Towards evening of the next day the broken wagon wheel was replaced. By that time the children were not more anxious to move forward than was Grandma Padgett. So just before sunset they broke up camp and moved along the country road until the constellations were swinging overhead. Zene took the first good crossway that led to the 'pike, and after waiting to be sure that the noses of Old Hickory and Old Henry were following, he jogged between dewy fence rows, and they came to the broad white ribbon of high road, and in time to the village of Somerford, having progressed only ten miles that day.
Bobaday and Corinne were so sleepy, and their departure from Somerford next morning was taken at such an early hour, that they remembered it only as a smell of tallow candles in the night, accompanied by a landlady's head in a ruffled nightcap.
Very different was Springfield, the county seat of Clark County. That was a town with people moving briskly about it, and long streets could be seen, where pleasant houses were shaded with trees.
Zene inquired the names of all small places as soon as they entered the main street, and then, obligingly halting the wagon at one side, he waited until Grandma Padgett came up, and told her. He learned and announced the cities long before any of them came into view. It was a pleasure to Bobaday and aunt Corinne to ride into a town repeating its name to themselves and trying to fasten its identity on their minds. First they would pass a gang of laborers working on the road, or perhaps a man walking up and down telegraph poles with sharp-shod heels; then appeared humble houses with children playing thickly around them. Finer buildings crowded on the sight, and where the signs of business flaunted, were women and little children in pretty clothes, always going somewhere to buy something nice. Once they met a long procession of carriages, and in the first carriage aunt Corinne beheld and showed to her nephew a child's coffin made of metal. It glittered in the sun. Grandma Padgett said it was zinc. But aunt Corinne secretly suspected it was made of gold, to enclose some dear little baby whose mother would not put it into anything else.
At New Carlisle, a sleepy little village where the dogfennel was wonderfully advanced for June, Zene took the gray from the wagon and hitched him to the carriage, substituting Old Hickory. The gray's shoulder was rubbed by his collar, and Zene reasoned that the lighter weight of the carriage would give him a better chance of healing his bruise. Thus paired the horses looked comical. Hickory and Henry evidently considered the change a disgrace to them. But they made the best of it and uttered no protest, except keeping as wide a space as possible between themselves and their new mates. But the gray and white, old yoke fellows at the plough, who knew nothing of the dignity of carriage drawing, and cared less, who had rubbed noses and shared feed-boxes ever since they were colts, both lifted up their voices in mournful whinneys and refused comfort and correction. The white turned his head back over his shoulder and would have halted anywhere until his mate came up; while the gray strained forward, shaking his head, and neighing as if his throat were full of tears every time a tree or a turn in the road hid the wagon.
The caravan moving to this irregular and doleful music, passed through another little town which Zene said was named Boston, late on a rainy afternoon. Here they crossed the Miami River in a bridge through the cracks of which Robert Day and Corinne looked at the full but not very wide stream. It flowed beneath them in comparative silence. The rain pricked the water's surface into innumerable puckers.
“Little boys dancing up,” said aunt Corinne, in time-honored phrase.
“No; it's bees stingin' the water,” said her nephew, “with long stingers that reach clear out of the clouds.”
These sky-bees stung the dusty road until it lay first in dark dimples and last in swollen mud rows and shallow pools. The 'pike kept its dignity under the heaviest rains. Its very mud was light and plaster-like, scarcely clinging to the wheels or soiling the horses' legs. Its flint ribs rung more sharply under the horses' shoes. Through the damp dusk aunt Corinne took pleasure in watching the fire struck by old Henry and the gray, against the trickling stones. They pulled the carriage curtains down, and Grandma Padgett had the oilcloth apron drawn up to her chin, while she continued to drive the horses through a slit. The rear of the wagon made a blur ahead of them. Now the 'pike sides faded from fresh green to a general dulness, and trees whispering to the rain lost their vistas and indentations of shade, and became a solid wall down which a steady pour hissed with settled monotony. Boswell and Johnson no longer foraged at the 'pike sides, or lagged behind or scampered ahead. They knew it was a rainy October night without lightning and thunder, slipped by mistake into the packet of June weather; and they trotted invisibly under the carriage, carrying their tails down, and their lolling tongues close to the puddles they were obliged to scamper through or skip. Boswell and Johnson remembered their experiences at the lonesome Susan house, where they lay in the deep weeds and were forgotten until morning by the harassed family; and they rolled their eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way, unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper. It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of woodsy creatures to be scratched out of holes or chased up trees, or to be nosed and chewed at. There were stray and half-wild pigs that had tails to be bitten, and what could be more exhilarating than making a drove of grunting pigs canter like a hailstorm away into deep woods! And in the towns and villages all resident dogs came to call on Boswell and Johnson. At every tavern Boswell picked a fight and Johnson fought it out; sometimes retiring with his tail to the earth and a sad expression of being outnumbered, but oftener a victor to have his wounds dressed and bandaged by Boswell's tongue. There was plenty to eat at taverns and camps, and good hunting in the woods; but who could tell what hungry milestone might stand at the end of this day's journey?
Grandma Padgett herself was beginning to feel anxious on this subject. She drove faster in order to overtake Zene and consult with him, but before his attention could be attracted, both carriage and wagon reached a broad belt of shine stretching across the 'pike, and making trees in the meadow opposite stand out as distinct individuals.
This illumination came from many camp-fires extending so far into the woods that the last one showed like a spark. A great collection of moving wagons were ranged in line along the extent of these fires, and tents pitched under the dripping foliage revealed children playing within their snug cover, or women spreading the evening meal. Kettles were hung above the fires, and skillets hissed on the coals. The horses, tied to their feed-boxes, were stamping and grinding their feed in content, and the gray lifted up his voice to neigh at the whole collection as Grandma Padgett stopped just behind Zene. All the camp dogs leaped up the 'pike together, and Boswell and Johnson met them in a neutral way while showing the teeth of defence. To Boswell and Johnson as well as to their betters, this big and well-protected encampment had an inviting look, provided the campers were not to be shunned.
A man came up the 'pike side through the rain and kicked some of the dogs aside.
“Hullo,” said he most cheerfully. “Want to put up?”
“What is it?” inquired Zene cautiously. He then craned his neck around to look at Grandma Padgett, whose spectacles glared seriously at the man.
This hospitable traveller wore a red shirt and a slouched hat, and had his trousers tucked in his boots. He pulled off his hat to shake the rain away, and showed bushy hair and a smiling bearded face. No weather could hurt him. He was ready for anything.
“Light down,” he exclaimed. “Plenty of room over there if you want it.”
“Who's over there?” inquired Zene.
“Oh, it's a big camp-meeting,” replied the man. “There's twenty or thirty families, and lots of fun.”
“Do you mean,” inquired Grandma Padgett, “a camp-meeting for religious purposes?”
“You can have that if you want it,” responded the man, “and have your exhorters along. It's a family camp. Most of us going out to Californy. Goin' to cross the plains. Some up in the woods there goin' to Missoury. Don't care where they're goin' if they want to stop and camp with us.We'refrom the Pan Handle of Virginia. There's a dozen families or more of us goin' out to Californy together. The rest just happened along.”
“I'm a Virginian myself,” said Grandma Padgett, warming, “though Ohio's been my State for many years.”
“Well, now,” exclaimed the mover, “if you want to light right down, we'll be all the gladder for that. I saw you stoppin' here uncertain; and there's the ford over Little Miami ahead of you. I thought you'd not like to try it in the dark.”
“You're not like a landlord back on the road that let us risk our necks!” said Grandma Padgett with appreciation. “But if you take everybody into camp ain't you afraid of getting the wrong sort?”
“Oh, no,” replied the Virginian. “There's enough ofusto overpowerthem.”
“Well, Zene,” said Grandma Padgett, “I guess we'd better stop here. We've provisions in our wagon.”
“How far you goin'?” inquired the hospitable mover.
“Into Illinois,” replied the head of the small caravan.
“Your trip'll soon be done, then. Come on, now, and go to Californy, why don't you!That'sthe country to get rich in! You'll see sights the other side of the Mississippi!”
“I'm too old for such undertakings,” said Grandma Padgett, passing over the mover's exuberance with a smile.
“Why, we have a granny over ninety with us!” he declared. “Now's the time to start if you want to see the great western country.”
Zene drove off the 'pike on the temporary track made by so many vehicles, and Grandma Padgett followed, the Virginian showing them a good spot near the liveliest part of the camp, upon which they might pitch.
The family sat in the-carriage while Zene took out the horses, sheltered the wagon under thick foliage where rain scarcely penetrated, and stretched the canvas for a tent. Then Grandma Padgett put on her rubber overshoes, pinned a shawl about her and descended; and their fire was soon burning, their kettle was soon boiling, in defiance of water streams which frequently trickled from the leaves and fell on the coals with a hiss. The firelight shone through slices of clear pink ham put down to broil. Aunt Corinne laid the cloth on a box which Zene took out of the wagon for her, and set the cups and saucers, the sugar and preserves, and little seed cakes which grew tenderer the longer you kept them, all in tempting order. They had baker's bread and gingercakes in the carriage. Since her adventure at the Susan house, Grandma Padgett had taken care to put provisions in the carriage pockets. Then aunt Corinne, assisted by her nephew, got potatoes from the sack, wrapped them in wet wads of paper, and roasted them in the ashes. A potato so roasted may be served up with a scorched and hardened shell, but its heart is perfumed by all the odors of the woods. It tastes better than any other potato, and while the butter melts through it you wonder that people do not fire whole fields and bake the crop in hot earth before digging it, to store for winter.
{Illustration: BOBADAY'S CANOPIED THRONE.}
Zene had frequently assured Robert Day that an egg served this way was better still. He said he used to roast eggs in the ashes when burning stumps, and you only needed a little salt with them, to make them fit for a king. But Robert Day scorned the egg and remained true to the potato.
While they were at supper the Virginian's wife came to see them, carrying in her hand an offering of bird-pie. Grandma Padgett responded with a dish of preserves. And they then talked about the old State, trying to discover mutual interests there.
The Virginian's wife was a strong, handsome, cordial woman. Her family came from the Pan Handle, but from the neighborhood of Wheeling, They were not mountaineers. She had six children. They were going to California because her husband had the mining fever. He wanted to go years before, but she held out against it until she saw he would do no good unless he went. So they sold their land, and started with a colony of neighbors.
The names of all her relatives were sifted, and Grandma Padgett made a like search among her own kindred, and they discovered that an uncle of one, and a grandfather of the other, had been acquainted, and served together in the War of '12. This established a bond. Grandma Padgett was gently excited, and told Bobaday and Corinne after the Virginia woman's departure to her own wagons, that she should feel safe on account of being an old neighbor in the camp.
But the camp was too exciting to let the children fall asleep early. Fires were kept briskly burning, and some of the wagoners feeling in a musical humor, shouted songs or hummed melancholy tunes which sounded like a droning accompaniment to the rain. The rain fell with a continuous murmur, and evidently in slender threads, for it scarcely pattered on the tent. It was no beating, boisterous, drenching tempest, but a lullaby rain, bringing out the smell of barks, of pennyroyal and May-apple and wild sweet-williams from the deep woods.
Robert Day crept out of the carriage, having with him the oil-cloth apron and a plan. Four long sticks were not hard to find, or to sharpen with his pocket knife, and a few knocks drove them into the soft earth, two on each side of a log near the fire. He then stretched the oil-cloth over the sticks, tying the corners, and had a canopied throne in the midst of this lively camp. A chunk served for a footstool. Bobaday sat upon his log, hearing the rain slide down, and feeling exceedingly snug. His delight came from that wild instinct with which we all turn to arbors and caves, and to unexpected grapevine bowers deep in the woods; the instinct which makes us love to stand upright inside of hollow sycamore-trees, and pretend that a green tunnel among the hazel or elderberry bushes is the entrance hall of a noble castle.
Bobaday was very still, lest his grandmother in the tent, or Zene in the remoter wagon, should insist on his retiring to his uneasy bed again. He got enough of the carriage in daytime, having counted all its buttons up and down and crosswise. The smell of the leather and lining cloth was mixed with every odor of the journey. One can have too much of a very easy, well-made carriage.
The firelight revealed him in his thoughtful mood: a very white boy with glistening hair and expanding large eyes of a gray and velvet texture. Some light eyes have a thin and sleepy surface like inferior qualities of lining silk; and you cannot tell whether the expression or the humors of the eye are at fault. But Nature, or his own meditations on what he read and saw in this delicious world, had given to Bobaday's irises a softness like the pile of gray velvet, varied sometimes by cinnamon-colored shades.
His eyes reflected the branches, the other campfires, and many wagons. It gave him the sensation of again reading for the first time one of grandfather's Peter Parley books about the Indians, or Mr. Irving's story of Dolph Heyleger, where Dolph approaches Antony Vander Heyden's camp. He saw the side of one wagon-cover dragged at and a little night-capped head stuck out.
“Bobaday!” whispered aunt Corinne, creeping on tiptoe toward him, and anxious to keep him from exclaiming when he saw her.
“What did you get up for?” he whispered back.
“What didyouget up for?” retaliated aunt Corinne.
Robert Day made room for her on the log under the canopy, and she leaned down and laced her shoes after being seated. “Ma Padgett's just as tight asleep! What'd she say if she knew we wasn't in bed!”
It was so exciting and so nearly wicked to be out of bed and prowling when their elders were asleep, they could not possibly enjoy the sin in silence.
“Ain't it nice?” whispered aunt Corinne. “I saw you fixin' this little tent, and then I sl-ip-ped up and hooked some of my clothes on, and didn't dast to breathe 'fear Ma Padgett'd hear me. There must be lots of children in the camp.”
“Yes; I've heard the babies cryin'.”
“Do you s'pose there's any gipsy folks along?”
“Do 'now,” whispered Bobaday, his tone inclining to an admission that gipsy folks might be along.
“The kind that would steal us,” explained aunt Corinne.
This mere suggestion was an added pleasure; it made them shiver and look back in the bushes.
“There might be—away back yonder,” whispered Robert Day, emboldened by remembering that his capable grandmother was just within the tent, and Zene at easy waking distance.
“But all the people will hitch up and drive away in the morning,” he added, “and we won't know anything about 'em.”
To aunt Corinne this seemed a great pity. “I'd like to see how everybody looks,” she meditated.
“So'd I,” whispered her nephew.
“It's hardly rainin' a drizzle now,” whispered aunt Corinne.
“I get so tired ridin' all day long,” whispered Robert, “that I wish I was a scout or something, like that old Indian that was named Trackless in the book—that went through the woods and through the woods, and didn't leave any mark and never seemed to wear out. You remember I read you a piece of it?”
Aunt Corinne fidgeted on the log.
“Wouldn't you like,” suggested her nephew, whose fancy the nighttime stimulated, “to get on a flying carpet and fly from one place to another?”
Aunt Corinne cast a glance back over her shoulder.
“We could go a little piece from our camp-fire and not get lost,” she suggested.
“Well,” whispered Robert boldly, “le's do it. Le's take a walk. It won't do any harm. 'Tisn't late.”
“The's chickens crowin' away over there.”
“Chickens crow all times of the night. Don't you remember how our old roosters used to act on Christmas night? I got out of bed four times once, because I thought it was daylight, they would crow so!”
“Which way'll we take?” whispered aunt Corinne.
Robert slid cautiously from the log and mapped out the expedition.
“Off behind the wagon so's Zene won't see us. And then we'll slip along towards that furthest fire. We can see the others as we go by. Follow me.”
It was easy to slip behind the wagon and lose themselves in the brush. But there they stumbled on unseen snags and were caught or scratched by twigs, and descended suddenly to a pig-wallow or other ugly spot, where Corinne fell down. Bobaday then thought it expedient for his aunt to take hold of his jacket behind and walk in his tracks, according to their life-long custom when going down cellar for apples after dark. Grandma Padgett was not a woman to pamper the fear of darkness in her family. She had been known to take a child who recoiled from shapeless visions, and lead him into the unlighted room where he fancied he saw them.
So after proceeding out of sight of their own wagon, aunt Corinne and her nephew, toughened by this training, would not have owned to each other a wish to go back and sit in safety and peace of nerve again upon the log. Robert plodded carefully ahead, parting the bushes, and she passed through the gaps with his own figure, clinching his jacket with fingers that tightened or relaxed with her tremors.
They had not counted on being smelled out by dogs at the various watch-fires. One lolling yellow beast sprang up and chased them. Aunt Corinne would have flown with screams, but her nephew hushed her up and put her valiantly on a very high stump behind himself. The dog took no trouble to trace them. He was too comfortable before the brands, too mud-splashed and stiff from a long day's journey, to care about chasing any mystery of the wood to its hole. But this warned them not to venture too near other fires where other possible dogs lay sentry.
“Why didn't we fetch old Johnson?” whispered aunt Corinne, after they slid down the tree stump.
“'Cause Boswell'd been at his heels, and the whole camp'd been in a fight,” replied Bobaday. “Old Johnson was under our wagon; I don't know where Bos was. I was careful not to wake him.”
Through gaps in foliage and undergrowth they saw many an individual part of the general camp; the wagon-cover in some cases being as dun as the hide of an elephant. When a curtain was dropped over the front opening of the wagon, Bobaday and Corinne knew that women and children were sleeping within on their chattels. Here a tent was made of sheets and stretched down with the branch of an overhanging tree for a ridge-pole; and there horse-blankets were made into a canopy and supported by upright poles. Within such covers men were asleep, having sacks or comforters for bedding.
On a few wagon tongues, or stretched easily before fires, men lingered, talking in steady, monotonous voices as if telling stories, or in indifferent tones as if tempting each other to trades.
The rain had entirely ceased, though the spongy wet wood sod was not pleasant to walk upon. “I guess,” said-aunt Corinne, “we'd better go back.”
“Well, we've seen consider'ble,” assented her nephew. “I guess we'd better.”
So he faced about. But quite near them arose the piercing scream of a child in mortal fear.
Aunt Corinne and her nephew felt pierced by the cry. Her hands gripped his jacket with a shock. Robert Day turning took hold of his aunt's wrist to pinch her silent, but his efforts were too zealous and turned her fright to indignation.
“I don't want my hand pinched off, Bobaday Padgett!” whispered aunt Corinne, jerking away and thus breaking the circuit of comfort and protection which was supposed to flow from his jacket.
“But listen,” hissed Robert.
“I don't want to listen,” whispered aunt Corinne; “I want to go back to our camp-fire.”
“Nobody can hurt us,” whispered her nephew, gathering boldness. “You stay here and let me creep through the bushes to that wagon. I want to see what it was.”
“If you stay a minute I'll go and leave you,” remonstrated aunt Corinne. “Ma Padgett don't want us off here by ourselves.”
But Robert's hearing was concentrated upon the object toward which he moved. He used Indian-like caution. The balls of his large eyes became so prominent that they shone with some of the lustre of a cat's in the dark.
Corinne took hold of the bushes in his absence.
The wind was breathing sadly through the trees far off. What if some poor little child, lost in the woods, should come patting to her, with all the wildness of its experience hanging around it? Oh, the woods was a good play-house, on sunshiny days, but not the best of homes, after all. That must be why people built houses. When the snow lay in a deep cake, showing only the two thumb-like marks at long intervals made by the rabbit in its leaping flight, and when the air was so tense and cold you could hear the bark of a dog far off, Bobaday used to say he would love to live in the woods all the time. He would chop to keep himself warm. He loved to drag the air into his lungs when it seemed frozen to a solid. Corinne remembered how his cheeks burned and his eyes glittered during any winter exertion. And what could be prettier, he said, than the woods after it sleeted all night, and hoar frost finished the job! Every tree would stand glittering in white powder, as if dressed for the grandest occasion, the twigs tipped with lace-work, and the limbs done in tracery and all sorts of beautiful designs. Still this white dress was deadly cold to handle. Aunt Corinne had often pressed her fingers into the velvet crust upon the trunks. She did not like the winter woods, and hardly more did she like this rain-soaked place, and these broad, treacherous leaves that poured water down her neck in the humid dark.
Bobaday pounced upon her with such force when he appeared once more, that she was startled into trying to climb a bush no higher than herself.
He had not a word to say, but hitched his aunt to his jacket and drew her away with considerable haste. They floundered over logs and ran against stumps. Their own smouldering fire, and wagon with the hoops standing up like huge uncovered ribs, and the tents wherein their guardian slept after the fatigue of the day, all appeared wonderfully soon, considering the time it had taken them to reach their exploring limit.
Aunt Corinne huddled by the coals, and Bobaday sat down on the foot-chunk he had placed for his awning throne.
“You better go to bed quick as ever you can,” he said.
“I guess I ain't goin',” said aunt Corinne with indignant surprise, “till you tell me somethin' about what was up in the bushes. I stayed still and let you look, and now you won't tell me!”
“You heard the sound,” remonstrated Robert.
“But I didn't see anything,” argued aunt Corinne.
“You wouldn't want to,” said Bobaday.
They were talking in cautious tones, but no longer whispering. It had become too tiresome. Aunt Corinne would now have burst out with an exclamation, but checked herself and tilted her nose, talking to the coals which twinkled back to her between her slim fingers.
“Boys think they are so smart! They want to have all the good times and see all the great shows, and go slidin' in winter time, when girls have to stay in the house and knit, and then talk like they's grown up, and we's little babies!”
Robert Day fixed his eyes on his aunt with superior compassion.
“Grandma Padgett wouldn't want me to scare you,” he observed.
Corinne edged several inches closer to him. She felt that she must know what her nephew had seen if she had to thread all the dark mazes again and look at it by herself.
“Ma Padgett never 'lows me to act scared,” she reminded him. “I always have to go up to what I'm 'fraid of.”
“You won't go up to this.”
“Maybe I will. Tisn't so far back to that wagon.”
“I wouldn't stir it up for considerable,” said Robert.
“Was it a lion or a bear? Was it goin' to eat anything? Is that what made the little child cry?”
“The little child hollered 'cause 'twas afraid of it. I was glad you didn't look in at the end of the wagon with me.”
Aunt Corinne edged some inches nearer her protector.
“How could you see what was in a dark wagon?”
“There was a candle lighted inside. Aunt Krin, there was a little pretty girl in that wagon that I do believe the folks stole!”
This was like a story. The luxury of a real stolen child had never before come in aunt Corinne's way.
“Why, Bobaday?” she inquired affectionately.
“Because the little girl seemed like she was dead till all at once she opened her eyes, and then her mouth as if she was going to scream again, and they stopped her mouth up, and covered her in clothes.”
“What did the wagon look like?”
“Like a little room. And they slept on the floor. They had tin things hangin' around the sides, and a stove in one corner with the pipe stickin' up through the cover. And the cover was so thick you couldn't see a light through it. You could only see through the pucker-hole where it comes together over the feed-box.”
“And how many folks were there?”
“I don't know. I saw them fussing with the little girl, and I saw it, and then I didn't stay any longer.”
“What was it, Bobaday?”
“I don't know,” he solemnly replied.
“Yes, but what did it look like?”
Her nephew stared doubtingly upon her.
“Will you holler if I tell you?”
Aunt Corinne went through an impressive pantomime of deeding and double-deeding herself not to holler.
“Will you be afraid all the rest of the night?”
No; aunt Corinne intimated that her courage would be revived and strengthened by knowing the worst about that wagon.
He pierced her with his dilating eyes, and beckoned her to put up her ear for the information.
“You ain't goin' to play any trick,” remonstrated his relative, “like you did when you got me to say grandmother, grandmother, thith—thith—thith, and then hit my chin and made me bite my tongue?”
Robert was forced to chuckle at the recollection, but he assured aunt Corinne that grandmother, grandmother, thith—thith—thith was far from his thoughts. He hesitated, with aunt Corinne's ear jogging against his chin. Then in a loud whisper he communicated:
“Itwas a man with a pig'shead onhim!”
Aunt Corinne drew back into a rigid attitude. “I don't believe it!” she said.
Robert Day passed over her incredulity with a flickering smile.
“People don't have pigs' heads on them!” argued aunt Corinne. “Did he grunt?”
“And he had a tush stickin' out from his lower jaw,” added Robert.
They gazed at each other in silent horror. While this awful pantomime was going on, the flap of Grandma Padgett's tent was lifted, and a voice of command, expressing besides astonishment and alarm, startled their ears with—
“Children!”
Aunt Corinne leaped up and turned at bay, half-expecting to find the man with the pig's head gnashing at her ear. But what she saw in the sinking light was a fine old head in a night-cap, staring at them from the tent. Bobaday and his aunt were so rapid in retiring that their guardian was unable to make them explain their conduct as fully as she desired. They slept so long in the morning that the camp was broken up when Grandma Padgett called them out to breakfast.
{Illustration: THE VIRGINIAN AND HIS CHILDREN.}
Zene wanted the tent of aunt Corinne to stretch over the wagon-hoops. He had already hitched the horses, restoring the gray and the white to their former condition of yoke-fellows, and these two rubbed noses affectionately and had almost as much to whisper to each other as had Robert and Corinne over their breakfast.
The darkened wagon was nowhere to be seen. Corinne climbed a tall stump as an observatory, and Bobaday went a piece into the bushes, only to find that all that end of the camp was gone. The colony of Virginians was also partly under way.
Aunt Corinne felt a certain sadness steal over her. She had brought herself to admit the pig-headed man, with limitations. He might have a pig's head on him, but it wasn't fast. He did it to frighten children. She had fully intended to see him and be frightened by him at any cost. Now he was gone like a bad dream in the night. And she should not know if the little girl was stolen. She could only revenge herself on Robert Day for having seen into that darkened wagon, with the stove-pipe sticking out when she had not, by sniffing doubtfully at every mysterious allusion to it. They did not mention the pigheaded man to Grandma Padgett, though both longed to know if such a specimen of natural history had ever come under her eyes. She would have questioned then about the walk that led to this discovery. Her prejudices against children's prowling away from their elders after dark were very strong.
Aunt Corinne thought the pig-headed man might have come to their carriage when they were ready to start, instead of the Virginian.
“Right along the pike?” he inquired cheerfully.
“I believe so,” said Grandma Padgett.
“You'll be in our company then as far as you go. It'll be better for you to keep in a big company.”
“It will indeed,” said Grandma Padgett sincerely.
“Oh, you'll keep along to Californy,” said the Virginian.
“To the Illinois line,” amended Grandma Padgett, at which he laughed, adding:
“Well, we'll neighbor for a while, anyhow.”
“Let your little boy and girl ride in our carriage,” begged Robert Day, seizing on this relief from monotony.
“Yes do,” said his grandmother, turning her glasses upon the little boy and girl. Aunt Corinne had been inspecting them as they stood at their father's heels, and bestowing experimental smiles on them. The boy was a clear brown-eyed fellow with butternut trousers up to his arm-pits, and a wool hat all out of shape. The little girl looked red-faced and precise, the color from her lips having evidently become diluted through her skin. Over a linsey petticoat she wore a calico belted apron. The belt was as broad as the length of aunt Corinne's hand, for in the course of the morning aunt Corinne furtively measured it. Although it was June weather, this little girl also wore stout shoes and yarn stockings.
“Well, they might get in if they won't crowd you,” assented their father. “You're all to take dinner with us, my wife says.”
The children were hoisted up the steps, which they climbed with agile feet, as if accustomed to scaling high cart wheels. Bobaday sat by his grandmother, and the back seat received this addition to the party without at all crowding aunt Corinne. She looked the boy and girl over with great satisfaction. They were near her own age.
“Do you play teeter in the woods?” she inquired with a fidget, by way of opening the conversation.
The boy rolled his eyes towards her and replied in a slow drawl, sometimes they did.
Robert Day then put it to him whether he liked moving.
“I like to ride the leaders for fawther,” replied the boy.
“What's your name?” inquired aunt Corinne, directing her inquiry to both.
The little girl turned redder, answering in a broad drawl like her brother, “His name's Jonathan and mine's Clar'sy Ellen.”
Aunt Corinne looked down at the hind wheel revolving at her side of the carriage, and her lips unconsciously moved in meditation.
“Thrusty Ellen!” she repeated aloud.
“Clar'sy Ellen,” corrected the little girl, her broad drawl still confusing the sound.
Aunt Corinne's lips continued to move. She whispered to the hind wheel, “Mercy! If I was named Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, I'd wish my folks'd forgot to name me at all!”
Little Miami river was crossed without mishap, and the Padgetts and Breakaways took dinner together.
Robert Day could not help noticing the difference between his grandmother's wagon and the wagons of the Virginians. Their wagon-beds were built almost in the shape of the crescent moon, bending down in the centre and standing high at the ends, and they appeared half as long again as the Ohio vehicle. The covers were full of innumerable ribs, and the puckered end was drawn into innumerable puckers.
The children took their dinners to the yellow top of a brand-new stump which, looked as if somebody had smoothed every sweet-smelling ring clean on purpose for a picnic table. Some branches of the felled tree were near enough to make teeter seats for Corinne and Thrusty Ellen. Jonathan and Robert stood up or kneeled against the arching roots. Dinner taken from the top of a stump has the sap of out-door enjoyment in it; and if you have to scare away an ant, or a pop-eyed grasshopper thuds into the middle of a plate, you still feel kindly towards these wild things for dropping in so sociably.
Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were rather silent, but such remarks as they made were solid information.
“You don't know wher' my fawther's got his money,” said Jonathan.
This was stated so much like a dare that Robert yearned to retort that he did know, too. As he did not know, the next best thing was to pretend it was no consequence anyhow, and find out as quickly as possible; therefore Robert Day said:
“Ho! Maybe he hasn't any.”
“He has more gold pieces 'n ever you seen,” proceeded Jonathan weightily.
“Then why don't he give you some?” exclaimed aunt Corinne with a wriggle. “I had a gold dollar, but I b'lieve that little old man with a bag on his back stole it.”
Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen made round eyes at a young damsel who had been trusted with gold.
{Illustration}
“My fawther calls 'em yeller boys,” said Jonathan. “He carries 'em and his paper money in a belt fastened round his waist under all his clothes.”
“You don't ought to tell,” said Thrusty Ellen. “Father said we shouldn't talk about it.”
“Hewon't steal it,” said Jonathan, indicating Robert with his thumb. “Shewon't neither,” indicating aunt Corinne.
Aunt Corinne with some sharpness assured the Virginia children that her nephew and herself were indeed above such suspicion; that Ma Padgett and brother Tip had the most money, and even Zene was well provided with dollars; while they had silver spoons among their goods that Ma-Padgett said had been in the family more than fifty years!
Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen accepted this information with much stolidity. The grandeur of having old silver made no impression on them. They saw that Grandma Padgett had one pair of horses hitched to her moving-wagon instead of three pairs, and they secretly rated her resources by this fact.
It was very cheerful moving in this long caravan. When there was a bend in the 'pike, and the line of vehicles curved around it, the sight was exhilarating.
Some of the Virginians sat on their horses to drive. There was singing, and calling back and forth. And when they passed a toll-gate, all the tollkeeper's family and neighbors came out to see the array. Jonathan and Robert rode in his father's easiest wagon, while Thrusty Ellen, and her mother enjoyed Grandma Padgett's company in the carriage. As they neared Richmond, which lay just within the Indiana line, men went ahead like scouts to secure accommodations for the caravan. At Louisburg, the last of the Ohio villages, aunt Corinne was watching for the boundary of the State. She fancied it stretched like a telegraph wire from pole to pole, only near the ground, so the cattle of one State could not stray into the other, and so little children could have it to talk across, resting their chins on the cord. But when they came to the line and crossed it there was not even a mark on the ground; not so much as a furrow such as Zene made planting corn. And at first Indiana looked just like Ohio. Later, however, aunt Corinne felt a difference in the States. Ohio had many ups and downs; many hillsides full of grain basking in the sun. The woods of Indiana ran to moss, and sometimes descended to bogginess, and broad-leaved paw-paw bushes crowded the shade; mighty sycamores blotched with white, leaned over the streams: there was a dreamy influence in the June air, and pale blue curtains of mist hung over distances.
But at Richmond aunt Corinne and her nephew, both felt particularly wide awake. They considered it the finest place they had seen since the capital of Ohio. The people wore quaint, but handsome clothes. They saw Quaker bonnets and broad-brimmed hats. Richmond is yet called the Quaker city of Indiana. But what Robert Day and Corinne noticed particularly was the array of wagons moved from street to street, was an open square such as most Western towns had at that date for farmers to unhitch their teams in, and in that open square a closely covered wagon connected with a tent. It was nearly dark. But at the tent entrance a tin torch stuck in the ground showed letters and pictures on the tent, proclaiming that the only pig-headed man in America was therein exhibiting himself and his accomplishments, attended by Fairy Carrie, the wonderful child vocalist.
Before Bobaday had made out half the words, he telegraphed a message to aunt Corinne, by leaning far out of the Brockaway wagon and lifting his finger. Aunt Corinne was leaning out of the carriage, and saw him, and she not only lifted her finger, but violently wagged her head.
The caravan scouts had not been able to find lodging for all the troops, and there was a great deal of dissatisfaction about the rates asked by the taverns. So many of the wagons wound on to camp at the other side of the town, the Brockaways among them. But the neighborly Virginian, in exchanging Robert for his wife and daughter at the carriage door, assured Grandma Padgett he would ride back to her lodging-place next morning and pilot her into the party again.
“I thank you kindly,” said Grandma Padgett in old-fashioned phrase. “It's growing risky for me to sleep too much in the open night air. At my age folks must favor themselves, and I'd like a bed to-night, if it is a tavern bed, and a set, table, if the vittles are tavern vittles. And we can stir out early.”
So Thrusty Ellen and Jonathan rode away with their father, unconscious of Robert and Corinne's superior feeling in stopping at a tavern.
In the tavern parlor were a lot of sumptuous paper flowers under a glass case. There were a great many stairs to climb, and a gong was sounded for supper.
After supper Grandma Padgett made Zene take her into the stable-yard, that she might carry from the wagon some valuables which thieves in a town would be tempted to steal.
It was about this time that Corinne and Robert Day strayed down the front steps, consulted together and ventured down the street, came back, and ventured again to the next corner.
“He gave us the slip before,” said Robert, “but I'd like to get a good look at him for once.”
“Would you da'st to spend your gold dollar, though,” said aunt Corinne.
“Well, that's better than losin' it,” he responded.
It seemed very much better in aunt Corinne's eyes.
“We can just run down there, and run right back after we go in, while Ma Padgett is busy.”
“Then we'll have to be spry,” said Robert Day.
Having passed the first corner they were spry, springing along the streets with their hands locked. It was not hard to find one's way about in Richmond then, and the tavern was not far from the open square. They came upon the tent, the smoky tin torch, the crowd of idlers, and a loud-voiced youth who now stood at the entrance shouting the attractions within.
Robert dragged his aunt impetuously to the tent door and offered his gold dollar to the shouter.
“Pass right in, gentlemen and ladies,” said the ill-looking youth in his monotonous yell, bustling as if he had a rush of business, “and make room for the crowd, all anxious to see the only pig-headed man in America, and to hear the wonderful warblings of Fairy Carrie, the child vocalist. Admission fixed at the low figure of fifteen cents per head,” said the ill-looking youth, dropping change into Robert's hand and hustling him upon the heels of Corinne who craned her neck toward the inner canvas. “Only fifteen cents, gentlemen, and the last opportunity to see the pig-headed man who alone is worth the price of admission, and has been exhibited to all the crowned heads of Europe. Fifteen cents. Five three cent pieces only. Fairy Carrie, the wonderful child vocalist, and the only living pig-headed man standing between the heavens and earth to-day.”
But when aunt Corinne had reached the interior of the tent, she turned like a flash, clutched Robert Day, and hid her eyes against him. A number of people standing, or seated on benches, were watching the performances on a platform at one end of the tent.
“He won't hurt you,” whispered Robert.
“Go 'way!” whispered aunt Corinne, trembling as if she would drive the mere image from her thoughts.
“It's the very thing I saw at the camp,” whispered Robert.
“Le's go out again.”
“I want my money's worth,” remonstrated Robert in an injured tone. “And now he's pickin' up his things and going behind a curtain. Ain't he ugly! I wonder how it feels to look that way? Why don't you stand up straight and act right! Folks'll notice you. I thought you wanted to see him so bad!”
“I got enough,” responded aunt Corinne. “But there comes the little girl. And it's the little girl I saw in the wagon. Ain't she pretty!”
{Illustration}
“She ain't got a pig's head, has she?” demanded aunt Corinne.
“She's the prettiest little girl I ever saw,” responded Robert impatiently. “I guess if she sees you she'll think, you're sheep-headed. You catch me spendin' gold dollars to take you to shows any more!”
The shrill treble of a little child began a ballad at that time very popular, and called “Lilly Dale.” Aunt Corinne faced about and saw a tiny creature, waxen-faced and with small white hands, and feet in bits of slippers, standing in a dirty spangled dress which was made to fluff out from her and give her an airy look. Her long brown curls hung about her shoulders. But her black eyes were surrounded with brownish rings which gave her a look of singing in her sleep, or in a half-conscious state. She was a delicate little being, and as she sung before the staring people, her chin creased and the corners of her mouth quivered as if she would break into sobs if she only dared. Her song was accompanied by a hand-organ ground behind the scenes; and when she had finished and run behind the curtain, she was pushed out again in response to the hand-clapping.
Robert Day hung entranced on this performance. But when Fairy Carrie had sung her second song and disappeared, he took hold of his aunt's ear and whispered cautiously therein:
“I know the pig-headed man stole that little girl.”
Aunt Corinne looked at him with solemn assent. Then there were signs of the pig-headed man's returning to the gaze of the public. Aunt Corinne at once grasped her nephew's elbow and pushed him from the sight. They went outside where the ill-looking youth was still shouting, and were crowded back against the wagon by a group now beginning to struggle in.
Robert proposed that they walk all around the outside, and try to catch another glimpse of Fairy Carrie.
They walked behind the wagon. A surly dog chained under it snapped out at them. Aunt Corinne said she should like to see Fairy Carrie again, but Ma Padgett would be looking for them.
At this instant the little creature appeared back of the tent. Whether she had crept under the canvas or knew some outlet to the air, she stood there fanning herself with her hands, and looking up and about with an expression which was sad through all the dusk.
Corinne and Robert Day approached on tiptoe. Fairy Carrie continued to fan herself with her fingers, and looked at them with a dull gaze.
“Say!” whispered aunt Corinne, indicating the interior of the tent, “is he your pa?”
Fairy Carrie shook her head.
“Is your ma in there?”
Fairy Carrie again shook her head, and her face creased as if she were now determined in this open air and childish company to cry and be relieved.
“Can't you talk?” whispered aunt Corinne.
“No,” said the child.
“Yes, you can, too! Did the show folks steal you?”
Fairy Carrie's eyes widened. Tears gathered and dropped slowly down her cheeks.
Aunt Corinne seized her hand. “Why, Bobaday, Padgett! You just feel how cold her fingers are!”
Robert did so, and shook his head to indicate that he found even her fingers in a pitiable condition.
“You come with us to Ma Padgett,” exhorted aunt Corinne in an excited whisper. “I wouldn't stay where that pig-man is for the world.”
The dog under the wagon was growling.
“If the pig-man stole you, Ma Padgett will have him put in jail.”
“Le's go back this way, so they won't catch her,” cautioned Bobaday.
The dog began to bark.
Robert and Corinne moved away with the docile little child between them. At the barking of the dog one or two other figures appeared behind the tent. Fairy Carrie in her spangled dress was running between Robert and Corinne into the dark.