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22
The Keeper of the Bees

thing. What they thought of it as they fled down a California road with two guns in the car, two irate bandits behind them who might possibly overtake them in a speedier car at any minute, and possibly a third bandit with them, was a different proposition entirely. Susy Brunson sat on the front seat and held the revolver that had been given her father convenient to his reach. Mrs. Brunson sat on the back seat with her eyes round and a heart full of consternation. William Brunson stepped on the gas and turned at every crossroad he encountered. He did not in the least care where he went. All he wanted was to lose proximity to where he had been. He had a feeling that the lights of any small town that California proffered would look very good to him at that minute.

As for Jamie MacFarlane, he had enjoyed his supper; he had clothes that would not identify him as the man who was missing from the Arrowhead Hospital; he knew where he hoped to get his breakfast, he considered himself lost to the world of hospitals, and if he could achieve this adventure during his first day of freedom, there was every hope that he might be able at least to hold his own on the morrow. And so, through utter exhaustion, his head began slowly to sink down and over. Mrs. Brunson, dubious about the clothes, studied him as intently as she could by the night light. He looked exactly like any decent American of Scottish extraction, debilitated by illness. Finally she whispered to her daughter, “Susy, can’t you dig out a pillow for this poor boy? You can see he has been awfully sick and he is plumb tired out.”