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down?   “A boy like this,” Sam continued, drawing deep on his pipe, “could do us some good. Got big ears, see? Good eyes, too. An’ nobody suspects a kid. By now they’re used to him comin’ it around an’ they would hardly notice he was there.   He could find out who was carryin’ money, how they traveled, and I’d bet he knows more hidin’ places in this swamp than any catymount.” The climb up the ridge was steep, and Rob might slip back several times. He might fall headlong and get turned around in the dark when he got up. It had happened to Jean ... but Rob had a good head and he had grit. He never took foolish chances. As soon as he got to Mill Creek Road, he would run. He would keep going, too: once Rob began on a thing he wouldn’t let up.   “You got any real good friends in town, boy?”
    “No, sir.”
    “How about the youngsters?”
    “They say my mother was a gypsy.”
    “Right.” Sam chuckled. He was pleased with himself. He had guessed that a boy living like this one would be at outs with the town. He had been a poor boy himself. He leaned forward. “Boy, is there anything you want real bad? I mean something for your very own?”
    “A rifle,” Jean replied promptly. “I’d like a rifle so I could go west.”
    Sam’s laughter boomed and he slapped his heavy thigh. “That’s it! There it is!   By the Lord Harry, Fud! There’s the LaBarge cropping out in the boy! A rifle so’s he could go west, now doesn’t that beat all?” He sat back on his bench against the wall, puffing at his pipe. He held the pipe in one corner of his mouth and puffed from the other side. Fud looked bored and impatient, but the man on the bunk merely snored.   Rob should definitely be on the ridge by now. He would be frightened and breathing hard from the climb so he would stop to catch his breath. Up there on the ridge it would be bright moonlight, stark and clear. Below him on this side would be the swamp, and on the other, the forest. All he had to do was pick his way carefully along the top of that comblike ridge until it played out at Mill Creek Road.
    How long would it take him to get to town? Two hours? Three? Rob was cautious, and on the ridge he would take his time. Up there among the jagged rocks and brush it would be rough going and to hurry might mean a sprained or broken ankle. Once out of the woods and on the road he could run. But how far could a boy run without stopping?
    Rob would be frightened up there in the moonlight with a vast sea of darkness below him, a sea whose waves were the moving tops of trees and whose bottom was swamp and forest. It would be very still up there, except for the wind, and a sudden noise would stop a man, make the hair prickle on the back of his neck.   The air would be cool, but there would be that strange odor of dampness and decay, the smell from stagnant pools, of rotting vegetation mingled with the fresh smell of pines and hemlock. Somewhere a night bird would call, an eerie sound that would make Rob stop, shivering. But then he would hurry on, perhaps falling, skinning his knees, rising agajn and going on ...   “So you want a rifle? Now that’s smart. A good rifle is a thing to come by, and mighty handy, but a good rifle costs money. Now you try selling herbs to buy a rifle and it would take quite a spell. You stick with us, do what I tell you and use that noggin of yours, then we’ll get a rifle for you, and the best of the lot, too.”
    “What would I have to do?”
    Sam chuckled again. “See there, Fud? No nonsense about this lad, comes right to the point. Business, he is, strictly business.” Sam leaned his hairy forearms on the table. “Do? Nothing but what you’ve been doing, boy. You take your herbs to town to sell. On’y sometimes you go to Sunbury or Selinsgrove, too. And you sell ‘em ... what else? You listen. Just that. You listen. Sometimes folks passing through carry a sight of money, more’n is good for ‘em. Well, we mean to