It was not pleasant to stand in a strange house in an unknown neighborhood, drenched, hungry and unprotected, hearing fearful sounds like danger threatening under foot.
Corinne felt a speechless desire to be back in the creek again and on the point of drowning; that would soon be over. But who could tell what might occur after this groaning in the cellar?
“I heard a noise,” said Grandma Padgett, to bespeak their attention, as if they could remember ever hearing anything else.
“It's cats, I think,” said Robert Day, husky with courage.
Cats could not groan in such short and painful catches. Conjectures of many colors appeared and disappeared like flashes in Bobaday's mind. The groaner was somebody that bad Dutch landlord had half murdered and put in the cellar. Maybe the floor was built to give way and let every traveller fall into a pit! Or it might be some boy or girl left behind by wicked movers to starve. Or a beggarman, wanting the house to himself, could be making that noise to frighten them away.
The sharp groans were regularly uttered. Corinne buried her head in her mother's skirts and waited to be taken or left, as the Booggar pleased.
“Well,” said Grandma Padgett, “I suppose we'll have to go and see what ails that Thing down there. It may be a human bein' in distress.”
Robert feared it was something else, but he would not have mentioned it to his grandmother.
“What'll we carry to see with?” he eagerly inquired. It was easy to be eager, because they had no lights except the brands in the fireplace.
Grandma Padgett, who in her early days had carried live coals from neighbors' houses miles away, saw how to dispense with lamp or candle. She took a shovel full of embers—and placed a burning chip on top. The chip would have gone out by itself, but was kept blazing by the coals underneath.
“Shall I go ahead?” inquired Robert.
“No, you walk behind. And you might carry a piece of stick,” replied his grandmother, conveying a hint which made his shoulder blades feel chilly.
They moved toward the cellar entrance in a slow procession, to keep the chip from flaring out.
“Don't hang to me so!” Grandma Padgett remonstrated with her daughter. “I sh'll step on you, and down we'll all go and set the house afire.”
Garrets are cheerful, cobwebby places, always full of slits where long, smoky sun-rays can poke in. An amber warmth cheers the darkness of garrets; you feel certain there is nothing ugly hiding behind the remotest and dustiest box. If rats or mice inhabit it, they are jovial fellows. But how different is a cellar, and especially a cellar neglected. You plunge down rough steps into a cavern. A mouldy air from dried-up and forgotten vegetables meets you. The earth may not be moist underfoot, but it has not the kind feeling of sun-warmed earth. And if big rats hide there, how bold and hideous they are! There are cool farmhouse cellars floored with cement and shelved with sweet-smelling pine, where apple-bins make incense, and swinging-shelves of butter, tables of milk crocks, lines of fruit cans and home-made catsup bottles, jars of pickles and chowder, and white covered pastry and cake, promise abundant hospitality. But these are inverted garrets, rather than cellars. They are refrigerators for pure air; and they keep a mellow light of their own. When you go into one of them it seems as if the house were standing on its head to express its joy and comfort.
But the Susan House cellar was one of dread, aside from the noise proceeding out of it. Bobaday knew this before they opened a door upon a narrow-throated descent.
One of Zene's stories became vivid. It was a story of a house where nobody could stay, though the landlord offered it rent-free. But along came two good youths without any money, and for board and lodging, they undertook to break the spell by sleeping there three nights. The first two nights they were not disturbed, and sat with their candle, reading good books until after midnight. But the third, just on the stroke of twelve, a noise began in the cellar! So they took their candle, and, armed with nothing except good books, went below, and in the furthest corner they saw a little old man with a red nightcap on his head, sitting astride of a barrel! In Zene's story the little old man only had it on his mind to tell these good youths where to dig for his money; and when they had secured the money, he amiably disappeared, and the house was pleasant to live in ever afterward.
This tale, heard in the barn while Zene was greasing harnesses, and heard without Grandma Padgett's sanction, now made her grandson shiver with dread as his feet went down into the Susan House dungeon. It was trying enough to be exploring a strange cellar full of groans, without straining your eyes in expectation of seeing a little old man in a red nightcap, sitting astride of a barrel!
“Who's there?” said Grandma Padgett with stern emphasis, as she held her beacon stretched out into the cellar.
The groaning ceased for an awful space of time. Aunt Corinne was behind her nephew, and she squatted on the step to peer with distended eyes, lest some hand should reach up and grab her by the foot.
It was a small square cellar, having earthen sides, but piles of pine boxes made ambushes everywhere.
“Come out!” Grandma Padgett spoke again. “We won't have any tricks played. But if you're hurt, we can help you.”
It was like addressing solid darkness, for the chip was languishing upon its coals, and cast but a dim red glare around the shovel.
Still some being crept toward them from the darkness, uttering a prolonged and hearty groan, as if to explode at once the accumulations of silence.
Aunt Corinne realizing it was a man, rushed to the top of the steps and hid her eyes behind the door. She knew her mother could deal with him, and, if he offered any harm, pour coals of fire upon his head in a literal sense. But she did not feel able to stand by. Robert, on the other hand, seeing no red nightcap on the head thrust up toward them, supported his grandmother strongly, and even helped to pull the man up-stairs.
One touch of his soft, foolish body was enough to convince any one that he was a harmless creature. His foot was sprained.
Robert carried a backless chair and set it before the fire, and on this the limping man was placed. Grandma Padgett emptied her coals on the hearth and surveyed him. He had a red face and bashful eyes, and while the top of his head was quite bald, he had a half-circle of fuzz extending around his face from ear to ear. He wore a roundabout and trousers, and shoes with copper toes. His hands were fat and dimpled as well as freckled. Altogether, he had the appearance of a hugely overgrown boy, ducking his head shyly while Grandma Padgett looked at him.
“For pity sake!” said Grandma Padgett. “What ails the creature? What's your name, and who are you?”
At that the man chanted off in a nasal sing-song, as if he were accustomed to repeating his rhyme:
J. D. Matthews is my name,Ohio-r is my nation,Mud Creek is my dwellin' place,And glory is my expectation.
“Yes,” said Grandma Padgett, removing her glasses, as she did when very much puzzled.
Corinne, in a distant corner of the lighted room, began to laugh aloud, and after looking towards her, the man laughed also, as if they two were enjoying a joke upon the mother.
“Well, it may be funny, but you gave us enough of a scare with your gruntin' and your groanin',” said Grandma Padgett severely.
J. D. Matthews reminded of his recent tribulations, took up one of his feet and began to groan over it again. He was as shapeless and clumsy as a bear, and this motion seemed not unlike the tiltings of a bear forced to dance.
“There you go,” said Grandma Padgett. “Can't you tell how you came in the cellar, and what hurt you?”
Mr. Matthews piped out readily, as if he had packed the stanza into shape between the groans of his underground sojourn:
To the cellar for fuel I did go,And there I met my overthrow;I lost my footing and my candle,And grazed my shin and sprained my ankle.
“The man must be a poet,” pronounced Grandma Padgett with contempt. “He has to say everything in rhyme.”
Chanted Mr. Matthews:
I was not born in a good time,I cannot speak except in rhyme.
“Ain't he funny?” said Bobaday, rubbing his own knees with enjoyment.
“He's very daft,” said the grandmother. “And what to do for him I don't know. We've nothing to eat ourselves. I might wet his foot and tie it up.”
Mr. Matthews looked at her smilingly while he recited:
I have a cart that does containA panaseerfor ev'rypain.There's coffee, also there ischee,Sugar and cakes, bread and hone-ee.I have parch corn and liniment,Which causes me to feel content.There is some half a dozen kittlesTo serve me when I cook my vittles.Butter and eggs I do deal in;To go without would be a sin.When I sit down to cook my meals,I know how good a king feels.
“Well, if you had your cart handy it would be worth while,” said Grandma Padgett indulgently. “But talkin' of such things when the children are hungry only aggravates a body more.”
Producing a key from his roundabout pocket, Mr. Matthews lifted his voice and actually sung:
J. D. Matthews' cart stands at your door.Lady, will you step out and see my store?I've cally-co and Irish table linen,Domestic gingham and the best o' flannen.I take eggs and butter for these treasures,I never cheat, but give good measures.
“Let me see if there is a cart,” begged Bobaday, reaching for the key which his grandmother reluctantly received.
He then went to the front door and groped in the weeds. The hand-cart was there, and all of Mr. Matthews' statements were found to be true. He had plenty of provisions, as well as a small stock of dry goods and patent medicines, snugly packed in the vehicle which he was in the habit of pushing before him. There were even candles. Grandma Padgett lighted one, and stuck it in an empty liniment bottle. Then she dressed the silly pedler's ankle, and put an abundant supper on the fire to cook in his various kettles; the pedler smiling with pure joy all the time to find himself the centre of such a family party.
Bobaday and Corinne came up, and stood leaning against the ends of the mantel. No poached eggs and toast ever looked so nice; no honey ever had such melting yellow comb; no tea smelled so delicious; no ginger cakes had such a rich moistness. They sat on the carriage cushions and ate their supper with Grandma Padgett. It was placed on the side of an empty box, between them and the pedlerman. He divided his attention betwixt eating and chanting rhymes, interspersing both with furtive laughs, into which he tried to draw the children. Grandma Padgett overawed him; but he evidently felt on a level with aunt Corinne and her nephew. In his foolish red face there struggled a recollection of having gone fishing, or played marbles, or hunted wild flowers with these children or children like them. He nodded and twinkled his eyes at them, and they laughed at whatever he did. His ankle was so relieved by a magic liniment, that he felt able to hobble around the house when Grandma Padgett explored it, repeating under his breath the burst he indulged in when she arrayed the supper on the box:
O, I went to a friend's house,The friend says, 'Come in,Have a hot cup of coffee;And how have you been?'
Grandma Padgett said she could not sleep until she knew what other creatures were hidden in the house.
They all ascended the enclosed staircase, and searched echoing dusty rooms where rats or mice whisked out of sight at their approach.
“This is a funny kind of an addition to a tavern,” remarked the head of the party. “No beds: no anything. We'll build a fire in this upper fireplace, and bring the cushions and shawls up, and see if we can get a wink of sleep. It ain't a cold night, and we're dry now. You can sleep by the fireplace down-stairs,” she said to the pedler, “and I'll settle with you for our breakfast and supper before we leave in the morning. It's been a providence that you were in the house.”
Mr. Matthews smiled deferentially, and appeared to be pondering a new rhyme about Grandma Padgett. But the subject was so weighty it kept him shaking his head.
They came down-stairs for fuel and coals, and she requested the pedler to take possession of the lower room and make himself comfortable, but not to set the house on fire.
“What shall we give him to sleep on?” pondered the grandmother. “I can't spare things from the children; it won't do to let him sleep on the floor.”
“I have a cart, it has been said,Which serves me both for cupboard and bed,”
chanted Mr. Matthews.
“Well, that's a good thing,” said Grandma Padgett. “If you could pull a whole furnished house out of that cart 'twouldn't surprise me.”
The pedler opened the door and dragged his cart in over the low sill. They then bolted the door with such rusty fastenings as remained to it.
As soon as he felt the familiar handle on his palms, J. D. Matthews forgot that his ankle had been twisted. He was again upon the road, as free as the small wild creatures that whisked along the fence. Grandma Padgett's grown-up strength of mind failed to restrain him from acting the horse. He neighed, and rattled the cart wildly over the empty room. Now he ran away and pretended to kick everything to pieces; and now he put himself up at a manger, and ground his feed. He broke out of his stable and careened wildly around a pasture, refusing to be hitched, and expressing his contempt for the cart by kicking up at it.
“I guess your sprain wasn't as bad as you let on,” observed Grandma Padgett.
The observation, or a twinge, reminded Mr. Matthews to double himself down and groan again.
With painful limps, and Robert Day's assistance, he got the cart before the fireplace. It looked like a narrow, high green box on wheels. The pedler blocked the wheels behind, and propped the handle level. Then he crept with great contentment to the top, and stretched himself to sleep.
“He's a kind of a fowl of the air,” said Grandma Padgett.
“Oh, but I hope he's going our road!” said Bobaday, as they re-ascended the stairs. “He's more fun than a drove of turkeys!”
“And I'm not a bit afraid of him,” said aunt Corinne. “He ain't like the old man with a bag on his back.”
But J. D. Matthews was going in the opposite direction.
Before Grandma Padgett had completed her brief toilet next morning, and while the daylight was yet uncertain, the Dutch landlord knocked at the outer door for his fee. He seemed not at all surprised at finding the pedler lodging there, but told him to stop at the tavern and trade with the vrow.
“And a safe time the poor simple soul will have,” said Grandma Padgett, making her spectacles glitter at the landlord, “gettin' through the creek that nigh drowned us. I suppose,youhave a ford that you don't keep for movers.”
“Oh, yah!” said the landlord. “Te fort ist goot.”
“How dared you send a woman and two children to such an empty, miserable shell as this?”
{Illustration: J. D. MATTHEWS RUNS AWAY.}
“I don't keep moofers to mine tafern,” said the landlord, putting his abundant charge into his pocket. “Chay-Te, he always stops here. He coes all ofer te countries, Chay-Te toes. His headt ist pat.”
“But his heart is good,” said the grandmother. “And that will count up more to his credit than if he was an extortioner, and ill-treated the stranger within his gate.”
“Oh, Chay-Te ist a goot feller!” said the Dutch landlord comfortably, untouched by any reflections on his own conduct.
Grandma Padgett could not feel placid in her mind until the weeds and hill hid him from sight.
Mr. Matthews arose so sound from his night's slumber, that he was able after pumping a prodigious lot of water over himself, and blowing with enjoyment, to help her get the breakfast, and put the kettles in travelling order afterwards. He had a great many housewifely ways, and his tidiness was a satisfaction to Grandma Padgett. The breakfast was excellent, but Corinne and Bobaday on one side of the box, and J. D. Matthews on the other, exchanged glances of regret at parting. He helped Robert put the horses to the carriage, making blunders at every stage of the hitching up.
They all came out of the Susan House, and he pushed his cart into the road.
“I almost hate to leave it,” said aunt Corinne, “because we did have a good time after we were scared so bad.”
“Seems as if a body always hates to leave a place,” remarked Bobaday. “The next people that come along will never know we lived here one night. Butwe'llalways remember it.”
Grandma Padgett before entering the carriage, was trying to make the pedler take pay for the food her family ate. He smiled at her deferentially, but backed away with his cart.
“What a man this is!” she exclaimed impatiently. “We owe you for two meals' vittles.”
“I have some half a dozen kittles,” murmured Mr. Matthews.
“But won't you take the money? The landlord was keen enough for his.”
The pedler had got his rhyme about Grandma Padgett completed. He left her, still stretching her hand out, and rattled his cart up to the children who were leaning from the carriage towards him.
“She is a lady of renown,” chanted J. D. Matthews, indicating their grandmother.
She makes good butter by the pound,Her hand is kind, so is her tongue;But when she comes I want to run!
He accordingly ran, rattling the cart like a hailstorm before him, downhill; and out of their sight.
“Ah, there he goes!” sighed aunt Corinne, “and he hardly limps a bit. I hope we'll see him again some time.”
“I might 'a forced the money into his pocket,” reflected Grandma Padgett, as she took up the lines. “But I'd rather feel in debt to that kind, simple soul than to many another. Why didn't we ask him if he saw Zene's wagon up the road? These poor horses want oats. They'll be glad to sight the white cover once more.”
“I would almost rather have him come along,” decided Robert Day, “than to find the wagon. For he could make a camp anywhere, and speak his poetry all the time. What fun he must have if he wants to stay in the woods all night. I expect if he wanted to hide he could creep into that cart and stretch out, with his face where he could smell the honey and ginger cakes. I'd like to have a cart and travel like that. Are we going on to the 'pike again, Grandma?”
“Not till we find Zene,” she replied, driving resolutely forward on the strange road.
A covered wagon appeared on the first crossroad, moving steadily between rows of elder bushes. The carriage waited its approach. A figure like Zene's sat resting his feet on the tongue behind the old gray and the old white.
“It's our wagon,” said Robert Day. Presently Zene's countenance, and even the cast in his eyes, became a certainty instead of a wavering indistinctness, and he smiled with satisfaction while halting his vehicle at right angles with the carriage.
“Where have you been?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
“Over on t'other road,” replied Zene, indicating the direction with his whip, “huntin' you folks. I knowed you hadn't made the right turn somehow.”
Grandma Padgett mentioned her experience with the Dutch landlord and the ford, both of which Zene had avoided by taking another cross-road that he had neglected to indicate to them. He said he thought they would see the wagon-track and foller, not bein' fur behind. When he discovered they were not in his train, he was in a narrow road and could not turn; so he tied the horses and walked back a piece. He got on a corn-field fence and shouted to them; but by that time there was no carriage anywhere in the landscape.
“Such things won't do,” said Grandma Padgett with some severity.
“No, marm,” responded Zene humbly.
“We must keep together,” said the head of the caravan.
“Yes, marm,” responded Zene earnestly.
“Well, now, you may drive ahead and keep the carriage in sight till it's dinner-time and we come to a good place to halt.”
Bobaday said he believed he would get in with Zene and try the wagon awhile. Springs and cushions had become tiresome. He half-stood on the tongue, to bring his legs down on a level with Zene's, and enjoyed the jolting in every piece of his backbone. He had had a surfeit of woman-society. Even the horsey smell of Zene's clothes was found agreeable. And above all, he wanted to talk about J. D. Matthews, and tell the terrors of a bottomless ford and a house with a strange-sounding cellar.
“But the man was the funniest thing,” said Bobaday. “He just talked poetry all the time, and Grandma said he was daft. I'd like to talk that way myself, but I can't make it jee.”
Zene observed mysteriously, that there were some queer folks in this section.
Yes, Bobaday admitted; the landlord was as Dutch as sour-krout.
Zene observed that all the queer folks wasn't Dutch. He shook his head and looked so steadily at a black stump that Robert knew his eyes were fixedly cast on the horizon. The boy speculated on the possibility of people with crooked eyes seeing anything clearly. But Zene's hints were a stimulant to curiosity.
“Where didyoustay last night?” inquired Robert, bracing himself for pleasant revelations.
“Oh, I thought at first I'd put up in the wagon.” replied Zene.
“But you didn't?”
“No: notintirely.”
“Whatdidyou do?” pressed Robert Day.
“Well, I thought I'd better git nigh some house, on account of givin' me a chance to see if you folks come by. I thought you'd inquire at all the houses.”
“Did you stop at one?”
{Illustration: ZENE EXCITES BOBADAY'S CURIOSITY.}
“I took the team outbya house. It was plum dark then.”
“I'd gone in to see what kind of folks they were first,” remarked Bobaday.
“Yes, sir; that's what I'd orto done. But I leads them round to their feed-box after I watered 'em to a spring o' runnin' water. Then I doesn't know but the woman o' the house will give me a supper if I pays for it. So I slips to the side door and knocks. And a man opens the door.”
Robert Day drew in his breath quickly.
“How did the man look?” he inquired.
“I can't tell you that,” replied Zene, “bekaze I was so struck with the looks of the woman that I looked right past him.”
Robert considered the cast in Zene's eyes, and felt in doubt whether he looked at the man and saw the woman, or looked at the woman and saw the man.
“Was she pretty?”
“Pretty!” replied Zene. “Is that flea-bit-gray, grazin' in the medder there, pretty?”
“Well,” replied Bobaday, shifting his feet, “that's about as good-looking as one of our old grays.”
“You don't know a horse,” said Zene indulgently. “Ourn's an iron gray. There's a sight of difference in grays.”
“Was the woman ugly?”
“Is a spotted snake ugly?”
“Yes,” replied Robert decidedly; “or it 'pears so to me.”
“That's how the woman 'peared to me. She was tousled, and looked wild out of her eyes. The man says, says he, 'What do you want?' I s'ze, 'Can I git a bite here?'”
Robert had frequently explained to Zene the utter nonsense of this abbreviation, “I s'ze,” but Zene invariably returned to it, perhaps dimly reasoning that he had a right to the dignity of third person when repeating what he had said. If he said of another man, “says he,” why could he not remark of himself, “I says he?” He considered it not only correct, but ornamental.
“The man says, says he, 'We don't keep foot-pads.' And I s'ze—for I was mad—'I ain't no more a foot-pad than you are,' I s'ze. 'I've got a team and a wagon out here,' I s'ze, 'and pervisions too, but I've got the means to pay for a warm bite,' I s'ze, 'and if you can't accommodate me, I s'pose there's other neighbors that can.'”
“You shouldn't told him you had money and things!” exclaimed Robert, bulging his eyes.
“I see that, soon's I done it,” returned Zene, shaking a line over the near horse. “The woman spoke up, and she says, says she, 'There ain't any neighbor nigher than five miles.' Thinks I, this settlement looked thicker than that. But I doesn't say yea or no to it. And they had me come in and eat. I paid twenty-five cents for such a meal as your gran'marm wouldn't have set down on her table.”
“What did they have?”
“Don't ask me,” urged Zene; “I'd like to forget it. There was vittles, but they tasted so funny. And they kept inquirin' where I's goin' and who was with me. They was the uneasiest people you ever see. And nothing would do but I must sleep in the house. There was two rooms. I didn't see till I was in bed, that the only door I could get out of let into the room where the man and woman stayed.”
Robert Day began to consider the part of Ohio through which his caravan was passing, a weird and unwholesome region, full of shivering delights. While the landscape lay warm, glowing and natural around him, it was luxury to turn cold at Zene's night-peril.
“I couldn't go to sleep,” continued Zene, “and I kind of kept my eye on the only window there was.”
Robert drew a sigh of relief as he reflected that an enemy watching at the window would be sure Zene was looking just in the opposite direction.
“And the man and woman they whispered.”
“What did they whisper about?”
“How do I know?” said Zene mysteriously. “Whisper—whisper—whisper—z-z! That's the way they kept on. Sometimes I thought he's threatenin' her, and sometimes I thought she's threatenin' him. But along in the middle of the night they hushed up whisperin'. And then I heard somebody open the outside door and go out. I s'ze to myself, 'Nows the time to be up and ready.' So I was puttin' on the clothes I'd took off, and right there on the bed, like it had been there all the time, was two great big eyes turnin' from green to red, and flame comin' out of them like it does out of coals when the wind blows.”
“Was it a cat?” whispered Robert Day, hoping since Zene was safe, that it was not.
Zene passed the insinuation with a derisive puff. He would not stoop to parley about cats in a peril so extreme.
“'How doIknow what it was?” he replied. “I left one of my socks and took the boot in my hand. It was all the gun or anything o' that kind I had. I left my neckhan'ketcher, too.”
“But you didn't get out of the window,” objected Bobaday eagerly. “They always have a hole dug, you know, right under the window, to catch folks in.”
“Yes, I did,” responded Zene, leaping a possible hole in his account. “I guess I cleared forty rod, and I come down on all-fours behind a straw-pile right in the stable-lot.”
“Did the thing follow you?”
“Before I could turn around and look, I see that man and that woman leadin' our horses away from the grove where I'd tied 'em to the feed-box.”
“What for?” inquired Robert Day.
Zene cast a compassionate glance at his small companion.
“What do folks ever lead critters away in the night for?” he hinted.
“Sometimes to water and feed them.”
“I s'ze to myself,” continued Zene, ignoring this absurd supposition, “'now, if they puts the horses in their stable, they means to keep the wagon too, and make way with me so no one will ever know it. But,' I s'ze, 'if they tries to lead the horses off somewhere for to hide 'em, thenthat'sall they want, and they'll pretend in the morning to have lost stock themselves.'”
“And which did they do?” urged Robert after a thrilling pause.
“They marched straight for their stable.”
The encounter was now to take place. Robert Day braced himself by means of the wagon-tongue.
“Then what didyoudo?”
“I rises up,” Zene recounted in a cautious whisper, “draws back the boot, and throws with all my might.”
“Not at the woman?” urged Bobaday.
“I wanted to break her first,” apologized Zene. “She was worse than the man. But I missed her and hit him.”
Robert was glad Zene aimed as he did.
“Then the man jumps and yells, and the woman jumps and yells, and the old gray he rears up and breaks loose. He run right past the straw pile, and before you could say Jack Robinson, I had him by the hitch-strap—it was draggin'—and hoppin' against the straw, I jumped on him.”
“Jack Robinson,” Zene's hearer tried half-audibly. “Then what? Did the man and woman run?”
“I makes old Gray jump the straw pile, and I comes at them just like I rose out of the ground! Yes,” acknowledged Zene forbearingly, “they run. Maybe they run toward the house, and maybe they run the other way. I got a-holt of old White's hitch-strap and my boot; then I cantered out and hitched up, and went along the road real lively. It wasn't till towards mornin' that I turned off into the woods and tied up for a nap. Yes, I sleptpartof the night in the wagon.”
Robert sifted all these harrowing circumstances.
“Maybethey weren't stealing the horses,” he hazarded. “Don't folks ever unhitch other folks' horses to put 'em in their stable?”
Zene drew down the corners of his mouth to express impatience.
“But I'd hated to been there,” Robert hastened to add.
“I guess you would,” Zene observed in a lofty, but mollified way, “if you'd seen the pile of bones I passed down the road a piece from that house.”
“Bones?”
“Piled all in a heap at the edge of the woods.”
“What kind of bones, Zene?”
“Well, I didn't get out to handle 'em. But I see one skull about the size of yours, with a cap on about the size of yours.”
This was all that any boy could ask. Robert uttered a derisive “Ho!” but he sat and meditated with pleasure on the pile of bones. It cast a lime-white glitter on the man and woman who but for that might have been harmless.
“I didn't git much rest,” concluded Zene. “I could drop off sound now if I'd let myself.”
“I'll drive,” proposed Bobaday.
Zene reluctantly considered this offer. The road ahead looked smooth enough. “I guess there's no danger unless you run into a fence corner,” he remarked.
“I can drive as well as Grandma Padgett can,” said Robert indignantly.
Zene wagged his head as if unconvinced. He never intended to let Robert Day be a big boy while he stayed with the family.
“Your gran'marm knows how to handle a horse. Now if I's to crawl back and take a nap, and you's to run the team into any accident, I'd have to bear all the blame.”
Robert protested: and when Zene had shifted his responsibility to his satisfaction, he crept back and leaned against the goods, falling into a sound sleep.
The boy drove slowly forward. It seemed that old gray and old white also felt last night's vigils. They drowsed along with their heads down through a landscape that shimmered sleepily.
Robert thought of gathering apples in the home orchard: of the big red ones that used to fall and split asunder with their own weight, waking him sometimes from a dream, with their thump against the sod. What boy hereafter would gather the sheep-noses, and watch the early June's every day until their green turned suddenly into gold, and one bite was enough to make you sit down under the tree and ask for nothing better in life! He used to keep the chest in his room floored with apples. They lay under his best clothes and perfumed them. His nose knew the breath of a russet, and in a dark cellar he could smell out the bell-flower bin. The real poor people of the earth must be those who had no orchards; who could not clap a particular comrade of a tree on the bark and look up to see it smiling back red and yellow smiles; who could not walk down the slope and see apples lying in ridges, or pairs, or dotting the grass everywhere. Robert was half-asleep, dreaming of apples. He felt thirsty, and heard a humming like the buzz of bees around the cider-press. He and aunt Corinne used to sit down by the first tub of sweet cider, each with two straws apiece, and watch their faces in the rosy juice while they drank Cider from the barrels when snow was on the ground, poured out of a pitcher into a glass, had not the ecstatic tang of cider through a straw. The Bees came to the very edge of the tub, as if to dispute such hiving of diluted honey; and more of them came, from hanging with bent bodies, around the dripping press.
Their buzz increased to a roar. Robert Day woke keenly up to find the old white and the old gray just creeping across a railroad track, and a locomotive with its train whizzing at full speed towards them.
A breath's delay must have been fatal. Robert had no whip, but doubling the lines and shouting at the top of his voice, he braced himself and lashed the gray. The respectable beast leaped with astonishment, dragging its fellow along. The fore wheels cleared the track, and Bobaday's head was filled with the prolonged cry of the locomotive. Zene sprang up, and the hind part of the wagon received a crash which threw the boy out at the side, and Zene quite across the gray's back.
The train came to a stop after running a few yards further. But finding that no lives were lost, it put on steam and disappeared on its course, and Zene and his trembling assistant were trying to prop up one corner of the wagon when Grandma Padgett brought her spectacles to bear upon the scene.
One hind wheel had been splintered by the train, the leap of the gray turning the wagon from the road. Grandma Padgett preserved her composure and asked few questions. Her lips moved at frequent intervals for a long time after this accident. But aunt Corinne flew out of the carriage, and felt her nephew's arms and wailed over the bump his cheek received, and was sure his legs were broken, and that Zene limped more than ever, and that the train had run straight across their prostrate forms.
Zene busied himself with shamefaced eagerness in getting the wagon off the road and preparing to hunt a shop. He made piteous grimaces over every strap he unfastened.
“We cannot leave the goods standing here in the wagon with nobody to watch 'em,” said the head of the caravan. “It's nigh dinner-time, and we'll camp in sight, and wait till we can all go on together. A merciful Providence has brought us along safe so far. We mustn't git separated and run ourselves into any more dangers than we can help.”
Zene lingered only to pitch the camp and find water at a spring running down into a small creek. Then he bestrode one of the wagon horses, and, carrying the broken wheel-hubs, trotted away.
Grandma Padgett tucked up her dress, took provisions from the wagon, and got dinner. Aunt Corinne and her nephew made use of this occasion to lay in a supply of nuts for winter. The nuts were old ones, lying under last autumn's leaves, and before a large heap had been gathered, aunt Corinne bethought her to examine if they were fit to eat. They were not; for besides an ancient flavor, the first kernel betrayed the fact that these were pig-nuts instead of hickory.
{Illustration: BOBADAY'S NARROW ESCAPE.}
“You would have 'em,” said Bobaday, kicking the pile. “I didn't think they's good, anyhow.”
“They looked just like our little hickories,” said aunt Corinne, twisting her mouth at the acrid kernel, “that used to lay under that tree in the pasture. And their shells are as sound.”
But there was compensation in two saplings which submitted to be rode as teeters part of the idle afternoon.
Grandma Padgett had put away the tea things before Zene returned. He brought with him a wagon-maker from one of the villages on the 'pike. The wagon-maker, after examining the disabled vehicle, and getting the dimensions of the other hind wheel which Zene had forgotten to take to him, assured the party he would set them up all right in a day or two.
Grandma Padgett was sitting on a log knitting.
“We'd better have kept to the 'pike,” she remarked.
“Yes, marm,” responded Zene.
“The toll-gates would be a small expense compared to this.”
“Yes, indeed, marm,” responded Zene, grimacing piteously.
“Still,” said Grandma Padgett, “we have much to be thankful for, in that our lives and health have been spared.”
“Oh, yes, marm! yes, marm!” responded Zene.
The wagon-maker hung by one careless leg to his horse before cantering off, and inquired with neighborly interest:
“How far West you folks goin'?”
“We're goin' to Illinois,” replied Grandma Padgett.
“Oh, pshaw, now!” said the wagon-maker. “Goin' to the Eeleenoy! that's a good ways. Ain't you 'fraid you'll never git back?”
“We ain't expectin' to come back,” said Grandma Padgett. “My son's settled there.”
“He has!” said the wagon-maker with an accent of surprise. “Well, well! they say that's an awful country.”
“My son writes back it's as fine land as he ever saw,” said Grandma Padgett with dignity and proper local pride.
“But the chills is so bad,” urged the wagon-maker, who looked as if he had experienced them at their worst. “And the milk-sick, they say the milk-sick is all over the Eeleenoy.”
“We're not borrowing any trouble about such things,” said Grandma Padgett.
“Some of our townsfolks went out there,” continued the wagon-maker, “but what was left of 'em come back. They had to buy their drinkin' water, and the winters on them perrares froze the children in their beds! Oh, I wouldn't go to the Eeleenoy,” said the wagon-maker coaxingly. “You're better off here, if you only knew it.”
As Grandma Padgett heard this remonstrance with silent dignity, the wagon-maker took himself off with a few additional remarks.
Then they began to make themselves snug for the night. The wagon-cover was taken off and made into a tent for Grandma Padgett and aunt Corinne. Robert Day was to sleep in the carriage, and Zene insisted on sleeping with blankets on the wagon where he could watch the goods. He would be within calling distance of the camp.
“We're full as comfortable as we were last night, anyhow,” observed the head of the caravan.
Zene said it made no difference about his supper. He took thankfully what was kept for him, and Robert Day felt certain Zene was trying to bestow on him some conscience-stricken glances.
It was an occasion on which Zene could be made to tell a story. He was not lavish with such curious ones as he knew. Robert sometimes suspected him to be a mine of richness, but it took such hard mining to get a nugget out that the results hardly compensated for the effort.
But when the boy climbed upon the wagon in starlight, and made a few leading remarks, Zene really plunged into a story. He thereby relieved his own feelings and turned the talk from late occurrences.
“I told you about Little Ant Red and Big Ant Black?”
“No, you never!” exclaimed Bobaday.
“Well, once there was Little Ant Red and Big Ant Black lived neighbors.”
“Whose aunts were they—each other's?” inquired the boy.
“They wasn't your father's or mother's sisters; they wasantymires,” explained Zene.
“Oh,” said Robert Day.
“Ant Red, she was a little bit of a thing; you could just see her. But Ant Black, she was a great big critter that went like a train of cars when she was a mind to.”
“I don't like either kind,” said Robert. “The little ones got into our sugar once, and Grandma had to fight 'em out with camphor, and a big black got into my mouth and I bit him in two. He pinched my tongue awful, and he tasted sour.”
“Big Ant Black,” continued Zene, “she lived in a hill by a stump, but Little Ant Red she lived on a leaf up a tree.”
“I thought they always crept into houses,” urged Bobaday.
“This one didn't. She lived on a leaf up a tree. And these two ants run against each other in everything. When they met in the grass they'd stand up on their hind feet and shake hands as friendly as you please, but as soon as their backs was turned they'd talk! Big Ant Black said Little Ant Red was always a meddling, and everybody knowed her son was drowned in under the orchard cider-press where his mother sent him to snuff round. And Little Ant Red she used to tell how Ant Black was so graspin' she tried to carry that cider-press off and hide it in her hole.
“They had all the neighbors takin' sides. There was a yellow-back spider. He took up for Ant Red; he hoped to get a taste of her, and Ant Black he knowed was big enough to bite him unless he was mighty soople in wrappin' the web around her. Every mornin' when the dew stood in beads on his net he told Ant Red they was tears he shed about her troubles, and she run up and down and all around, talkin' like a sawmill, but keepin' just off the web. And there was Old Grasshopper, he sided with Ant Red, and so did Miss Green Katydid. But all the beetles, and them bugs that lived under the bark of the old stump, they took up for Ant Black, 'cause she was handy. And the snake-feeder was on her side.
“Well, it run along, feelin's gittin' harder and harder, till Ant Black she jumped up and kitched Ant Red fussin' round her cow pasture one night, and then the cows began to give bloody milk, and then Ant Black she give out that Ant Red was a witch.
“Now, these kind of critters, they're as smart as human bein's if you only knowed it. And that was enough. The katydid, she said she felt pins and needles in her back whenever Ant Red looked at her; and the snake-feeders said she shot arries at 'em when they was flyin' over a craw-fish hole. All the beetles and wood-bugs complained of bein' hit with witch-bells, and the more Ant Red acted careful the more they had ag'in her.
“Well, the spider he told her to come into his den and live, and she'd be safe from hangin', but she wasn't sure in her mind about that. Even the grasshopper jumped out of her way, and bunged his eyes out at her; as if she could harm such a great big gray lubber as him! She was gittin' pretty lonesome when she concluded to try a projic.”
“What's a projic?” inquired Robert Day.
“Why, it's a—p'epperation, or—a plan of some kind,” explained Zene.
“So she invites Big Ant Black and all her family, and the spider and all his family, and the beetles and bugs and all their families, and the snake-feeders and Miss Katydid for young folks, and don't leave out a neighbor, to an apple-bee right inside the orchard fence.
“So it was pleasant weather, and they all come and brung the babies, the old grasshopper skippin' along as nimble and steppin' on the shawl that was wrapped round his young one. And the snake-feeders they helped Miss Katydid over the lowest fence-rail, and here come Big Ant Black with such a string behind her it looked like a funeral instead of a family percession and she twisted her neck from side to side as soon as she see the great big apple, kind of wonderin' if they couldn't carry it off.
“Little Ant Red had all her children's heads combed and the best cheers set out, and she had on her good dress and white apron, and she says right and left, 'Hoddy-do, sir? hoddy-do, marm? Come right in and take cheers. And they all shook hands with her as if they'd never dreamt of callin' her a witch, and fell right on to the apple and begun to eat. And they all e't and e't, till they'd made holes in the rind and hollered it out. And Big Ant Black she gits her family started, and they carries off chunk after chunk of that apple till the road was black and white speckled between her house and the apple-tree.
“Little Ant Red she walks around urgin' them all to help theirselves, and that made them all feel pleasant to her. But Big Ant Black she got so graspin' and eager, that what does she do but try to help her young ones carry off the whole apple-shell. It did look jub'ous to see such a big thing movin' off with such little critters tuggin' it. And then Ant Red got on to a clover-head and showed the rest of the company what Ant Black was a-doin'. Says Ant Red: 'You ain't e't more'n a mouthful, Mr. Grasshopper.'
“'No, marm,' says he.
“'I s'ze to myself,' says Ant Red, 'here is this polite company, and the snake-feeders don't touch nothin,' and everybedy knows Miss Katydid lives on nothin' but rose-leaf butter, and the bugs and beetles will hardly take enough, to keep 'em alive.' 'And I s'ze to myself,' says Ant Red, 'here's this big apple walkin' off with nobody but Ant Black to move it. This great big sound apple. And it looks to me like witchcraft. That's what it looks like,' says Ant Red.
“They all declared it looked just like witchcraft. Ant Black tried to show them how holler the apple was, and they declared if she'd hollered it that way so quick, it was witchcraft certain.
“So what does they do but pen her and her young ones in the apple-shell and stop it up with mud. Even the mud-wasps and tumble-bugs that hadn't been bid come and took part when they see the dirt a-flyin'. Ant Red set on the clover-head and teetered.
“Now, down to this present minute,” concluded Zene, “you never pick up an apple and find a red ant walkin' out of it. If ants is there, it's one of them poor black fellers that was shut up at the apple-bee, and they walk out brisk; as if they's glad to find daylight once more.”