Old Caravan Days Read online

  CHAPTER X. THE CRY OF A CHILD IN THE NIGHT.

  But the camp was too exciting to let the children fall asleep early.Fires were kept briskly burning, and some of the wagoners feeling ina musical humor, shouted songs or hummed melancholy tunes whichsounded like a droning accompaniment to the rain. The rain fell witha continuous murmur, and evidently in slender threads, for itscarcely pattered on the tent. It was no beating, boisterous,drenching tempest, but a lullaby rain, bringing out the smell ofbarks, of pennyroyal and May-apple and wild sweet-williams from thedeep woods.

  Robert Day crept out of the carriage, having with him the oil-clothapron and a plan. Four long sticks were not hard to find, or tosharpen with his pocket knife, and a few knocks drove them into thesoft earth, two on each side of a log near the fire. He thenstretched the oil-cloth over the sticks, tying the corners, and had acanopied throne in the midst of this lively camp. A chunk served fora footstool. Bobaday sat upon his log, hearing the rain slide down,and feeling exceedingly snug. His delight came from that wildinstinct with which we all turn to arbors and caves, and tounexpected grapevine bowers deep in the woods; the instinct whichmakes us love to stand upright inside of hollow sycamore-trees, andpretend that a green tunnel among the hazel or elderberry bushes isthe entrance hall of a noble castle.

  Bobaday was very still, lest his grandmother in the tent, or Zene inthe remoter wagon, should insist on his retiring to his uneasy bedagain. He got enough of the carriage in daytime, having counted allits buttons up and down and crosswise. The smell of the leather andlining cloth was mixed with every odor of the journey. One can havetoo much of a very easy, well-made carriage.

  The firelight revealed him in his thoughtful mood: a very white boywith glistening hair and expanding large eyes of a gray and velvettexture. Some light eyes have a thin and sleepy surface like inferiorqualities of lining silk; and you cannot tell whether the expressionor the humors of the eye are at fault. But Nature, or his ownmeditations on what he read and saw in this delicious world, hadgiven to Bobaday's irises a softness like the pile of gray velvet,varied sometimes by cinnamon-colored shades.

  His eyes reflected the branches, the other campfires, and manywagons. It gave him the sensation of again reading for the first timeone of grandfather's Peter Parley books about the Indians, or Mr.Irving's story of Dolph Heyleger, where Dolph approaches AntonyVander Heyden's camp. He saw the side of one wagon-cover dragged atand a little night-capped head stuck out.

  "Bobaday!" whispered aunt Corinne, creeping on tiptoe toward him,and anxious to keep him from exclaiming when he saw her.

  "What did you get up for?" he whispered back.

  "What did _you_ get up for?" retaliated aunt Corinne.

  Robert Day made room for her on the log under the canopy, and sheleaned down and laced her shoes after being seated. "Ma Padgett'sjust as tight asleep! What'd she say if she knew we wasn't in bed!"

  It was so exciting and so nearly wicked to be out of bed andprowling when their elders were asleep, they could not possibly enjoythe sin in silence.

  "Ain't it nice?" whispered aunt Corinne. "I saw you fixin' thislittle tent, and then I sl-ip-ped up and hooked some of my clotheson, and didn't dast to breathe 'fear Ma Padgett'd hear me. There mustbe lots of children in the camp."

  "Yes; I've heard the babies cryin'."

  "Do you s'pose there's any gipsy folks along?"

  "Do 'now," whispered Bobaday, his tone inclining to an admissionthat gipsy folks might be along.

  "The kind that would steal us," explained aunt Corinne.

  This mere suggestion was an added pleasure; it made them shiver andlook back in the bushes.

  "There might be--away back yonder," whispered Robert Day, emboldenedby remembering that his capable grandmother was just within the tent,and Zene at easy waking distance.

  "But all the people will hitch up and drive away in the morning," headded, "and we won't know anything about 'em."

  To aunt Corinne this seemed a great pity. "I'd like to see howeverybody looks," she meditated.

  "So'd I," whispered her nephew.

  "It's hardly rainin' a drizzle now," whispered aunt Corinne.

  "I get so tired ridin' all day long," whispered Robert, "that I wishI was a scout or something, like that old Indian that was namedTrackless in the book--that went through the woods and through thewoods, and didn't leave any mark and never seemed to wear out. Youremember I read you a piece of it?"

  Aunt Corinne fidgeted on the log.

  "Wouldn't you like," suggested her nephew, whose fancy the nighttimestimulated, "to get on a flying carpet and fly from one place toanother?"

  Aunt Corinne cast a glance back over her shoulder.

  "We could go a little piece from our camp-fire and not get lost,"she suggested.

  "Well," whispered Robert boldly, "le's do it. Le's take a walk. Itwon't do any harm. 'Tisn't late."

  "The's chickens crowin' away over there."

  "Chickens crow all times of the night. Don't you remember how ourold roosters used to act on Christmas night? I got out of bed fourtimes once, because I thought it was daylight, they would crow so!"

  "Which way'll we take?" whispered aunt Corinne.

  Robert slid cautiously from the log and mapped out the expedition.

  "Off behind the wagon so's Zene won't see us. And then we'll slipalong towards that furthest fire. We can see the others as we go by.Follow me."

  It was easy to slip behind the wagon and lose themselves in thebrush. But there they stumbled on unseen snags and were caught orscratched by twigs, and descended suddenly to a pig-wallow or otherugly spot, where Corinne fell down. Bobaday then thought it expedientfor his aunt to take hold of his jacket behind and walk in histracks, according to their life-long custom when going down cellarfor apples after dark. Grandma Padgett was not a woman to pamper thefear of darkness in her family. She had been known to take a childwho recoiled from shapeless visions, and lead him into the unlightedroom where he fancied he saw them.

  So after proceeding out of sight of their own wagon, aunt Corinneand her nephew, toughened by this training, would not have owned toeach other a wish to go back and sit in safety and peace of nerveagain upon the log. Robert plodded carefully ahead, parting thebushes, and she passed through the gaps with his own figure,clinching his jacket with fingers that tightened or relaxed with hertremors.

  They had not counted on being smelled out by dogs at the variouswatch-fires. One lolling yellow beast sprang up and chased them. AuntCorinne would have flown with screams, but her nephew hushed her upand put her valiantly on a very high stump behind himself. The dogtook no trouble to trace them. He was too comfortable before thebrands, too mud-splashed and stiff from a long day's journey, to careabout chasing any mystery of the wood to its hole. But this warnedthem not to venture too near other fires where other possible dogslay sentry.

  "Why didn't we fetch old Johnson?" whispered aunt Corinne, afterthey slid down the tree stump.

  "'Cause Boswell'd been at his heels, and the whole camp'd been in afight," replied Bobaday. "Old Johnson was under our wagon; I don'tknow where Bos was. I was careful not to wake him."

  Through gaps in foliage and undergrowth they saw many an individualpart of the general camp; the wagon-cover in some cases being as dunas the hide of an elephant. When a curtain was dropped over the frontopening of the wagon, Bobaday and Corinne knew that women andchildren were sleeping within on their chattels. Here a tent was madeof sheets and stretched down with the branch of an overhanging treefor a ridge-pole; and there horse-blankets were made into a canopyand supported by upright poles. Within such covers men were asleep,having sacks or comforters for bedding.

  On a few wagon tongues, or stretched easily before fires, menlingered, talking in steady, monotonous voices as if telling stories,or in indifferent tones as if tempting each other to trades.

  The rain had entirely ceased, though the spongy wet wood sod was notpleasant to walk upon. "I guess," said-aunt Corinne, "we'd better goback."


  "Well, we've seen consider'ble," assented her nephew. "I guess we'dbetter."

  So he faced about. But quite near them arose the piercing scream ofa child in mortal fear.