He was half right but so was I and I checked up barely enough to cry back: "Call "em off! Call "em off or I"ll shoot Charmer!"
With Dandy clasped close and with eyes streaming he blew the recall.
Looking for its effect, I saw Euonymus trying to swim and Charmer quitting the chase. But the young dog kept on. The current was carrying Euonymus away. Twice through vines and brush, while I cried: "Catch the fallen tree below you! Catch the tree!" I tried to spur my horse down into the stream, and on the third trial I succeeded.
The flood had cut the bank from under a great b.u.t.tonwood. It hung p.r.o.ne over the water, and one dipping fork seized and held the fainting swimmer. The dog was close, but had entered the current too far down and was breasting it while he bayed in protest to his master"s horn.
Now, as Euonymus struggled along the tree the brute struck for the bank, and the two gained it together. Euonymus ran, but on a bit of open gra.s.s dropped to one knee, at bay. The dog sprang. In the negro fashion the runaway"s head ducked forward to receive the onset, while both hands clutched the brute"s throat. Not dreaming that they would keep their hold till I could get there, I leaped down in the shoal to fire; but the grip held, though the dog"s teeth sank into legs and arms, and all at once Euonymus straightened to full stature, lifting the dog till his hind legs could but just tiptoe the ground.
"Right!" I cried; "bully, my boy! Lift him one inch higher and he"s whipped!"
But Euonymus could barely hold him off from face and throat.
"Turn him broadside to me!" I shouted, having come into water breast-deep. "Let me put a hole through him!"
But the fugitive"s only response was: "Run, Robelia! "Ever mind me!
Run! Run!"
And here came Hardy across the gravel-bar, in the saddle. I aimed at him: "Stand, sir! Stand!"
He hauled in and lifted the horn. Euonymus had heaved the dog from his feet. The horn rang, and with a howl of terror the brute writhed free, leaped into the river and swam toward his master. I sprang on my horse and took the deep water: "Wait, boy! Wait!"
It was hard getting ash.o.r.e. When I reached the spot of gra.s.s I found only the front half of the runaway"s hickory shirt, in b.l.o.o.d.y rags. I spurred to a gap in the bushes, and there, face down, lay Euonymus, insensible. I knelt and turned the slender form; and then I whipped off my coat and laid it over the still, black bosom. For Euonymus was a girl.
XVII
Her eyelids quivered, opened. For a moment the orbs were vacant, but as she drew a deep breath she saw me. Her shapely hand sought her throat-b.u.t.ton, and finding my coat instead she turned once more to the sod, moaning, "Brother! Mingo!"
"Is he Robelia?" I asked. "Come, we"ll find him."
Clutching my coat to her breast, she staggered up. I helped her put the coat on and sprang into the saddle. "Now mount behind me," I said, reaching for her hand; but with an anguished look:
"Whah Mingo?" she asked. "Is dey kotch Mingo?"
"No, not yet. Your hand--now spring!"
She landed firmly and we sped into the woods.
My merely wounding Dandy was fortunate. It kept Hardy from following me hotfooted or rousing the neighborhood. I dare say he wanted no one but himself to have the joy of killing me.
At a "store" and telegraph-station I let my charge down into a wild plum-patch, bought a hickory shirt, left my half-dead beast, telegraphed my livery-stable client where to find him, and so avoided the complication of being a horse-thief. Then I recovered Euonymus and about ten that night the five of us met on the bank of a creek. Near its farther sh.o.r.e, on a lonely railroad siding, we found a waiting freight-train and stole into one of its empty cars; and when at close of the next day hunger drove us out our pursuers were beating the bush a hundred miles behind.
Fed from a negro-cabin and guided by the stars, we fled all of another night afoot, and on the following day lost Mingo. At broad noon, with an overseer and his gang close by in a corn-field, the seductions of a melon-patch overcame him and he howled away his freedom in the jaws of a bear-trap. His father and mother wept dumb tears and laid their faces to the ground in prayer. Euonymus was frantic. With all her superior sanity, she would not have left the region could she have persuaded us to go on without her.
Well! Day by day we lay in the brush, and night after night fled on.
I could tell much about the sweet, droll piety of my three fellow runaways, and the humble generosity of their hearts. No ancient Israelite ever looked forward to the coming of a political Messiah with more pious confidence than they to a day when their whole dark race should be free and enjoy every right that any other race enjoys.
"Even a right to cross two races?" I once asked Luke, smilingly, though with intense aversion.
"No, suh; no, suh! De same Lawd what give" ev"y man a wuck he cayn"t do ef he ain"t dat man, give" ev"y ra-ace a wuck dey cayn"t do ef dey ain"t dat ra-ace." I fancy he had been years revolving that into a formula; or--he may have merely heard some master or mistress say it.
"Still," I suggested, "races have crossed, and made new and better ones."
"I don"t "spute dat, suh; no, suh. But de Lawd ain"t neveh gwine to make a betteh ra-ace by cross"n" one what done-done e"en-a" most all what even yit been done, on to anotheh what, eh----"
Sidney (Onesimus) put in: "What ain"t neveh yit done noth"n"!" And her mother sighed, "Amen!"
XVIII
"Yes?" inquired Mme. Castanado. "Well?"
"Ah, surely!" cried several, "Tha"z not all?"
Mme. De l"Isle appealed to her husband: "Even two, three hun"red mile", that din"n" bring the line of Canada, I think."
"No, but, I suppose, of the Ohio."
"And that undergroun" railway!" said Scipion.
"Yes," Mme. Alexandre agreed, "but that story remain" unfinizh" whiles that uncle of Mr. Chezter couldn" return at his home."
"Not even his State," ventured mademoiselle.
"But he did," Chester said; "he came back."
M. Dubroca spoke up: "Oh, "tis easy to insert that, at the en"--foot-note."
"And Hardy?" asked Beloiseau, "him and yo" uncle, they di"n" shoot either the other?"
"I believe they did, each the other. I never quite understood the hints I got of it, till now. I know that six months in bed with a back full of _somebody"s_ buckshot saved my uncle"s life."
"From lynching! That also muz" be insert"!"
Chester thought not. "No, centre the interest in the runaway family, as in mademoiselle"s "Clock in the Sky."" And so all agreed.
A second time he walked home with mademoiselle, under the same lenient escort as before. One thus occupied, by moonlight, can moralize as he cannot with any larger number. "It"s hard enough at best," he said, "for us, in our pride of race, to sympathize--seriously--in the joys, the hopes, the sufferings of souls under dark skins yet as human as ours if not as white."
"Yes, "tis true. Only one man, Mr. Chester, I ever knew, myself, who did that."
"Your father?"
"Yes, my dear father."
"Will you not some day tell me his story?"