BEFORE WE MOVED out we made a preliminary visit to the farm, and both Aggie and I were most favorably impressed. It had certain deficiencies, as I have noted, but it lay on a slope, with wooded mountains behind it, and below in the valley were the summer estates of several wealthy families.
Nevertheless, that night was to see the real beginning of our troubles. It was a calm and quiet evening, and we had no premonition whatever as, through the darkness, we drove in Tish’s car down the hill and onto the main road. I remember that Tish was commenting on the simplicity and honesty of the rural districts.
“The very air,” she said, “smells of peace. Who could imagine violence here, or trickery?”
And then it happened. We had just passed the driveway into one of the summer estates, when suddenly and without warning a man stepped into the road and waved a red lantern.
We had been moving rapidly, and as Tish suddenly applied the brakes I was thrown forward against the windshield with considerable force. When I recovered, Aggie was picking herself off the floor of the car, and as the man approached us she gave a wild shriek.
“He’s a bandit, Tish!” she gasped. “He’s got a gun!”
We could now observe him distinctly, and a more dreadful figure I have never seen. He wore a handkerchief tied over his face, and as he came striding toward us he looked enormous in that light. But his first words surprised us.
“You little fool!” he said. “Did you think you’d got away with it?”
Tish had recovered her speech by that time, and she answered him indignantly.
“I object to your language,” she said coldly. “As to getting away with anything—Give him my purse, Lizzie. It has two dollars and sixty-five cents in it. If that is the value he places on his immortal soul—”
To my surprise, however, he did not take the purse. Instead, he merely lifted the lantern and inspected us, and then, to our horror, he began to laugh. It took him some time to stop, and when he spoke it was in a choked voice.
“My apologies, ladies,” he said. “You see, I thought—But never mind what I thought. Just drive on and forget it.”
“And leave you to attack other innocent women?” Tish demanded.
“Oh, come, come,” he said. “I haven’t attacked you, have I? You’ve still got your two dollars and sixty-five cents. You’ve still got your—er—honor.” Here he paused and inspected the car, which is far from new. “You’ve still got your automobile too. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
Tish, however, was not satisfied. He had quite a cultivated voice, and was evidently far above the usual gangster in type.
“Something quite dreadful must have driven you to the highway,” she said. “Surely you have people, a family, perhaps even a mother. What would she say, could she see you now?”
This seemed to touch him, for he was silent for a moment.
Then he said:
“I am sorry, ladies, but I cannot discuss such subjects. They are too sacred. When I think of my home—” He seemed suddenly overcome with emotion. “Drive on and forget me,” he said huskily. “If anyone had told me six months ago that I would be standing in this road with a gun in my hand—But enough of that,” he said, his voice growing hard. “Tell me,” he went on, “have any of you seen a car something like this tonight, containing a redheaded girl who looks like a forest fire and has a disposition like a wildcat?”
We had not, and said so. Whereupon he gave what sounded like a groan, and seemed to take a tighter grip on his revolver.
“It’s as well,” he said ominously. “It’s as well, and then some. Because if I ever lay my hands on that imp of Satan I shall make her stand for a week.”
“Stand!” Aggie repeated.
“Stand,” he said firmly. “She’ll stand because she won’t want to sit. I’m fed up. I’m fed up so full that I’m practically gorged. If she comes here tonight, she’ll be sorry. That’s all.”
We all felt most uneasy, and Tish inquired if he would dare to mistreat a young and innocent girl in that manner. At this, however, he gave a hollow laugh.
“Young and innocent!” he said bitterly. “Listen to me. She may be young, all right, but she’s been raising hell ever since she wore diapers. If she thinks she can get away with this, she’s mistaken her man. That’s all.” But he saw our faces at that moment, and added: “Don’t worry; I shan’t kill her. That would be too easy! All right, ladies. Just move along and forget you saw me.”
He then stepped back into the bushes, and Tish started the car again. Aggie was sneezing with excitement, and I must say that even Tish seemed slightly upset. In fact, we had gone only half a mile or so when she suddenly stopped the car.
“We must go back,” she said in a determined voice. “He dislikes that girl intensely, and I don’t believe he is a bandit. He is probably a discarded lover, and as such is dangerous. We must not leave her to her fate, whatever it may be.”
I remember begging her not to do anything so rash, and Aggie flatly refused to leave the car. However, anyone who knows Tish Carberry and her hatred of wrong and injustice will know that nothing moved her. She was already on her way, and as I was unwilling to leave her to her fate I followed her. The last sound I heard was our poor Aggie sneezing in the car.
It was indeed a strange journey, for soon Tish left the road and took to the fields. In the darkness it was quite impossible to see, and at least twice I was caught in barbed wire, and once I stepped into a mud hole and lost a shoe, with no chance of retrieving it.
At last, however, we were behind the embankment where we had been held up, and could plainly see the bandit, or whatever he was, lurking beside the road. He had dropped the mask and was smoking a cigarette, but he was evidently still in a bad humor, for once he lighted a match and looked at his watch, and we could hear him swearing in a most unseemly manner.
We waited there for two hours.
It was certainly a dreadful time. I was cramped, the air was cold, and to add to our anxiety, every now and then a car would come along and he would flag it. But nothing really occurred until midnight, when a car came along very swiftly, and he seemed to know it at once.
I felt Tish brace herself beside me as he waved the lantern, and my heart sank as the car stopped.
“What’s the matter?” called a clear girlish voice.
“Get out of that car,” he said in a most surly manner. “What the hell do you mean by stealing it and running away? Get out, I tell you!”
And then followed a most surprising situation, for the girl merely sat still.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” she said in a tired voice. “It’s you again, is it? Get out of my way or I’ll run over you.”
She actually started the engine, and with a furious step he was beside her. In the excitement the handkerchief fell off his face, but he did not seem to notice it.
“Listen,” he said; “you’re a pestiferous little idiot, and for two cents I’d yank you out of that car and shake some sense into you. Where have you been?”
“That’s my business,” she said angrily. “And if you think I’m afraid of you, you can think again. You and your wooden gun!”
In a second she had stepped on the gas and the car was moving. That, however, was apparently more than he could bear, for at once two shots rang out and the car ran straight into the ditch and stopped.
It was so horrible that I could not even scream, and indeed it was some days later before we knew that one of the bullets had gone through Tish’s hat from front to back.
As it was, there was a dreadful silence, and we expected to find the poor child slumped in her seat. But to our surprise she began to crawl out of the car.
“You would think of that,” she said bitterly. “And they’re your tires. Don’t ask me to pay for them.”
“All right,” he said. “You asked for it and you got it. Now you can walk home and like it.”
Well, I must say we were puzzled; especially as all he did after that was to turn off the road and disappear, leaving her standing there. When Tish and I reached her, however, she seemed quite composed. She got out a cigarette and lit it, and then coolly looked us over.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, “but there is no corpse. That was just a friend of mine. He gets steamed up like that now and then.”
“Then he is a danger to the community and should be locked up,” said Tish grimly.
For some reason that seemed to amuse her; but after a moment she looked toward the car in the ditch and scowled.
“I’ll get him for that,” she said in an ominous tone. “He may think he has his troubles, but he hasn’t started yet.”
With that she left us abruptly, and the last we saw the car was still in the ditch and she was walking up the road, alone.
All in all, it was most bewildering, and Tish spoke only once.
“It may be,” she said, “that this is the love-making of a strange and new generation. I believe they have changed greatly from my mother’s day. But if it is not—”
That was indeed a portentous and most unhappy night, for, on reaching the car, our dear Aggie was not in it, and a peculiar and overwhelming odor pervaded the entire atmosphere. It was not for some time that we located her among some bushes, and then she stated that a kitten had jumped into the car and she had petted it, with dire results.
We had some difficulty in getting her out of her retreat, for she had abandoned most of her clothing; but at last we did so, and it was on our way into town, with Aggie clad largely in a motor rug, that I voiced my first uncertainty as to the country as a place of residence.
“I can stand a great deal, Tish,” I said, “but I prefer my bandits in the city, where there are policemen, and my skunks made into furs. If this is a peaceful country evening, I’m not strong enough for any more.”
I believe even our dear Tish was shaken for the moment, especially when the man at the garage merely took one sniff and then refused to let the car inside the place. But he offered to turn a hose inside it as it stood outside the garage and let the water run the rest of the night, and at last we went home.
I must admit, however, that for some time after, we could see people on the sidewalks turn and sniff as we passed them in the street; and for several weeks dogs, of which Aggie is fond, would approach her in friendly fashion and then turn and run like all-possessed.