn back, or perhaps try Economy. That would be