CROSSING THE BOG
"He led them through the depths as through the wilderness."--Ps. cvi,
9
Peter bounded from his bed in a daze. What was Ambrose yelling
about? Was the house afire? He reached, from force of habit, for
his pants. His hand failed to touch them.
"Whar be they?" he thundered. "Whar en hell es my pants?"
Maria was awake, too, groping about for a light. "Hain't they whar
yo' put 'em?" she asked.
"Naw, they hain't," he shouted. "Somebody's tuk 'em. Hit's thet
Mollie--thet's who hit es."
He pranced about, roaring invectives, while Maria made a light and
Ambrose appeared in the doorway.
"Whar be they?" he repeated. "War she in hyar? Whar'd yo' see her?"
"Out in th' yard," cried Ambrose, trembling with excitement. "She
war a-goin' es ef th' devil hed kicked her on end. Gosh! but she war
a-steppin'. An' they shoved ole Walter outten th' gate--"
Grimes gave a whoop. "Whut!" he cried. "Whar war yo'? Ef yo' seed
hit, whyn't yo' yell? Yo' kin make noise 'nuff 'bout nawthin'." He
tore down the stairs and out into the yard with no further thought of
pants. He did not propose to lose his horse as well. But the great
gate was locked. The key was attached to the pants. The pants were
gone. The Grimes family were prisoners in their own home.
They ran about like a bevy of frightened jack-rabbits and finally
brought up on the edge of the bog. There was light now, light enough
to see clearly. And what they saw was so incredible that for a
moment they thought their eyes were deceiving them.
Children--a swaying, floundering string of them, like the tail of a
kite, with the largest, Mollie, in the lead, clear out in the bog,
beyond the reach of any plank on the premises--and nobody would have
ventured to cross on a plank had one been available.
Grimes stared, rubbed his eyes and stared again. "Plumb idjits!" he
ejaculated. "Th' dum fools! I'll git 'em off en thar mighty quick."
He tore indoors and returned on the jump, his shirt flying like a
sail in the morning breeze, and carrying a shot-gun. He paused,
raised the gun to his shoulder and took aim.
From her precarious position on the limb of a tree, her feet barely
out of the mud, Mollie watched him.
"He ain't a-goin' ter hit none on us," she told the children with a
calmness of tone and a sense of conviction that was nothing short of
inspired. "Th' Good Shepherd's a-watchin'. He'll put up His hand,
er sumpin'. They was scarred hands. Mebbe thet's how hit happened.
He was a helpin' little chil'en."
But the hand that reached forth and touched the ogre's arm was the
hand of a poor, ignorant, half-witted woman, the victim of
circumstances, the creature of her environment--Maria.
"I wouldn't shoot 'em," she said, and who knows but that she, too,
was inspired, "th' police might be aroun' an' hear yo'. Leave 'em
an' they'll die in th' mire, anyhow."
Peter lowered the gun. Several sparrows twittered and went flying
over his head in the direction of the children. Neither the children
nor the sparrows fell. Maria's hand had performed the most noble
deed of her life.
"Thet's right," remarked Peter, for once not berating her for
interference. Then he commenced to laugh. The laugh was a cross
between that of a fiend and a hyena. And when he laughed, Ambrose,
his son, laughed. It was a good joke on Mollie! But Maria did not
laugh.
Then Peter remembered his unclad extremities and the run-a-way horse
and the missing key. He gritted his teeth and shook his fist
futilely toward the children before turning and making his way back
to the house.
"Now, didn't I tell yo-all?" said Mollie, smiling upon the children.
"I'm jist es happy es this hyar Honey-baby on my back. An' I hain't
a-feared o' nawthin'. Come on, we-uns has got our breff now. Kin
yo' git out on thet limb, Willie, ter fling th' rope?"
Willie was already climbing like a monkey out on the limb from which
he was to cast the rope to the next tree, further on in the depths of
the swamp. The trees were closer together now, the ground seemed to
be firmer and the mud less tenacious than in that one awful hole so
close to the farm outbuildings.
Leathy was quickly getting tired. She had run a sliver in her
finger. Every time she tried to cling tightly to a tree-limb the
sliver pierced her hand anew.
"Ain't we 'most thar?" she whispered.
"Shore," called back Johnnie. "Luk out, thar, now. Ef yo' hain't
keerful, yo're a-goin' ter slip." Leathy emitted a little scream.
It was true, she was slipping. She tried to right herself. The
sliver hurt. She tried to move her hand to ease it. Down she went!
But she was still fast to the rope. Practical Johnnie extended his
crutch. She grasped it. She clambered back into safety. On they
went.
But it was slow work--very slow work. Mollie was hampered by the
baby on her back; but a better, less troublesome child it would have
been difficult to find. Little Doris laughed and sang and clapped
her chubby hands at everything.
It was truly a venture of faith. Not one of that sad little
procession had the slightest idea of the topography of the country
save Johnnie. He declared that when he arrived at the farm he was
brought along a river road. He remembered it because he had been
looking at a boat that was just being docked. It dimly recalled to
Mollie's mind the boat she remembered playing about when she was
almost a baby. Perhaps if they could get to this river Johnnie told
about, they could get in a boat. Then Grimes would surely never find
them. But did the bogs extend to a road, and was there a river near
that road? There was no one to answer the question.
"Whar th' birds go thar has ter be sumpin' to eat an' drink,"
declared Mollie. "We-all is a-goin' ter foller th' sparrows, hain't
we, Honey-chile?"
Baby Doris tugged at Mollie's long braids and chirruped merrily:
"Gittep--Gittep hossey!" She knew not the meaning of fear.
Yet there were dangers all about them. The dangers were of the
deadliest kind. The little boys knew it. Mollie knew it. There
were poisonous bugs, insects and snakes. They infested the trees and
foliage as well as the ground under the trees. Every move the
children made, every step they took was a veritable gamble with
death. But all along the line of mud-stained little pilgrims bright,
alert, trained eyes kept watch, and acute little ears, ever attuned
to detect the slightest sound that might mean a closely menacing
danger, were constantly on duty.
It was Bobbie who saw the snake and Johnnie's crutch that killed it.
It was Willie who, with a branch broken from a tree, brushed the
horrid spider from Leon's shoulder without the younger boy's
knowledge. It was Leon, himself, who cried out a warning to Jimmie
and the girls to dodge some flying creature. They were on guard,
each one, like a little band of soldiers. They were fighting a
battle with death. Every one of those tired, half-starved little
ones, climbing with the ease of monkeys along those low-hanging
branches knew with an awful certainty that they were fleeing for
their lives. Any one of them would instantly have dropped into the
engulfing mud rather than fall again into the clutches of the ogre
they had left behind.
But their passage was as if the sparrows that flew ahead had, with
their wings, swept the way clear before them. The snakes crawled
away, or were sleeping, having gorged themselves during the night.
The bugs and spiders seemed incurious regarding the strange
procession, and the sun shone down between the trees with such
unusual brightness that the insects sought deeper shade.
"Everything a-goin' fine," called Mollie from her place up ahead.
"Yo'-all don't need ter be a-feared ter laugh, now. Ther hain't ary
one ter whup yo'-all. Jimmie, yo' kin sing ef yo' feel fer hit.
Thar hain't nawthin' a-goin' ter tech us an' time we gits ter thet
thar nex' tree we'll set a spell on thet low limb an' each on us eat
a potato."
For Mollie had left nothing forgotten. She had included in her
provisions for the journey, milk for the baby, water for the children
and raw potatoes for them all. She did not know that greater
struggles lay ahead; that they had accomplished but a small part of
their tortuous journey.