“All right; just pick up a ball club in the hall; there are lots of snakes in the woods.”
Both young men picked up baseball bats, and started joyously on their tramp through the woods.
It was still and dark through the woods; no sunlight pierced through the heavy lowering clouds overhead, and the thick, intertwined branches, almost keeping out the daylight, made it seem as if it were nearly night.
By the time the carriage containing Gladys and Dorothy had arrived near Aunt Sarah’s cabin it was raining heavily. The cabin was a little distance off the road.
“We’re here, Miss Gladys; but it’s rainin’ powerful bad,” said the faithful James, stopping the horses and turning around to talk to the two girls through an opening behind his coachman’s seat. “It’s rainin’ too bad fo’ you to walk in it; yo’ll spile dem nice close of yourn. Yo’ lem me take de basket; I’ll tell Aunt Sarah you’se heah but can’t come out.”
“All right, James, take the basket; will the horses stand without hitching?”
“I won’t promise they’ll stand, Miss Gladys; dey may lie down. Dey shorly am de tiridist horses I ever seen.” And James, laughing at his joke, took the basket and soon disappeared down a little lane at the end of which was Aunt Sarah’s cabin.
An instant later, to her horror, Gladys saw a negro with an evil, vicious face, come out of the woods on the other side of the road. She instinctively knew him to be that desperate Lambo. Gladys and Dorothy screamed in terror as he approached the carriage, realizing they were in danger. Lambo gave them little more than a passing glance but quickly jumped on the box, and seizing the reins, lashed the horses savagely. A moment later shouts were heard. Lambo turned around quickly, took a pistol from his pocket, discharged it, and whipped up his horses to a run. He then turned around, and with the smoking pistol in his hand said: “I know you; you’re the Bollup girls. I’ve a score to settle with your father and I can see my way to do it. If you’re quiet I’ll let you out further down; but if you’re not I’ll shoot you as I have just shot your brother.”
The two girls clasped each other in terror. They were too frightened to speak. Terror-stricken, they looked with blanched faces at the ugly, horrible creature as he spoke. A dread that their brother Tom had been shot possessed them, and they knew not what terrible treatment they might receive at the hands of the desperate negro.