It was a light night, but the new moon looked just like it was
blowed through the sky by the high wind. I noticed that, because I
remembered it afterwards.
“Now I was outside, I didn't know which way to turn. If I run to
either side, there were the men, and if I took toward the pig-pen
they'd see me. And they'd be comin' around and 'd ketch me where I
was.”
“What did you do?” exclaimed aunt Corinne, preserving a rigid
attitude.
The toll-woman laughed cheerfully as she poured out more tea for
herself, Grandma Padgett having waved back the teapot spout.
“I took the only chance I saw and jumped for that there cave.”
Both Robert and his aunt arose from their chairs to look out of the
back door.
The cave was a structure which I believe is peculiar to the West,
being in reality a kind of dug-out. It flourished before people built
substantial houses with cellars under them, and held the same
relation to the family's summer economy as the potato, apple, and
turnip holes did to its winter comfort. Milk, butter, perishable
fruit, lard, meats, and even preserves were kept in the cave. It was
intended for summer coolness and winter warmth. To make a cave, you
lifted the sod and dug out a foot of earth. The bottom was covered
with straw. Over this you made boards meet and brace each other with
the slope of the roof. The ends were boarded up, leaving room for a
door, and the whole outside sodded thickly, so that a cave looked
like a sharp-printed bulge in the sward, excepting at that end where
the heavy padlocked door closed it. It was a temptation to bad boys
and active girls; they always wanted to run over it and hear the
hollow sound of the boards under their feet. I once saw a cave break
through and swallow one out of such a galloping troup, to his great
dismay, for he was running over an imaginary volcano, and when he sat
down to his shoulders in an apple-butter jar, the hot lava seemed
ready made to his hand.
From the toll-woman's cave-roof, spikes of yellow mustard were
shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to
a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children,
and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges.
Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ridge of this
cave.
It stood a few yards from the back door.
“I had the key in my pocket,” said the toll-woman, “and ever since
then I've never carried it anywhere else. I clapped, it into the
padlock and turned, but just as I pulled the door I heard feet comin'
around the house full drive. Instead of jumpin' into the cave I
jumped behind it. I thought they had me, but I wasn't goin' to be
crunched to death in a hole, like a mouse. My stocking-feet slipped,
and I came down flat, but right where the shadow of the house and the
shadow of the cave fell all over me. If I hadn't slipped I'd been
runnin' across that field, and they'd seen me sure. Folks around here
made a good deal of fuss over the way things turned out, but I don't,
take any more credit than's my due, so I say it just happened that I
didn't try to run further.
“The two men outside unlocked the back door and the one inside came
on to the step.
“'There's nothin' in the box and nobody in here,' says he. 'She's
jumped out o' bed and run and carried the cash with her.'
“'Did you look under the bed?' says one of the outsiders. And he ran
and looked himself; anyway, he went in the house and came out again.
I was glad I hadn't got under the bed.
“'This job has to be done quick,' says the first one. 'And the best
way is to ketch the woman and make her give up or tell where the
stuff is hid. She ain't got far, because I heard her open this door.'
“Then they must have seen the cave door stannin' open. I heard them
say something about 'cave,' and come runnin' up.
“'Hold on,' says one, and he fires a pistol-shot right into the
cave. I was down with my mouth to the ground, flat as I could lay,
but the sound of a gun always made me holler out, and holler I did as
the ball seemed to come thud! right at me; but it stuck in the back
of the cave.
“'All right. Here she is!' says the foremost man, and in they all
went. I heard them stumble as they stepped down, and one began to
blame the others for crowdin' after him when they ought to stopped at
the mouth to ketch me if I slipped through his fingers.
“I don't know to this hour how I did it,” exclaimed the toll-woman,
fanning herself, “nor when I thought of it. But the first thing I
felt sure of I had that door slammed to, and the key turned in the
padlock, and them three robbers was ketched like mice in a trap,
instead of it's bein' me!”
Robert Day gave a chuckle of satisfaction, but aunt Corinne braced
herself against the door-frame and gazed upon the magic cave with
still wider eyes.
“Did they yell?” inquired Bobaday.
“It ain't fit to tell,” resumed the toll-woman, “what awful language
them men used; and they kicked the door and the boards until I
thought break through they would if they had to heave the whole
weight, of dirt and sod out of the top. Then I heard somebody comin'
along the 'pike, and for a minute I felt real discouraged; for,
thinks I, if there's more engaged to help them, what's a poor body to
do?
“But 'twas a couple of stock-men, riding home, and they stopped at
the gate, and I run through the open house to tell my story, and it
didn't take long for them with pistols in their pockets and big black
whips loaded with lead in the handles, to get the fellows out and tie
'em up firm. I hunted all the new rope in the house, and they took
the firearms away from the robbers, and drove 'em off to jail, and
the robbers turned out to be three of the most desp'rate characters
in the State, and they're in prison now for a long term of years.”
“What did you do the rest of the night?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
“O, I locked everything tight again, and laid down till daylight,”
replied the toll-woman, with somewhat boastful indifference. “Folks
haven't got done talkin' yet about that little jail in my back yard,”
she added, laughing. “They came from miles around to look into it and
see where the men pretty nigh kicked the boards loose.”
This narrative was turned over and over by the children after they
resumed their journey, and the toll-woman and her cave had faded out
in distance. If they saw a deserted cabin among the hollows of the
woods, it became the meeting place of robbers. Now that aunt
Corinne's nephew turned his mind to the subject, he began to think
the whole expedition out West would be a failure--an experience not
worth alluding to in future times--unless the family were well robbed
on the way. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, in the great overland colony,
would have Indians to shudder at, a desert and mountains to cross,
besides the tremendous Mississippi River. Robert would hate to meet
Jonathan in coming days--and he had a boy's faith that he should be
constantly repassing old acquaintances in this world--and have no
peril to put in the balance against Jonathan's adventures. Of course
he wanted to come out on the right side of the peril, it does not
tell well otherwise.
But while aunt Corinne's mind ran as constantly on robbers, they had
no charms for her. She did not want to be robbed, and was glad her
lines had not fallen in the lonely toll-house. Being robbed appeared
to her like the measles, mumps, or whooping-cough; more interesting
in a neighboring family than in your own. She would avoid it if
possible, yet the conviction grew upon her that it was not to be
escaped. The strange passers-by who once pleasantly varied the road,
now became objects of dread. Though Zene got past them in safety, and
though they gave the carriage a wide road, aunt Corinne never failed
to turn and watch them to a safe distance, lest they should make a
treacherous charge in the rear.
Had they been riding through some dismal swamp, the landscape's
influence would have accounted for all these terrors. But it was the
pretty region of Western Indiana, containing hills and bird-songs
enough to swallow up a thousand stories of toll-gate robberies in
happy sight and sound.
Grandma Padgett, indeed, soon put her ban upon the subject of caves
and night-attacks. But she could not prevent the children thinking.
Nor was she able to drive the carriage and at the same time sit in
the wagon when they rode with Zene and stop the flow of recollection
to which they stimulated him. While sward, sky, and trees became
violet-tinted to her through her glasses, and she calmly meditated
and chewed a bit of calamus or a fennel seed, Bobaday and aunt
Corinne huddled at the wagon's mouth, and Zene indulgently harrowed
up their souls with what he heard from a gentleman who had been in
the Mexican war.
“The very gentleman used to visit at your grand-marm's house,” said
Zene to Robert, “and your marm always said he was much of a
gentleman,” added Zene to aunt Corinne. “Down in the Mexican country
when they didn't fight they stayed in camp, and sometimes they'd go
out and hunt. Man that'd been huntin', come runnin' in one day scared
nigh to death. He said he'd seen the old Bad Man. So this gentleman
and some more of the fine officers, they went to take a look for
themselves. They hunted around a good spell. Most of them gave it up
and went back: all but four. The four got right up to him.”
“O don't, Zene!” begged aunt Corinne, feeling that she could not
bear the description.
But to Robert Day's mind arose the picture of Apollyon, in _Pilgrim's
Progress_, and he uttered something like a snort of enjoyment, saying:
“Go on, Zene.”
[Illustration: ZENE'S WILD MAN.]
“I guess it was a crazy darkey or Mexican,” Zene was careful to
explain. “He was covered with oxhide all over, so he looked red and
white hairy, and the horns and ears were on his head. He had a long
knife, and cut weeds and bark, and muttered and chuckled to himself.
He was ugly,” acknowledged Zene. “The gentleman said he never saw
anything better calkilated to look scary, and the four men followed
him to his den. They wouldn't shoot him, but they wanted to see what
he was, and he never mistrusted. After a long round-about, they
watched him crawl on all-fours into a hole in a hill, and round the
mouth of the hole he'd built up a tunnel of bones. The bones smelt
awful,” said Zene. “And he crawled in with his weeds and bark in his
hand, and they didn't see any more of him. That's a true story,”
vouched Zene, snapping his whip-lash at Johnson, “but your grandmarm
wouldn't like for me to tell it to you. Such things ain't fit for
children to hear.”
Robert Day felt glad that Zene's qualms of repentance always came
after the offence instead of before, and in time to prevent the
forbidden tale.
Yet, having made such ardent preparation for robbers, and tuned
their minds to the subject by every possible influence, the children
found they were approaching the last large town on the journey
without encountering any.
This was Terre Haute. One farmer on the road, being asked the distance,
said, it was so many miles to Tarry Hoot. Another, a little later met,
pronounced the place Turry Hut; and a very trim, smooth-looking man
whom Zene classed as a banker or judge, called it Tare Hote. So the
inhabitants and neighbors of Terra Haute were not at all unanimous in
the sound they gave her French name; nor are they so to this day.