Chapter 3

Tish came into the cave then and took a spoonful of blackberry cordial. As we knew, her intrepid spirit had not quailed; but, as she said, one’s body is never as strong as one’s soul. Her knees were shaking.

We put in a quiet and restful afternoon. Mr. Muldoon had a pack of cards with him and we played whist. He played a very fair game, but he was on the alert all the time. At every sound he started, and once or twice he slipped out into the thicket and searched the glen in every direction with his eyes.

He had asked us, if the outlaws surprised us, to say that he was Tish’s nephew, Charlie Sands, and to stick to it. “Unless it’s Naysmith,” he said. “He knows me.” From that to calling us Aunt Tish, Aunt Aggie and Aunt Lizzie was very easy. At four o’clock we stopped playing, with Mr. Muldoon easily the winner, and Aggie made fudge for everybody.

Late in the afternoon Tish called me aside. She said she did not want Mr. Muldoon to feel that he was a burden, but that we were almost out of provisions. We had expected to buy eggs, milk and bread at farmhouses, and instead we had been shut up in the cave. She thought there was a farm up the glen, having heard a cow-bell, and she wanted me to go and find out.

“Go yourself!” I said somewhat rudely. “If you want to be shot down in your tracks by outlaws, well and good. I don’t.”

Aggie, called aside, refused as firmly as I had. Tish stood and looked at us both with her lip curling.

“Very well,” she said coldly; “I shall go. But if I get my neuralgia again from wading through the creek bottom don’t blame me!”

She put on her overshoes and, taking a tin bucket for milk and her trusty rifle, she started while Mr. Muldoon was showing Aggie a new game of solitaire. I went to the cave mouth with her and listened to the crackling of twigs as she slid down into the valley. She came into view at the bottom much sooner than I had expected, having, as I learned later, slipped on a loose stone and rolled fully half the way down.

The next two hours seemed endless. Mr. Muldoon, tiring of solitaire, had rolled himself up in a corner and was peacefully sleeping, with his injured foot on Aggie’s hop pillow. Aggie and I sat on guard, one on each side of the cave mouth, and stared down at the valley, which was darkening rapidly.

Tish had been gone two hours and a half and no sign of her, when Aggie began to cry softly.

“She’ll never come back!” she whimpered. “The outlaws have got her and killed her. Oh, Tish, Tish!”

“Why would they kill her?” I demanded. “Because she’s trying to buy milk and eggs?”

“B-because she knows too much,” Aggie wailed. “We’ve found their lair, that’s why—don’t tell me this isn’t an outlaw’s cave. It’s just b-built for it. They’ll do away with her and then they’ll come after us.”

Aggie never carries a secret weight in her bosom. She always opens up her heart to the nearest listener. This probably relieves Aggie, but it does not make her a cheerful companion. Eight o’clock and darkness came, and still no Tish. I went into the cave and brought out my gun, and Aggie roused Mr. Muldoon and explained the situation to him. He grew quite white.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “What possessed her anyhow? To the farmhouse! Why, they’ll——”

His face more than his words convinced us that the matter was really serious. He examined Aggie’s revolver, which he mostly carried in his hip pocket, and, going to the mouth of the cave, listened carefully. Everything was quiet. The cave and both sides of the valley were in deep shadow, but over the ridge of the Camel’s Back across from us there was still a streak of red sunset light. Mr. Muldoon looked and pointed.

Against the background of crimson cloud a man’s figure stood out clearly. He was peering down toward us, although in the dusk he could hardly have seen us, and he carried a gun. Mr. Muldoon smiled faintly.

“Well, they’ve spotted me, I guess,” he said. “I’d better move on before I get you into trouble. They won’t hurt women.”

“Why don’t you shoot him?” Aggie asked. “It would be one bandit less. If you do arrest him, and he gets nearly all his sentence off for good behavior, he’ll be out again in no time, doing more mischief.”

But at that moment we saw the man on the hill throw his gun to his shoulder and aim at something moving below in the valley. Aggie screamed, and I believe I did also.

“Tish!” cried Aggie. “He’s shooting at Tish!” And at that instant the bandit fired. He fired three times, and the noise of his gun echoed backward and forward among the hills. We thought we heard a yell from the valley. Then the next second there was a faint crack from below and the outlaw’s gun flew out of his hands. Mr. Muldoon’s jaw dropped. “Did you see that?” he said feebly. “Did—you—see—that—shot?”

The outlaw disappeared from the skyline and perhaps ten minutes later Tish crawled up to the cave and put down a tin pail full of milk, a glass of jelly wrapped in a newspaper, and a basket of eggs. Aggie fell on her and cried with joy.

“Be careful of those eggs,” Tish warned her. “That outlaw charged me forty cents a dozen.”

“You gave him a good fright anyhow,” said Aggie fondly.

“Fright?”

“When you shot at him.”

“Oh, that one! I’m talking about the woman at the farm.”

“And—the one on the hill over there?”

“Oh! Well, he fired at me and I fired back. That’s all.”

With an air of exaggerated indifference Tish swaggered into the cave and took off her overshoes.

“Hurry up supper, Ag,” she said—never before or since has she called Aggie “Ag”—“I’m starving.”

She said she had heard little or nothing. She had found the farmhouse, had bought her supplies from a surly woman and had come away again. Asked by Mr. Muldoon if she had seen any men, she said she had seen a farmhand milking. That was all, except the outlaw on the hill.

But under her calmness Tish was terribly excited. I could tell it by her glittering eyes and the red spot in each cheek. Manlike, Mr. Muldoon did not see these signs; he ate very little and sat watching her, fascinated. Only once, however, did he broach the subject.

“I had no idea you were such a shot, Miss Letitia,” he said. “It—that was a marvel.”

“Oh, I shoot a little,” said Tish coolly. “Only for my own amusement, of course.”

Mr. Muldoon made no reply. He was very thoughtful all evening, did not care to play whist, and watched Tish whenever he could, furtively.

Tish herself was in an exalted mood, but not about the shot—she was modest enough about that.

And with cause. Months after she told us how it happened. She said she was carrying the eggs and milk with her left hand and had the gun in her right, when a shot struck a tree beside her. She was so startled that her finger pulled the trigger of her own rifle, which was pointed up, with the result we know of. She would probably never have confessed even then, had she not taken rheumatic fever and thought she was dying.

When Mr. Muldoon went out to fix Modestine for the night Tish called us to the back of the cave.

“I bought the milk and eggs,” she said hurriedly, “and having a dime left—your missionary dime, Aggie, I borrowed it—I went back and bought a glass of jelly. Men like preserves. The woman wrapped it in a newspaper, and there is a full account of the robbery and of Muldoon being after the outlaws. He’s after the outlaws, but he’s after the reward too. They’re quoted at a thousand dollars!”

“He can have the thousand dollars for all of me,” said Aggie.

“A thousand dollars!” said Tish. “A thousand dollars to hand in to the church as the return from your missionary dime! And if we don’t get it Muldoon will! As soon as he can get about on his leg he’ll cease being hunted and begin to hunt. Why should he have it? He has plenty of chances, and we’ll never have another.”

That was all she had a chance to say, Muldoon joining us at that moment.

We retired early, but I did not sleep well. I wakened from time to time and I could hear Tish stirring next to me. At last I reached over and touched her.

“Can’t you sleep?” I whispered.

“Don’t want to,” she whispered back. “I’ve got it all fixed, Lizzie. We’ll take those outlaws back to the city, roped two by two.”

It was a cool spring night, but I broke into a hot perspiration.

V

Tish began with Mr. Muldoon the next morning. He could not leave the cave to carry up water, for daylight revealed another guard across the valley and it was clear we were being watched. While Aggie and I went to the spring Tish talked to him.

She told him that he had undertaken too much, single-handed, and that he should have brought a posse with him. He agreed with her. He said he had started with a posse, but that they had split up. Also he insisted that but for his accident he could have managed easily.

“I’m up against it,” he said, “and I know it. They’ll get me yet. For the last day or two they’ve been closing up round this cave, and in a night or two they’ll rush it. They’ve got their headquarters at that farmhouse.”

“The thing for you to do then,” said Tish, “is to get out while there is time. You can get help and come back.”

“And leave you women here alone?”

“They’re not after us,” Tish replied, “and we’ve managed alone for a good many years. I guess we’ll get along.”

But when she proposed her plan, which was that he should put on Aggie’s spare outfit and her sun veil and ride out of the valley on Modestine’s back in daylight, he objected. He said no outlaw worthy of the name would fall for a thing like that, and he said he wouldn’t wear skirts, and that was all there was to it.

But in the end Tish prevailed, as usual.

“I’m going to the farmhouse this morning and I am going to say that one of the ladies is leaving this afternoon and going back home. That will be you. I wish you had a razor, but the veil will hide that. They’ll not molest you. You’ll not only look like Aggie—you’ll be Aggie.”

Well, it seemed to be his best chance, although none of us dared to think what might happen if the hat blew off or Aggie’s gray alpaca ripped at the seams.

We worked feverishly all day, letting out the dress and setting forward the buttons on her raincoat. Mr. Muldoon was inclined to be sulky. He sat at the back of the cave, playing solitaire and every now and then examining the road maps. Aggie was depressed too. But, as Tish said, getting rid of Muldoon was the first step toward the thousand dollars, and even if Aggie never got her gray alpaca again it had seen its best days.

That morning, while Aggie and I sewed and ripped and Mr. Muldoon sat back in the cave with the road map on his knees, Tish went to the farmhouse. She came back at eleven o’clock with a chicken for dinner and a flush on each cheek.

“I’ve fixed it, Mr. Muldoon,” she said. “I talked to one of the outlaws!”

“What?” screeched Aggie.

“He’d come in for something to eat—the red-bearded one. We had quite a chat. I told him we were traveling like Stevenson—with a donkey; but that one of the ladies had an abscess on a tooth and was going home. He said it was no place for women and offered himself as an escort.”

Mr. Muldoon groaned. “What am I going to do if one of them comes up and makes an ass of himself?” he demanded. “Kiss him?”

Tish looked at him coldly.

“You’ll have your jaw tied up,” she said. “That will cover your chin, and you needn’t speak. Point to your jaw. Anyhow, they’ll not bother you. I said the toothache had affected your disposition, and we were just as glad you were going. The red-haired man says he’s got relatives near the mouth of the valley and you can stay there overnight. One of the men folks pulls teeth in emergencies.”

It is hard, writing all this of Tish, to remember that she has always been a truthful woman. As Charlie Sands said later, when we told him the story and he had sat, open-mouthed, staring from one to the other of us, no one knows what depths of mendacity lie behind the most virtuous countenance.

We started “Aggie” off at two o’clock that afternoon, sitting sideways on Modestine, jaw tied up, veiled and sun-hatted, with Aggie’s flowered-silk bag hanging to one wrist and a lunch-basket on the other arm. Tish and I saw “her” down the hill and kissed “her” good-by.

This was Tish’s idea. I thought it unnecessary, but as a matter of fact, no matter what Charlie Sands may say, it was not a real kiss, going as it did through a veil and a bandage.

The man with a gun watched “her” off, and Tish, having waved “her” out of sight round a curve, looked up at him and nodded. Far away as he was, he saw that and swept his hat off with quite an air.

* * * * *

Tish’s plan was very simple. She told us as we cleared up the cave after the day’s excitement.

“When I go for the evening milk,” she said, “I shall mention that we have a young man with us, a stranger, who has hurt his ankle and cannot walk. And I’ll ask for arnica. That’s all.”

“That’s all!” Aggie and I exclaimed together.

“Certainly that’s all. Sometime tonight they’ll rush the cave.”

“You’re a fool!” said Aggie shortly.

“Why?” demanded Tish. “We won’t be in it. We’ll be outside. The moment they are in we’ll start to shoot. Not one of them will dare to stick his nose out.”

When we told this to Charlie Sands he slid entirely off his chair and sat on the floor. “Not really!” he kept saying over and over. “You dreamed it! You must have! A thing like that!” I hastened to explain. “Tish planned it,” I said. I remember him, looking at Tish—who was crocheting as she told the story—and moistening his lips. He was quite green in color.

VI

Clipping from the _Morning News_ of May the seventh:

SHERIFF AMBUSHED

REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE OF MULDOON AND PARTY IN THUNDER CLOUD GLEN

An extraordinary state of affairs was discovered by the relief party of constables, city and county detectives and state constabulary sent to the relief of Sheriff Muldoon and his posse, who have been on the track of the C. & L. train bandits since last Monday.

The relief party was sent out in response to a telephone message from a farmhouse in Thunder Cloud Glen, and transmitted from the farmer’s line to a long-distance wire. This message was to the effect that the sheriff and his posse, shut in a cave, were being held prisoners by the outlaws, being shot at steadily, and that so far every attempt at escape had been thwarted by the terrific fire of the bandits.

A relief party in automobiles was rushed at once to the scene.

Thunder Cloud Glen is a narrow valley between the Camel’s Back and Thunder Cloud Mountain. A mile or so from the entrance to the glen the road, always bad and now almost washed away by the recent heavy rains, became impassable. The party abandoned the machines and in skirmish order proceeded up the glen.

Within an hour’s time firing was heard, and the rescuers doubled their pace. Passing a bend in the valley, the scene of the outrage lay spread before them: On the left the low mouth of a cave, and across the valley, on a slope of the Camel’s Back, a faint cloud of smoke, showing where the outlaws had their lair. As the rescuers came in sight the firing ceased and an ominous stillness hung over the valley.

The relief expedition had been seen by the imprisoned party also. Muldoon’s well-known soft felt hat, tied to the end of a pole, was thrust from the cave mouth and waved vigorously up and down, showing that some of the imprisoned party still lived. One solitary shot was aimed at the hat, followed by profound quiet.

Using every precaution, Deputy Sheriff Mulcahy deployed his men with the intention of closing in on the outlaws from all sides at the same time.

At this time an interesting interruption occurred. From the underbrush at the foot of the Camel’s Back emerged three elderly women, their clothing in tatters, and in the wildest excitement. They insisted that the outlaws were in the cave, and hysterical with fright from their terrible experience, declared that they had been holding the bandits in check and demanded the reward for their capture. They were rational enough in other ways and explained that they had been on a walking tour with a donkey. There was, however, no donkey.

Deputy Sheriff Mulcahy, who is noted for his gallantry, sent the three women to a safe place at the rear of the party and detailed a guard to make them comfortable. It being thought possible that the women were accomplices of the outlaws, precautions were also taken to prevent their escape.

No trace of the outlaws was found. Sheriff Muldoon and his three deputies, now enabled to leave the cave, joined the searchers. Every inch of Thunder Cloud Glen was searched, but without result. Across from the cave mouth, behind a heap of fallen rocks, was found the spot from which the outlaws had been shooting. The ground was trampled and the rock chipped by the return fire from the cave. Here, too, was found a new automatic revolver, a small rifle and another gun of antique pattern. In a crevice of rock was discovered a flowered-silk bag, containing various articles of feminine use, including a packet of powders marked “hay fever,” a small bottle labeled “blackberry cordial,” and a dozen or so unexploded cartridges for the revolver.

Convinced now that the three women were accomplices of the outlaws—and this corroborated by Sheriff Muldoon’s statement that he had positively seen one of the three women peering over the rock and aiming a rifle at him, and that the same woman, two days before, had fired at him from the valley, knocking his gun out of his hand—Deputy Sheriff Mulcahy promptly arrested the women and had them taken in an automobile to the city.

At the jail, however, it was discovered that an unfortunate error had been made, and the ladies were released. They went at once to their homes. While their names have not been divulged it is reported that they are well known and highly esteemed members of the community, and much sympathy has been expressed for their disagreeable experience.

Up to a late hour last night no trace had been found of the outlaws. It is believed that they have left Thunder Cloud Glen and have penetrated farther into the mountains.

* * * * *

Charlie Sands came for us at the jail. He asked us no questions, which I thought strange, but he got a carriage and took us all to Tish’s. He did not speak a word on the way, except to ask us if we had no hats. On Tish’s replying meekly that we had left them in the cave, he said nothing more, but sat looking like a storm until we drew up at the house.

I dare say we did look curious. Our clothes were torn and draggled, and although we had washed at the jail we were still somewhat powder-streaked and grimy.

Charlie Sands led us into Tish’s parlor and shut the door. Then he turned and surveyed the three of us.

“Sit down,” he said grimly.

We sat. He stood looking down at each of us in turn.

“I’ll hear the story in a minute,” he said, still cold and disagreeable. “But first of all, Aunt Tish, I want to ask you if you realize that this last escapade of yours is a disgrace to the family?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Tish asserted with something of her old spirit. “It was all for Aggie’s missionary dime. I——”

“A moment,” he said, holding up his hand. “I’m going to ask a question. I’ll listen after that. _Did you or did you not hold up the C. & L. express car?_”

We were too astounded to speak.

“Because if you did,” he said, “missionary dime or no missionary dime, I shall turn you over to the authorities! I have gone through a lot with you, Aunt Tish, in the past year.”

Aggie and I expected to see Tish rise in majesty and point him out of the room. But to our amazement she broke down and cried.

“No,” she said feebly, “we didn’t rob the car. But oh, Charlie, Charlie! We nursed that wretch Muldoon, and fed him and sent him off on Modestine in Aggie’s gray alpaca, and he got away; and if you say to go to jail I’ll go.”

“Muldoon!”

“The wretch who said he was Muldoon. The—the train robber.”

Well, it took hours to tell the story, and when we had all finished and Aggie had gone to bed in Tish’s spare room with hysteria, and Tish had gone to bed with tea and toast, Charlie Sands was still walking up and down the parlor, stopping now and then to mutter: “Well, I’ll be——” and then going on with his pacing.

Hannah brought me a cup of junket at eight o’clock, for none of us had eaten dinner. I was sitting there with the cup in my lap when the doorbell rang. Charlie Sands answered it. It was a letter addressed to all three of us.

We called Tish and Aggie and they crept in, very subdued and pallid. Charlie Sands opened the letter and read it:

_Dear and Charming Ladies:_ I am abject. What can I say to you, who have just come through such an experience on my account? How can I apologize or explain? Especially as I am confused myself as to what really happened. Did Muldoon actually attack the cave? Were you in it when he arrived? Or is it possible that, with my foolish fabrication in your mind, you attempted—— But that is absurd, of course.

Whatever occurred and however it occurred, I am on my knees to you all. Even a real bandit would have been touched by your kindness. And I am not a real bandit any more than I am a real sheriff.

I am an ordinary citizen, usually a law-abiding citizen. But as a result of a foolish wager at my club, brought about by the ease with which numerous trains have been robbed recently, I undertook to hold up a C. & L. train with an empty revolver, and to evade capture for a certain length of time. The first part was successful. The train messenger, on seeing my gun, handed me, without a word, a fat package. I had not asked for it. It was a gift. I do not even now know what is in it. The newspapers say it is money. It might have been eggs, as far as I know. The second part would have been simple also, had I not hurt my leg.

Things were looking serious for me when you found me. I shall never forget the cave, or the omelets, or the tea, or the fudge. I can never return your hospitalities, but one thing I can do.

The express company offers a reward of a thousand dollars for my little package. Probably they are right and it is not eggs. Whatever it is, it is buried under the tree where we tied our noble steed, Modestine. Please return the package and claim the reward. If you have scruples against taking it remember that the express company is rich and the Fiji Islanders needy. Turn it in as the increased increment on Miss Aggie’s missionary dime.

(Signed) THE OUTLAW OF THUNDER CLOUD.

We found the package, or Charlie Sands found it for us, and the express company paid us the reward. We gave it to Aggie, and with the exception of fifty dollars she turned it all in at the church, where it created almost a riot. With the fifty dollars we purchased, through Charlie Sands, a revolver with a silver inlaid handle, and sent it to the real Sheriff Muldoon. It eased our consciences somewhat.

That was all last spring. It is summer now. Tish is talking again of flowering hedgerows and country lanes, but Aggie and I do not care for the country, and the mere sight of a donkey gives me a chill.

Yesterday evening, on our way to prayer meeting, we heard a great noise of horns coming and stopped to see a four-in-hand go by. A young gentleman was driving, with a pretty girl beside him. As we lined up at the curb he turned smiling from the girl and he caught our eyes.

He started, and then, bowing low, he saluted us from the box.

It was “Muldoon.”

TISH DOES HER BIT

From the very beginning of the war Tish was determined to go to France. But she is a truthful woman, and her age kept her from being accepted. She refused, however, to believe that this was the reason, and blamed her rejection on Aggie and myself.