A covered wagon appeared on the first crossroad, moving steadily
between rows of elder bushes. The carriage waited its approach. A
figure like Zene's sat resting his feet on the tongue behind the old
gray and the old white.
“It's our wagon,” said Robert Day. Presently Zene's countenance, and
even the cast in his eyes, became a certainty instead of a wavering
indistinctness, and he smiled with satisfaction while halting his
vehicle at right angles with the carriage.
“Where have you been?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
“Over on t'other road,” replied Zene, indicating the direction with
his whip, “huntin' you folks. I knowed you hadn't made the right turn
somehow.”
Grandma Padgett mentioned her experience with the Dutch landlord and
the ford, both of which Zene had avoided by taking another cross-road
that he had neglected to indicate to them. He said he thought they
would see the wagon-track and foller, not bein' fur behind. When he
discovered they were not in his train, he was in a narrow road and
could not turn; so he tied the horses and walked back a piece. He got
on a corn-field fence and shouted to them; but by that time there was
no carriage anywhere in the landscape.
“Such things won't do,” said Grandma Padgett with some severity.
“No, marm,” responded Zene humbly.
“We must keep together,” said the head of the caravan.
“Yes, marm,” responded Zene earnestly.
“Well, now, you may drive ahead and keep the carriage in sight till
it's dinner-time and we come to a good place to halt.”
Bobaday said he believed he would get in with Zene and try the wagon
awhile. Springs and cushions had become tiresome. He half-stood on
the tongue, to bring his legs down on a level with Zene's, and
enjoyed the jolting in every piece of his backbone. He had had a
surfeit of woman-society. Even the horsey smell of Zene's clothes was
found agreeable. And above all, he wanted to talk about J. D.
Matthews, and tell the terrors of a bottomless ford and a house with
a strange-sounding cellar.
“But the man was the funniest thing,” said Bobaday. “He just talked
poetry all the time, and Grandma said he was daft. I'd like to talk
that way myself, but I can't make it jee.”
Zene observed mysteriously, that there were some queer folks in this
section.
Yes, Bobaday admitted; the landlord was as Dutch as sour-krout.
Zene observed that all the queer folks wasn't Dutch. He shook his
head and looked so steadily at a black stump that Robert knew his
eyes were fixedly cast on the horizon. The boy speculated on the
possibility of people with crooked eyes seeing anything clearly. But
Zene's hints were a stimulant to curiosity.
“Where did _you_ stay last night?” inquired Robert, bracing
himself for pleasant revelations.
“Oh, I thought at first I'd put up in the wagon.” replied Zene.
“But you didn't?”
“No: not _intirely_.”
“What _did_ you do?” pressed Robert Day.
“Well, I thought I'd better git nigh some house, on account of
givin' me a chance to see if you folks come by. I thought you'd
inquire at all the houses.”
“Did you stop at one?”
[Illustration: ZENE EXCITES BOBADAY'S CURIOSITY.]
“I took the team out _by_ a house. It was plum dark then.”
“I'd gone in to see what kind of folks they were first,” remarked
Bobaday.
“Yes, sir; that's what I'd orto done. But I leads them round to
their feed-box after I watered 'em to a spring o' runnin' water. Then
I doesn't know but the woman o' the house will give me a supper if I
pays for it. So I slips to the side door and knocks. And a man opens
the door.”
Robert Day drew in his breath quickly.
“How did the man look?” he inquired.
“I can't tell you that,” replied Zene, “bekaze I was so struck with
the looks of the woman that I looked right past him.”
Robert considered the cast in Zene's eyes, and felt in doubt whether
he looked at the man and saw the woman, or looked at the woman and
saw the man.
“Was she pretty?”
“Pretty!” replied Zene. “Is that flea-bit-gray, grazin' in the
medder there, pretty?”
“Well,” replied Bobaday, shifting his feet, “that's about as good-looking
as one of our old grays.”
“You don't know a horse,” said Zene indulgently. “Ourn's an iron
gray. There's a sight of difference in grays.”
“Was the woman ugly?”
“Is a spotted snake ugly?”
“Yes,” replied Robert decidedly; “or it 'pears so to me.”
“That's how the woman 'peared to me. She was tousled, and looked
wild out of her eyes. The man says, says he, 'What do you want?' I
s'ze, 'Can I git a bite here?'”
Robert had frequently explained to Zene the utter nonsense of this
abbreviation, “I s'ze,” but Zene invariably returned to it, perhaps
dimly reasoning that he had a right to the dignity of third person
when repeating what he had said. If he said of another man, “says
he,” why could he not remark of himself, “I says he?” He considered
it not only correct, but ornamental.
“The man says, says he, 'We don't keep foot-pads.' And I s'ze--for I
was mad--'I ain't no more a foot-pad than you are,' I s'ze. 'I've got
a team and a wagon out here,' I s'ze, 'and pervisions too, but I've
got the means to pay for a warm bite,' I s'ze, 'and if you can't
accommodate me, I s'pose there's other neighbors that can.'”
“You shouldn't told him you had money and things!” exclaimed Robert,
bulging his eyes.
“I see that, soon's I done it,” returned Zene, shaking a line over
the near horse. “The woman spoke up, and she says, says she, 'There
ain't any neighbor nigher than five miles.' Thinks I, this settlement
looked thicker than that. But I doesn't say yea or no to it. And they
had me come in and eat. I paid twenty-five cents for such a meal as
your gran'marm wouldn't have set down on her table.”
“What did they have?”
“Don't ask me,” urged Zene; “I'd like to forget it. There was
vittles, but they tasted so funny. And they kept inquirin' where I's
goin' and who was with me. They was the uneasiest people you ever
see. And nothing would do but I must sleep in the house. There was
two rooms. I didn't see till I was in bed, that the only door I could
get out of let into the room where the man and woman stayed.”
Robert Day began to consider the part of Ohio through which his
caravan was passing, a weird and unwholesome region, full of
shivering delights. While the landscape lay warm, glowing and natural
around him, it was luxury to turn cold at Zene's night-peril.
“I couldn't go to sleep,” continued Zene, “and I kind of kept my eye
on the only window there was.”
Robert drew a sigh of relief as he reflected that an enemy watching
at the window would be sure Zene was looking just in the opposite
direction.
“And the man and woman they whispered.”
“What did they whisper about?”
“How do I know?” said Zene mysteriously. “Whisper--whisper--whisper--z-z!
That's the way they kept on. Sometimes I thought he's threatenin' her,
and sometimes I thought she's threatenin' him. But along in the middle
of the night they hushed up whisperin'. And then I heard somebody open
the outside door and go out. I s'ze to myself, 'Nows the time to be up
and ready.' So I was puttin' on the clothes I'd took off, and right
there on the bed, like it had been there all the time, was two great
big eyes turnin' from green to red, and flame comin' out of them like
it does out of coals when the wind blows.”
“Was it a cat?” whispered Robert Day, hoping since Zene was safe,
that it was not.
Zene passed the insinuation with a derisive puff. He would not stoop
to parley about cats in a peril so extreme.
“'How do _I_ know what it was?” he replied. “I left one of my
socks and took the boot in my hand. It was all the gun or anything o'
that kind I had. I left my neckhan'ketcher, too.”
“But you didn't get out of the window,” objected Bobaday eagerly.
“They always have a hole dug, you know, right under the window, to
catch folks in.”
“Yes, I did,” responded Zene, leaping a possible hole in his
account. “I guess I cleared forty rod, and I come down on all-fours
behind a straw-pile right in the stable-lot.”
“Did the thing follow you?”
“Before I could turn around and look, I see that man and that woman
leadin' our horses away from the grove where I'd tied 'em to the
feed-box.”
“What for?” inquired Robert Day.
Zene cast a compassionate glance at his small companion.
“What do folks ever lead critters away in the night for?” he hinted.
“Sometimes to water and feed them.”
“I s'ze to myself,” continued Zene, ignoring this absurd
supposition, “'now, if they puts the horses in their stable, they
means to keep the wagon too, and make way with me so no one will ever
know it. But,' I s'ze, 'if they tries to lead the horses off
somewhere for to hide 'em, then _that's_ all they want, and
they'll pretend in the morning to have lost stock themselves.'”
“And which did they do?” urged Robert after a thrilling pause.
“They marched straight for their stable.”
The encounter was now to take place. Robert Day braced himself by
means of the wagon-tongue.
“Then what did _you_ do?”
“I rises up,” Zene recounted in a cautious whisper, “draws back the
boot, and throws with all my might.”
“Not at the woman?” urged Bobaday.
“I wanted to break her first,” apologized Zene. “She was worse than
the man. But I missed her and hit him.”
Robert was glad Zene aimed as he did.
“Then the man jumps and yells, and the woman jumps and yells, and
the old gray he rears up and breaks loose. He run right past the
straw pile, and before you could say Jack Robinson, I had him by the
hitch-strap--it was draggin'--and hoppin' against the straw, I jumped
on him.”
“Jack Robinson,” Zene's hearer tried half-audibly. “Then what? Did
the man and woman run?”
“I makes old Gray jump the straw pile, and I comes at them just like
I rose out of the ground! Yes,” acknowledged Zene forbearingly, “they
run. Maybe they run toward the house, and maybe they run the other
way. I got a-holt of old White's hitch-strap and my boot; then I
cantered out and hitched up, and went along the road real lively. It
wasn't till towards mornin' that I turned off into the woods and tied
up for a nap. Yes, I slept _part_ of the night in the wagon.”
Robert sifted all these harrowing circumstances.
“_Maybe_ they weren't stealing the horses,” he hazarded. “Don't
folks ever unhitch other folks' horses to put 'em in their stable?”
Zene drew down the corners of his mouth to express impatience.
“But I'd hated to been there,” Robert hastened to add.
“I guess you would,” Zene observed in a lofty, but mollified way,
“if you'd seen the pile of bones I passed down the road a piece from
that house.”
“Bones?”
“Piled all in a heap at the edge of the woods.”
“What kind of bones, Zene?”
“Well, I didn't get out to handle 'em. But I see one skull about the
size of yours, with a cap on about the size of yours.”
This was all that any boy could ask. Robert uttered a derisive “Ho!”
but he sat and meditated with pleasure on the pile of bones. It cast
a lime-white glitter on the man and woman who but for that might have
been harmless.
“I didn't git much rest,” concluded Zene. “I could drop off sound
now if I'd let myself.”
“I'll drive,” proposed Bobaday.
Zene reluctantly considered this offer. The road ahead looked smooth
enough. “I guess there's no danger unless you run into a fence
corner,” he remarked.
“I can drive as well as Grandma Padgett can,” said Robert indignantly.
Zene wagged his head as if unconvinced. He never intended to let
Robert Day be a big boy while he stayed with the family.
“Your gran'marm knows how to handle a horse. Now if I's to crawl
back and take a nap, and you's to run the team into any accident, I'd
have to bear all the blame.”
Robert protested: and when Zene had shifted his responsibility to
his satisfaction, he crept back and leaned against the goods, falling
into a sound sleep.
The boy drove slowly forward. It seemed that old gray and old white
also felt last night's vigils. They drowsed along with their heads
down through a landscape that shimmered sleepily.
Robert thought of gathering apples in the home orchard: of the big
red ones that used to fall and split asunder with their own weight,
waking him sometimes from a dream, with their thump against the sod.
What boy hereafter would gather the sheep-noses, and watch the early
June's every day until their green turned suddenly into gold, and one
bite was enough to make you sit down under the tree and ask for
nothing better in life! He used to keep the chest in his room floored
with apples. They lay under his best clothes and perfumed them. His
nose knew the breath of a russet, and in a dark cellar he could smell
out the bell-flower bin. The real poor people of the earth must be
those who had no orchards; who could not clap a particular comrade of
a tree on the bark and look up to see it smiling back red and yellow
smiles; who could not walk down the slope and see apples lying in
ridges, or pairs, or dotting the grass everywhere. Robert was half-asleep,
dreaming of apples. He felt thirsty, and heard a humming like the
buzz of bees around the cider-press. He and aunt Corinne used to sit
down by the first tub of sweet cider, each with two straws apiece,
and watch their faces in the rosy juice while they drank Cider from
the barrels when snow was on the ground, poured out of a pitcher into
a glass, had not the ecstatic tang of cider through a straw. The Bees
came to the very edge of the tub, as if to dispute such hiving of
diluted honey; and more of them came, from hanging with bent bodies,
around the dripping press.
Their buzz increased to a roar. Robert Day woke keenly up to find
the old white and the old gray just creeping across a railroad track,
and a locomotive with its train whizzing at full speed towards them.