Old Caravan Days Part 24

"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."

CHAPTER XXV. ROBBERS.

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 att.i.tude.

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, b.u.t.ter, 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-b.u.t.ter 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 n.o.body 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 repa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sers-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 gla.s.ses, 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, in _Pilgrim's Progress_, and he uttered something like a snort of enjoyment, saying:

"Go on, Zene."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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, p.r.o.nounced the place Turry Hut; and a very trim, smooth-looking man whom Zene cla.s.sed 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.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE FAIR AND THE FIERCE BANDIT.