The Robber Bridegroom (7 page)

"And when you have heard, will you pay me then?" asked Goat.

"Now you have it in your head," said Salome. "And get gone!"

Then she boxed both his ears and he set out, first passing through the chicken yard and letting a hen out of the coop, and then through the pigsty, where he let out a little pig with red spots. On second thought, he put both of these and a big red peach into his bag as advance payment to provide against starvation.

He was going along and going along through the deep woods, and went part of the way with a little wild boar that trotted as proudly as a horse,

and had almost reached the robbers' house when he saw another place. There, up an avenue of cedar trees, at the entrance of a cave built of rock, sitting by a fire, was a bandit named the Little Harp, and he was just as ugly as it was possible to be. But Goat did not mind that, and sang out, "Good morning, mister! What are you up to? How are you feeling and how is everything with you? Is there anything that I could do for you? And how far is it from here to where the kidnaped young lady goes and raps on the door?"

Little Harp blinked his eyes and smiled, for nothing pleased him on a fine day like a lack of brains.

"Come here/' said he, "and stay with me. I will give you work to do/'

"Gladly," replied Goat, "but I am already working for another, a very rich lady, an old stepmother, who wants me to see that her stepdaughter is well kidnaped by a bandit. But I don't see why a young fellow like me could not take care of two commissions at one time/'

"That is the way to talk/' said the Little Harp. "You will come up in the world/'

"How much are you going to pay me every month?" asked Goat, taking a seat on a rock and stretching his legs.

"Never mind/' said the Little Harp. "Just do whatever I tell you, and you won't regret it."

"What will you want first/' asked Goat, "if I do work for you?"

"Well," said Little Harp, "I might take a notion for a big fat hen."

"If that is all, I don't think that will be very hard/' said Goat, and reaching into his little bag he pulled out the hen, which indeed the Little Harp had been watching with watering mouth from the first moment, if he had not smelled it down the way. So the Little Harp took it. "I must consider," said he. He wrung the hen by the neck, plucked a feather off it, passed it through his little fire, and swallowed it down. "Yes, I believe you could do the work," he said. "You are hired. But now there is one thing that you must remember never to do, as long as you

work for me. Never open the little trunk you

will see standing by my featherbed inside the

cave/'

"If I do, you may cut off my ears/' promised Goat.

"You may hear something say, 'Let me out/ " said Little Harp, "but you must answer, 'Not yet!' If you open the trunk even one inch, that will be the end of you/'

"And will the money stop then too?" asked Goat.

"Completely," said Little Harp. "There is not a chance in the world of your ever getting another cent once you are dead/'

"I agree to the terms/' said Goat, and they shook hands.

"Now," said Goat, "what would you like me to do?"

"Well," said Little Harp, "I feel a fancy coming over me for a pig with red spots, but if that is impossible to find, don't look for it."

"Impossible my foot," said Goat. "I can get it for you as easy as breathing," and he pulled out his pig.

"Go pickle him/' said Little Harp.

"Would you not rather have a peach?" asked Goat. "For that won't take as long."

"Yes," said the Little Harp, "I believe I would rather have a peach."

So he ate the peach on the spot, seed, fuzz, and all, and Goat asked him with the last swallow, "What next?"

"Next I would like a girl, kidnaped and brought to my door here," said Little Harp. "But I dare say you will not know where to find one/ 1

"I have no kidnaped girl with me," said Goat, "but I have one in my mind. How soon do you want her?"

"By tomorrow," said Little Harp.

"It's as good as over with," said Goat. "You may imagine her now, skipping over the hill."

"Let me see her little finger first," said Little Harp. "Then, if I like that much, I will take her."

Goat was so overjoyed that he got up and did a little dance called "Rabbit Hash." Then away he went.

Little Harp went inside his cave and stretched his feet on the featherbed to wait.

Then there was a voice which had the sound of coming out of a little trunk, and it said, "Let me out!"

"Not yet!" cried Little Harp, and he began to cry, "Oh, you do plague me so, to be nothing more than a head wrapped up in blue mud, though I know your eyes and your tongue do stick out as red as fire, the way you came down off the pole in Rodney Square." And he said, "Oh, Big Harp, my brother, please stay in the trunk like a good head, and don't be after me eternally for raiding and murdering, for you give me no rest."

But the voice said, "Let me out!" all the while, even after the Little Harp fell asleep and went to snoring.

Back home in the gully, in came Goat, butting his way through the front door, which was locked, and they were all sitting around the table.

"Good news!" he cried, snatching up a johnny-cake. "Sisters, the time for one of you has come. Arise and prepare yourself, for the time is set for tomorrow."

"The time for what?" they said.

"You must listen more closely, if you want to hear wonders," said Goat. "Sisters, all six of you point up your ears, and take this in with the full set of twelve. I am now working on the side for a gentleman up yonder in a cave, and when I said, 'What do you want?* he said first a hen, then a pig, then a peach, and before long he was dead for a wife. And although I do not speak all that runs to the end of my tongue, I conversed with myself behind my hand, and said, 'Here I am with six hopping virgin sisters in my own family, and my own house a nest of women— this job was designed for me in Heaven!' And I rushed here at once with the good news."

"Well," said the mother, "is he rich?" For she did all the talking for the six daughters.

"Oh, I am sure he must be rich," answered Goat, "for he has, for one thing, a trunk so

precious that he talks to it, and lets no one open it even to the extent of an inch/'

So all the daughters there in a row began to sit up and toss their hair about.

'Is he handsome?" said the youngest.

"Well," said Goat, "I would not say outright that the gentleman is stamped with beauty, for when I saw him, his head was no larger than something off the orange tree, his forehead was full of bumps like an alligator's, and two teeth stuck out of his mouth like the broadhorns on a flatboat. He came out walking like a goose and dressed like a wild Indian. But beauty is no deeper than the outside, and besides, all six of you are as weighted down with freckles as a fig tree is with figs, which should render you modest/'

'Which of us shall marry him?" they asked one another, and fell to giggling.

"Let us send him up the eldest," said the mother, "for she has waited the longest/' and so that was decided.

"Be ready at sunup for the kidnaping," said

Goat, "and be sure one of your little fingers is as sweet as a rose, or nothing will be doing/*

At the same time, Clement and Salome were riding in the little cart over the plantation, which by now had all been harvested.

"Next year," said Salome, and she shaded her eagle eye with her eagle claw, and scanned the lands from east to west, "we must cut down more of the forest, and stretch away the fields until we grow twice as much of everything. Twice as much indigo, twice as much cotton, twice as much tobacco. For the land is there for the taking, and I say, if it can be taken, take it"

"To encompass so much as that is greedy/' said Clement. "It would take too much of time and the heart's energy/'

"All the same, you must add it on," said Salome. "If we have this much, we can have more/' And she petted the little nut-shaped head of the peacock on her lap.

"Are you not satisfied already?" asked her husband.

ioo THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM

"Satisfied!" cried Salome. "Never, until we have got rid of this house which is little better than a Kentuckian's cabin, with its puncheon floor, and can live in a mansion at least five stories high, with an observatory of the river on top of that, with twenty-two Corinthian columns to hold up the roof/'

"My poor wife, you are ahead of yourself," said Clement, and he felt of her forehead to see if it were hot. And indeed it was burning like fire, for Salome worked her brain day and night to think up her wishes.

"I am doing well enough," said Salome. "It is you whose hand is cold."

"Then it is cold with grief," said Clement.

"Oh, now that that lazy, extravagant daughter of yours is no longer here," said Salome, "we shall be able to count much more on our plans, for now you have no one to will the money to, and so we may as well spend it at once."

"Hold your tongue, wife!" cried Clement, and he raised up and almost put his hands upon her, but he could not, for the poor contamination of

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 101 her heart broke out through her words until it showed even on her skin, like the signs of the pox, and he could not punish her.

Then Salome, having Clement in her power, sent him out to make fresh application to the Governor for more acres, and resigned to that, he rode away to Rodney.

And there, staying once more at the inn where the landlord with the trembling ears kept hospitality for the travelers, Clement chanced to see Jamie Lockhart again, dressed as fine as anyone out of New Orleans in his button-sewn coat with the sleeves knotted around him cape-wise.

Now the truth is, Jamie had neglected poor Clement entirely, being so taken up with his daughter, and had never ridden back to do the thing he had promised, but only put it off. So he ran forward now to clasp his hand, and sat him down in the grogshop and bought him a glass of the best Kentucky whisky. Then he told him, as his excuse, that his business had

102 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM carried him all of a sudden to New Orleans on the very night when he saw him last, where he had been from then till now, as busy as he had ever been in his life, and that he had therefore been unable to ride after the bandit who had frightened his daughter.

"However," said Jamie, "drink down bravely, for it is my belief that the fellow will do her no more harm if he did not do it at first thoughts/'

"Alas," said Clement, "while you were gone, he thought of it, for my child is stolen away."

Then the salt tears ran down his cheeks, and Jamie's heart was reached by the old man's sorrow, and after buying him another glass of whisky he spent the night in the same bed again without stealing a cent from him. Indeed, since he had not stolen it yet, he doubted if he ever would, for the old man had trusted the evil world and was the kind of man it would break your heart to rob.

"I have just succeeded in enlarging my plantation twice over," said Clement, when they met

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 103 again in the morning, "though the size of anything whatever has nothing to do with the peace of mind. My wife will build a tower to overlook the boundaries of her land, while I ride its woods and know it to be a maze without end, for my love is lost in it."

So, in his soft feeling, Jamie declared before he knew it that he would track down this beast if it was the last thing he did, blow his brains out, and marry the poor daughter in the bargain.

For never once, due to the seven rampant brothers which his own kidnaped bride brought into the conversation now and again (whenever he recalled that he was promised to another), did the thought alight on Jamie's head that she might be for one moment the same as Clement's thumb-sucking child. It was the habit of the times for heiresses to disappear, as though swallowed up, and one more or less did not cause Jamie to stop and take notice.

"Tonight/' said Jamie now, rising to his feet, "I will ride the woods to the north of here, and

you must ride them to the south, and if the man

has been running ahead of you, we will head him

off."

Clement shook his hand, and when he could speak, it was to say once more, "Save her, and she is yours still/'

On the plantation, Clement, inspired by Jamie to the hope of making a rescue that very night, ate a whole roast pig for supper and set out on horseback just as the stars began to come out.

He rode south on the Old Natchez Trace and then took another trail branching off to the deepest woods, a part he had never searched before. The wind shook the long beards of the moss. The lone owls hooted one by one and flew by his head as big as barrels. Near-by in the cane the wildcats frolicked and played, and on he rode, through the five-mile smell of a bear, and on till he came all at once to the bluff where deep down, under the stars, the dark brown wave of the Mississippi was rolling by. That was the place where he had found the river and married

THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM 105 Salome. And if he had but known it, that was the place where Jamie Lockhart had carried his daughter, there under the meeting trees at the edge.

Clement's horse stopped, and all of a sudden there was a rustle of the leaves and a ghost or a shape went by behind him. In the next moment Clement was riding in pursuit, for he thought it was the bandit now for sure, and he rode and rode furiously, though it seemed to him that he had lost the way and that he was only charging in a circle; and this had happened to him before. But then he heard the same sound, and he brought his horse to a stop and jumped off his back. And although up until that moment he had thought all he defended too sacred for the privilege of violence, he now flung himself forward with such force that the wind left his body for a moment. He ran headlong through the dark, and then it seemed he clasped the very sound itself in his arms. He could feel the rude powerful grip of a giant or a spirit, and once he was brushed by a feather such as the savages

io6 THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM wore, and they threshed about and beat down the earth for a long time. It was as dark as it could possibly be, for the stars seemed to have gone in and left the naked night overhead, and so Clement wrestled with his monster without any aid from the world at all. He tossed it to the ground and it flew up again, he bent it back with all his strength and it would not yield, it fought with the arms of a whirlwind and flung him on the ground, and he was about to give up, but then it clung to him like the Old Man of the Sea and he could not get out from under. At last with a great crash he threw himself upon it and it went down, and he sat there holding it down where it lay with his own body for the rest of the night, not daring to close his eyes for his concern, and for thinking he had won over wickedness. And it was not till the eye of the red sun looked over the ridge that Clement saw he had fought all night with a willow tree.