Stage-coach and Tavern Days

by Alice Morse Earle

On that bitter night, a man—none other than our black-browed highwayman—rode clattering up to the toll-gate two miles below the town, and called out to open the gate; when the wife of the toll-keeper appeared to do that duty he jumped from his horse, rushed in toward the house, demanding in a terrible voice all the money in the toll till and chest. The woman was terrified at this demand, yet not so scared but she could at his first approach throw the fat bag with all the accumulation of toll money under the porch, and do it unseen by the highwayman; and she at once asserted tearfully, with the alacritous mendacity born of sharp terror (the account says with great earnestness and womanish simplicity), that her husband had gone to the agent in town with all the month’s collections, leaving her but a few shillings for change, which she displayed in the gate-drawer for proof. Disgusted but credulous, the villain rode off with loud oaths, baffled in the simplest fashion by Dame Trusty No. 1.

Sign-board of
Williams Tavern.

He then went to the tavern of John Pye, the wealthy landlord, on the West Troy road. He found the house locked peacefully for the night, but forced a window and entered. In the barroom and kitchen, the fire was carefully covered to keep till morning. Lighting his dark lantern with the coals, he then poured water on both fires and extinguished them, and I have puzzled long in my mind wondering why he dallied, risking detection by doing this. He then went to the room where Pye and his wife were peacefully reposing, and rudely awakened them. Mrs. Pye, promptly assuming the rôle she carried throughout, jumped from her bed and asked him what he wished. He answered, the chap-book says, “silently,” “I deal with your husband, Madam, not with you”—and a more fatuous mistake never issued from lips of highwayman. To Pye he then said, “Your money or your life.” Pye, heavy with sleep—and natural stupidity—seemed to fancy some trick was being played on him in mischief, and to the highwayman’s demand for money answered, half alarmed, half peevish, “It’s damned little money you’ll get out of me, my lad, as the thing is but indifferently plenty with me.” But he was roused at last by the fierceness of threats and gestures, and whimpered that his money was below; and the two proceeded downstairs to the taproom by the light of the robber’s lantern. The moment they left the room, Mrs. Pye ran softly to a bedroom where slept two sojourners at the inn, wakened them with hurried words of the robber’s visit and her beloved Pye’s danger, and made appeals for help; and as an emphatic wakener pulled them out of bed upon the floor. Then she ran swiftly back to bed.

In the meantime the terrified Pye recalled that his wife had the keys of the taproom till which held his money, and he and the highwayman returned to her bedroom and demanded them from her. “I’ll give the keys to thee nor no man else,” she stoutly answered. “Thee must, I tell thee,” whined Pye, “or worse may happen.” “Pye, I’ll not give up my keys,” still she cried, and seized a loaded gun by the bedside; for fierce answer the highwayman fired his pistol at Pye. With lamentable outcries Pye called out he was a dead man, and his arm fell to his side. His wife thrust the gun in his hands, shouting, “Fire, Pye, fire! he’s feeling for another pistol.” “I cannot,” he quavered out, “I cannot hold the gun.” She pushed it into his hands, held up his arm, aimed for him, and between them they pulled the trigger. In a second all was utter darkness and stillness: they had hit the highwayman. He pitched forward, fell on his lantern, put it out, and lay as one dead. Here was a situation for a good, thrifty, staid Albany vrouw, a dying husband on one side, a dead highwayman on the other, all in utter darkness. She ran for coals to the barroom and kitchen fires. Both were wet and black. She had no tinder box, coals must be brought from a neighbor’s. She suddenly bethought of an unusual fire that had been lighted in the parlor the previous evening for customers, where still might be a live coal. This was her good fortune, and with lighted candle she proceeded to the scene of attack. Pye lay in a swoon on the bed, but by this time the highwayman had vanished; and safe and untouched under the bed were five hundred dollars in gold and five hundred more in bills, which, it is plain, Pye himself had wholly forgotten in his fright.

In the meantime where were the two “knights of the bedchamber,” as the chap-book calls them? Far more silently than the robber they feared had they slid downstairs, and away from the tavern into hiding, until the highwayman rode past them.

They then tracked him by trails of blood, and soon saw him dismounted and rolling in the snow as if to quench the flow of blood. Though they knew he was terribly wounded and they were two to one, they stole past him at a safe distance in silence to the protection of the town, where they raised the cry of “A robber! Watch! Murder! Help! A band of highwaymen! Pye is dead!” Oh, how bravely they bawled and shouted! and soon a hue and cry was started from end to end of Albany town.

With an extraordinary lack of shrewdness which seemed to characterize the whole of this episode of violence, and which proved Johnson no trained “swift-nick,” as Charles II. called highwaymen, instead of making off to some of the smaller towns or into the country, he rode back to Albany; and soon the night-capped heads thrust from the little Dutch windows, and terrified men leaning out over the Dutch doors, and the few amazed groups in the streets saw a fleet horseman, hatless, with bloody handkerchief bound around his head, come galloping and thundering through Albany, down one street, then back again to the river. When he reached the quay, the horse fearlessly sprang without a moment’s trembling a terrible leap, eight feet perpendicular, twenty feet lateral, out on the ice. All screamed out that horse and rider would go through the ice and perish. But the ice was strong, and soon horse and rider were out of sight; but mounted men were now following the distant sound of hoofs, and when the outlaw reached what he thought was the opposite shore, but what was really a marshy island, one bold pursuer rode up after him. The robber turned, fired at him at random, and the Albany brave fled in dismay back to his discreet neighbors.

But honor and courage was now appearing across the ice in the figure of Captain Winne, the pennypost, who was heard to mutter excitedly in his semi-Dutch dialect: “Mine Cott! vat leeps das horse has mate! vull dwenty feet! Dunder and bliksem! he’s der tuyfel for rooning!” Winne was an old Indian fighter, and soon he boldly grappled the highwayman, who drew a dagger on him. Winne knocked it from his hand. The highwayman grappled with him, wrenched away his club, and hit the pennypost a blow on his mouth which loosened all his front teeth (which, the chap-book says, “Winne afterwards took out at his leisure”). Winne then dallied no longer; he pulled down the handkerchief from the robber’s forehead, twisted it around his neck, and choked him. In the morning twilight the great band of cautious Albanians gravely advanced, bound the highwayman securely, and carried him in triumph back to jail. He was placed in heavy irons, when he said, “Iron me as you will, you can hold me but a short time.” All thought he meant to attempt an escape, but he spoke with fuller meaning; he felt himself mortally wounded. They put an iron belt around his waist and fastened it by a heavy chain to a staple in the floor. They placed great rings around his ankles, chained them to the floor, and then chained ankle-bands and belt together. They would have put an iron collar and chain on him also, but he said, “Gentlemen! have some mercy!” and a horrible wound at the base of the brain made them desist.