Chapter 4

Rebecca gazed anxiously after this second messenger. Robelia, near by, munched blackberries.

"Rebecca, did you ever think what you'd do if both your children were in equal danger?"

"Why, yass'm, I is studie' dat, dis ve'y day, ef de trufe got to be tol'."

Thought I: "If anything else has to be told, Robelia'll be my only helper." I asked Rebecca which one she would try to save first.

"Why, mist'ess, I could tell dat a heap sight betteh when de time come. De Lawd mowt move me to do most fo' de one what least fitt'n' to"--she choked--"to die. An' yit ag'in dat mowt depen' on de circumstances o' de time bein'."

"Well, it mustn't, Rebecca, it mustn't!"

"Y'--yass'm--no'm'm! Mustn' it?"

"No, in any case you must do as I tell you."

"Oh, o' co'se! yass'm!"

"So promise, now, that in any pinch you'll try first to save your son."

"Yass'm." A pang of duplicity showed in her uplifted glance, yet she murmured again: "Yass'm, I promise you dat." Nevertheless, I had my doubts.

A hum of voices told us my two anglers were approaching, and with Rebecca's quieting hand on the pusillanimous Robelia we drew into hiding and saw them cross the corner of a clearing and vanish again downstream. Then, hearing the coach, we went to meet it.

Both messengers were on the box. Euonymus passed me my bundle of stuff. The coach turned round. Bidding Euonymus stay on the box I had Rebecca and Robelia take the front seat inside. Following in I remarked: "Good boy, that of yours, Luke."

Luke bowed so reverently that I saw Euonymus's belief in me was not his alone. "We thaynk de Lawd," Luke replied, "fo' boy an' gal alike; de good Lawd sawnt 'em bofe."

"Yet extra thanks for the son wouldn't hurt."

Robelia buried a sob of laughter in the nearest cushion, and as we rolled away gaped at me with a face on which a dozen flies danced and played tag. And so we went----.

Chester ceased reading and stood up. For Mlle. Chapdelaine was rising. All the men rose.

"And so, also," she said, "I too must go."

"Oh, but the story is juz' big-inning," Mme. Alexandra protested, and Mme. De l'Isle said:

"I'm sure 'twill turn out magnificent, yes!"

Mademoiselle declared the tale fascinating. She "would be enchanted to stay," but her aunts _must_ be considered, etc.; and when Chester confessed the reading would require another session anyhow Mmes. De l'Isle and Alexandre arose, and M. Castanado asked aloud if there was any of the company who could not return a week from that evening.

No one was so unlucky. "But!" cried Mme. Alexandre, "why not to my parlor?"

"Because!" said Mme. Castanado, to Chester's vivid enlightenment, "every week-day, all day, you have mademoiselle with you."

"With me, ah, no! me forever down in my shop, and mademoiselle incessantly upstair'!"

Mme. Castanado prevailed. That same room, one week later.

Scipion and Dubroca escorted Mme. De l'Isle across to her beautiful gates, and Chester, not in dream but in fact, with M. De l'Isle and Mme. Alexandre following well in the rear, walked with mademoiselle to the high fence and green batten wicket of her olive-scented garden in the rue Bourbon. So walking, and urged by him, she began to tell of matters in her father's life, the old Hotel St. Louis life before hers began--matters that gave to "The Clock in the Sky" and "The Angel of the Lord" a personal interest beyond all academic values.

"We'll finish about that another time," she said, and with "another time" singing in his heart like a taut wire he verily enjoyed the rasping of the wicket's big lock as he turned away.

The week wore round. Except M. De l'Isle, kept away by a meeting of the Athénée Louisianais, all were regathered; one thing alone delayed the reading. Each of the three women had separately asked her father confessor how far one might justly--well--lie--to those seeking the truth only for cruel and wicked ends. But as no two had received the same answer, and as Chester's uncle was gone to his reward--or penalty--the question was early tabled. "Well," Mme. Castanado said: "'And so we went--' in the coach. Go on, read."

XIII

And so we went, not through the town but around it.

My attendants were heavy with sleep. Seating Rebecca next me I called Euonymus into the coach and let mother, son, and daughter slumber at ease.

To the few persons we met I paraded my bonnet and curls. Some, in Southern fashion, I questioned. I was a widow who had sold her plantation in order to go and live with a widowed brother. Euonymus too I showed off, who, waking at every halt, presented a face that seemed any boy's rather than a runaway's. So natural to these Africans was the supernatural that I could be one of the men who plucked Lot from Sodom and yet a becurled widow.

When at noon, at a farmhouse, we had fed horses and dined, I at the planter's board, my "slaves" under the house-grove trees, Euonymus took the lines, and for five hours Luke slept inside. Then they changed places again, and Euonymus and I, face to face, watched the long hot day wane, and pass through gorgeous changes into twilight. Often I saw questions in the young eyes that watched me so reverently, but I dared not encourage them; dared not be a talkative angel. Also my brain had its questions. How was I to get out of the most perilous trap into which a sane man--if sane I was--ever thrust himself? There was no sign that we were being pursued, but it was a harrowing puzzle how, without drawing suspicion upon the runaways, to get them once more separated from me and the coach while I should vanish as a lady and reappear as a gentleman.

"Euonymus, boy, if I should by and by dress as a man could you put these woman things on, over what you're wearing, and be a lady in my place?"

"Why, eh, y'--yass'm. Oh, yass'm, ef you say so, my--mistress; howsomever, you know what de good book say' 'bout de Ethiopium."

"Can't change--yes, I know; but this would be only for an hour or two and in the dark."

"It'd have to be pow'ful dahk," sighed Euonymus, and from Robelia's sunbonnet came--"Unh!"

Rebecca interposed: "An' still, o' co'se, we all gwine do ezac'ly what you say."

"Well," I responded, "maybe we won't do that." And we never did. I was still "Mrs. Southmayd," as we came into a small railway station. At the ticket-window I asked if any one had come up in the train of half an hour before, inquiring for a lady in a coach.

"No, ma'am, nobody got off that train. But there's another train at half past eight."

"Oh," I whined, "he won't come on that; he's overrated my speed and gone on to the next station, making five miles more going for me!"

"Why, no, you can give three of your servants a pass to go on with the carriage, keep your maid and wait for the train."

"Ah, no! No lady can choose to travel by rail where she can go in her own coach!"

They said no more except to warn Luke of a bad piece of road about two miles on. Sure enough, in its very middle--crack!--we broke down. "De kingbolt done gone clean in two!" said Luke, and Robelia repeated the news explosively.

"We'll leave the coach," I announced. "Fold the lap-robes on the backs of the two horses, for Rebecca and me. You-all can walk beside us."

After a while, so going, we passed a large plantation house, its windows ruddy with home cheer. A second quarter-mile brought dimly to view a railroad water-tank and an empty flag-station house, and in the next bit of woods I spoke to Euonymus: "Have you that bundle? Ah, yes. Luke, this boy and I are going off here a step for me to change my dress. If any passer questions you, say I'll be right back."

"Yass, madam, but, er, eh--wouldn' you sooner take yo' maid, Robelia, instid?"

"No, for as to dress I'll be as much of a man, when I get back, as Euonymus."

"Is Euonymus gwine change dress too?"

"No, these things that I take off, your wife and Robelia may divide between them."

I started away but Luke lifted a hand. I thought he was going to claim every dud for Robelia. Not so.

"We all thanks you mighty much, madam, but in fac', ef de trufe got to be tol'----"

"It hasn't got to be told _me_, Luke, if I----"

"Oh, no, madam, o' co'se. I 'uz on'y gwine say--a-concernin' Euonymus----"

I hurried off while the wife chided her good man: "Why don't you dess hide all dem thing' in yo' heart like _dey_ used to do when d' angel 'pear' unto _dem_?"

Alone with Euonymus, as I whipped off my feminine garb and whirled into the other, I began to say that however suddenly I might leave the fugitives they must rest assured that I was not deserting them. To which----

"Oh, my Lawd," Euonymus replied, "us know dat!"

We reached the pike again. "Rebecca, dismount. Hand me your bridle. Luke, for you-all's better safety I'm going back and return these horses. We may not see one another again----"

"Oh, Lawdy, Lawdy!" moaned Rebecca.

"In dis vain worl' you mean," Luke said.

"That's all. Come, don't waste time. You'd better walk on for a short way in the pike before taking to the woods. Now go all night for all you're worth. Good-by." I turned abruptly. But my led horse was averse to abruptness, and all the family except the torpid Robelia poured up their blessings and rained kisses on my very feet.

In my half-intelligent plan I intended first to stop at the house we had gone by, and had reached the gate of its front lane when I met one of its household, a lad of sixteen, on the pike.

"Yes, he had just seen the disabled coach."

I said that by business appointment with the lady who had just left the coach I had gone to the next railway station northward in order to meet her. That I had come down the turnpike on a hired horse and met her and her servants pushing forward to our appointment as best they could. Now, I said, our business, a law matter, was accomplished and she was gone on on my hired horse. This span I was taking back to the stable whence I had hired them for her in the morning.

The boy's graciousness shamed me through and through. "Why, certainly! He would have the coach drawn up to the house before sunrise and would keep it as long as I liked." He asked me in, but I went on to the little railway town, repeated my tarradiddle at its "hotel," and soon was asleep.

["'Tarradi'l','" said Mme. Castanado, "tha'z may be a species of paternoster, I suppose, eh?"

"No," said Scipion, "I think tha'z juz' a fashion of speech that he took a drink. I do that myself, going to bed."

Chester explained, but said that to admit one's untruthfulness by even a nickname implied _some_ compunction. Whereat two or three put in:

"Ah! if he acknowledge' his compunction he's all right! But we are stopping the story."

It went on.]

XIV

I was awakened, after the breakfast hour, by a tap on my door. Why it gave me consternation I could not have told; I dare say my inveracities of the day before had failed to digest. "Come in," I called, and in stepped my two fishermen.

Their good mornings were pleasant, but, "Fact is," said one, "we're bothered about your client."

"The lady who passed through here last evening?"

"Yes, it looks as though----"

"Go on while I dress. Looks as though--what?"

"As though she wa'n't what you thought, or else----"

I smiled aggressively: "Pardon, I _know_ that lady. 'Or else,' you say? What else? Go on."

"Oh, you go on dressing. Do you know them darkies are hers?"

"Hoh! Are your teeth yours? Why do you ask?"

He handed me a newspaper clipping:

Two Hundred Dollars Reward. Ran away from my plantation in ---- county of this State, on the ------ day of ------ the following named and described slaves; father, mother, daughter, and son: . . . A reward of fifty dollars will be paid to any person for the capture and imprisonment in any jail, of each or either of the above named. Etc.

With a laugh I returned the thing and went on dressing. "It doesn't," I said aloud to my busy image in the mirror, "describe my client's darkies at all." I faced round: "Why, gentlemen, if this isn't the most astonishing----"

"Ho-old on. Ho-old on! Finish your dressing. We're told it does describe two of them and we thought we'd just come and see for ourselves."

"And you followed the unprotected lady?"

"We followed four runaway niggers, sir! Else why did they take to the woods inside of a mile from that house where you left the coach? Oh, you're dressed; come along; time's flying!"

Determined to waste all the time I could, "Wait," I said, strapping on my pistol. "Now, gentlemen, we'll follow this matter to the end, beginning now, instantly. But it must be done as----"

"Oh, as privately as possible! Certainly!"

"Certainly. You want the reward and you want it all. But understand, I know you're in error, and I go with you solely to prove you are. Now, by your theory----"

"Oh, come along!" We went. I killed time over my coffee, and in getting a saddle for one of my hired span. "You must excuse us if we're not polite," my friends apologized after another flash of impatience. "Of course those niggers are not on the run in broad day, but their trail's getting cold!"

"You're not as bad-mannered as I am," I laughed as we mounted, but their allusion to hounds made me enjoy the burden of my six-shooter.

As we ambled off, "What were you going to say," one asked me, "about our 'theory,' or something?"

"Oh! I see you think Mrs. Southmayd must have met up with company and left her servants to follow on to the next station alone."

"Exactly. We tracked the darkies along the edge of the road; but her horse tracks--we could only see that no horse tracks left the road where any of their man tracks left it."

When we had gone a mile or so one of the boys turned to leave us by a neighborhood road, saying: "I'll rejoin you, 'cross fields, where you turned back last night. I'm going for the dogs."

"Stop! Gentlemen, this is too high-handed. Do you reckon I'll let you run down those four innocent creatures with hounds? I _swear_ you shan't do it, sirs."

"See here," said the one still with me, "come on. We'll show you the very spots where those innocents left the road one by one, and if you don't say they've used every trick known to a nigger to kill their trail, we'll just quit and go home. Does that suit you?"

"Not by a long chalk!" I retorted as I moved with him up the pike. "Those poor simpletons--alone in a strange land, maybe without a pass, at any moment liable to meet a patrol--how easy for them to make the fatal mistake of leaving the road and hiding their tracks!"

"All right, come ahead, you'll see fair play."

We passed the scene of the breakdown and then the house to which the coach had been drawn. I saw the coach in a stable door. By and by a turn in the pike revealed the other clerk and a tall, slim horseman just dismounting among four lop-eared, black-and-brown dogs coupled two and two by light steel breast-yokes. With a heavy whip and without a frown this man gave one of them a quick cut over the face as the brute ventured to lift a voice as hollow and melodious as a bell.

"He's a puppy I'm breaking in," said the man. "Now here, you see"--he pointed to the middle of the road--"is where you, sir, met up with the madam and her niggers, and given her yo' hoss and taken her span. Here's the tracks o' the span, you takin' 'em back; you can see they're the same as these comin' this way. T'other critter's tracks I don't make out, but no matter, here's the niggers' along here--and here, see? and here--here--there." We rode for ten minutes or so. Then halting again:

"Look yonder in that lock o' fence. There's where one went over into the brush."

Beyond the high worm fence grew a stubborn tangle of briers, vines, and cane. "Mind you," I began to call after the nigger-chaser, but one of my companions spoke for me:

"Mr. Hardy, we got to be dead sure they're runaways before we put the dogs on."

"No, we ain't," Hardy called through the back of his head. "Dandy and Charmer'll tell us if they're not, before we've gone three hundred yards, and I can call 'em off so quick it'll turn 'em a somerset." He dismounted, and, while unyoking the two older hounds, spoke softly a few words of gusto that put them into a dumb ecstasy. One of the boys pressed his horse up to mine.

"There's the place," he said. "Now watch the dogs find it."

As the pair sprang from Hardy's hands one began to nose the air, the other the earth, to left, to right, and to cross each other's short, swift circuits. With stony face while assuming a voice of wildest eagerness he cried in searching whispers: "Niggeh thah, Dandy! Niggeh thah, Charmer! Take him, my lady!"

Skimming the ground with hungry noses, the dogs answered each cry with a single keen yap of preoccupied affirmation. Almost at once Charmer came to the spot pointed out to me, reared her full length upon the rails and let out a new note; long, musical, fretful, overjoyed. Hardy mounted breast-high to the fence's top, wreathed two fingers in the willing brute's collar, lifted her, and dropped her on the other side. There she instantly resumed her search.

At the same time her yoke-mate's deep bay pealed like a trumpet, from a few yards up the roadway. He had struck the broad, frank trail of the other three negroes. The "puppy," still in leash, replied in a note hardly less deep and mellow, but the whip of cool discipline cut him off. From an ox-horn the master blew a short, sharp recall and at once Dandy returned and began his work over, knowing now which runaway to single out.

Hardy remained on the fence, watching his favorite, over in the brush. By a stir of the bushes, now here, now there, we could see how busy she was, and every now and then she sent us, as if begging our patience, her eager promissory yelp.

Suddenly her master had a new thought. He stepped onward to the next lock of the fence, scrutinized its top rail, moved to, the next lock, examining the top rail there, then to the next, the next, the next, and at the seventh or eighth beckoned us.

"See, here?" he asked. "Think that ain't a runaway nigger? Look." A splinter had been newly rubbed off the rail. "What you reckon done that, sir; a bird or a fish? That's where he jumped. Look yonder, where he landed and lit out."

The merest fraction of a note from the horn brought the two free dogs to their master, and before he could lift Dandy over the fence Charmer was on the trail. She threw her head high and for the first time filled the resounding timber with the music of her bay.

["Mr. Chester," murmured Mlle. Chapdelaine, and once more he ceased to read. Mme. Castanado had laid her hands tightly to her face. Yet now she smilingly dropped them, saying: "Seraphine--Marcel--please to pazz around that cake an' wine. Well, I su'pose there are yet in the worl'--in Afrique--Asia--even Europe--several kin' of cuztom mo' wicked than that. And still I'm sorry that ever tranzpire. But, Mr. Chezter, if you'll resume?"

Chester once more resumed.]

XV

Hardy's incitements were no longer whispers.

"Dandy! Dandy!" he cried, with wild elation of voice and still no emotion in his face. "Niggeh-fellah thah. Dandy! Ah, Dandy! look him out!"

The music swelled from Dandy's throat. Away went the pair. The younger couple, in yoke, trembled and moaned to be after them. The two clerks had swung down three or four rails from the fence, and with Hardy were hurrying their horses through, when the youngest dog, nose to the ground and tugging his yokemate along, let go a cry of discovery and began to dig furiously under a bottom rail. His master threw him off and drew from under it "Mrs. Southmayd's" tiny beflowered bonnet.

"Good God!" exclaimed one of the boys as he held it up, "they've made way with her!"

"Now, none of _that_ nonsense!" I cried; "she's given it to one of them and they've feared 'twould get them into trouble!" But the three had spurred off and I could only toss it away and follow.

The baying had ceased and an occasional half-smothered yap told that the scent was broken. A huge grape-vine end, hanging from a lofty bough, had enabled the run-away to take a long sidewise swing clear of the ground; but as I came up the brutes had recovered the trail and sped on, once more breaking the still air, far and wide, into deep waves of splendid sound. Close after them, as best they might in yoke, scuttled the younger pair, dragging each other this way and that, their broad ears trailing to their feet, and Hardy riding close behind them, reciting their pedigrees and their distinguishing whims.

Presently we issued from the woods, at the edge of wide fields surrounding a plantation-house and slave-quarters, and I hoped to find the trail broken again; but without a pause the chase turned along a line of fence as if to half encircle the plantation. The master of the hounds, in nervy yet placid words, explained that a runaway knew better than to cross open ground by night and set the house-dogs a-barking. It was only on seeing no workers in the fields that I remembered it was Sunday, and feared intensely that the pious fugitives might have shortened their flight.

From the plantation's farther bound we ran down a long, gentle slope of beautiful open woods. At the bottom of it a clear stream rippled between steep banks shrouded with strong vines. Here the scent had failed and it was wonderful to see the docile faith and intelligence with which the dogs resigned the whole work to their master, and followed beside him while he sought a crossing-place for his horse. This took many minutes, but by and by they scrambled over, he bidding us wait where we were until the dogs should open again; and as he started down-stream along the farther bank the older hounds, at a single word, ran circling out before him in the tangle, electrified by the steel-cold eagerness of his implorings.

But now, to my joy, he found their hungry snufflings as futile as his own scrutinizings and divinations, and after following the stream until my companions fretted openly at the delay, he dropped a note from his horn, rode back with the four dogs, recrossed, and passed down on our side with them at his heels, frowning at last and scanning the tangled growth of the opposite bank.

And now again he came back: "You see, this stream runs so nigh the way they wanted to go that there's no tellin' how fur they waded down it or whether they was two, three, or four of 'em rej'ined together. They're shore to 'a' been all together when they left it, but where that was hell only knows. Come on."

We plunged across after him and followed down the farther bank, and at the point where he had turned back he put the hounds on again. "How do you know there were more than one here?" I asked.

"Because, if noth'n' else, this trail at first was a fool's trail and now it's as smart as cats a-fight'n'--_look 'em out, Dandy_! Every time the rascals struck a swimmin'-hole they swum it, the men sort o' tote'n' the women, I reckon--_ah, my Charmer! Yes, my sweet lady! take 'em! take 'em_!"

As the stream emerged into an old field--"Sun's pow'ful hot for you-all!" Hardy added. "Ain't see' such a day this time o' year fo' a coon's age. Hosses feel'n' it. Hard to say which is hottest, sun or brush."

We had skirted the branch a full mile, beating its margin thoroughly, and were in deep woods again, when all at once Charmer let out a glad peal. Her mate echoed it and with the stream at their back they were off and away in full cry. The trail was broad and strong and with rare breaks continued so for an hour. Often the dogs made us trot; in open grounds we galloped. Once, in a thickety wet tract where the still air was suffocating and a sluggish runlet meandered widely, Hardy was forced, after long hinderance, to drop the trail and recover it on a rising ground beyond.