Placing a slender finger under his chin, Tess drew the wry face up until his tearful eyes were directed into hers.
"Andy," she imparted, "there ain't a deputy in this hull world can get ye, an' don't ye be worryin' 'bout it. Jesus'd butt in an' help ye afore the man could get his nippers on ye. He'll fix it so they can't get ye, I bet."
And of a truth, Tessibel knew whereof she spoke.
"But Burnett'll be here most any time, now," shivered the little man, his chest rising and falling with emotion, "an' I tell ye, Tess--" Here he straightened up, his eyes glistening. "I tell ye, once let 'im git after a house he thinks a feller air in an' he'd turn it topsy-turvy, tissel end up. Why, Burnett can smell a man from prison a mile. I know him, I do! Hain't I seen,--and you have too, Orn,--many a poor cuss get away just like I did, mebbe over the river, mebbe a hundred miles or two, or he might even git in another state, but Burnett'll haul him back by his neck, jest the same."
Andy wilted at the end of his long speech like a hothouse plant in the frost.
"But he ain't a goin' to git you, Andy dear," Tess interposed, hugging the bent little figure. "Me an' Daddy loves ye, an' we'll hide ye, we will. Be glad ye're little, honey. If ye was big, it'd be harder to sneak ye out of sight."
"I don't see where ye're goin' to hide 'im, Tess?" remarked Skinner, making the statement a question by the rising inflection in his voice. "It air jest like Andy says, if Burnett gits on 'is scent, he'll find 'im all right, all right, an' five thousand dollars'd spur any man on to hunt 'im down."
The squatter girl smiled in sudden decision.
"They won't find 'im where I put 'im," said she, decisively.
"Tell us about it, brat," urged her father, wistfully.
Tess thought a minute, and hummed a minute.
"He air goin' to get put in my straw tick! That air where ye're goin', Andy," she explained presently. "An' I air got to be awful sick an' git in bed an' stay there. I don't know anything else to do! Oh dear! I can't look sick to save my life, can I?"
She got up and went to the glass and considered minutely her own rosy reflection. After contemplating it for some time, she came back and sat down, leaning a dimpled chin on the palm of one hand.
"I guess as how I don't need to be sick anywhere inside me," she decided. Then a smile smoothed away the slight pucker on her brow. "I know! I could hurt my foot, couldn't I? I guess as how that air best.... I'll hurt my foot.... Mebbe I'll sprain my ankle. I dunno yet, but I'll be a bed all right, an' I'll have Deacon with me. I bet when that warden sees me spread on that cot an' a owl starin' at 'im, he won't even think o' askin' me to git up."