“I don't know to this hour how I did it,” exclaimed the toll-woman, fanning herself, “nor when I thought of it. But the first thing I felt sure of I had that door slammed to, and the key turned in the padlock, and them three robbers was ketched like mice in a trap, instead of it's bein' me!”
Robert Day gave a chuckle of satisfaction, but aunt Corinne braced herself against the door-frame and gazed upon the magic cave with still wider eyes.
“It ain't fit to tell,” resumed the toll-woman, “what awful language them men used; and they kicked the door and the boards until I thought break through they would if they had to heave the whole weight, of dirt and sod out of the top. Then I heard somebody comin' along the 'pike, and for a minute I felt real discouraged; for, thinks I, if there's more engaged to help them, what's a poor body to do?
“But 'twas a couple of stock-men, riding home, and they stopped at the gate, and I run through the open house to tell my story, and it didn't take long for them with pistols in their pockets and big black whips loaded with lead in the handles, to get the fellows out and tie 'em up firm. I hunted all the new rope in the house, and they took the firearms away from the robbers, and drove 'em off to jail, and the robbers turned out to be three of the most desp'rate characters in the State, and they're in prison now for a long term of years.”
“What did you do the rest of the night?” inquired Grandma Padgett.
“O, I locked everything tight again, and laid down till daylight,” replied the toll-woman, with somewhat boastful indifference. “Folks haven't got done talkin' yet about that little jail in my back yard,” she added, laughing. “They came from miles around to look into it and see where the men pretty nigh kicked the boards loose.”
This narrative was turned over and over by the children after they resumed their journey, and the toll-woman and her cave had faded out in distance. If they saw a deserted cabin among the hollows of the woods, it became the meeting place of robbers. Now that aunt Corinne's nephew turned his mind to the subject, he began to think the whole expedition out West would be a failure--an experience not worth alluding to in future times--unless the family were well robbed on the way. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, in the great overland colony, would have Indians to shudder at, a desert and mountains to cross, besides the tremendous Mississippi River. Robert would hate to meet Jonathan in coming days--and he had a boy's faith that he should be constantly repassing old acquaintances in this world--and have no peril to put in the balance against Jonathan's adventures. Of course he wanted to come out on the right side of the peril, it does not tell well otherwise.