Still, as crossing the Sciota at Columbus, had been entering a land of adventure, crossing the White River at Indianapolis, seemed at first entering a land of commonplace.
The children were very tired of the wagon. Even aunt Corinne got permission to ride stretches of the road with Robert Day and Zene in the wagon. It gave out a different creak and jolted her until she was grateful for springs and cushions when obliged to go back to them. The landscape was still hazy, the woods grew more beautiful. But neither of the children cared for the little towns along the route: Bellville, Stilesville, Meridian, Manhattan, Pleasant Garden. Hills appeared and ledges of rock cropped out in them. Yet even hills may be observed with indifference by eyes weary of an endless panorama.
They drove more rapidly now to make up for lost time. Both children dived into the carriage pockets for amusement, and aunt Corinne dressed her rag doll a number of times each day. They talked of Rose Tracy, still calling her Fairy Carrie. Of the wonderful clothes her mother laid out to put upon her the night of her departure, in place of aunt Corinne's over-grown things, and the show woman's tawdry additions. They wondered about her home and the colored people who waited on her, and if she would be quite well and cured of her stupor by the time she reached Baltimore. Grandma Padgett told them Baltimore was an old city down in Maryland, and the National 'Pike started in its main street. From Baltimore over the mountains to Wheeling, in the Pan Handle of Virginia, was a grand route. There used to be a great deal of wagoning and stage-coaching, and driving droves of horses and cattle by that road. Perhaps, suggested aunt Corinne, Fairy Carrie would watch the 'pike for the Padgett family, but Bobaday ridiculed the idea. When he grew up a man he meant to go to Baltimore but the railroad would be his choice of routes.
Both Robert and his aunt were glad the day they stopped for dinner near a toll-house, and the woman came and invited them to dine with her.
The house stood on the edge of the 'pike, with its gate-pole ready to be lowered by a rope, looking like any other toll place. But the woman was very brisk and Yankee-like, and different from the many slatternly persons who had before taken toll. She said her people came from “down East,” but she herself was born in Ohio. She thought the old lady would like a cup of strong tea, and her dinner was just ready, and it did get lonesome eating by a body's self day after day.
The Padgetts added their store to the square table set in a back room, and the toll-woman poured her steaming tea into cups covered with flower sprigs. Everything about her was neat and compact as a ship's cabin. Her bed stood in one corner, curtained with white dimity. There were two rooms to the toll-house, the front one being a kind of shop containing a counter, candy jars set in the windows, shoestrings and boxes of thread on shelves, and a codfish or two sprawled upon nails and covered with netting. From the back door you could descend into a garden, and at the end of the garden was a pig-sty, occupied by a white pig almost as tidy and precise as his owner. In the toll-woman's living room there was a cupboard fringed with tissue paper, a rocking-chair cushioned in red calico, curtains to match, a cooking-stove so small it seemed made for a play-thing, and yellow chairs having gold-leaf ornaments on their backs. She herself was a straight, flat woman, looking much broader in a front or back view than when she stood sidewise toward you. Her face was very good-natured. Altogether she seemed just the ready and capable wife for whom the man went to London after the rats and the mice led him such a life. Though in her case it is probable the wheelbarrow would not have broken, nor would any other mishap have marred the journey.
“You don't live here by yourself, do you?” inquired Grandma Padgett as the tea and the meal in common warmed an acquaintance which the fact of their being from one State had readily begun.
“Since father died I have,” replied the toll-woman. “Father moved in here when about everything else failed him, and he'd lost ambition, and laws! now I am used to it. I might gone back to Ohio, but when you fit me into a place I never want to pull up out of it.”
“And don't you ever get afraid, nights or any time, without men folks about?”
“Before I got used to being alone, I did. And there's reason yet every little while. But I only got one bad scare.”
A wagon paused at the front door, so near the horses might have put their heads in and sniffed up the merchandise, and the woman went to take toll, before telling about her bad scare.
“How do you manage in the nights?” inquired her guest.
“That's bad about fair-times, when the wild young men get to racin' late along. The pole's been cut when I tied it down, and sometimes they've tried to jump it. But generally the travellers are peaceable enough. I've got a box in the front door like a letter-box, with a slit outside for them to drop change into, and the pole rope pulls down through the window-frame. There ain't so much travel by night as there used to be, and a body learns to be wakeful anyhow if they've ever had the care of sick old people.”
“You didn't say how you got scared,” remarked aunt Corinne, sitting straight in one of the yellow chairs to impress upon her mind the image of this heroine of the road.
“Well, it was robbers,” confessed the toll-woman, “breakin' into the house, that scared me.”
Robbers! Aunt Corinne's nephew mentally saw a cavern in one of the neighboring hills, and men in scarlet cloaks and feathers lurking among the bushes. If there is any word sweeter to the young male ear than Indian or Tagger, it is robbers.
“Are there many robbers around here?” he inquired, fixing intent eyes on the toll-woman.
“There used to be plenty of horse-thieves, and is, yet,” she replied. “They've come huntin' them from away over in Illinois. I remember that year the milk-sick was so bad there was more horse-thieves than we've ever heard of since.”
“But they ain't true robbers, are they?” said aunt Corinne's nephew in some disgust, his scarlet bandits paling.
“Not the kind that come tryin' the house when I got scared,” admitted the toll-woman.
“And did they get in?” exclaimed Robert Day's aunt.
“I don't like to think about it yet,” remarked the toll-woman, cooling her tea and intent on enjoying her own story. “'Twasn't so very long ago, either. First comes word from this direction that a toll-gate keeper and his wife was tied and robbed at the dead o' night. And then comes word from the other direction of an old man bein' knocked on the head when he opened his door. It wouldn't seem to you there'd be enough money at a toll-gate to make it an object,” said the woman, looking at Zene's cross eyes with unconcealed disfavor. “But folks of that kind don't want much of an object.”
“They love to rob,” suggested Bobaday, enjoying himself.
“They're a desp'rate, evil set,” said the toll-woman sternly. “Why, I could tell things that would make your hair all stand on end, about robberies I've known.”
Aunt Corinne felt a warning stir in her scalp-lock. But her nephew began to desire permanent encampment in the neighborhood of this toll-gate. Robber-stories which his grandmother not only allowed recited, but drank in with her tea, were luxuries of the road not to be left behind.
“Tell some of them,” he urged.
“I'll tell you about their comin'here,” said the toll-woman. “'Twas soon after father's death. They must known there was a lone woman here, and calculated on findin' it an easy job. He'd kept me awake a good deal, for father suffered constant in his last sickness, and though I was done out, I still had the habit of wakin' regular at his medicine-hours. The time was along in the fall, and there was a high wind that night. Fair time, too, so there was more travel on the 'pike of people comin' and goin' to the Fair and from it, in one day, than in a whole week ordinary times.”
{Illustration: THE TOLL-WOMAN.}
“I opened my eyes just as the clock struck two and seemed like I heard something at the front door. I listened and listened. It wasn't the wind singin' along the telegraph wires as it does when there's a strong draught east and west. And it wasn't anybody tryin' to wake me up. Some of our farmers that buys stock and has to be out early and late in a droviete way, often tells me beforehand what time o' night they'll be likely to come by, and I set the pole so it'll be easy for them that knows how to tip up. Then they put their money in the box, and tip the pole back after they drive through, to save wakin' me, for the neighbors are real accommodating and they knew father took a heap of care. But the noise I heard wasn't anybody droppin' coppers in the box, nor raisin' or lowerin' the pole. The rope rasps against the hole when the gate goes up or down. It was just like a lock was bein' picked, or a rattly old window bein' slid up by inches.
“I mistrusted right away. It wouldn't do any good for me to holler. The nearest neighbor was two miles off. I hadn't any gun, and never shot off a gun in my life. I would hate to hurt a human bein' that way. Still, I was excited and afraid of gettin' killed myself; so if I'dhada gun Imighthave shot it off, for by the time I got my dress and stockin's on, that window was up, and somethin' was in that front room. I could hear him step, still as a cat.
“I thought about the toll-money. Everybody knew the box's inside the door, so I was far from leavin' it there till the collector came. I always took the money out and tied it in a canvas sack and hid it. A body would never think of lookin' where I hid that money.”
“Where did you hide it?” inquired aunt Corinne.
The toll-woman rose up and went to collect from a carriage at the door. The merry face of a girl in the carriage peeped through the house, and some pleasant jokes were exchanged.
“That's the daughter of the biggest stock man around here,” said the toll-woman, returning, and passing over aunt Corinne's question. “She goes to college, but it don't make a simpleton ofher. She always has a smile and a pleasant word. Her folks are real good friends of mine. They knew our folks in Ohio.”
“And did he come right in and grab you?” urged Bobaday, keeping to the main narrative.
“I was that scared for a minute,” resumed the toll-woman, “that I hadn't any strength. The middle door never is locked. I leave it on the latch like, so I can hear wheels better. What to do I didn't know, but a body thinks fast at such times. First thing I knew I was on the back doorstep, hookin' the door on the outside. Then a gust of wind like, came around the corner of the house, and voices came with it, and I felt sure there were more men waitin' there to ketch me, if I tried to run.”
It was a light night, but the new moon looked just like it was blowed through the sky by the high wind. I noticed that, because I remembered it afterwards.
“Now I was outside, I didn't know which way to turn. If I run to either side, there were the men, and if I took toward the pig-pen they'd see me. And they'd be comin' around and 'd ketch me where I was.”
“What did you do?” exclaimed aunt Corinne, preserving a rigid attitude.
The toll-woman laughed cheerfully as she poured out more tea for herself, Grandma Padgett having waved back the teapot spout.
“I took the only chance I saw and jumped for that there cave.”
Both Robert and his aunt arose from their chairs to look out of the back door.
The cave was a structure which I believe is peculiar to the West, being in reality a kind of dug-out. It flourished before people built substantial houses with cellars under them, and held the same relation to the family's summer economy as the potato, apple, and turnip holes did to its winter comfort. Milk, butter, perishable fruit, lard, meats, and even preserves were kept in the cave. It was intended for summer coolness and winter warmth. To make a cave, you lifted the sod and dug out a foot of earth. The bottom was covered with straw. Over this you made boards meet and brace each other with the slope of the roof. The ends were boarded up, leaving room for a door, and the whole outside sodded thickly, so that a cave looked like a sharp-printed bulge in the sward, excepting at that end where the heavy padlocked door closed it. It was a temptation to bad boys and active girls; they always wanted to run over it and hear the hollow sound of the boards under their feet. I once saw a cave break through and swallow one out of such a galloping troup, to his great dismay, for he was running over an imaginary volcano, and when he sat down to his shoulders in an apple-butter jar, the hot lava seemed ready made to his hand.
From the toll-woman's cave-roof, spikes of yellow mustard were shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children, and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges. Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ridge of this cave.
It stood a few yards from the back door.
“I had the key in my pocket,” said the toll-woman, “and ever since then I've never carried it anywhere else. I clapped, it into the padlock and turned, but just as I pulled the door I heard feet comin' around the house full drive. Instead of jumpin' into the cave I jumped behind it. I thought they had me, but I wasn't goin' to be crunched to death in a hole, like a mouse. My stocking-feet slipped, and I came down flat, but right where the shadow of the house and the shadow of the cave fell all over me. If I hadn't slipped I'd been runnin' across that field, and they'd seen me sure. Folks around here made a good deal of fuss over the way things turned out, but I don't, take any more credit than's my due, so I say it just happened that I didn't try to run further.
“The two men outside unlocked the back door and the one inside came on to the step.
“'There's nothin' in the box and nobody in here,' says he. 'She's jumped out o' bed and run and carried the cash with her.'
“'Did you look under the bed?' says one of the outsiders. And he ran and looked himself; anyway, he went in the house and came out again. I was glad I hadn't got under the bed.
“'This job has to be done quick,' says the first one. 'And the best way is to ketch the woman and make her give up or tell where the stuff is hid. She ain't got far, because I heard her open this door.'
“Then they must have seen the cave door stannin' open. I heard them say something about 'cave,' and come runnin' up.
“'Hold on,' says one, and he fires a pistol-shot right into the cave. I was down with my mouth to the ground, flat as I could lay, but the sound of a gun always made me holler out, and holler I did as the ball seemed to come thud! right at me; but it stuck in the back of the cave.
“'All right. Here she is!' says the foremost man, and in they all went. I heard them stumble as they stepped down, and one began to blame the others for crowdin' after him when they ought to stopped at the mouth to ketch me if I slipped through his fingers.
“I don't know to this hour how I did it,” exclaimed the toll-woman, fanning herself, “nor when I thought of it. But the first thing I felt sure of I had that door slammed to, and the key turned in the padlock, and them three robbers was ketched like mice in a trap, instead of it's bein' me!”
Robert Day gave a chuckle of satisfaction, but aunt Corinne braced herself against the door-frame and gazed upon the magic cave with still wider eyes.
“Did they yell?” inquired Bobaday.
“It ain't fit to tell,” resumed the toll-woman, “what awful language them men used; and they kicked the door and the boards until I thought break through they would if they had to heave the whole weight, of dirt and sod out of the top. Then I heard somebody comin' along the 'pike, and for a minute I felt real discouraged; for, thinks I, if there's more engaged to help them, what's a poor body to do?
“But 'twas a couple of stock-men, riding home, and they stopped at the gate, and I run through the open house to tell my story, and it didn't take long for them with pistols in their pockets and big black whips loaded with lead in the handles, to get the fellows out and tie 'em up firm. I hunted all the new rope in the house, and they took the firearms away from the robbers, and drove 'em off to jail, and the robbers turned out to be three of the most desp'rate characters in the State, and they're in prison now for a long term of years.”
“What did you do the rest of the night?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
“O, I locked everything tight again, and laid down till daylight,” replied the toll-woman, with somewhat boastful indifference. “Folks haven't got done talkin' yet about that little jail in my back yard,” she added, laughing. “They came from miles around to look into it and see where the men pretty nigh kicked the boards loose.”
This narrative was turned over and over by the children after they resumed their journey, and the toll-woman and her cave had faded out in distance. If they saw a deserted cabin among the hollows of the woods, it became the meeting place of robbers. Now that aunt Corinne's nephew turned his mind to the subject, he began to think the whole expedition out West would be a failure—an experience not worth alluding to in future times—unless the family were well robbed on the way. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, in the great overland colony, would have Indians to shudder at, a desert and mountains to cross, besides the tremendous Mississippi River. Robert would hate to meet Jonathan in coming days—and he had a boy's faith that he should be constantly repassing old acquaintances in this world—and have no peril to put in the balance against Jonathan's adventures. Of course he wanted to come out on the right side of the peril, it does not tell well otherwise.
But while aunt Corinne's mind ran as constantly on robbers, they had no charms for her. She did not want to be robbed, and was glad her lines had not fallen in the lonely toll-house. Being robbed appeared to her like the measles, mumps, or whooping-cough; more interesting in a neighboring family than in your own. She would avoid it if possible, yet the conviction grew upon her that it was not to be escaped. The strange passers-by who once pleasantly varied the road, now became objects of dread. Though Zene got past them in safety, and though they gave the carriage a wide road, aunt Corinne never failed to turn and watch them to a safe distance, lest they should make a treacherous charge in the rear.
Had they been riding through some dismal swamp, the landscape's influence would have accounted for all these terrors. But it was the pretty region of Western Indiana, containing hills and bird-songs enough to swallow up a thousand stories of toll-gate robberies in happy sight and sound.
Grandma Padgett, indeed, soon put her ban upon the subject of caves and night-attacks. But she could not prevent the children thinking. Nor was she able to drive the carriage and at the same time sit in the wagon when they rode with Zene and stop the flow of recollection to which they stimulated him. While sward, sky, and trees became violet-tinted to her through her glasses, and she calmly meditated and chewed a bit of calamus or a fennel seed, Bobaday and aunt Corinne huddled at the wagon's mouth, and Zene indulgently harrowed up their souls with what he heard from a gentleman who had been in the Mexican war.
“The very gentleman used to visit at your grand-marm's house,” said Zene to Robert, “and your marm always said he was much of a gentleman,” added Zene to aunt Corinne. “Down in the Mexican country when they didn't fight they stayed in camp, and sometimes they'd go out and hunt. Man that'd been huntin', come runnin' in one day scared nigh to death. He said he'd seen the old Bad Man. So this gentleman and some more of the fine officers, they went to take a look for themselves. They hunted around a good spell. Most of them gave it up and went back: all but four. The four got right up to him.”
“O don't, Zene!” begged aunt Corinne, feeling that she could not bear the description.
But to Robert Day's mind arose the picture of Apollyon, inPilgrim's Progress, and he uttered something like a snort of enjoyment, saying:
“Go on, Zene.”
{Illustration: ZENE'S WILD MAN.}
“I guess it was a crazy darkey or Mexican,” Zene was careful to explain. “He was covered with oxhide all over, so he looked red and white hairy, and the horns and ears were on his head. He had a long knife, and cut weeds and bark, and muttered and chuckled to himself. He was ugly,” acknowledged Zene. “The gentleman said he never saw anything better calkilated to look scary, and the four men followed him to his den. They wouldn't shoot him, but they wanted to see what he was, and he never mistrusted. After a long round-about, they watched him crawl on all-fours into a hole in a hill, and round the mouth of the hole he'd built up a tunnel of bones. The bones smelt awful,” said Zene. “And he crawled in with his weeds and bark in his hand, and they didn't see any more of him. That's a true story,” vouched Zene, snapping his whip-lash at Johnson, “but your grandmarm wouldn't like for me to tell it to you. Such things ain't fit for children to hear.”
Robert Day felt glad that Zene's qualms of repentance always came after the offence instead of before, and in time to prevent the forbidden tale.
Yet, having made such ardent preparation for robbers, and tuned their minds to the subject by every possible influence, the children found they were approaching the last large town on the journey without encountering any.
This was Terre Haute. One farmer on the road, being asked the distance, said, it was so many miles to Tarry Hoot. Another, a little later met, pronounced the place Turry Hut; and a very trim, smooth-looking man whom Zene classed as a banker or judge, called it Tare Hote. So the inhabitants and neighbors of Terra Haute were not at all unanimous in the sound they gave her French name; nor are they so to this day.
At Terra Haute, where they halted for the night, Robert Day was made to feel the only sting which the caravan mode of removal ever caused him.
The tavern shone resplendent with lights. When Grandma Padgett's party went by the double doors of the dining-room, to ascend the stairs, they glanced into what appeared a bower or a bazaar of wonderful sights. They had supper in a temporary eating-room, and the waiter said there was a fair in the house. Not an agricultural display, but something got up by a ladies' sewing-society to raise money for poor people.
Now Robert Day and Corinne knew all about an agricultural display. They had been to the State Fair at Columbus, and seen cattle standing in long lines of booths, quilts, and plows, and chickens, pies, bread, and fancy knitting, horses, cake stands, and crowds of people. They considered it the finest sight in the world, except, perhaps, a fabulous crystal palace which was or had been somewhere a great ways off, and which everybody talked about a great deal, and some folks had pictured on their window blinds. But a fair got up by a ladies' sewing-society to raise money for the poor, was so entirely new and tantalizing to them that they begged their guardian to take them in.
Grandma Padgett said she had no money to spare for foolishness, and her expenses during the trip footed up to a high figure. Neither could she undertake to have the trunks in from the wagon and get out their Sunday clothes. But in the end, as both children were neatly dressed, and the fair was to help the poor, she gave them a five-cent piece each, over and above admission money, which was a fip'ney-bit, for children, the waiter said. Zene concluded he would black his boots and look into the fair awhile also, and as he could keep a protecting eye on her young family, and had authority to send them up-stairs in one hour and a half by the bar-room time, Grandma Padgett went to bed. She was glad the journey was so nearly over, for every night found her quite tired out.
Zene, magnifying his own importance and authority, ushered aunt Corinne and Robert into the fair, and limped after them whenever he thought they needed admonition or advice. The landlord's pert young son noticed this and made his intimates laugh at it. Besides, he was gorgeously attired in blue velvet jacket and ruffles and white trousers, and among the crowds of grown people coming and going, other children shone in resplendent attire. Aunt Corinne felt the commonness of her calico dress. She had a “white” herself, if Ma Padgett had only let her put it on, but this could not be explained to all the people at the fair. And there were so many things to look at, she soon forgot the white. Dolls of pink and pearly wax, with actual hair, candy or wooden dogs, cats, and all domestic animals, tables of cakes, and lines of made-up clothing which represented the sewing society's labors. There was too much crowding for comfort, and too much pastry trodden into the floor; and aunt Corinne and her nephew felt keen anxiety to spend their five-cent pieces to the best advantage. She was near investing in candy kisses, when yellow and scarlet-backed books containing the history of “Mother Hubbard,” or the “Babes in the Woods,” or “Little Red Riding Hood,” attracted her eye, and she realized what life-long regret she must have suffered for spending five cents on candy kisses, when one such volume might be hers for the same money.
Just as aunt Corinne laid her silver on the book counter, however, and gave her trembling preference to the “History of Old Dame Trot and her Cat,” Bobaday seized her wrist and excitedly told her there was a magic-lantern show connected with the fair, which could be seen at five cents per pair of eyes. Dame Trot remained unpurchased, and the coin returned to aunt Corinne's warm palm. But she inquired with caution,
“What's a magic-lantern show?”
“Why, the man, you know,” explained Robert, “has pitctures in a lantern, and throws light through 'em, and they spread out on a wet sheet on the wall. The room's all dark except the place on the wall. A Chinese man eatin' mice in his sleep: he works his jaws! And about Saul in the Bible, when he was goin' to kill the good people, and it says, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' And when they let him down in a basket. And there's a big star like grandma's star quilt, only it keeps turning all kinds of colors and working in and out on itself. And a good many more. Zene went in. He said he wanted to see if we ought to look at it. And he'll stand by the door and pay our money to the man if we want to go. There's such a crowd to get in.”
Robert Day's aunt caught the fire of his enthusiasm and went straight with him to the door wherein the magic lantern performed. A crowd of children were pushing up, but Zene, more energetic than courteous pushed his charges ahead so that they gained chairs before the landlord's son could make his choice.
{Illustration: AT THE SEWING SOCIETY FAIR.}
He sat down directly behind Robert and aunt Corinne, and at once began to annoy them with impertinent remarks.
“Movers' young ones are spry,” said the landlord's son, who had been petted on account of his pretty face until he was the nuisance of the house. “I wouldn't be a movers' young one.”
Robert felt a stinging throb in his blood, but sat still, looking at the wall. Aunt Corinne, however, turned her head and looked witheringly at the blue-jacketed boy.
“Movers' young ones have to wear calico,” he continued, “and their lame pap goes lippity-clink around after them.”
“He thinks Zene's our father!” exclaimed aunt Corinne, blazing at the affront she received.
“Don't mind him,” said Robert, slowly. “He's the hostler's boy, and used to staying in the stable. He doesn't know how to behave when they let him into the house.”
This bitter skirmishing might have become an open engagement at the next exchange of fires, for the landlord's son stood up in rage while his chums giggled, and Robert felt terribly equal to the occasion. He told Zene next day he had his fist already doubled, and he didn't care if the landlord put them all in jail. But just then the magic light was turned upon the wall, the landlord's son was told by twenty voices to sit down out of the way, the lantern man himself sternly commanding it. So he sunk into his seat feeling much less important, and the wonders proceeded though Aunt Corinne felt she should always regret turning her back on the Dame Trot book and coming in there to have Zene called her lame pap, while Robert wondered gloomily if any stigma did attach to movers' children. He had supposed them a class to be envied.
This grievance put the robbers out of his mind when they trotted ahead next day. The Wabash River could scarcely soothe his ruffled complacence. And never an inch of the Wabash River have I seen that was not beautiful and restful to the eye. It flows limpidly between varying banks, and has a trick of throwing up bars and islands, wooded to the very edges—captivating places for any tiny Crusoe to be wrecked upon. Skiffs lay along the shore, and small steamers felt their way in the channel. It was a river full of all sorts of promises; so shallow here that the pebbles shone in broad sheets like a floor of opals wherever you might wade in delight, so deep and shady with sycamore canopies there, that a good swimmer would want to lie in ambush like a trout, at the bottom of the swimming hole, half a June day.
Perhaps it was the sight of the Wabash River which suggested washing clothes to Grandma Padgett. She said they were now near the Illinois State line, and she would not like to reach the place with everything dirty. There was always plenty to do when a body first got home, without hurrying up wash-day.
So when they passed a small place called Macksville, and came to Sugar Creek, she called a halt, and they spent the day in the woods. Sugar Creek, though not sweet, was clear. Zene carried pails full of it to fill the great copper kettle, and slung this over a fire. The horses munched at their feed-box or cropped grass, wandering with their heads tied to their forefeet to prevent their cantering off. Grandma Padgett at the creek's brink, set up her tubs and buried herself to the elbows in suds, and aunt Corinne with a matronly countenance, assisted. All that day Robert went barelegged, and splashed water, wading out far to dip up a gourdful; and he thought it was fun to help stretch the clothes-line among saplings, and lift the scalded linen on a paddle into the tub, losing himself in the stream. Ordinary washdays as he remembered them, were rather disagreeable. Everybody had to wake early, and a great deal of fine-split wood was needed. The kitchen smelt of suds, and the school-lunch was scraps left from Sunday instead of new cake, turnovers and gingerbread.
{Illustration: GRANDMA PADGETT'S WASHING-DAY IN THE WOODS.}
But this woods wash-day was an experience to delight in, like sailing on a log in the water, and pretending you are a bold navigator, or lashing the rocking-chair to a sled for a sleighride. It was something out of the common. It was turning labor into fantastic tricks.
They had an excellent supper, too, and after dusk the clothes stood in glintly array on the line, the camp-fire shone ruddy in a place where its smoke could not offend them, and they were really like white stones encircling an unusual day.
But when Robert awoke in the night they gave him a pang of fright, and he was sorry his grandma had decided to let them bleach in the dew of the June woods. From his bed in the carriage he could see both the road and the lines of clothes. A horseman came along the road and halted. He was not attracted by the camp-fire, because that had died to ashes. He probably would not have heard the horses stamp in their sleep, for his own horse's feet made a noise. And the wagon cover was hid by foliage. But woods and sight were not dark enough to keep the glint of the washing out of his eyes. Robert saw this rider dismount and heard him walking cautiously into their camp.
Here at last was the robber. After you have given over expecting a robber, and even feel that you can do without him, to find him stealing up in the night when you are camped in a lonely place and not near enough either tent or wagon to wake the other sleepers for reinforcements, is trying to the nerves.
Bobaday sat up in the carriage, bracing his courage for the emergency. He could take a cushion, jump out and attack the man with that. It was not a deadly weapon, and would require considerable force back of it to do damage. The whip might be better. He reached for the whip and turned the handle uppermost. There was no cave at hand to trap this robber in, but a toll-woman should not show more spirit than Robert Day Padgett in the moment of peril.
Though the robber advanced cautiously, he struck his foot against a root or two, and stumbled, making the horse take irregular steps also, for he was leading his horse with the bridle over his arm.
And he came directly up to the carriage. Robert grasped the whip around the middle with both hands, but some familiar attitude in the stranger's dim outline made him lower it.
“Bobby,” said the robber, speaking guardedly, “are you in here?”
“Pa Padgett,” exclaimed Robert Day, “is that you?”
“Hush! Yes. It's me, of course. Don't wake your grandma. Old folks are always light sleepers.”
Pa Padgett reached into the carriage, shook hands with his boy, and kissed him. How good the bushy beard felt against Bobaday's face.
He said nothing about robbers, while his father unsaddled his horse and tied the animal snugly to a limb.
Then Pa Padgett put his foot on the hub and sprang into the carriage.
“Is there room for me to stretch myself in here tonight too?”
“Of course there is. But don't you want to see grandma and aunt Krin?”
“Wait till morning. We'll all take an early start. Have they kept well?”
“Everybody's well,” replied Bobaday. “But how did you know we were here?”
“I'd have passed by,” said Pa Padgett, “if I hadn't seen all that white strung along. Been washing clothes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I made out the carriage, and something like a wagon back in the bushes. So I came up to examine.”
“We thought you'd be at the State line,” said Robert.
“Oh, I intended to ride out till I met you,” replied his father. “But I'd have missed you on the plain road; and gone by to the next town to stop for you, if it hadn't been for the washing. You better go to sleep again now. Have you had a nice trip?”
“Oh, awful nice! There was a little girl lost, and we got her to her mother again, and Zene and the wagon were separated from us once”—
“Zene has taken good care of you, has he?”
“He didn't have to take care of us!” remonstrated Robert. “And last night when there was a fair, I thought he stuck around more than he was needed: There was the meanest boy that stuck up his hose at movers' children.”
Aunt Corinne's brother Tip laughed under his breath.
“You'll not be movers' children much longer. The home is over yonder, only half a day's ride or so.”
“Is it a nice place?”
“I think it's a nice place. There's prairie, but there's timber too. And there's money to be made. You go to sleep now. You'll wake your grandma, and I expect she's tired.”
“Yes, sir, I'm going. Is there a garden?”
“There's a good bit of ground for a garden; and there's a planting of young catalpas. Far as the eye can see in one direction, it's prairie. On the other side is woods. The house is better than the old one. I had to build, and I built pretty substantial. Your grandma's growing old. She'll need comforts in her old age, and we must put them around her, my man.”
Bobaday thought about this home to which he and his family were to grow as trees grasp the soil. Already it seemed better to him than the one he had left. There would be new playmates, new landscapes, new meadows to run in, new neighbors, new prospects. The home, so distant during the journey that he had scarcely thought about it at all, now seemed to inclose him with its pleasant walls, which the smell of new timbers made pleasant twice over.
Boswell and Johnson, under the carriage, waked by the cautious talk from that sound sleep a hard day's hunts after woods things induces, and perhaps sniffing the presence of their master and the familiar air of home, rose up to shake themselves, and one of them yawned until his jaws creaked.
“It's the dogs,” whispered Bobaday.
“We mustn't set them to barking,” cautioned Pa Padgett.
“Well, good-night,” said the boy, turning on his cushion.
“Good-night. This caravan must move on early in the morning.”