Page 13 - The English Carnival 7

vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village
armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly
kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing

with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon,
bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude
of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of
Alabama that lay exposed to my view. “Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet
been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold.
Heaven help the wolves!” said I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard,
and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a coconut.

“He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,” explained Bill, “and then mashed it
with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?”

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. “I’ll fix
you,” says the kid to Bill. “No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got

paid for it. You better beware!”
After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of
his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.

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The English Carnival–8