The contents of that pocket she piled upon her seat; she raked the
interior with her nails, then she looked at Robert Day with dilating
eyes.
“_My_ gold dollar's gone!” said aunt Corinne. “That little old
man with a bag on his back--I just know he got into the barn and took
it last night.”
“You put it in and took it out so many times yesterday,” said
Bobaday, “maybe it fell on the carriage floor.” So they unavailingly
searched the carriage floor.
The little old man with a bag on his back was now fixed in Corinne's
imagination as the evil genius of the journey. If he spirited out her
gold dollar, what harm could he not do them! He might throw stones at
them from sheltered places, and even shoot them with guns. He could
jump out of any culvert and scare them almost to death! This
destroyed half her pleasure as the day advanced, in watching boys
fish with horse-hair snares in the runs which trickled under
culverts. But Robert felt so much interest in the process that he was
glad to have the noon halt made near such a small fishing-place. He
took his lunch and sat on the bank with the boys. They were very
dirty, and one of them had his shirtsleeve split to the shoulder,
revealing a sun-blistered elbow joint that still worked with a right
good will at snaring. But no boys were ever fuller of out-door
wisdom. They had been swimming, and knew the best diving-hole in the
world, only a couple of miles away. They had dined on berries, and
expected to catch it when they got home, but meant to attend a show
in one of their barns that afternoon, the admission price being ten
pins. Bobaday learned how to make a slip-knot with the horse-hair and
hold it in silent suspense just where the minnows moved: the moment a
fish glided into the open snare a dexterous jerk whipped him out of
the water, held firmly about the middle by the hair noose. It
required skill and nice handling, and the split-sleeved boy was the
most accomplished snarer of all.
[Illustration: BOBADAY LUNCHES WITH STRANGE BOYS.]
Robert shared his lunch with these youths, and parted from them
reluctantly when the horses were put in. But aunt Corinne who stood
by in a critical attitude, said she couldn't see any use in catching
such little fish. You never fried minnies. You used 'em for bait in
deep water, though, the split-sleeved boy condescended to inform her,
and you _could_ put 'em into a glass jar, and they'd grow like
everything. Aunt Corinne was just becoming fired with anxiety to own
such a jarful herself, when the carriage turned toward the road and
her mother obliged her to climb in.
About the middle of the afternoon Zene halted and waited for the
carriage to come up. He left his seat and came to the rear of Old
Hickory, the off carriage horse, slapping a fly flat on Old Hickory's
flank as he paused.
“What's the matter, Zene?” inquired Grandma Padgett. “Has anything
happened?”
“No, marm,” replied Zene. He was a quiet, singular fellow, halting
in his walk on account of the unevenness of his legs; but faithful to
the family as either Boswell or Johnson. Grandma Padgett having
brought him up from a lone and forsaken child, relied upon all the
good qualities she discovered from time to time, and she saw nothing
ludicrous in Zene. But aunt Corinne and Bobaday never ceased to
titter at Zene's “marm.”
“I've been inquirin' along, and we can turn off of the 'pike up here
at the first by-road, and then take the first cross-road west, and
save thirty mile o' toll gates. The road goes the same direction.
It's a good dirt road.”
Grandma Padgett puckered the brows above her glasses. She did not
want to pay unnecessary bounty to the toll-gate keepers.
“Well, that's a good plan, Zene, if you're sure we won't lose the
way, or fall into any dif-fick-ulty.”
“I've asked nigh a dozen men, and they all tell the same tale,” said
Zene.
“People ought to know the lay of the land in their own neighborhood,”
admitted Grandma Padgett. “Well, we'll try what virtue there is in the
dirt road.”
So she clucked to the carriage horses and Zene went back to his
charge.
The last toll-gate they would see for thirty miles drew its pole
down before them. Zene paid according to the usual arrangement, and
the toll-man only stood in the door to see the carriage pass.
“I wouldn't like to live in a little bit of a house sticking out on
the 'pike like that,” said aunt Corinne to her nephew. “Folks could
run against it on dark nights. Does he stay there by himself? And if
robbers or old beggars came by they could nab him the minute he
opened his door.”
“But if he has any boys,” suggested Robert looking back, “they can
see everybody pass, and it'd be just as good as going some place all
the time. And who's afraid of robbers!”
Zene beckoned to the carriage as he turned off the 'pike. For a
distance the wagon moved ahead of them, between tall stake fences
which were overrun with vines or had their corners crowded with bushes.
Wheat and cornfields and sweet-smelling buckwheat spread out on each
side until the woods met them, and not a bit of the afternoon heat
touched the carriage after that. Aunt Corinne clasped a leather-covered
upright which hurt her hand before, and leaned toward the trees on
her side. Every new piece of woodland is an unexplored country containing
moss-lined stumps, dimples of hollows full of mint, queer-shaped trees,
and hickory saplings just the right saddle-curve for bending down as
“teeters,” such as are never reproduced in any other piece of woodland.
Nature does not make two trees alike, and her cool breathing-halls under
the woods' canopies are as diverse as the faces of children wandering
there. Moss or lichens grow thicker in one spot; another particular
enclosure you call the lily or the bloodroot woods, and yet another
the wild-grape woods. This is distinguished for blackberries away up
in the clearings, and that is a fishing woods, where the limbs stretch
down to clear holes, and you sit in a root seat and hear springs
trickling down the banks while you fish. Though Corinne could possess
these reaches of trees only with a brief survey, she enjoyed them as a
novelty.
“I would like to get lost in the woods,” she observed, “and have
everybody out hunting me while I had to eat berries and roots. I
don't believe I'd like roots, though: they look so big and tough. And
I wouldn't touch a persimmon! Nor Injun turnip. You's a bad boy that
time you give me Injun turnip to eat, Bobaday Padgett!”
She turned upon her nephew, fierce with the recollection, and he
laughed, saying he wished he'd some to fool somebody with now.
“It bit my mouth so a whole crock of milk wouldn't help it, and if
brother Tip'd been home, Ma Padgett wouldn't let you off so easy.”
“You wanted to taste it,” said Robert. “And you'd eat the green
persimmons if they'd puckered your mouth clear shut.”
“I wanted to see what the things that the little pig that lived in
the stone house filled his churn with, tasted like,” admitted aunt
Corinne lucidly; so she subsided.
“Do you see the wagon, children?” inquired Grandma Padgett, who felt
the necessity of following Zene's lead closely. She stopped Old
Hickory and Old Henry at cross-roads.
“No; but he said turn west on the first road we came to,” counseled
Bobaday.
“And this is the first, I counted,” said aunt Corinne.
“I wish we could see the cover ahead of us. We don't want to resk
gettin' separated,” said Grandma Padgett.
Yet she turned the horses westward with a degree of confidence, and
drove up into a hilly country which soon hid the sun. The long shades
crept past and behind them. There was a country church, with a
graveyard full of white stones nearly smothered in grass and briers.
And there was a school-house in an open space, with a playground
beaten bare and white in the midst of a yellow mustard jungle. They
saw some loiterers creeping home, carrying dinner-pail and basket,
and taking a languid last tag of each other. The little girls looked
up at the passing carriage from their sunbonnet depths, but the boys
had taken off their hats to slap each other with: they looked at the
strangers, round-eyed and ready to smile, and Robert and Corinne
nodded. Grandma Padgett bethought herself to ask if any of them had
seen a moving wagon pass that way. The girls stared bashfully at each
other and said “No, ma'am,” but the boys affirmed strongly that they
had seen two moving wagons go by, one just as school was out, and the
boldest boy of all made an effort to remember the white and gray
horses.
The top of a hill soon stood between these children, and the
travellers, but in all the vista beyond there was no glimpse of Zene.
Grandma Padgett felt anxious, and her anxiety increased as the dusk
thickened.
“There don't seem to be any taverns along this road,” she said; “and
I hate to ask at any farmer's for accommodations over night. We don't
know the neighborhood, and a body hates to be a bother.”
“Let's camp out,” volunteered Bobaday.
“We'd need the cover off of the wagon to do that, and kittles,” said
Grandma Padgett, “and dried meat and butter and cake and things
_out_ of the wagon.”
“Maybe Zene's back in the woods campin' somewhere,” exclaimed aunt
Corinne. “And he has his gun, and can shoot birds too.”
“No, he's goin' along the right road and expectin' us to follow. And
as like as not has found a place to put up,--while we're off on the
wrong road.”
“How'll we ever get to brother Tip's, then?” propounded aunt
Corinne. “Maybe we're in Missouri, or Iowa, and won't never get to
the Illinois line!”
“Humph!” remarked Robert her nephew; “do you s'pose folks could go
to Iowa or Missouri as quick as this! Cars'd have to put on steam to
do it.”
“And I forgot about the State lines,” murmured his aunt. “The'
hasn't been any ropes stretched along't _I_ saw.”
“They don't bound States with ropes,” said Robert Day.
“Well, it's lines,” insisted aunt Corinne.
“Do you make out a house off there?” questioned Grandma Padgett,
shortening the discussion.
“Yes, ma'am, and it's a tavern,” assured her grandson, kneeling upon
the cushion beside her to stretch his neck forward.
It was a tavern in a sandy valley. It was lighting a cautious candle
or two as they approached. A farmer was watering his team at the
trough under the pump spout. All the premises had a look of Holland,
which Grandma Padgett did not recognize: she only thought them very
clean. There was a side door cut across the centre like the doors of
mills, so that the upper part swung open while the lower part
remained shut. A fat white woman leaned her elbows upon this,
scarcely observing the travellers.
Grandma Padgett paused at the front of the house and waited for
somebody to come out. The last primrose color died slowly out of the
sky. If the tavern had any proprietor, he combined farming with
tavern keeping. His hay and wheat fields came close to the garden,
and his corn stood rank on rank up the hills.
“They must be all asleep in there,” fretted Grandma Padgett. The
woman with her arms over the half door had not stirred.
“Shall I run in?” said Bobaday.
“Yes, and ask if Zene stopped here. I don't see a sign of the wagon.”
Her grandson opened the carriage door and ran down the steps. The
white-scrubbed hall detained him several minutes before he returned
with a large man who smoked a crooked-stemmed pipe during the
conference. The man held the bowl of the pipe in his hand which was
fat and red. So was his face. He had a mighty tuft of hair on his
upper lip. His shirt sleeves shone like new snow through the dark.
“Goot efenins,” he said very kindly.
“I want to stop here over night,” said Grandma Padgett. “We're
moving, and our wagon is somewhere on this road. Have you seen
anything of a wagon--and a white and a gray horse?”
“Oh, yes,” said the tavern keeper, nodding his head. “Dere is lots
of wakkons on de road aheadt.”
“Well, we can't go further ourselves. Can you take the lines?”
“Oh, nein,” said the tavern-keeper mildly. “I don't keep moofers mit
my house. Dey goes a little furter.”
“You don't keep movers!” said Grandma Padgett indignantly. “What's
your tavern for?”
“Oh, yah,” replied the host with undisturbed benevolence. “Dey goes
a little furter.”
“Why have you put out a sign to mislead folks?”
The tavern keeper took the pipe out of his mouth to look up at his
sign. It swayed back and forth in the valley breeze, as if itself
expostulating with him.
“Dot's a goot sign,” he pronounced. “Auf you go up te hill, tere ist
te house I put up mit te moofers. First house. All convenient. You
sthay tere. I coom along in te mornin'. Tere ist more as feefty
famblies sthop mit tat house. Oh, nien, I don't keep moofers mit te
tafern.”
“This is a queer way to do,” said Grandma Padgett, fixing the full
severity of her glasses on him. “Turn a woman and two children away
to harbor as well as they can in some old barn! I'll not stop in your
house on the hill. Who'd 'tend to the horses?”
“Tare ist grass and water,” said the landlord as she turned from his
door. “And more as feefty famblies hast put up tere. I don't keep
moofers mit te tafern.”
Robert and Corinne felt very homeless as she drove at a rattling
pace down the valley. They were hungry, and upon an unknown road; and
that inhospitable tavern had turned them away like vagrants.
“We'll drive all night before we'll stop in his movers' pen,” said
Grandma Padgett with her well-known decision. “I suppose he calls
every vagabond that comes along a mover, and his own house is too
clean for such gentry. I've heard about the Swopes and the Dutch
being stupid, but a body has to travel before they know.”
But well did the Dutch landlord know the persuasion of his house on
the hill after luckless travellers had passed through a stream which
drained the valley. This was narrow enough, but the very banks had a
caving, treacherous look. Grandma Padgett drove in, and the carriage
came down with a plunge on the flanks of Old Hickory and Old Henry,
and they disappeared to their nostrils and the harness strips along
the centre of their backs.
[Illustration: “HASN'T THE CREEK ANY BOTTOM?” CRIED GRANDMA PADGETT.]
“Hasn't the creek any bottom?” cried Grandma Padgett, while Corinne
and Robert clung to the settling carriage. The water poured across
their feet and rose up to their knees. Hickory and Henry were urged
with whip and cry.
“Hold fast, children! Don't get swept out!” Grandma Padgett
exhorted. “There's no danger if the horses can climb the bank.”
They were turned out of their course by the current, and Hickory and
Henry got their fore feet out, crumbling a steep place. Below the
bank grew steeper. If they did not get out here, all must go whirling
and sinking down stream. The landing was made, both horses leaping up
as if from an abyss. The carriage cracked, and when its wheels once
more ground the dry sand, Grandma Padgett trembled awhile, and moved
her lips before replying to the children's exclamations.
“We've been delivered from a great danger,” she said. “And that
miserable man let us drive into it without warning!”
“If I's big enough,” said Robert Day, “I'd go back and thrash him.”
“It ill becomes us,” rebuked Grandma Padgett, “to give place to
wrath after escaping from peril. But if this is the trap he sets for
his house on the hill, I hope he has been caught in it himself
sometime!”
“Where'll we go now?” Corinne wailed, having considered it was time
to begin crying. “I'm drownded, and my teeth knock together, I'm
gettin' so cold!”
They paused at the top of the hill, Corinne still lamenting.
“I don't want to stop here,” said Grandma Padgett, adding, “but I
suppose we must.”
The house was large and weather-beaten; its gable-end turned toward
the road. The “feefty famblies” had left no trace of domestic life.
Grass and weeds grew to the lower windows. The entrance was at one
side through a sea of rank growths.
“It looks like they's ghosts lived here,” pronounced Robert dismally.
“Don't let me hear such idle speeches!” said Grandma Padgett,
shaking her head. “Spooks and ghosts only live in people's
imaginations.”
“If they got tired of that,” said Robert, “they'd come to live here.”
“The old house looks like its name was Susan,” wept Corinne. “Are we
goin' to stay all night in this Susan house, ma?”
Her parent stepped resolutely from the carriage, and Bobaday
hastened to let down some bars. He helped his grandmother lead the
horses into a weedy enclosure, and there unhitch them from the
carriage. There was a shed covered with straw which served for a
stable. The horses were watered--Robert wading to his neck among
cherry sprouts to a curb well, and unhooking the heavy bucket from
its chain, after a search for something else available. Then leaving
the poor creatures to browse as best they could, the party prepared
to move upon the house. Aunt Corinne came out of the wet carriage.
Grandma Padgett picked up some sticks and chips. They attempted to
unlock the door; but the lock was broken. “Anybody can go in!”
remarked the head of the party. “But I don't know that we can even
build a fire, and as to provisions, I s'pose we'll have to starve
this night.”
But stumbling into a dark front room, and feeling hopelessly along
the mantel, they actually found matches. The tenth one struck flame.
There were ashes and black brands in the fireplace, left there possibly,
by the landlord's last moofer. Grandma Padgett built a fire to which the
children huddled, casting fearful glances up the damp-stained walls.
The flame was something like a welcome.
“Perhaps,” said Grandma with energy, “there are even provisions in
the house. I wouldn't grudge payin' that man a good price and cookin'
them myself, if I could give you something to eat.”
“We can look,” suggested Bobaday. “They'd be in the cellar, wouldn't
they?”
“It's lots lonesomer than our house was the morning we came away,”
chattered aunt Corinne, warming her long hands at the blaze.
And now beneath the floor began a noise which made even Grandma
Padgett stand erect, glaring through her glasses.
“_Something's_ in the cellar!” whispered Bobaday.