CHAPTER XI

HEBE POCOCK

"Oh, Laura!" gasped Eve. "That boy will never give the colt up."

"Why not? See him?" exclaimed Mother Wit. "He knows he is riding a stolen horse. There! he's sliding out of the saddle."

The fact was, the colt--still but half broken under the saddle and with its eyes on its mother--would not move out of its tracks. The boy jumped off and tried to lead Jinks.

"Get away from that horse, boy!" commanded Laura, bringing the old mare down to a more moderate pace as they approached the stolen colt.

"I'll tell my brother!" yelled the youngster. "I'll set him on ye! This critter is his'n."

"And he came by it just as dishonestly as you came by such grammar as you use," said Laura, laughing, while Eve hopped over the wheel on her side of the cart and grabbed the reins out of the boy's hands.

"Let that horse alone!" cried the youngster, kicking at Eve with his bare foot.

But Eve Sitz wasn't afraid of any boy--not even had he been of her own size and age. Her open palm smacked the youngster's head resoundingly and he staggered away, bawling:

"Lemme erlone! Hebe! Hebron Pocock! I wantcher!"

Laura was already backing the mare, preparatory to turning about.

"Come on with the colt, Eve!" she cried.

The boy they had unhorsed continued to bawl at the top of his voice. But for the moment nobody appeared. Eve lengthened the bridle rein for a leading strap and then essayed to climb into the cart again. The boy ceased crying and threw a stone. The colt jumped and tried to pull away, for the stone struck her.

"Whoa, Jinks!" cried Eve. "If I could catch that boy! I'd do more than box his ears--so I would!"

"Come on, Eve!" called Laura, looking over her shoulder. "Here come some women from the shanties. They will do something to us beside calling us names----or throwing stones," as she dodged one that the boy sent in her direction.

"Whoa, Jinksey!" commanded Eve, again, trying to lead the frightened colt toward the cart.

"Hebe Pocock! Yi-yi! You're wanted!" yelled the small boy again, sending down a perfect shower of stones from the bank above them, but fortunately throwing them wild.

Eve managed to climb up into the cart, still holding the snorting, pawing colt by the strap.

"Drive on! drive on!" she gasped, looking back at the several ill-looking and worse dressed women who were running toward them.

"Go on!" urged Laura to the mare, and Old Peggy started back up the hill, while Eve towed Jinks behind. Suddenly, however, the bushes parted, and a roughly dressed fellow, with a red handkerchief tied around his head in lieu of a cap, stepped out into the road. He carried a gun in the hollow of his arm, the muzzle of which was turned threateningly toward the cart and the two girls in it. The two barrels looked as big around as cannon in the eyes of Laura and Evangeline Sitz!

"Hey, there!" advised the ugly looking fellow. "You ladies better stop a bit."

"It's Pocock!" whispered Laura.

"I know it," returned Eve, in the same tone.

"That horse you're leadin' belongs to me," said Pocock, with an ugly scowl.

"You know better, Hebron," exclaimed Eve, bravely. "It belongs to my father."

"It may look like your father's colt," said Pocock. "But I bought her of a gypsy, and it ain't the same an--i--mile."

"The old mare knows her," said Laura, quickly, as the colt nuzzled up to Peggy and the gray mare turned around to look upon the colt with favorable eye.

"That don't prove nothing," growled Pocock. "Drop that rein."

"No, I won't!" cried Eve. "Even the bridle is father's. I recognize it."

By this time the women from the shanties had arrived. They were dreadful looking creatures, and Laura was more afraid of them than she was of Pocock's shot-gun.

"What's them gals doin' to your brother Mike, Hebe?" demanded one of the women. "They want slappin', don't they?"

"They want to l'arn to keep their han's off'n my property," growled Pocock. "Come! let the little horse go."

"No!" cried Eve.

"Yes," cried Pocock, shifting his gun threateningly.

"You bet she will!" cried the woman who had spoken before, and she started to climb up on Laura's side of the cart.

Laura seized the whip and the woman jumped back.

"Shoot her, Hebe!" she yelled. "She'd a struck me with that thing!"

But Laura had no such intention. She brought the lash of the whip down upon the mare's flank. With a snort of surprise and pain the old horse sprang forward and had not Hebe Pocock leaped quickly aside he would have been run over.

But unfortunately neither Eve nor the colt were prepared for this sudden move on Laura's part. The colt stood stock-still and Eve lost her grip on the bridle rein.

"Go it!" yelled Pocock, laughing with delight. "I got the colt!"

He sprang at the head of Jinks. The women were laughing and shrieking.

"That's the time I did it!" gasped Laura, in chagrin, pulling down the old mare.

And just then the purring of an automobile sounded in their ears and there rounded the nearest turn in the road a big touring car. It rolled down toward the cart and the group about the colt, with diminished speed.

"Oh! we mustn't lose that colt after coming so near getting it away," cried Laura.

"But father can go after it with a constable," declared Eve, doubtfully.

"But Pocock will get it away from here----"

"Why, Laura Belding!" exclaimed a loud, good-natured voice. "What is the matter here?"

"Mrs. Grimes!" gasped Laura, as the auto stopped. The butcher's wife and daughter were sitting in the tonneau. Hester looked straight ahead and did not even glance at her two school-fellows.

"Isn't that young Pocock, that used to work for your father, Hester?" demanded Mrs. Grimes. "That's a very bad boy. What's he been doing to you, Laura?"

"He has stolen that little horse from Eve's father," cried Laura. "And now he won't give it up."

"'Tain't so!" cried Hebe Pocock, loudly. "Don't you believe that gal, Mis' Grimes. I bought this horse----"

"Hebe," said the butcher's wife, calmly, "you never had money enough in your life to buy a horse like that--and you never will have. Lead it up here and let the girl have her father's property. And you women, go back to your homes--and clean up, for mercy's sake! I never did see such a shiftless, useless lot as you are at the Four Corners. When I lived there, we had some decency about us----"

"Oh, Mother!" gasped Hester, grasping the good lady's arm.

"Well, that's where we lived--your father an' me," declared Mrs. Grimes. "It was near the slaughter houses and handy for him. And let me tell you, there was respectable folk lived there in them days. Hebe Pocock! Are you goin' to do what I tell you?"

The fellow came along in a very hang-dog manner and passed the strap to Eve Sitz.

"'Tain't fair. It's my horse," he growled.

"You know better," said Mrs. Grimes, calmly. "And you expect Mr. Grimes to find you a good job, do you? You wanted to get to be watchman, or the like, in town? If I tell Henry about this what chance do you suppose you'll ever have at _that_ job?"

"Mebbe I'll get it, anyway," grinned Pocock.

"And maybe you won't," said Mrs. Grimes, calmly.

Meanwhile Laura and Eve, after thanking the butcher's wife, drove on. But Hester never looked at them, or spoke.