But Grandma Padgett did not enjoy the tavern bed or the tavern
breakfast. She passed the evening until midnight searching the
streets of Richmond, accompanied by Zene and his limp. Some of the
tavern people had seen her children in front of the house, but the
longest search failed to bring to light any trace of them in or about
that building. The tavern-keeper interested himself; the chamber
maids were sympathetic. Two hostlers and a bartender went different
ways through the town making inquiries. The landlady thought the
children might have wandered off to the movers' encampment, where
there were other children to play with. Grandma Padgett bade Zene put
himself on one of the carriage horses and post to camp. When he came
back he reported that Thrusty Ellen and Jonathan were asleep in the
tents, and nobody had seen Robert and Corinne.
While searching the streets earlier in the evening, Grandma Padgett
observed the pig-headed man's pavilion, and this she also explored
with Zene. A crowd was making the canvas stifling, and the pig-headed
man's performances were being varied by an untidy woman who screamed
and played on a portable bellows which had ivory keys, after
explaining that Fairy Carrie, the Wonderful Musical Child, had been
taken suddenly ill and could appear no more that night.
Grandma Padgett remained only long enough to scan twice over every
face in the tent. She went out, telling Zene she was at her wits' end.
“Oh, they ain't gone far, marm,” reassured Zene. “You'll find out
they'll come back to the tavern all right; mebby before we get there.”
But every such hopeful return to base disheartened the searchers
more. At last the grandmother was obliged to lie down.
Early in the morning the Virginian came, full of concern. His party
was breaking camp, but he would stay behind and help search for the
children.
“That I won't allow,” said Grandma Padgett. “You're on a long road,
and you don't want to risk separating from the colony. Besides no one
can do more than we can--unless it was Son Tip. As I laid awake, I
wished in my heart Son Tip was here.”
“Can't you send him a lightnin' message?” said the Virginian. “By
the telegraphic wire,” he explained, quoting a line of a popular song.
“I wish I could,” said Grandma Padgett, “but there's no telegraph
office in miles of where he's located. I thought of it last night.
There's no way to reach him that I can see, but by letter, and
sometimes _they_ lay over on the road. And I don't allow to stop
at this place. I'm goin' to set out and hunt in all directions till I
find the children.”
The Virginian agreed that her plan was best. He also made
arrangements to ride back and tell her if the caravan overtook them
on the 'pike during that day's journey. Then he and Grandma Padgett
shook hands with each other and reluctantly separated.
She made inquiries about all the other roads leading out of
Richmond. Zene drove the carriage out of the barnyard, and Grandma
Padgett, having closed her account with the tavern, took the lines,
an object of interest and solicitude to all who saw her depart, and
turned Old Hickory and Old Henry on a southward track. Zene followed
with the wagon; he was on no account to loiter out of speaking
distance. The usual order of the march being thus reversed, both
vehicles moved along lonesomely. Even Boswell and Johnson scented
misfortune in the air. Johnson ran in an undeviating line under the
carriage, as if he wished his mistress to know he was right there
where she could depend on him. His countenance expressed not only
gravity, but real concern. Boswell, on the other hand, was in a state
of nerves. If he saw a bank at the roadside he ran ahead and mounted
it, looking back into the carriage, demanding to know, with a yelping
howl, where Bobaday and Corinne were. When his feelings became too
strong for him he jumped at the step, and Grandma Padgett shook her
head at him.
“Use your nose, you silly little fice, and track them, why don't you?”
As soon as Boswell understood this reproach he jumped a fence and
smelt every stump or tuft of grass, every bush and hummock, until the
carriage dwindled in the distance. Then he made the dust smoke under
his feet as a sudden June shower will do for a few seconds, and
usually overtook the carriage with all of his tongue unfurled and his
lungs working like a furnace. Johnson reproved him with a glance, and
he at once dropped his tail and trotted beside Johnson, as if
throwing himself on that superior dog for support in the hour of
affliction.
At noon no trace of Robert and Corinne had been seen. Grandma
Padgett halted, and when Zene came up she said:
“We'll eat a cold bite right here by the road, and then go on until
sunset. If we don't find them, we'll turn back to town and take
another direction.”
They ate a cold bite, brought ready packed from the Richmond tavern.
The horses were given scant time for feeding, and drank wherever they
could find water along the road.
Cloudless as the day was, Grandma Padgett's spectacles had never
made any landscape look as blue as this one which she followed until
sunset. Sometimes it was blurred by a mist, but she wiped it off the
glasses.
At sunset they had not seen a track which might be taken for Robert
or Corinne's. The grasshoppers were lonesome. There was a great void
in the air, and the most tuneful birds complained from the fence-rails.
Grandma Padgett constantly polished her glasses on the backward road.
Nothing was said about making a halt for supper or any kind of cold
bite. The carriage was silently turned as one half the sun stood
above the tree-tops, I and it passed the wagon without other sign.
The wagon turned as silently. The shrill meadow insects became more
and more audible. Some young calves in a field, remembering that it
was milking time, began to call their mothers, and to remonstrate at
the bars in voices full of sad cadences. The very farmhouse dogs,
full-fed, and almost too lazy to come out of the gates to interview
Boswell and Johnson, barked as if there was sickness in their
respective families and it was all they could do to keep up their
spirits and refrain from howling.
The carriage and wagon jogged along until the horizon rim was all of
that indescribable tint that evening mixes with saffron, purple and
pink. Grandma Padgett became anxious to reach Richmond again. The
Virginian might have returned over the road with news of her
children. Or the children themselves might be at the tavern waiting
for her. Zene drove close behind her, and when they were about to
recross a shallow creek, scooped between two easy swells and floating
a good deal of wild grapevine and darkly reflecting many sycamores,
he came forward and loosened the check-reins of Hickory and Henry to
let them drink. Grandma Padgett felt impatient at any delay.
“I don't think they want water, Zene,” said she.
“They'd better cool their mouths, marm.” he said. But still he
fingered the check reins, uncertain how to state what had sent him
forward.
“Seems like I heard somebody laugh, marm,” said Zene.
“Well, suppose you did,” said Grandma Padgett. “The whole world
won't mourn just because we're in trouble.”
“But it sounded like Corinne,” said Zene uncertainly.
Grandma Padgett's glasses glared upon him.
“You'd' be more apt to hear her crying,” she exclaimed. “When did
you hear it?”
“Just now. I jumped right off the load.”
Hickory and Henry, anxious to taste the creek, would have moved
forward, but were checked by both pairs of hands.
“What direction?”
“I don't feel certain, marm,” said Zene, “but it come like it was
from that way through the woods.”
Grandma Padgett stretched her neck out of the carriage toward the
right.
“Is that a sled track?” she inquired. “It's gittin' so dim I can't
see.”.
Zene said there was a sled track, pointing out what looked like a
double footpath with a growth of grass and shrubs along the centre.
“We'll drive in that way,” she at once decided, “and if we get
wedged among the trees, we'll have to get out the best way we can.”
Zene turned the gray and white, and led on this new march. Hickory
and Henry, backed from the creek without being allowed to dip their
mouths, reluctantly thumped the sled track with their shoes, and
pretended to distrust every tall stump and every glaring sycamore
limb which rose before their sight. Scrubby bushes scraped the bottom
of the carriage bed. Now one front wheel rose high over a chunk, and
the vehicle rolled and creaked. Zene's wagon cover, like a big white
blur, moved steadily in front, and presently Hickory and Henry ran
their noses against it, and seemed to relish the knock which the
carriage-pole gave the feed-box. Zene had halted to listen.
It was dark in the woods. A rustle could be heard now and then as of
some tiny four-footed creature moving the stiff grass; or a twig cracked.
The frogs in the creek were tuning their bass-viols. A tree-toad rattled
on some unseen trunk, and the whole woods heaved its great lungs in the
steady breathing which it never leaves off, but which becomes a roar
and a wheeze in stormy or winter weather.
“There isn't anything”--began Grandma Padgett, but between thing and
“here” came the distinct laugh of a child.
[Illustration: “WHERE'S BOBADAY?”]
Zene cracked his whip over the gray and the white, and the wagon
rumbled ahead rapidly, jarring against roots, and ends of decayed
logs, turning short in one direction, and dipping through a long
sheltered mud-hole to the very wheel-hubs, brushing against trees and
under low branches until guttural remonstrances were scraped out of
the cover, and finally descending into an abrupt hollow, with the
carriage rattling at its hind wheels.
Grandma Padgett had been through many experiences, but she felt she
could truly say to her descendants that she never gave up so entirely
for pure joy in her life as when she saw Robert and Corinne sitting
in front of a fire built against a great stump, and talking with a
fat, silly-looking man who leaned against a cart-wheel.