Chapter 90

TRIUMPHANT PROGRESS OF DICK.--GENDARMES FOILED.--THE DODGE CLUB IS ATTACKED BY BRIGANDS, AND EVERY MAN OF IT COVERS HIMSELF WITH GLORY.--SCREAM OF THE AMERICAN EAGLE!

It was late on the evening of the following day before Dick made his appearance with Pietro, Another vettura had been obtained, and with cracks of a long whip that resounded through the whole town, summoning the citizens to the streets; with thunder of wheels over the pavements; with prancing and snorting of horses; Pietro drove up to the hotel. Most conspicuous in the turn-out was Dick, who was seated in the coupe, waving his hat triumphantly in the air.

The appearance of the carriage was the signal for three hearty cheers, which burst involuntarily from the three Americans on the courtyard, rousing Mr. Figgs from sleep and the inn-keeper from his usual lethargy. One look at the horses was enough to show that there was no chance of proceeding further that day. The poor beasts were covered with foam, and trembled excessively. However, they all felt infinite relief at the prospect of getting away, even though they would have to wait till the following morning.

Dick was dragged to the dining-room by his eager friends and fiercely interrogated. He had not much to tell.

The journey to Rome had been made without any difficulty, the carriage having tumbled forward on its front axle not more than one hundred and fifty-seven times. True, when it reached Rome it was a perfect wreck, the framework being completely wrenched to pieces; and the proprietor was bitterly enraged with Pietro for not leaving the carriage at Civita Castellana, and returning on horseback for a wheel; but Dick interceded for the poor devil of a driver, and the proprietor kindly consented to deduct the value of the coach from his wages piecemeal.

Their journey back was quick but uninteresting. Dick acknowledged that he had a faint idea of staying in Rome, but saw a friend who advised him not to. He had taken the reins and driven for a great part of the way, while Pietro had gone inside and slumbered the sleep of the just.

As it was a lonely country, with few inhabitants, he had beguiled the tedious hours of the journey by blowing patriotic airs on an enormous trombone, purchased by him from a miscellaneous dealer in Rome. The result had been in the highest degree pleasing to himself, though perhaps a little surprising to others. No one, however, interfered with him except a party of gendarmes who attempted to stop him. They thought that he was a Garibaldino trying to rouse the country. The trombone might have been the cause of that suspicion.

Fortunately the gendarmes, though armed to the teeth, were not mounted, and so it was that, when they attempted to arrest Dick, that young man lashed his horses to fury, and, loosening the reins at the same moment, burst through the line, and before they knew what he was about he was away.

They fired a volley. The echoes died away, mingled with gendarmerian curses. The only harm done was a hole made by a bullet through the coach. The only apparent effect was the waking of Pietro. That worthy, suddenly roused from slumber, jumped up to hear the last sounds of the rifles, to see the hole made by the bullet, the fading forms of the frantic officials, and the nimble figure of the gallant driver, who stood upright upon the seat waving his hat over his head, while the horses dashed on at a furious gallop.

This was all. Nothing more occurred, for Pietro drove the remainder of the way, and Dick's trombone was tabooed.

On the following morning the welcome departure was made. To their inexpressible joy they found that the coach was this time a strong one, and no ordinary event of travel could delay them. They had lost two days, however, and that was no trifle. They now entered upon the second stage, and passed on without difficulty.

In fact, they didn't meet with a single incident worth mentioning till they came to Perugia. Perugia is one of the finest places in Italy, and really did not deserve to be overhauled so terrifically by the Papal troops. Every body remembers that affair. At the time when the Dodge Club arrived at this city they found the Papal party in the middle of a reaction. They actually began to fear that they had gone a little too far. They were making friendly overtures to the outraged citizens. But the latter were implacable, stiff!

What rankled most deeply was the maddening fact that these Swiss, who were made the ministers of vengeance, were part of that accursed, detested, hated, shunned, despised, abhorred, loathed, execrated, contemptible, stupid, thick-headed, brutal, gross, cruel, bestial, demoniacal, fiendish, and utterly abominable race--_I Tedeschi_ --whose very name, when hissed from an Italian month, expresses unutterable scorn and undying hate.

They left Perugia at early dawn. Jogging on easily over the hills, they were calculating the time when they would reach Florence.

In the disturbed state of Italy at this time, resulting from war and political excitement, and general expectation of universal change, the country was filled with disorder, and scoundrels infested the roads, particularly in the Papal territories. Here the Government, finding sufficient employment for all its energies in taking care of itself, could scarcely be expected to take care either of its own subjects or the traveller through its dominions. The Americans had heard several stories about brigands, but had given themselves no trouble whatever about them.

Now it came to pass that about five miles from Perugia they wound round a very thickly-wooded mountain, which ascended on the left, far above, and on the right descended quite abruptly into a gorge. Dick was outside; the others inside. Suddenly a loud shout, and a scream from Pietro. The carriage stopped.

The inside passengers could see the horses rearing and plunging, and Dick, snatching whip and reins from Pietro, lashing them with all his might. In a moment all inside was in an uproar.

"We are attacked!" cried Buttons.

"The devil!" cried the Senator, who, in his sudden excitement, used the first and only profane expression which his friends ever heard him utter.

Out came the Doctor's revolver.

Bang! bang! wept two rifles outside, and a loud voice called on them to surrender.

"_Andate al Diavolo_!" pealed out Dick's voice as loud as a trumpet. His blows fell fast and furiously on the horses. Maddened by pain, the animals bounded forward for a few rods, and then swerving from the road-side, dashed against the precipitous hill, where the coach stuck, the horses rearing.

Through the doors which they had flung open in order to jump out the occupants of the carriage saw the reeling figures of armed men overthrown and cursing. In a moment they all were out.

Bang! and then--

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bang! went half a dozen rifles.

Thank Heaven! not one of the Club, was struck. There were twenty scoundrels armed to the teeth.

The Doctor was as stiff as a rock. He aimed six times as calmly as though he were in a pistol-gallery. Nerve told. Six explosions roared. Six yells followed. Six men reeled.

"I'd give ten years of my life for such a pistol!" cried Buttons.

The Italians were staggered. Dick had a bowie-knife. The Senator grasped a ponderous beam that he had placed on the coach in case of another break-down. Mr. Figgs had a razor which he had grabbed from the storehouse in the Doctor's pocket. Buttons had nothing. But on the road lay three Italians writhing.

"Hurrah!" cried Buttons. "Load again, Doctor. Come; let's make a rush and get these devils on the road."

He rushed forward. The others all at his side. The Italians stood paralyzed at the effect of the revolver. As Buttons led the charge they fell back a few paces.

"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" burst Buttons, the Senator, and Dick, as each snatched a rifle from the prostrate bandits, and hastily tore the cartridge-boxes from them.

"Load up! load up! Doctor!" cried Buttons.

"All right,"' said the Doctor, who never changed in his cool self-possession.

But now the Italians with curses and screams came back to the attack. It is absolutely stupefying to think how few shots hit the mark in the excitement of a fight. Here were a number of men firing from a distance of hardly more than forty paces, and not one took effect.

The next moment the whole crowd were upon them. Buttons snatched Mr. Figgs's razor from his grasp and used it vigorously. Dick plied his bowie-knife. The Senator wielded a clubbed rifle on high as though it were a wand, and dealt the blows of a giant upon the heads of his assailants. All the Italians were physically their inferiors--small, puny men. Mr. Figgs made a wild dash at the first man he saw and seized his rifle. The fight was spirited.

The rascally brigands were nearly three times as numerous, but the Americans surpassed them in bodily strength and spirit.

Crash--crash--fell the Senator's rifle, and down went two men. His strength was enormous--absorbed as it had been from the granite cliffs of the old Granite State. Two brawny fellows seized him from behind. A thrust of his elbow laid one low. Buttons slashed the wrist of the other. A fellow threw himself on Buttons. Dick's bowie-knife laid open his arm and thigh. The next moment Dick went down beneath the blows of several Italians. But Buttons rushed with his razor to rescue Dick. Three men glared at him with uplifted weapons. Down came the Senator's clubbed rifle like an avalanche, sweeping their weapons over the cliff. They turned simultaneously on the Senator, and grasped him in a threefold embrace. Buttons's razor again drank blood. Two turned upon him. Bang! went the Doctor's pistol, sending one of them shrieking to the ground. Bang! Once more, and a fellow who had nearly overpowered the breathless Figgs staggered back. Dick was writhing on the ground beneath the weight of a dead man and a fellow who was trying to suffocate him. Buttons was being throttled by three others who held him powerless, his razor being broken. A crack on Mr. Figgs's head laid him low. The Doctor stood off at a little distance hastily reloading.

The Senator alone was free; but six fierce fellows assailed him. It was now as in the old Homeric days, when the heroic soul, sustained by iron nerve and mighty muscle, came out particularly strong in the hour of conflict.

The Senator's form towered up like one of his own granite cliffs in the storm--as rugged, as unconquerable. His blood was up! The same blood it was that coursed through the veins of Cromwell's grim old "Ironsides," and afterward animated those sturdy backwoods-men who had planted themselves in American forests, and beaten back wild beasts and howling savages.

Buttons, prostrate on the ground, looked up, gasping through the smoke and dust, as he struggled with his assailants. He saw the Senator, his hair bristling out straight, his teeth set, his eye on fire, his whole expression sublimed by the ardor of battle. His clothes were torn to shreds; his coat was gone, his hat nowhere, his hands and face were covered with clots of blood and streaks from mud, dust, smoke, and powder.

The eye of Buttons took in all this in one glance. The next instant, with a wide sweep of his clubbed rifle the Senator put forth all his gigantic strength in one tremendous effort. The shock was irresistible. Down went the six bandits as though a cannon-ball had struck them. The Senator leaped away to relieve Dick, and seizing his assailant by neck and heel, flung him over the cliff. Then tearing away another from Mr. Figgs's prostrate and almost senseless form, he rushed back upon the six men whom he had just levelled to the earth.

Dick sprang to the relief of Buttons, who was at his last extremity. But the Doctor was before him, as cool as ever. He grasped one fellow by the throat--a favorite trick of the Doctor's, in which his anatomical knowledge came very finely into play:

"Off!" rang the Doctor's voice.

The fellow gasped a curse. The next instant a roar burst through the air, and the wretch fell heavily forward, shot through the head, while his brains were splattered over the face of Buttons. The Doctor with a blow of his fist sent the other fellow reeling over.

Buttons sprang up gasping. The Italians were falling back. He called to the Senator. That man of might came up. Thank God they were all alive! Bruised, and wounded, and panting--but alive.

The scowling bandits drew off, leaving seven of their number on the road _hors de combat_. Some of the retreating ones had been badly treated, and limped and staggered. The Club proceeded to load their rifles.

The Doctor stepped forward. Deliberately aiming he fired his revolver five times in rapid succession. Before he had time to load again the bandits had darted into the woods.

"Every one of those bullets _hit_," said the Doctor with unusual emphasis.

"We must get under cover at once," said Dick. "They'll be back shortly with others!"

"Then we must fortify our position," said the Senator, "and wait for relief. As we were, though, it was lucky they tried a hand-to-hand fight first. This hill shelters us on one side. There are so many trees that they can't roll stones down, nor can they shoot us. We'll fix a barricade in front with our baggage. We'll have to fight behind a barricade this time; though, by the Eternal! I wish it were hand-to-hand again, for I don't remember of ever having had such a glorious time in all my born days!"

The Senator passed his hand over his gory brow, and walked to the coach.

"Where's Pietro?"

"Pietro! _Pietro_!"

No answer.

"PI-E-TRO!"

Still no answer.

"Pietro!" cried Dick, "if you don't come here I'll blow your--"

"Oh! is it you, Signori?" exclaimed Pietro's voice; and that worthy appeared among the trees a little way up the hill. He was deadly pale, and trembled so much that he could scarcely speak.

"Look here!" cried Buttons; "we are going to barricade ourselves."

"Barricade!"

"We can not carry our baggage away, and we are not going to leave it behind. We expect to have another battle."

Pietro's face grew livid.

"You can stay and help us if you wish."

Pietro's teeth chattered.

"Or you can help us far more, by running to the nearest town and letting the authorities know."

"Oh, Signore, trust me! I go."

"Make haste, then, or you may find us all murdered, and then how will you get your fares--eh?"

"I go--I go; I will run all the way!"

"Won't you take a gun to defend yourself with?"

"Oh no!" cried Pietro, with horror. "No, no!"

In a few minutes he had vanished among the thick woods.

After stripping the prostrate Italians the travellers found themselves in possession of seven rifles, with cartridges, and some other useful articles. Four of these men were stone-dead. They pulled their bodies in front of their place of shelter. The wounded men they drew inside, and the Doctor at once attended to them, while the others were strengthening the barricade.

"I don't like putting these here," said the Senator; "but it'll likely frighten the brigands, or make them delicate about firing at us. That's my idee."

The horses were secured fast. Then the baggage was piled all around, and made an excellent barricade. With this and the captured rifles they felt themselves able to encounter a small regiment.

"Now let them come on," cried the Senator, "just as soon as they damn please! We'll try first the European system of barricades; and if that don't work, then we can fall back, on the real original, national, patriotic, independent, manly, native American, true-blue, and altogether heroic style!"

"What is that?"

The Senator looked at the company, and held out his clenched fist:

"Why, from behind a tree, in the woods, like your glorious forefathers!"