IV
It is perhaps a singular thing that this absence of the three men from
the feed-box at the time of the sharp lieutenant's investigation should
terrify the girl more than it should joy her. That for which she had
prayed had come to pass. Apparently the escape of these men in the face
of every improbability had been granted her, but her dominating emotion
was fright. The feed-box was a mystic and terrible machine, like some
dark magician's trap. She felt it almost possible that she should see
the three weird man floating spectrally away through the air. She
glanced with swift apprehension behind her, and when the dazzle from the
lantern's light had left her eyes, saw only the dim hillside stretched
in solemn silence.
The interior of the barn possessed for her another fascination because
it was now uncanny. It contained that extraordinary feed-box. When she
peeped again at the knot-hole, the calm, grey prisoner was seated upon
the feed-box, thumping it with his dangling, careless heels as if it
were in nowise his conception of a remarkable feed-box. The sentry also
stood facing it. His carbine he held in the hollow of his arm. His legs
were spread apart, and he mused. From without came the low mumble of the
three other troopers. The sharp lieutenant had vanished.
The trembling yellow light of the lantern caused the figures of the men
to cast monstrous wavering shadows. There were spaces of gloom which
shrouded ordinary things in impressive garb. The roof presented an
inscrutable blackness, save where small rifts in the shingles glowed
phosphorescently. Frequently old Santo put down a thunderous hoof. The
heels of the prisoner made a sound like the booming of a wild kind of
drum. When the men moved their heads, their eyes shone with ghoulish
whiteness, and their complexions were always waxen and unreal. And there
was that profoundly strange feed-box, imperturbable with its burden of
fantastic mystery.
Suddenly from down near her feet the girl heard a crunching sound, a
sort of a nibbling, as if some silent and very discreet terrier was at
work upon the turf. She faltered back; here was no doubt another
grotesque detail of this most unnatural episode. She did not run,
because physically she was in the power of these events. Her feet
chained her to the ground in submission to this march of terror after
terror. As she stared at the spot from which this sound seemed to come,
there floated through her mind a vague, sweet vision--a vision of her
safe little room, in which at this hour she usually was sleeping.
The scratching continued faintly and with frequent pauses, as if the
terrier was then listening. When the girl first removed her eyes from
the knot-hole the scene appeared of one velvet blackness; then gradually
objects loomed with a dim lustre. She could see now where the tops of
the trees joined the sky and the form of the barn was before her dyed in
heavy purple. She was ever about to shriek, but no sound came from her
constricted throat. She gazed at the ground with the expression of
countenance of one who watches the sinister-moving grass where a serpent
approaches.
Dimly she saw a piece of sod wrenched free and drawn under the great
foundation-beam of the barn. Once she imagined that she saw human hands,
not outlined at all, but sufficient, in colour, form, or movement to
make subtle suggestion.
Then suddenly a thought that illuminated the entire situation flashed
in her mind like a light. The three men, late of the feed-box, were
beneath the floor of the barn and were now scraping their way under this
beam. She did not consider for a moment how they could come there. They
were marvellous creatures. The supernatural was to be expected of them.
She no longer trembled, for she was possessed upon this instant of the
most unchangeable species of conviction. The evidence before her
amounted to no evidence at all, but nevertheless her opinion grew in an
instant from an irresponsible acorn to a rooted and immovable tree. It
was as if she was on a jury.
She stooped down hastily and scanned the ground. There she indeed saw a
pair of hands hauling at the dirt where the sod had been displaced.
Softly, in a whisper like a breath, she said, "Hey!"
The dim hands were drawn hastily under the barn. The girl reflected for
a moment. Then she stooped and whispered: "Hey! It's me!"
After a time there was a resumption of the digging. The ghostly hands
began once more their cautious mining. She waited. In hollow
reverberations from the interior of the barn came the frequent sounds of
old Santo's lazy movements. The sentry conversed with the prisoner.
At last the girl saw a head thrust slowly from under the beam. She
perceived the face of one of the miraculous soldiers from the feed-box.
A pair of eyes glintered and wavered, then finally settled upon her, a
pale statue of a girl. The eyes became lit with a kind of humorous
greeting. An arm gestured at her.
Stooping, she breathed, "All right." The man drew himself silently back
under the beam. A moment later the pair of hands resumed their cautious
task. Ultimately the head and arms of the man were thrust strangely from
the earth. He was lying on his back. The girl thought of the dirt in his
hair. Wriggling slowly and pushing at the beam above him he forced his
way out of the curious little passage. He twisted his body and raised
himself upon his hands. He grinned at the girl and drew his feet
carefully from under the beam. When he at last stood erect beside her,
he at once began mechanically to brush the dirt from his clothes with
his hands. In the barn the sentry and his prisoner were evidently
engaged in an argument.
The girl and the first miraculous soldier signalled warily. It seemed
that they feared that their arms would make noises in passing through
the air. Their lips moved, conveying dim meanings.
In this sign-language the girl described the situation in the barn.
With guarded motions, she told him of the importance of absolute
stillness. He nodded, and then in the same manner he told her of his two
companions under the barn floor. He informed her again of their wounded
state, and wagged his head to express his despair. He contorted his
face, to tell how sore were their arms; and jabbed the air mournfully,
to express their remote geographical position.
This signalling was interrupted by the sound of a body being dragged or
dragging itself with slow, swishing sound under the barn. The sound was
too loud for safety. They rushed to the hole and began to semaphore
until a shaggy head appeared with rolling eyes and quick grin.
With frantic downward motions of their arms they suppressed this grin
and with it the swishing noise. In dramatic pantomime they informed this
head of the terrible consequences of so much noise. The head nodded, and
painfully, but with extreme care, the second man pushed and pulled
himself from the hole.
In a faint whisper the first man said, "Where's Sim?"
The second man made low reply: "He's right here." He motioned
reassuringly toward the hole.
When the third head appeared, a soft smile of glee came upon each face,
and the mute group exchanged expressive glances.
When they all stood together, free from this tragic barn, they breathed
a long sigh that was contemporaneous with another smile and another
exchange of glances.
One of the men tiptoed to a knot-hole and peered into the barn. The
sentry was at that moment speaking. "Yes, we know 'em all. There isn't a
house in this region that we don't know who is in it most of the time.
We collar 'em once in a while--like we did you. Now, that house out
yonder, we----"
The man suddenly left the knot-hole and returned to the others. Upon
his face, dimly discerned, there was an indication that he had made an
astonishing discovery. The others questioned him with their eyes, but he
simply waved an arm to express his inability to speak at that spot. He
led them back toward the hill, prowling carefully. At a safe distance
from the barn he halted, and as they grouped eagerly about him, he
exploded in an intense undertone: "Why, that--that's Cap'n Sawyer they
got in yonder."
"Cap'n Sawyer!" incredulously whispered the other men.
But the girl had something to ask. "How did you get out of that feed-
box?" He smiled. "Well, when you put us in there, we was just in a
minute when we allowed it wasn't a mighty safe place, and we allowed
we'd get out. And we did. We skedaddled 'round and 'round until it
'peared like we was going to get cotched, and then we flung ourselves
down in the cow-stalls where it's low-like--just dirt floor--and then we
just naturally went a-whooping under the barn floor when the Yanks come.
And we didn't know Cap'n Sawyer by his voice nohow. We heard 'im
discoursing, and we allowed it was a mighty pert man, but we didn't know
that it was him. No, m'm."
These three men, so recently from a situation of peril, seemed suddenly
to have dropped all thought of it. They stood with sad faces looking at
the barn. They seemed to be making no plans at all to reach a place of
more complete safety. They were halted and stupefied by some unknown
calamity.
"How do you raikon they cotch him, Sim?" one whispered mournfully.
"I don't know," replied another in the same tone.
Another with a low snarl expressed in two words his opinion of the
methods of Fate: "Oh, hell!"
The three men started then as if simultaneously stung, and gazed at the
young girl who stood silently near them. The man who had sworn began to
make agitated apology: "Pardon, miss! 'Pon my soul, I clean forgot you
was by. 'Deed, and I wouldn't swear like that if I had knowed. 'Deed, I
wouldn't."
The girl did not seem to hear him. She was staring at the barn.
Suddenly she turned and whispered, "Who is he?"
"He's Cap'n Sawyer, m'm," they told her sorrowfully. "He's our own
cap'n. He's been in command of us yere since a long time. He's got folks
about yere. Raikon they cotch him while he was a-visiting."
She was still for a time, and then, awed, she said: "Will they--will
they hang him?"
"No, m'm. Oh no, m'm. Don't raikon no such thing. No, m'm."
The group became absorbed in a contemplation of the barn. For a time no
one moved nor spoke. At last the girl was aroused by slight sounds, and
turning, she perceived that the three men who had so recently escaped
from the barn were now advancing toward it.
