Old Caravan Days Part 3

"Well, we can't go further ourselves. Can you take the lines?"

"Oh, nein," said the tavern-keeper mildly. "I don't keep moofers mit my house. Dey goes a little furter."

"You don't keep movers!" said Grandma Padgett indignantly. "What's your tavern for?"

"Oh, yah," replied the host with undisturbed benevolence. "Dey goes a little furter."

"Why have you put out a sign to mislead folks?"

The tavern keeper took the pipe out of his mouth to look up at his sign. It swayed back and forth in the valley breeze, as if itself expostulating with him.

"Dot's a goot sign," he p.r.o.nounced. "Auf you go up te hill, tere ist te house I put up mit te moofers. First house. All convenient. You sthay tere. I coom along in te mornin'. Tere ist more as feefty famblies sthop mit tat house. Oh, nien, I don't keep moofers mit te tafern."

"This is a queer way to do," said Grandma Padgett, fixing the full severity of her gla.s.ses on him. "Turn a woman and two children away to harbor as well as they can in some old barn! I'll not stop in your house on the hill. Who'd 'tend to the horses?"

"Tare ist gra.s.s and water," said the landlord as she turned from his door. "And more as feefty famblies hast put up tere. I don't keep moofers mit te tafern."

Robert and Corinne felt very homeless as she drove at a rattling pace down the valley. They were hungry, and upon an unknown road; and that inhospitable tavern had turned them away like vagrants.

"We'll drive all night before we'll stop in his movers' pen," said Grandma Padgett with her well-known decision. "I suppose he calls every vagabond that comes along a mover, and his own house is too clean for such gentry. I've heard about the Swopes and the Dutch being stupid, but a body has to travel before they know."

But well did the Dutch landlord know the persuasion of his house on the hill after luckless travellers had pa.s.sed through a stream which drained the valley. This was narrow enough, but the very banks had a caving, treacherous look. Grandma Padgett drove in, and the carriage came down with a plunge on the flanks of Old Hickory and Old Henry, and they disappeared to their nostrils and the harness strips along the centre of their backs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HASN'T THE CREEK ANY BOTTOM?" CRIED GRANDMA PADGETT.]

"Hasn't the creek any bottom?" cried Grandma Padgett, while Corinne and Robert clung to the settling carriage. The water poured across their feet and rose up to their knees. Hickory and Henry were urged with whip and cry.

"Hold fast, children! Don't get swept out!" Grandma Padgett exhorted. "There's no danger if the horses can climb the bank."

They were turned out of their course by the current, and Hickory and Henry got their fore feet out, crumbling a steep place. Below the bank grew steeper. If they did not get out here, all must go whirling and sinking down stream. The landing was made, both horses leaping up as if from an abyss. The carriage cracked, and when its wheels once more ground the dry sand, Grandma Padgett trembled awhile, and moved her lips before replying to the children's exclamations.

"We've been delivered from a great danger," she said. "And that miserable man let us drive into it without warning!"

"If I's big enough," said Robert Day, "I'd go back and thrash him."

"It ill becomes us," rebuked Grandma Padgett, "to give place to wrath after escaping from peril. But if this is the trap he sets for his house on the hill, I hope he has been caught in it himself sometime!"

"Where'll we go now?" Corinne wailed, having considered it was time to begin crying. "I'm drownded, and my teeth knock together, I'm gettin' so cold!"

They paused at the top of the hill, Corinne still lamenting.

"I don't want to stop here," said Grandma Padgett, adding, "but I suppose we must."

The house was large and weather-beaten; its gable-end turned toward the road. The "feefty famblies" had left no trace of domestic life.

Gra.s.s and weeds grew to the lower windows. The entrance was at one side through a sea of rank growths.

"It looks like they's ghosts lived here," p.r.o.nounced Robert dismally.

"Don't let me hear such idle speeches!" said Grandma Padgett, shaking her head. "Spooks and ghosts only live in people's imaginations."

"If they got tired of that," said Robert, "they'd come to live here."

"The old house looks like its name was Susan," wept Corinne. "Are we goin' to stay all night in this Susan house, ma?"

Her parent stepped resolutely from the carriage, and Bobaday hastened to let down some bars. He helped his grandmother lead the horses into a weedy enclosure, and there unhitch them from the carriage. There was a shed covered with straw which served for a stable. The horses were watered--Robert wading to his neck among cherry sprouts to a curb well, and unhooking the heavy bucket from its chain, after a search for something else available. Then leaving the poor creatures to browse as best they could, the party prepared to move upon the house. Aunt Corinne came out of the wet carriage.

Grandma Padgett picked up some sticks and chips. They attempted to unlock the door; but the lock was broken. "Anybody can go in!"

remarked the head of the party. "But I don't know that we can even build a fire, and as to provisions, I s'pose we'll have to starve this night."

But stumbling into a dark front room, and feeling hopelessly along the mantel, they actually found matches. The tenth one struck flame.

There were ashes and black brands in the fireplace, left there possibly, by the landlord's last moofer. Grandma Padgett built a fire to which the children huddled, casting fearful glances up the damp-stained walls.

The flame was something like a welcome.

"Perhaps," said Grandma with energy, "there are even provisions in the house. I wouldn't grudge payin' that man a good price and cookin'

them myself, if I could give you something to eat."

"We can look," suggested Bobaday. "They'd be in the cellar, wouldn't they?"

"It's lots lonesomer than our house was the morning we came away,"

chattered aunt Corinne, warming her long hands at the blaze.

And now beneath the floor began a noise which made even Grandma Padgett stand erect, glaring through her gla.s.ses.

"_Something's_ in the cellar!" whispered Bobaday.

CHAPTER V. THE SUSAN HOUSE CELLAR.

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.