Here at last was the robber. After you have given over expecting a
robber, and even feel that you can do without him, to find him
stealing up in the night when you are camped in a lonely place and
not near enough either tent or wagon to wake the other sleepers for
reinforcements, is trying to the nerves.
Bobaday sat up in the carriage, bracing his courage for the
emergency. He could take a cushion, jump out and attack the man with
that. It was not a deadly weapon, and would require considerable
force back of it to do damage. The whip might be better. He reached
for the whip and turned the handle uppermost. There was no cave at
hand to trap this robber in, but a toll-woman should not show more
spirit than Robert Day Padgett in the moment of peril.
Though the robber advanced cautiously, he struck his foot against a
root or two, and stumbled, making the horse take irregular steps
also, for he was leading his horse with the bridle over his arm.
And he came directly up to the carriage. Robert grasped the whip
around the middle with both hands, but some familiar attitude in the
stranger's dim outline made him lower it.
“Bobby,” said the robber, speaking guardedly, “are you in here?”
“Pa Padgett,” exclaimed Robert Day, “is that you?”
“Hush! Yes. It's me, of course. Don't wake your grandma. Old folks
are always light sleepers.”
Pa Padgett reached into the carriage, shook hands with his boy, and
kissed him. How good the bushy beard felt against Bobaday's face.
He said nothing about robbers, while his father unsaddled his horse
and tied the animal snugly to a limb.
Then Pa Padgett put his foot on the hub and sprang into the carriage.
“Is there room for me to stretch myself in here tonight too?”
“Of course there is. But don't you want to see grandma and aunt
Krin?”
“Wait till morning. We'll all take an early start. Have they kept
well?”
“Everybody's well,” replied Bobaday. “But how did you know we were
here?”
“I'd have passed by,” said Pa Padgett, “if I hadn't seen all that
white strung along. Been washing clothes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I made out the carriage, and something like a wagon back in
the bushes. So I came up to examine.”
“We thought you'd be at the State line,” said Robert.
“Oh, I intended to ride out till I met you,” replied his father.
“But I'd have missed you on the plain road; and gone by to the next
town to stop for you, if it hadn't been for the washing. You better
go to sleep again now. Have you had a nice trip?”
“Oh, awful nice! There was a little girl lost, and we got her to her
mother again, and Zene and the wagon were separated from us once”--
“Zene has taken good care of you, has he?”
“He didn't have to take care of us!” remonstrated Robert. “And last
night when there was a fair, I thought he stuck around more than he
was needed: There was the meanest boy that stuck up his hose at
movers' children.”
Aunt Corinne's brother Tip laughed under his breath.
“You'll not be movers' children much longer. The home is over
yonder, only half a day's ride or so.”
“Is it a nice place?”
“I think it's a nice place. There's prairie, but there's timber too.
And there's money to be made. You go to sleep now. You'll wake your
grandma, and I expect she's tired.”
“Yes, sir, I'm going. Is there a garden?”
“There's a good bit of ground for a garden; and there's a planting
of young catalpas. Far as the eye can see in one direction, it's
prairie. On the other side is woods. The house is better than the old
one. I had to build, and I built pretty substantial. Your grandma's
growing old. She'll need comforts in her old age, and we must put
them around her, my man.”
Bobaday thought about this home to which he and his family were to
grow as trees grasp the soil. Already it seemed better to him than
the one he had left. There would be new playmates, new landscapes,
new meadows to run in, new neighbors, new prospects. The home, so
distant during the journey that he had scarcely thought about it at
all, now seemed to inclose him with its pleasant walls, which the
smell of new timbers made pleasant twice over.
Boswell and Johnson, under the carriage, waked by the cautious talk
from that sound sleep a hard day's hunts after woods things induces,
and perhaps sniffing the presence of their master and the familiar
air of home, rose up to shake themselves, and one of them yawned
until his jaws creaked.
“It's the dogs,” whispered Bobaday.
“We mustn't set them to barking,” cautioned Pa Padgett.
“Well, good-night,” said the boy, turning on his cushion.
“Good-night. This caravan must move on early in the morning.”
End of Project Gutenberg's Old Caravan Days, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood