Free In The Belly Of The Bloodhound by Louis A. Meyer Page A

toward me. I wrap my mantilla more tightly about my lower face and cross the street so as to avoid the men. They notice this, and I see Beadle nudge Strunk and nod in my direction. Then they both quicken their pace and come at me.
    I gasp and spin and start running back up State.[_ “Stop, there! You stop!”
] I hear behind me, and I reach down and pull my skirts to my waist and turn on the speed. I dash past the Plow and Stars and then there’s Mr. Yale’s print shop, and then the good old Pig and Whistle, and I’m leavin’ ‘em behind ‘cause nobody ever catches Jacky Faber in the riggin’, or on foot, neither, and then I step on a cobble wrong and trip and go head over heels and I cry out in pain and get up lame. I hear shouts of triumph behind me.[
We’ve got ‘er now, by God!_] but I hobble on and duck down into the alley between Mrs. Bodeen’s and McGraths, and I can hear ‘em pantin’ behind me. I go to the end of the alley and then I stop and turn to face them. I fold my hands in front of me and I stand there quiet as they come puffing into the darkness of the narrow space.
    “Ah, dearie, now that’s a good girl,” says the one named Strunk. He pulls a small length of rope from his pocket. “You just stand right there and be good. Put your hands out in front of you now and…”
    ...And then John Thomas and Smasher McGee step out of the shadows behind Beadle and Strunk. In their hands they hold heavy belaying pins, and their dark, grim faces are set. There is scant mercy to be seen in either of them.
    I turn away from the sounds of struggle and head back to the school. And as I walk, I do not limp, for I didn’t trip over no cobblestone back there on State Street, no, I did not.
    Did two bodies wash up on the next morning’s tide? I don’t know, as I didn’t ask. I do know that I never again laid eyes on Beadle and Strunk.
    I know also that things will soon grow even hotter for me here and that I must get Jim and the[_ Morning Star_] to Dovecote to lay over till spring. And I will have to stay in the safety of my school.
    That’s what I gotta do.

Chapter 9
    And so it was that Jim and I and the[_ Star_] went back to Dovecote—me to stay till school started again in January, Jim to stay there with the boat, at least until spring.
    Jim had recovered enough to travel the next day, so we left early in the morning, right after a big breakfast, with Peg and the girls all fussing over him, which I know he enjoyed, although he blushed and said he didn’t. Jim had to eat slowly, carefully placing the food between his bruised and split lips, but at least those two rotters didn’t get any of his teeth. He might limp for a day or two, but he’s young; he’ll get over it.
    On the way down to the[_ Star,_] we stopped to buy Jim his heavy jacket, blue cap, and boots. And I bought him a bit of blue ribbon to tie back his curly brown hair.
    We found the traps and buoys I bought the day before piled on the dock next to the boat as promised. We loaded them on board and I returned to the chandler’s once more to buy some rope and blue and white paint. The money belt that I wear about my waist is getting very light.

    Star
log, December 4. 09:30. Under way on starboard tack from Boston to Quincy. Winds light and from the south. Will have to tack all the way to Dovecote.
    Back at Dovecote, the farm kids find Jim to be an exotic—a handsome boy who wears a striped jersey, bears evidence on his face of a recent fight, walks with a swaggering roll in his step, and knows how to sail a boat. The boys, of course, want to pound him, it being in the nature of boys to do that, but I asked Edward, the stableboy I had known from before, to keep the others from beating him until he has fully recovered from his wounds, and then they could. They agree, and by the time he has healed, they are all friends and so they forgo that particular male ritual, as I thought they might. The girls, on the other hand, have something else