CHAPTER XXI

CROSSING THE BOG

"He led them through the depths as through the wilderness."--Ps. cvi, 9

Peter bounded from his bed in a daze. What was Ambrose yelling about? Was the house afire? He reached, from force of habit, for his pants. His hand failed to touch them.

"Whar be they?" he thundered. "Whar en hell es my pants?"

Maria was awake, too, groping about for a light. "Hain't they whar yo' put 'em?" she asked.

"Naw, they hain't," he shouted. "Somebody's tuk 'em. Hit's thet Mollie--thet's who hit es."

He pranced about, roaring invectives, while Maria made a light and Ambrose appeared in the doorway.

"Whar be they?" he repeated. "War she in hyar? Whar'd yo' see her?"

"Out in th' yard," cried Ambrose, trembling with excitement. "She war a-goin' es ef th' devil hed kicked her on end. Gosh! but she war a-steppin'. An' they shoved ole Walter outten th' gate--"

Grimes gave a whoop. "Whut!" he cried. "Whar war yo'? Ef yo' seed hit, whyn't yo' yell? Yo' kin make noise 'nuff 'bout nawthin'." He tore down the stairs and out into the yard with no further thought of pants. He did not propose to lose his horse as well. But the great gate was locked. The key was attached to the pants. The pants were gone. The Grimes family were prisoners in their own home.

They ran about like a bevy of frightened jack-rabbits and finally brought up on the edge of the bog. There was light now, light enough to see clearly. And what they saw was so incredible that for a moment they thought their eyes were deceiving them.

Children--a swaying, floundering string of them, like the tail of a kite, with the largest, Mollie, in the lead, clear out in the bog, beyond the reach of any plank on the premises--and nobody would have ventured to cross on a plank had one been available.

Grimes stared, rubbed his eyes and stared again. "Plumb idjits!" he ejaculated. "Th' dum fools! I'll git 'em off en thar mighty quick."

He tore indoors and returned on the jump, his shirt flying like a sail in the morning breeze, and carrying a shot-gun. He paused, raised the gun to his shoulder and took aim.

From her precarious position on the limb of a tree, her feet barely out of the mud, Mollie watched him.

"He ain't a-goin' ter hit none on us," she told the children with a calmness of tone and a sense of conviction that was nothing short of inspired. "Th' Good Shepherd's a-watchin'. He'll put up His hand, er sumpin'. They was scarred hands. Mebbe thet's how hit happened. He was a helpin' little chil'en."

But the hand that reached forth and touched the ogre's arm was the hand of a poor, ignorant, half-witted woman, the victim of circumstances, the creature of her environment--Maria.

"I wouldn't shoot 'em," she said, and who knows but that she, too, was inspired, "th' police might be aroun' an' hear yo'. Leave 'em an' they'll die in th' mire, anyhow."

Peter lowered the gun. Several sparrows twittered and went flying over his head in the direction of the children. Neither the children nor the sparrows fell. Maria's hand had performed the most noble deed of her life.

"Thet's right," remarked Peter, for once not berating her for interference. Then he commenced to laugh. The laugh was a cross between that of a fiend and a hyena. And when he laughed, Ambrose, his son, laughed. It was a good joke on Mollie! But Maria did not laugh.

Then Peter remembered his unclad extremities and the run-a-way horse and the missing key. He gritted his teeth and shook his fist futilely toward the children before turning and making his way back to the house.

"Now, didn't I tell yo-all?" said Mollie, smiling upon the children. "I'm jist es happy es this hyar Honey-baby on my back. An' I hain't a-feared o' nawthin'. Come on, we-uns has got our breff now. Kin yo' git out on thet limb, Willie, ter fling th' rope?"

Willie was already climbing like a monkey out on the limb from which he was to cast the rope to the next tree, further on in the depths of the swamp. The trees were closer together now, the ground seemed to be firmer and the mud less tenacious than in that one awful hole so close to the farm outbuildings.

Leathy was quickly getting tired. She had run a sliver in her finger. Every time she tried to cling tightly to a tree-limb the sliver pierced her hand anew.

"Ain't we 'most thar?" she whispered.

"Shore," called back Johnnie. "Luk out, thar, now. Ef yo' hain't keerful, yo're a-goin' ter slip." Leathy emitted a little scream. It was true, she was slipping. She tried to right herself. The sliver hurt. She tried to move her hand to ease it. Down she went! But she was still fast to the rope. Practical Johnnie extended his crutch. She grasped it. She clambered back into safety. On they went.

But it was slow work--very slow work. Mollie was hampered by the baby on her back; but a better, less troublesome child it would have been difficult to find. Little Doris laughed and sang and clapped her chubby hands at everything.

It was truly a venture of faith. Not one of that sad little procession had the slightest idea of the topography of the country save Johnnie. He declared that when he arrived at the farm he was brought along a river road. He remembered it because he had been looking at a boat that was just being docked. It dimly recalled to Mollie's mind the boat she remembered playing about when she was almost a baby. Perhaps if they could get to this river Johnnie told about, they could get in a boat. Then Grimes would surely never find them. But did the bogs extend to a road, and was there a river near that road? There was no one to answer the question.

"Whar th' birds go thar has ter be sumpin' to eat an' drink," declared Mollie. "We-all is a-goin' ter foller th' sparrows, hain't we, Honey-chile?"

Baby Doris tugged at Mollie's long braids and chirruped merrily:

"Gittep--Gittep hossey!" She knew not the meaning of fear.

Yet there were dangers all about them. The dangers were of the deadliest kind. The little boys knew it. Mollie knew it. There were poisonous bugs, insects and snakes. They infested the trees and foliage as well as the ground under the trees. Every move the children made, every step they took was a veritable gamble with death. But all along the line of mud-stained little pilgrims bright, alert, trained eyes kept watch, and acute little ears, ever attuned to detect the slightest sound that might mean a closely menacing danger, were constantly on duty.

It was Bobbie who saw the snake and Johnnie's crutch that killed it. It was Willie who, with a branch broken from a tree, brushed the horrid spider from Leon's shoulder without the younger boy's knowledge. It was Leon, himself, who cried out a warning to Jimmie and the girls to dodge some flying creature. They were on guard, each one, like a little band of soldiers. They were fighting a battle with death. Every one of those tired, half-starved little ones, climbing with the ease of monkeys along those low-hanging branches knew with an awful certainty that they were fleeing for their lives. Any one of them would instantly have dropped into the engulfing mud rather than fall again into the clutches of the ogre they had left behind.

But their passage was as if the sparrows that flew ahead had, with their wings, swept the way clear before them. The snakes crawled away, or were sleeping, having gorged themselves during the night. The bugs and spiders seemed incurious regarding the strange procession, and the sun shone down between the trees with such unusual brightness that the insects sought deeper shade.

"Everything a-goin' fine," called Mollie from her place up ahead. "Yo'-all don't need ter be a-feared ter laugh, now. Ther hain't ary one ter whup yo'-all. Jimmie, yo' kin sing ef yo' feel fer hit. Thar hain't nawthin' a-goin' ter tech us an' time we gits ter thet thar nex' tree we'll set a spell on thet low limb an' each on us eat a potato."

For Mollie had left nothing forgotten. She had included in her provisions for the journey, milk for the baby, water for the children and raw potatoes for them all. She did not know that greater struggles lay ahead; that they had accomplished but a small part of their tortuous journey.