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 did you stay 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: not intirely.”
“What did you 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 out by a 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 do I know 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, then that's all 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 did you do?”
“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 slept part of the night in the wagon.”
Robert sifted all these harrowing circumstances.
“Maybe they 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.
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