Page:Bacheller--D'ri and I.djvu/68

D'RI AND I ing horse were hardly out of hearing when we were all in the road. My mother carried the baby, and my father his sword and rifle and one of the little ones. I took the three older children and set them on the feather bed that was bound to the back of the cow. They clung to the bed-cord, their hair flying, as the old cow ran to keep up with us, for at first we were all running. In a moment we could hear the voices of people coming behind. One of the women was weeping loudly as she ran. At the first cross-road we saw Arv Law and his family coming, in as great a hurry as we, Arv had a great pike-pole in his hand. Its upper end rose twenty feet above his head.

"What ye goin' t' dew with thet?" my father asked him.

"Goin' t' run it through the fust Injun I see," said he. "I 've broke the lock o' my gun."

There was a crowd at Jerusalem Four Corners when we got there. Every moment some family was arriving in a panic—the men, like my father, with guns and babies and baskets. The women, with the young, took refuge at once in the tavern, while the men surrounded