Old Caravan Days Part 7

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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.sionate 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. .h.i.tch-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 circ.u.mstances.

"_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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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.

CHAPTER VIII. LITTLE ANT RED AND BIG ANT BLACK.

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.