CHAPTER IV.--BURGLARS.
Judy was sitting up in bed, the moon lighting her enough for Molly tosee a wild, startled look on her face.
"Molly, Molly, I hear something!"
"You hear me making more noise than I have any business to at this timeo' night. I have been having a good old talk with muddy."
"Oh, no, it wasn't that. I knew you were downstairs. I haven't beentruly asleep. I was 'possuming.' It is out by the chicken yard, and I amso afraid it is burglars after the pullets Aunt Mary told me she wassaving for chicken salad for the wedding supper. Lewis was to kill themto-morrow."
Judy had entered so intensely into the Browns' household affairs thatMolly herself was no more interested in the festive preparations thanwas her guest. Molly drew cautiously to the window and peeped out; shebeckoned Judy, and the excited girls saw a sight to freeze the marrow intheir chicken-salad-loving bones: the thief had a wheelbarrow, and somegreat gunny sacks over his arm, and was in the act of boldly opening thechicken-yard gate.
"If we call he will get away, and how else can we let the boys know? Thewretch may have those sacks full of chickens even now," moaned Molly.
There was a three-room cottage or "office," as they called it, on theside of the house next the garden where all of the young men slept insummer. The girls feared that, in trying to let them know of theburglar, if they went out of the front door they would startle Mrs.Brown. And if they should try to go out the back door, in getting to thecottage they would have to run across a broad streak of moonlight inplain view of the thief, and thus give him ample time to get away withhis booty before they could arouse the boys.
"Why shouldn't we take the matter in our own hands and make him drop hissacks and run?" said Molly. "I am not afraid, are you?"
"Me afraid? Bless your soul, no. I am only afraid he will get off withthe chickens," replied the intrepid Judy. "I have my little revolver inthe tray of my trunk, the one papa gave me when we were camping inArizona. I can load it in a jiffy. But what weapon will you take?"
"I don't see anything but my tennis racket. I'll take that and someballs, too, in case I have to hit at long range. There is really nodanger for us, as a chicken thief has never been known to go armed withanything more dangerous than a bag."
They slipped on their raincoats, as they were darker than their kimonos,and crept softly down the back stairs, out on the back porch, and downthe steps into the yard, keeping close in the shadow of the house untilthey came to an althea hedge. Skirting this, still in the shadow, theygot near enough to the chicken-yard gate to have a good look at theburglar. That burly ruffian, instead of bagging the pullets that werepeacefully roosting in a dog-wood tree, totally unconscious that theywere sleeping the last sleep of the condemned, had taken a spade fromhis wheelbarrow, carefully spread out his gunny sacks and was diggingwith great care around the holly-hocks, digging so deep and so far fromthe roots that he soon got up a great sod without injuring the plants.This he placed with great care in the barrow, and as he stepped into thebroad moonlight the girls recognized Kent. They clutched each other andwere silent, except for a little choking noise from Judy which mighteasily have come from one of the condemned, having premonitory dreams ofthe morrow.
Kent worked on until his wheelbarrow was full of the lovely flowers.Then he stuck in the spade and trundled it away toward the garden, thegirls silently following, still keeping as well in the shadow as waspossible, and holding tight to their weapons, although they no longerhad any use for them. On reaching the garden, they realized that Kentmust have been working many hours. He had already moved dozens of thestately plants, and they now stood in the garden where they belonged, nodoubt glad of the transplanting from their former homely surroundings.So deeply and well had Kent dug that they were uninjured by the move,and he completed the job by dousing them plentifully with water from agreat tub that he had filled at the cistern.
The effect was wonderful, as Judy had known that it would be, but hersurprise and pleasure that Kent should be so anxious to gratify herevery wish was great. She felt her cheeks glowing with excitement andher heart pit-a-patting as it would not have done, even had Kent provedto be the chicken thief they had imagined him to be.
That young man finished his job, cleaned his spade, shook out the gunnysacks, raked the debris from the walk, and then, giving a tired yawn andstretching himself until he looked even taller than the six feet one hemeasured in his stocking feet, he said out loud in a perfectlyconversational tone:
"Now, Miss Judy, you may have the master mind that can imagine thingsand see beforehand how they are going to look, but I'll have you know ittakes work to create and drudgery to accomplish; and only by the sweatof the brow can we 'give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.'You and Molly can step out of the bushes and view the landscape."
"Oh, Kent, did you know we were there all the time?"
"Certainly, little Sister, from the time Miss Judy went like a chickenwith the gapes, I have known you were with me; but you seemed to behaving such a good time I hated to break it up. You might have steppedin and helped a fellow, though."
"Oh, we were doing the head work," retaliated Judy.
Kent laughed, and then he had to tease them about their adventure andtheir weapons, especially Molly's racket and balls.
"We had better crawl into the hay now, however. It is getting mightylate at night, or, rather, mighty early in the morning, and where willour beauty be if we don't get to sleep? I'll see you to the back door."
"You needn't," said Molly. "You must be dead tired, and here is theoffice door open for you. There is no use in your coming any farther. Wecan slip around the front way and be in the house in no time."
"Well, good morning. I am dead tired, and such brave ladies as you areneed no escort. Better luck to you next time you go burglar hunting."
It was a wonderful night, or rather morning, as Kent had indicated. Themoon hung low on the horizon ready for bed, as an example to all up-lateyoung ladies. The stars, with their rival retiring, were doing theirbest to get in a little shine before daylight. Everything was verystill. The tree frogs and crickets and Katy-dids had suddenly ceasedtheir incessant noise. There was a feel in the air that meant dawn.
What was it that greeted the ears of the tired Kent? Old tennis playerthat he was, it sounded to him like the twang of a racket in the handsof a determined server who means to drive a ball that the championhimself could not return. Then came the dull thud of the ball, a groan,a scream; then the sharp crack of a pistol, more screams from inside thehouse; lights, doors opening, all the household awake, and Paul and Johnand Crit, who had spent the night at Chatsworth, tumbling out of theoffice almost before Kent could get around the house. There he foundJudy fallen in a little heap on the grass, and Molly carefully andcoolly aiming a second tennis ball, this time at a real burglar.
The man climbing from the upper gallery of the house had been surprisedby the girls as they came from the garden. At Molly's first ball he haddropped to the ground, and Judy had caught him on the fly, as it were.The second tennis ball got him square on the jaw, but he was alreadydown and out. Kent declared afterward, when the smoke of battle hadcleared away, that it was not like Molly to hit a fellow when he wasdown. She had always been a good sport until now.
Mrs. Woodsmall, it seems, had talked too much about the weight ofMildred's silver, and had dwelt too long on the recklessness of theBrowns in having all of those fine things in the little hall room withthe window opening on the upper gallery, where anybody with anylimberness could climb up that twisted wisteria vine and get away withanything he had a mind to. A tramp, hanging around the postofficewindow, had overheard her and, having more limberness than any othercommodity, had endeavored to help himself.
Dr. John came with first aid to the injured, and found the man morescared than hurt. It was hard to tell which ball had done most damage;certainly Molly's was the more effective in appearance. Her first shehad served straight at his nose, so disfiguring that m
ember that therogues' gallery officials would have had difficulty in identifying him.The second found his jaw and gave him so much pain that John feared afracture. Judy's little pistol had done good work. A flesh wound on thearm was the verdict for her.
The ground was strewn with silver in every kind of fancy novelty that abride is supposed by her dear friends to need--or why else do they givethem to her?
Then Crittenden Rutledge opened his mouth and spoke. As usual when hedid such a thing it was worth getting up before dawn to hear him.
"Don't you think, Mildred, darling, we might give the poor fellow threeor four cheese scoops and several butter knives and a card tray or two?A young couple could easily make out for a while with one of each, andif he will promise to go back to Indiana and stay---- You did come fromIndiana, didn't you?" The man gave a grin and nodded. "Well, if youpromise to go back and never put your foot in Kentucky again, I'll gowrap up Aunt Clay's vases for you."
Mrs. Brown, thankful that her brood was safe and no more damage done thepoor, wicked tramp than a sore shoulder, a swollen nose and a fracturedjaw, sent them all to bed with instructions to sleep late, and toldMolly and Judy to stay in bed for breakfast. The burglar was put in thesmokehouse for safekeeping until sun-up, when John and Paul expected totake him to Louisville, swear out a warrant against him and land him injail. When the time came, however, to transfer their prisoner fromsmokehouse to jail, they found the door open, the man gone and a fineold ham missing.
"An' they ain't a single pusson in the whole er Indianny what knows howter cook a ham, either," bewailed Aunt Mary.
"To think the ungrateful wretch went off without Aunt Clay's vases,"muttered Crittenden Rutledge.