Chasing an Iron Horse Part 23

"We must be going," reiterated Watson, moving towards the door with unusual celerity for a blind man who had found himself in an unfamiliar apartment.

"Don't go yet," urged Mr. Peyton, seeking to detain the supposed vagabonds; "I want Mr. Jason to hear some of these plantation songs. I'll pay you well for your trouble, my boy--and you can take away all the food you want."

"I'm sorry," began George, "but----"

As the last word was uttered Farmer Charles Jason was ushered into the study. He was a chubby little man of fifty or fifty-five, with red hair, red face and a body which suggested the figure of a plump sparrow--a kindly man, no doubt, in the ordinary course of events, but the last person on earth that the two fugitives wanted to see.

"Well, this _is_ a surprise," said the master of the house, very cordially. "It's not often you favor us with a visit as far down the highway as this."

"When a fellow has gout as much as I have nowadays," returned Jason, "he doesn't get away from home a great deal. But something important made me come out to-day."

"Nothing wrong, I hope?" asked Mr. Peyton.

George took hold of Watson's left hand, and edged towards the open door.

But Mr. Peyton, not waiting for Jason to answer his question, leaped forward and barred the way.

"You fellows must not go until Mr. Jason has heard those negro melodies."

Owing to the number of people in the room (for all the children were there), Jason had not singled out the Northerners for any attention. But now he naturally looked at them. There was nothing suspicious in his glance; it was merely good-natured and patronizing.

"Yes, don't go," cried one of the children, a pretty little girl of ten or eleven. "Show Mr. Jason how the doggie can say his prayers." She hauled Waggie from George's coat, and held him in front of the farmer. George seized Waggie and returned him to his pocket. There was an angry flush on the boy's face. He had no kind feelings for pretty Miss Peyton.

Jason's expression underwent a complete transformation when he saw the dog. An idea seemed to strike him with an unexpected but irresistible force. The sight of the dog had changed the whole current of his thoughts.

He stared first at Watson, and then at George, with a frown that grew deeper and deeper. Then he turned to Mr. Peyton.

"I came over to tell you about the Yankee spies who are loose in the county," he cried quickly, in excited tones. "One of them was a boy with a dog. My son saw them--and I believe this to be the lad. I----"

The farmer got no further.

"Come, George!" suddenly shouted Watson.

At the back of the study there was a large gla.s.s door leading out to the rear porch of the house. He ran to this, found that it would not open, and so deliberately hit some of the panes a great blow with his foot.

Cras.h.!.+ The gla.s.s flew here and there in a hundred pieces. The next moment the ex-blind man had pushed through the ragged edges of the remaining gla.s.s, and was scurrying across a garden at the back of the house. After him tore George. In going through the door he had cut his cheek on one of the projecting splinters, but in the excitement he was quite unconscious of the fact. The children and their father stood looking at Jason in a dazed, enquiring way. They had not heard of the locomotive chase; they knew nothing of Northern spies; they did not understand that the farmer had suddenly jumped at a very correct but startling conclusion.

"After them!" shouted Jason. "They are spies!"

By this time the whole house was in an uproar. Most of the children were in tears (being frightened out of their wits at the mention of terrible spies), and the servants were running to and fro wringing their hands helplessly, without understanding exactly what had happened. Jason tore to the broken door, broke off some more gla.s.s with the end of the riding whip he held in his hand, and was quickly past this bristling barrier and out on the back porch. Mr. Peyton was behind him.

At the end of the garden, nearly a hundred yards away, was an old-fas.h.i.+oned hedge of box, which had reached, in the course of many years, a height of twelve feet or more. A little distance beyond this box was a wood of pine-trees. As Jason reached the porch he could see the two Northerners fairly squeeze their way through the hedge, and disappear on the other side. He leaped from the porch, and started to run down the garden. But his enemy, the gout, gave him a warning twinge, and he was quickly outdistanced by Mr. Peyton, who sped onward, with several negroes at his heels.

The party continued down the garden until they reached the hedge; then they ran to the right for a short distance, scurried through an arched opening in the green box, and thus reached the outskirts of the pine woods. Next they began to search through the trees. But not a sight of the fugitives could they obtain. After they had tramped over the whole woods, which covered about forty acres, they emerged into open fields. Not a trace of the runaways! They went back and made a fresh search among the pines; they sent negroes in every direction; yet the result was the same.

When Mr. Peyton returned, very hot and disgusted, to his usually quiet study he found Charles Jason lying on the sofa in an agony of gout.

Several of the children were near him.

"Oh, papa, I hope you did _not_ catch them," cried one of the latter. She was the little girl who had pulled Waggie from George's pocket.

Mr. Peyton laughed, in spite of himself.

"Have you fallen in love with the boy who sang, Laura?" he asked, with a twinkle in his eye.

"No," said Miss Laura, indignantly, "but Mr. Jason says they were spies--and spies are always hung--and I wouldn't like to see that nice dog hung."

The father burst into a peal of merriment.

"Don't worry," he said; "I reckon the dog would be pardoned--on the ground that he was led astray by others older than himself. Anyway, the rascals have gotten away as completely as if they had disappeared from the face of the earth."

Jason groaned. Whether the sound was caused by pain, or disappointment at the escape of the spies, or both, it would have been hard to tell. When he was taken to his home, not until the next day, he vowed he would never more chase anything, be it even a chicken.

And where were the missing man, boy, and dog? Much nearer to the Peyton house than any of its inmates fancied. When Watson and George ran down the garden their only idea was to get as far off from the house as possible, although they believed that they were pretty sure to be captured in the end. Their pistols were still useless; they did not know the geography of the neighborhood; there were enemies everywhere. But after they squeezed through the hedge, they found in front of them, between the box and the edge of the woods, a little patch of muddy, uncultivated land, devoted to the refuse of a farm. A trash heap, a broken plough, empty boxes, barrels, broken china, and other useless things betokened a sort of rustic junk-shop--a receptacle for objects which had seen their best days.

Among this collection, the quick eye of Watson caught sight of a large mola.s.ses hogshead, now empty and with its open end turned upwards. He pulled George by the sleeve, pointed to the hogshead, and then looked at the hedge, as he said, breathlessly: "This is big enough to hold us both; jump in--the hedge is so high they can't see us from the house!"

There was no chance to say more. In a twinkling the two had vaulted into the huge barrel, and were fairly squatting at the bottom. Above them was the open sky and the warm sun. Any pursuer who chose to stand on tiptoe and look in would have been rewarded for his pains. But Watson calculated that no one would think of the hogshead for the very reason that it stood out so prominently amid all the trash of this dumping ground. No one, in fact, gave a thought to the spot; it suggested nothing in the way of a hiding-place. Once a negro who had joined the hunt brushed by the hogshead, much to the terror of its occupants, but he gave it no heed. A few minutes later Mr. Peyton stopped within a few feet of it, to speak to his white overseer.

"We have searched the wood thoroughly," said the overseer, "but they are gone--that's sure."

"Well, they have gotten out of the place," observed the master. "But they won't get many miles away. I want you to take the sorrel mare and spread the alarm through the neighborhood."

"Yes, sir."

Hardly had Mr. Peyton and his overseer hurried away before Waggie indulged in a little yelp, to ease his own feelings. He found things rather cramped at the bottom of the hogshead, to which he had been transferred from George's pocket; he longed to have more leeway for his tiny legs.

"If you had given that bark a minute ago," muttered George, "you would have betrayed us, Master Waggie."

"Oh! oh! oh!" whispered Watson; "I am so cramped and stiff I don't know what will become of me. This is the most painful experience of the war."

There would have been something amusing in the position of the hiders if it had seemed less dangerous. Watson was now sitting with legs crossed, in tailor fas.h.i.+on; on his lap was George; and upon George's knee jumped Waggie.

"You're getting tired too soon," said George. "We will be here some time yet."

He was quite right, for it was not until dusk that they dared leave their curious refuge. Sometimes they stood up, when they got absolutely desperate, and had it not been that the tall hedge protected him, the head of Watson would a.s.suredly have been seen from the Peyton mansion. At last they cautiously abandoned the hogshead, and crept into the pines in front of them. When it was pitch dark the fugitives pushed forward in a northwestwardly direction, until they reached a log cabin, at a distance of about four miles from their point of departure. Within the place a light was cheerily burning.

"Shall we knock at the door?" asked Watson, in some doubt.

"I'm very hungry," laughed George. "I think I could risk knocking anywhere--if I could only get something to eat."

"Well, we might as well be hung for sheep as lambs," observed Watson. "Let us try it."

He had begun to think that it was only the question of a few hours before he and George would be in the hands of the enemy.

They knocked at the door. It was half opened by a long, lanky man, with a scraggy chin-beard, who looked like the customary pictures of "Uncle Sam."

"What is it?" he asked the travelers. There was a sound of voices within.

Was it prudent to play the blind man once again? Or had this fellow heard of the excitement at the Peyton mansion? Watson bethought himself of a method of finding out whether or not he should be endowed with sight.

"Are we anywhere near Squire Peyton's?" he demanded.