The Robber Bridegroom (3 page)

A,

L WAY OUT in the woods from Rodney's Landing, in a clearing in the live-oaks and the cedars and the magnolia trees, with the Mississippi River a mile to the back and the Old Natchez Trace a mile to the front, was the house Clement Musgrove had built that had grown from a hut, and there was the smoke now coining out the chimney. So while he was riding home through

31

the wilderness, there in the kitchen was his wife Salome, stirring a ladle in a pot of brew, and there at the window above was his daughter Rosamond, leaning out to sing a song which floated away on the air.

Rosamond was truly a beautiful golden-haired girl, locked in the room by her stepmother for singing, and still singing on, because it passed the time away better than anything else. This was the way the song began:

"The moon shone bright, and it cast a fair light: 'Welcome,' says she, 'my honey, my sweet! For 1 have loved thee this seven long year, And our chance it was we could never meet.'

Then he took her in his armes-two, And kissed her both cheek and chin, And twice or thrice he kissed this may Before they were parted in twin."

Before Rosamond came to the end of this love ballad, which was meant to be very long, Salome unlocked the door and there she stood like an old blackbird.

"Well, lazy thing/' said she, "I need fresh herbs for the pot. There are some extra-large ones growing on the other side of the woods at the farthest edge of the indigo field. Go and pick them and don't come back till your apron is full/'

And for a thing like this she would send Rosamond out alone every morning while her father was away, when he knew nothing of it. She would think that perhaps the Indians might kidnap the girl and adopt her into their tribe, and give her another name, or that a leopard might walk out between two trees and carry her off in his teeth before she could say a word.

For if Rosamond was as beautiful as the day, Salome was as ugly as the night, and all her gnashing of teeth made her none the better-looking.

So Rosamond said, "Yes, stepmother/' and taking the time to dress herself in a light blue gown, bind her hair with a ribbon, and bake herself a little hoecake for a lunch, she made ready for her expedition.

"If you come back without the herbs, I'll

break your neck," said the stepmother. "Now be

\» gone!

Rosamond on her way had to pass through a little locust grove, and as she walked underneath the boughs where the wild bees were humming, she always took hold of her mother's locket, which she wore on a silver chain, and the locket would seem to speak of its own accord. What it never failed to say was, "If your mother could see you now, her heart would break/'

On she went then, and no sooner was she out of sight under the trees than up to the door rode Clement coming home on his horse. Salome had sent the girl away in the nick of time, and indeed she had had her eyes upon her husband since he was no more than a speck of dust, to see if she could tell from a distance what presents he was bringing; and she wanted to get her own name on the best ones.

Clement came in, and the first thing he said was, "Hello, wife, where is my little daughter gone?" for she had not run out to meet him, and

that was as if the jessamines had not bloomed that year.

"Oh, she is safe enough, I have no doubt, and has forgotten us entirely," replied Salome, with a smile on her face all its own. "Her idleness has led her out of the house again, out dressed in her best, fit to meet the King there in the nettles, and not a word behind her of where she was going. Here I am keeping her dinner warm over the fire/' For this was the way she would talk to her husband.

"My poor little daughter!'' said Clement sadly. "It is a good thing that I married the woman who would look after my child/' he said to himself, "or what would happen to her then?"

Then Salome gritted her teeth, but she saved up on her anger to vent it in some grand way later, when the time was sure to come.

"How much did you get for your tobacco, and where are the presents you were to bring?" she said next.

"Here are the moneybags, count it for yourself when the table is cleared," said Clement,

who would not cheat even a little midge of its pleasures. "And here is the packet of needles, the paper of pins, length of calico, pair of combs, orange, Madeira, and muscadine wine, the salt for the table, and all from the apothecary that he could provide/'

"And is the silk gown for me too?" Salome asked, paying no heed to the rest but holding up to herself a beautiful dress the green of the sugar cane, and looking like an old witch dressed up for a christening.

"No, that is not for you, but for Rosamond," said Clement. "And so are the hairpins, and the petticoat stitched all around with golden thread, the like of which the young ladies are wearing in New Orleans."

"As if she were not vain enough as it is!" cried Salome. "And now these fancy things will be putting thoughts into her head, you mark my words, and away she will run, off with some river rat, like Liwie Lane and her sister Lambie on the next plantation, there within a week of each other."

Then Rosamond came back, with an apron full of herbs for the pot, and tried on the dress and the petticoat both before she would eat. What a sight she was! She pinned up her hair and she swept up and down the puncheon floor swaying like a swan, and flung her train about.

And the moment she saw Rosamond in the new clothes, Salome's heart felt like lead, and she had no more peace day or night.

"What have you been doing while I was gone?" said Clement when Rosamond had flung her arms around his neck to thank him, for she had never suspected that he would bring her anything except a childish and harmless toy.

"Oh, every day I go to the farthest edge of the indigo field, on the other side of the woods, and gather the herbs that grow there," said Rosamond, "for my stepmother will have no other kind. And today a little old panther came out from behind a holly tree and rubbed up against my side. I took him in my arms, to see what he would do, and he gave me a little purr. Just then the mother panther let go from the tree above

my head, and down she lit on her feet, stirring up the leaves like a whirlwind and growling from end to end, like the gold organ in the Rodney church. She was ten feet long and she must have been nine feet high when her hair started rising, for she reached away over my head when I looked her up and clown. The first thing I knew she took me up in her teeth, but very easy, by the sash, and carried me all the way home through the woods before she set me down at the gate. She swung me hard, and I knew she meant it for a lesson, and so I came away from her, and here I am, but the whole time I never dropped the leaf of one herb/'

Now Rosamond was a great liar, and nobody could believe a word she said. But it took all the starch out of the stepmother, you can be sure, to send Rosamond out on a dangerous errand, hoping some ill might befall her, and then to have her come safely back with a tale of something even worse than she had wished upon her. As for Rosamond, she did not mean to tell anything but the truth, but when she opened her

mouth in answer to a question, the lies would simply fall out like diamonds and pearls. Her father had tried scolding her, and threatening to send her away to the Female Academy, and then marching her off without her supper, but none of it had done any good, and so he let her alone. Now and then he remarked that if a man could be found anywhere in the world who could make her tell the truth, he would turn her over to him. Salome, on the other hand, said she should be given a dose of Dr. Peachtree.

"Next year, perhaps, she will submit to a tutor/' said Clement to Salome, "and learn Greek and sewing and the guitar/'

"Never! I will learn it all for myself/' said poor Rosamond, and picking up the guitar, sure enough, she played "Fair as the Rose/'

Near Clement's house, down in a gully, lived a poor widow and her six gawky daughters and her only son. The son, who was the youngest, was named Goat, because he could butt his way out the door when his mother left him locked in,

and equally, because he could butt his way in when she left him locked out. Every time she would go off, and tell him to be sure not to stir from the house while she was gone, to any wrestling matches, horse races, gander pullings, shooting matches, turkey shoots, or cockfights whatever in Rodney, or she would knock his head off with the skillet, she would be sure to find him missing when she got back. And this in spite of all her promises to bring him presents, and so it was useless to bring him any. Goat was full of curiosity, and anything he found penned up he would let out, including himself. He had let loose all the little colts and pigs and calves and the flocks of geese, peahens, chickens, and turkeys in that part of the country, and he would let anything out of a trap, if he had to tear its leg off to do it.

Now by some manner and the way things come about, Salome had found a familiar in little Goat, and it was there in the back of her head to use him for her own ends. She could not buy him for a slave, because he was not in any degree

a black African, but she took the old mother a quart jar of pickled peaches she had put up with her own hands, and looked so grand, that the mother freely gave her Goat for whatever occasion he was wanted, just so she got him back.

So the very next day after Clement brought Rosamond the silk dress like the dresses the Creole girls wore, and Salome's heart was getting no lighter but as heavy as iron, down crept the old stepmother behind the house into the gully and called away at Goat.

Goat, who had been left by the coals to watch a johnnycake, came out through a hole in the door with his hair all matted up and the color of carrots, and his two eyes so crossed they looked like one. He smiled and he had every other tooth, but that was all. He stood there with his two big toes sticking up.

"I hope you are well, Goat/* said Salome, giving her own brand of smile, and Goat said he had never felt better, as far as he could recollect.

"You remember that you are working for me, don't you, Goat?" said Salome.

"Yes indeed/' said Goat, "until a better offer comes along."

"Then here is your work for today/' said Salome, and she bent down as close to him as she dared, for he could have bitten her, and whispered a rigmarole into his ear.

"Leave it to me/' said Goat afterwards. "You have not spoken to a deaf man/'

So they sealed a bargain and Salome crept home to sit and wait.

In the meanwhile, Rosamond was fastening on her clothes, and she was putting on the new silk gown, for she was determined never again to wear any other. She pinned up her long hair with the pins. Then just as she was getting a look into the mirror, in walked Salome like a shadow across the sun.

"Well, my fine lady, I need herbs for the pot, for all that you got yesterday have lost their power today," she said. "Pick me nothing but the fine ones growing on the other side of the woods at the farthest edge of the indigo field.

And don't dare to come home till you have filled your apron/'

"Oh, but that will ruin my dress/' cried poor Rosamond.

"That is because you are fool enough to wear it/' said the stepmother, and so Rosamond had to go, and the stepmother called after her, "If you come back without the herbs, I'll wring your neck!"

Rosamond passed again through the little locust grove, and heard the golden hum of the bees, and took hold of the little locket. The locket spoke and said, "If your mother could see you now, her heart would break/'

Then on she went, and this time, skulking along behind her, but well out of sight, was Goat, bent on his task and thinking as hard as he could so as not to forget it.

First Rosamond went through the woods and then she passed along the field of indigo, and finally she came to the very edge, which was by the side of a deep, dark ravine. And at the foot of this ravine ran the Old Natchez Trace, that

old buffalo trail where travelers passed along and were set upon by the bandits and the Indians and torn apart by the wild animals.

There were the thorns and briars and among them the green herbs growing. No matter how many Rosamond picked, they always seemed to be just as thick the next day. So Rosamond held up her fine silk skirt and threw the herbs into it as she picked.

Now all this time, Goat had been keeping the little distance behind Rosamond, looking for his chance to finish her off. Those had been his directions in the long rigmarole Salome had whispered in his ear. If Rosamond were to take a look over the ravine's edge, he was to give her the right push, and if she were to fall into one of the bear traps he was to stop up his ears and not let her loose. And if anything whatever chanced to happen to her, he had only to remember to bring back a bit of her dress, all torn and rubbed in the dust, as a sign she was surely dead, and he would get his reward, a suckling pig.

Rosamond went about her business of gathering herbs, and if she saw or heard anything of

Goat in the bush, she thought it was an Indian or a wildcat and paid no attention to it; for she was wearing her mothers locket, which kept her from the extravagant harms of the world and only let her in for the little ones.

It was not long before she opened her mouth and sang,

"The moon shone bright, and it cast a fair light: 'Welcome,' says she, 'my honey, my sweet! For I have loved thee this seven long year, And our chance it was we could never meet/ "

And although she had never loved or known any man except her father, her voice was so sad and so sweet and full of love itself that Goat was on the very point of tears in the bushes.

No sooner had she finished the first verse of the song when there was a pounding of hoof-beats on the Trace below, and along under the crossed branches of the trees came riding none other than Jamie Lockhart, out for a devilment of some kind, with his face all stained in berry juice for a disguise.

When he heard Rosamond singing so sweetly,

as if she had been practicing just for this, he had to look up, and as soon as he saw her he turned his horse straight up the bank and took it in three leaps.