CHAPTER XXIV – THE CAPTIVES
That ride, shut in the Gypsy van, was one that neither Tess nor Dot nor Sammy Pinkney were likely soon to forget. The car plunged along the country road, and the distance the party traveled was considerable, although the direction was circuitous and did not, after two hours, take the Gypsy clan much farther from Milton than they had been at the previous camp.
By eleven o’clock they pulled off the road into a little glade that had been well known to the leaders of the party. A new camp was established in a very short time. Tents were again erected, fires kindled for the late supper, and the life of the Gypsy town was re-begun.
But Sammy and the two little Corner House girls were forbidden to leave the van in which they had been made to ride.
Big Jim came over himself, banged Sammy with his broad palm, and told him:
“You keep-a them here – you see? If those kids get out, I knock you good. See?”
Sammy saw stars at least! He would not answer the man. There was something beside stubbornness to Sammy Pinkney. But stubbornness stood him in good stead just now.
“Don’t you mind, Tess and Dot,” he whispered, his own voice broken with half-stifled sobs. “I’ll get you out of it. We’ll run away first chance we get.”
“But it never does you any good to run away, Sammy,” complained Tess. “You only get into trouble. Dot and I don’t want to be beaten by that man. He is horrid.”
“I wish we could see those nice ladies who sold us the basket,” wailed Dot, quite desperate now. “I – I’d be glad to give ’em back the bracelet.”
“Sh!” hissed Sammy. “We’ll run away and we’ll take the bracelet along. These Gyps sha’n’t ever get it again, so there!”
“Humph! I don’t see what you have to say about that, Sammy,” scoffed Tess. “If the women own it, of course they have got to have it. But I don’t want that Big Jim to have it – not at all!”
“He won’t get it. You leave it to me,” said Sammy, with recovered assurance.
The van door was neither locked nor barred. But if the children had stepped out of it the firelight would have revealed their figures instantly to the Gypsies.
Either the women bending over the pots and pans at the fires or the children running about the encampment would have raised a hue and cry if the little captives had attempted to run away. And there were a dozen burly men sitting about, smoking and talking and awaiting the call to supper.
This meal was finally prepared. The fumes from the pots reached the nostrils of Tess, Dot, and Sammy, and they were all ravenously hungry. Nor were they denied food. The Gypsies evidently had no intention of maltreating the captives in any particular as long as they obeyed and did not try to escape.
One young woman brought a great pan of stew and bread and three spoons to the van and set it on the upper step for the children.
“You eat,” said she, smiling, and the firelight shining on her gold earrings. “It do you goot – yes?”
“Oh, Miss Gypsy!” begged Tess, “we want to go home.”
“That all right. Beeg Jeem tak-a you. To-morrow, maybe.”
She went away hurriedly. But she had left them a plentiful supper. The three were too ravenous to be delicate. They each seized a spoon and, as Sammy advised, “dug in.”
“This is the way all Gypsies eat,” he said, proud of his knowledge. “Sometimes the men use their pocket knives to cut up the meat. But they don’t seem to have any forks. And I guess forks aren’t necessary anyway.”
“But they are nicer than fingers,” objected Tess.
“Huh? Are they?” observed the young barbarian.
After they had completely cleared the pan of every scrap and eaten every crumb of bread and drunk the milk that had been brought to them in a quart cup, Dot naturally gave way to sleepiness. She began to whimper a little too.
“If that big, bad Gypsy man doesn’t take us home pretty soon I shall have to sleep here, Sister,” she complained.
“You lie right down on this bench,” said Tess kindly, “and I will cover you up and you can sleep as long as you want to.”
So Dot did this. But Sammy was not at all sleepy. His mind was too active for that. He was prowling about the more or less littered van.
“Say!” he whispered to Tess, “there is a little window here in the front overlooking the driver’s seat. And it swings on a hinge like a door.”
“I don’t care, Sammy. I – I’m sleepy, too,” confessed Tess, with a yawn behind her hand.
“Say! don’t you go to sleep like a big kid,” snapped the boy. “We’ve got to get away from these Gyps.”
“I thought you were going to stay with them forever.”
“Not to let that Big Jim bang me over the head. Not much!” ejaculated Sammy fiercely. “If my father saw him do that – ”
“But your father isn’t here. If he was – ”
“If he was you can just bet,” said Sammy with confidence, “that Big Jim would not dare hit me.”
“I – I wish your father would come and take us all home then,” went on Tess, with another yawn.
“Well,” admitted Sammy, “I wish he would, too. Crickey! but it’s awful to have girls along, whether you are a pirate or a Gypsy.”
“You needn’t talk!” snapped Tess, quite tart for her. “We did not ask to come. And you were here ‘fore we got here. And now you can’t get away any more than Dot and I can.”
“Sh!” advised Sammy again, and earnestly. “I got an idea.”
“What is it?” asked Tess, without much curiosity.
“This here window in front!” whispered the boy. “We can open it. It is all dark at that end of the van. If we can slide out on to the seat we’ll climb down in the dark and get into the woods. I know the way to the road. I can see a patch of it through the window. What say?”
“But Dot? She sleeps so hard,” breathed Tess.
“We can poke her through the window on to the seat. Then we will crawl through. If she doesn’t wake up and holler – ”
“I’ll stop her from hollering,” agreed Tess firmly. “We’ll try it, Sammy, before those awful women get back into the van.”
Fortunately for the attempt of the captives their own supper had been dispatched with promptness. The Gypsies were still sitting about over the meal when Sammy opened that front window in the van.
He and Tess lifted Dot, who complained but faintly and kept her eyes tightly closed, and pushed her feet first through the small window. The driver’s seat was broad and roomy. The little girl lay there all right while first Tess and then Sammy crept through the window.
It was dark here, and they could scarcely see the way to the ground. But Sammy ventured down first, and after barking his shins a little found the step and whispered his directions to Tess about passing Dot down to him.
They actually got to the ground themselves and brought the smallest Corner House girl with them without any serious mishap. Sammy tried to carry Dot over his shoulder, but he could not stagger far with her. And, too, the sleepy child began to object.
“Sh! Keep still!” hissed her sister in Dot’s ear. “Do you want the Gypsies to get you again?”
She had to help Sammy carry the child, however. Dot was such a heavy sleeper – especially when she first went to sleep – that nothing could really bring her back to realities. The two stumbled along with her in the deep shadows and actually reached the woods that bordered the encampment.
Suddenly a dog barked. Somebody shouted to the animal and it subsided with a sullen growl. But in a moment another dog began to yap. The guards of the camp realized that something was going wrong, although as yet none of the dogs had scented the escaping children exactly.
“Oh, hurry! Hurry!” gasped Tess. “The dogs will chase us.”
“I am afraid they will,” admitted Sammy. “We got to hide our trail.”
“How’ll we do that, Sammy?” gasped Tess.
“Like the Indians do,” declared the boy. “We got to find a stream of water and wade in it.”
“But I’ve got shoes and stockings on. And Mrs. McCall says we can’t go wading without asking permission.”
“Crickey! how you going to run away from these Gypsies if you’ve got to mind what you’re told all the time?” asked Sammy desperately.
“But won’t the water be cold? And why wade in it, anyway?”
“So the dogs can’t follow our scent. They can’t follow scent through water. Come on. We got to find a brook or something.”
“There’s the canal,” ventured Tess, in an awed whisper.
“The canal, your granny!” exclaimed the exasperated boy. “That’s over your head, Tess Kenway.”
“Well! I don’t know of any other water. Oh! Hear those dogs bark.”
“Don’t you s’pose I’ve got ears?” snapped Sammy.
“They sound awful savage.”
“Yes. They’ve got some savage dogs,” admitted the boy.
“Will they bite us? Oh, Sammy! will they bite us?”
“Not if they don’t catch us,” replied the boy, staggering on, bearing the heavier end of Dot while Tess carried her sister’s feet.
They suddenly burst through a fringe of bushes upon the open road. There was just starlight enough to show them the way. The dogs were still barking vociferously back at the Gypsy camp. But there seemed to be no pursuit.
“Oh, my gracious! I’ve torn my frock,” gasped Tess. “Do wait, Sammy.”
The boy stopped. Indeed he had to, for his own breath had given out. The three fell right down on the grass beside the road, and Dot began to whimper.
“You stop her, Tess!” exclaimed Sammy. “You said you could. She will bring those Gypsies right here.”
“Dot! Dot!” whispered Tess, shaking the smaller girl. “Do you want to be a prisoner again? Keep still!”
“My – my knees are cold,” whined Dot.
“Je-ru-sa-lem!” gasped Sammy explosively. “Now she’s done it! We’re caught again.”
He jumped to his feet, but not quickly enough to escape the outstretched hand of the figure that had suddenly appeared beside them. A dark face bent over the trio of frightened children.
“He’s a Gyp!” cried Sammy. “We’re done for, Tess!”
CHAPTER XXV – IT MUST BE ALL RIGHT
As Mrs McCall told Ruth Kenway when she arrived with Luke and Cecile at the old Corner House, the other Kenway sister and Neale O’Neil had not started out on their hunt for the Gypsy encampment alone. Mr. Pinkney, hearing of the absence of the smaller girls, had volunteered to go with the searchers.
“Somehow, my wife feels that Sammy may be with Tess and Dot,” he explained to Neale and Agnes. “I never contradict her at such times. And perhaps he is. No knowing where that boy of mine is likely to turn up, anyway.”
“But you do not suppose for one instant, Mr. Pinkney, that Sammy has come and coaxed my sisters to run away?” cried Agnes from the tonneau, as the car started out through Willow Street.
“I am not so sure about that. You know, he got Dot to run away with him once,” chuckled Mr. Pinkney.
“This is nothing like that, I am sure!” declared Agnes.
“I am with you there, Aggie,” admitted Neale. “I guess this is a serious affair. The Gypsies are in it.”
Between the two, the boy and the girl told Mr. Pinkney all about the silver bracelet and the events connected with it. The man listened with appreciation.
“I don’t know, of course, anything about the fight between the two factions of Gypsies over what you call Queen Alma’s bracelet – ”
“If it doesn’t prove to be Sarah Turner’s bracelet,” interjected Agnes.
“Yes. That is possible. They may have just found it – those Gypsy women. And the story Costello, the junkman, told us might be a fake,” said Neale.
“However,” broke in Mr. Pinkney again, “there is a chance that the bracelet was given to Tess and Dot for a different purpose from any you have suggested.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Neale and Agnes in unison.
“It is a fact that some Gypsies do steal children. Now, don’t be startled! It isn’t commonly done. They are often accused without good reason. But Gypsies are always more or less mixed up with traveling show people. There are many small tent shows traveling about the country at this time of year.”
“Like Twomley & Sorber’s circus,” burst out Agnes.
“Smaller than that. Just one-ring affairs. And the shows are regular ‘fly-by-nights.’ Gypsies fraternize with them of course. And often children are trained in those shows to be acrobats who are doubtless picked up around the country – usually children who have no guardians. And the Gypsies sometimes pick up such.”
“Oh, but, Mr. Pinkney!” cried Agnes, “we are so careful of Tess and Dot. Usually, I mean. I don’t know what Ruth will say when she gets home to-night. It looks as though we had been very careless while she was gone.”
“I know what children have to go through in a circus,” said Neale soberly. “But why should the Gypsies have selected Tess and Dot?”
“Because, you tell me, they were playing circus, and doing stunts at the very time the Gypsy women sold them the basket.”
“Oh! So they were,” agreed Agnes. “Oh, Neale!”
“Crickey! It might be, I suppose. I never thought of that,” admitted the boy.
He was carefully running the car while this talk was going on. He soon drove past the Poole place and later stopped at a little house where the constable lived.
Mr. Ben Stryker was at home. It was not often that automobile parties called at his door. Usually they did not want to see Mr. Stryker, who was a stickler for the “rules of the road.”
“What’s the matter?” asked the constable, coming out to the car. “Want to pay me your fine, so as not to have to wait to see the Justice of the Peace?”
He said it jokingly. When he heard about the missing Kenway children and of the reason to fear Gypsies had something to do with it, he jumped into the car, taking Mr. Pinkney’s place in the front seat beside Neale.
“I’ve had my eye on Big Jim Costello ever since he has been back here,” Stryker declared. “I sent him away to jail once. He is a bad one. And if he is mixed up in any kidnapping, I’ll put him into the penitentiary for a long term.”
“But of course we would not want to make them trouble if the children went to the camp alone,” ventured Agnes. “You know, they might have been hunting for the two women who sold them the basket.”
“Those Gypsies know what to do in such a case. They know where I live, and they should have brought the two little girls to me. I certainly have it in for Big Jim.”
But as we have seen, when the party arrived at the spot where the Gypsies had been encamped, not a trace of them was left. That is, no trace that pointed to the time or the direction of their departure.
“Maybe these Gypsies did not have a thing to do with the absence of Tess and Dot,” whispered Agnes.
“And maybe they had everything to do with it,” declared Neale, aloud. “Looks to me as though they had turned the trick and escaped.”
“And in those motor-vans they can cover a deal of ground,” suggested Mr. Pinkney.
Agnes broke down at this point and wept. The constable had got out and with the aid of his pocket lamp searched the vicinity. He saw plainly where the vans had turned into the dusty road and the direction they had taken.
“The best we can do is to follow them,” he advised. “If I can catch them inside the county I’ll be able to handle them. And if they go into the next county I’ll get help. Well search their vans, no matter where we catch them. All ready?”
The party went on. To catch the moving Gypsies was no easy matter. Frequently Mr. Stryker got down to look at the tracks. This was at every cross road.
Fortunately the wheels of one of the Gypsy vans had a peculiar tread. It was easy to see the marks of these wheels in the dust. Therefore, although the pursuit was slow, they managed to be sure they were going right.
From eleven o’clock until three in the morning the motor-car was driven over the circuitous route the nomad procession had taken earlier in the night. Then they came to the new encampment.
Their approach was announced by the barking of the mongrel dogs that guarded the camp. Half the tribe seemed to be awake when the car slowed down and stopped on the roadway. Mr. Stryker got out and shouted for Big Jim.
“Come out here!” said the constable threateningly. “I know you are here, and I want to talk with you, Jim Costello.”
“Well, whose chicken roost has been raided now?” demanded Big Jim, approaching with his smile and his impudence both in evidence.
“No chicken thievery,” snapped Stryker, flashing his electric light into the big Gypsy’s face. “Where are those kids?”
“What kids? I got my own – and there’s a raft of them. I’ll give you a couple if you want.”
Big Jim seemed perfectly calm and the other Gypsies were like him. They routed out every family in the camp. The constable and Neale searched the tents and the vans. No trace of Tess and Dot was to be found.
“Everything you lay to the poor Gypsy,” said Big Jim complainingly. “Now it is not chickens – it is kids. Bah!”
He slouched away. Stryker called after him:
“Never mind, Jim. We’ll get you yet! You watch your step.”
He came back to the Kenway car shaking his head. “I guess they have not been here. I’ll come back to-morrow when the Gypsies don’t expect me and look again if your little sisters do not turn up elsewhere. What shall we do now?”
Agnes was weeping so that she could not speak. Neale shook his head gloomily. Mr. Pinkney sighed.
“Well,” the latter said, “we might as well start for home. No good staying here.”
“I’ll get you to Milton in much shorter time than it took to get here,” said the constable. “Keep right ahead, Mr. O’Neil. We’ll take the first turn to the right and run on till we come to Hampton Mills. It’s pretty near a straight road from there to Milton. And I can get a ride from the Mills to my place with a fellow I know who passes my house every morning.”
Neale started the car and they left the buzzing camp behind them. They had no idea that the moment the sound of the car died away the Gypsies leaped to action, packed their goods and chattels again, and the tribe started swiftly for the State line. Big Jim did not mean to be caught if he could help it by Constable Stryker, who knew his record.
The Corner House car whirred over the rather good roads to Hampton Mills and there the constable parted from them. He promised to report any news he might get of the absent children, and they were to send him word if Tess and Dot were found.
The car rounded the pond where Sammy had had his adventure at the ice-house and had ruined his knickerbockers. It was a straight road from that point to Milton. Going up the hill beside the pond in the gray light of dawn, they saw ahead of them a man laboring on in the middle of the road with a child upon his shoulders, while two other small figures walked beside him, clinging to his coat.
“There’s somebody else moving,” said Mr. Pinkney to Agnes. “What do you know about little children being abroad at this time of the morning?”
“Shall we give them a lift?” asked Neale. “Only I don’t want to stop on this hill.”
But he did. He stopped in another minute because Agnes uttered a piercing scream.
“Oh, Tessie! Oh, Dot! It’s them! It’s the children!”
“Great Moses!” ejaculated Mr. Pinkney, forced likewise into excitement, “is that Sammy Pinkney?”
The man carrying Dot turned quickly. Tess and Sammy both uttered eager yelps of recognition. Dot bobbed sleepily above the head of the man who carried her pickaback.
“Oh, Agnes! isn’t this my day for wearing that bracelet? Say, isn’t it?” she demanded.
The dark man came forward, speaking very politely and swiftly.
“It is the honest Kenway – yes? You remember Costello? I am he. I find your sisters with the bad Gypsies – yes. Then you will give me Queen Alma’s bracelet – the great heirloom of our family? I am friend – I bring children back for you. You give me bracelet?”
Tess and Dot were tumbled into their sister’s arms. Mr. Pinkney jumped out of the car and grabbed Sammy before he could run.
Costello, the junkman, repeated his request over and over while Agnes was greeting the two little girls as they deserved to be greeted. Finally he made some impression upon her mind.
“Oh, dear me!” Agnes cried in exasperation, “how can I give it you? I don’t know where it is. It’s been stolen.”
“Stolen? That Beeg Jeem!” Again Costello exploded in his native tongue.
Tess nestled close to Agnes. She lifted her lips and whispered in her sister’s ear:
“Don’t tell him. He’s a Gypsy, too, though I guess he is a good one. I have got that bracelet inside my dress. It’s safe.”
They did not tell Costello, the junkman, that at this time. In fact, it was some months before Mr. Howbridge, by direction of the Court, gave Queen Alma’s bracelet into the hands of Miguel Costello, who really proved in the end that he had the better right to the bracelet that undoubtedly had once belonged to the Queen of the Spanish Gypsies.
It had not been merely by chance that the young Gypsy woman who had sold the green and yellow basket to Tess and Dot had dropped that ornament into the basket. She had worn the bracelet, for she was Big Jim’s daughter.
Without doubt it was the intention of the Gypsies to engage the little girls’ interest through this bracelet and get their confidence, to bring about the very situation which they finally consummated. One of the women confessed in court that they could sell Tess and Dot for acrobats. Or they thought they could.
The appearance of Miguel Costello in Milton, claiming the rightful ownership of the silver bracelet, made the matter unexpectedly difficult for Big Jim and his clan. Indeed, the Kenways had much to thank Miguel Costello for.
However, these mysteries were explained long after this particular morning on which the children were recovered. No such home-coming had ever been imagined, and the old Corner House and vicinity staged a celebration that will long be remembered.
Luke Shepard had been put to bed soon after his arrival. But he would not be content until he got up again and came downstairs in his bathrobe to greet the returned wanderers.
Agnes just threw herself into Ruth’s arms when she first saw her elder sister, crying:
“Oh! don’t you dare ever go away again, Ruth Kenway, without taking the rest of us with you. We’re not fit to be left alone.”
“I am afraid some day, Agnes, you will have to get along without me,” said Ruth placidly, but smiling into Luke’s eyes as she said it. “You know, we are growing up.”
“Aggie isn’t ever going to grow up,” grumbled Neale. “She is just a kid.”
“Oh, is that so, Mr. Smartie?” cried Agnes, suddenly drying her eyes. “I’d have you know I am just as much grown up as you are.”
“Oh, dear, me, I’m so sleepy,” moaned Dot. “I – I didn’t sleep very well at all last night.”
“Goodness! I should think Sammy and I ought to be the ones to be sleepy. We didn’t have any chance at all!” Tess exclaimed.
As for Sammy, he was taken home by an apparently very stern father to meet a wildly grateful mother. Mrs. Pinkney drew the sting from all verbal punishment Mr. Pinkney might have given his son.
“And the dear boy! I knew he had not forgotten us when I found he had taken that picture with him. Did you, Sammy?”
“Did I what, Mom?” asked Sammy, his mouth comfortably filled with cake.
“That picture. You know, the one we all had taken down at Pleasant Cove that time. The one of your father and you and me that you kept on your bureau. When I saw that you had taken that with you to remember us by – ”
“Oh, crickey, Mom! Buster, the bull pup, ate that old picture up a month ago,” said the nonsentimental Sammy.