The Gipsy Caravan
“Hello, fellows. Look at this. Well, of all the——”
The boys looked up at Bob’s startled exclamation, and for a moment everything else was forgotten, while they stared with wide-open eyes at the grotesque procession that came into view.
Down the road crawled a little caravan of ten or a dozen ramshackle wagons, drawn by tired-looking horses. At their heads or alongside walked a number of men of various ages, dressed in all sorts of nondescript costumes. Their swarthy faces and dark eyes, together with the large earrings that they wore, gave them a distinctly piratical appearance, and to the boys they looked as though they might have been taken bodily from one of the old romances of the Spanish Main. They might easily have been the blood brothers of the rascals who sang in thundering chorus:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,
Sing heigho, and a bottle of rum.”
But, alas! there were no murderous pistols thrust in their belts or cutlasses held between their teeth to complete the illusion, and the picturesque crowd resolved itself into a troop of gipsies going into camp.
The place they had pitched upon for their temporary stay was about three miles distant from the boys’ camp and had been chosen with a keen eye to its advantages. Either through a scout sent ahead or simply by that marvelous sixth sense so highly developed in wandering peoples, they had elected to stop at a little ravine through which ran a brook of sparkling water and surrounded by a wood that furnished ample supplies for their campfires. It was fascinating to see the dexterity, born of long experience, with which the camp was pitched. The horses were unhitched in a twinkling and turned out to graze, while the wagons were ranged in a single circle around the camp. Some brown, dirty canvas and a few branches of trees were quickly transformed into tents. Wood was cut, a rough fireplace built, a huge kettle suspended over the flames that crackled merrily beneath, and the women and girls who had descended from the wagons busied themselves in bringing water from the brook and preparing supper for the tired and hungry crew. The men, after the rougher work was done, sprawled around upon the grass, talking in a language unintelligible to the boys, and occasionally casting an indifferent look at the group in the automobile, who had watched the scene with breathless interest.
“Well,” said Bert at last, as he roused himself with an effort, “they haven’t asked us to stay to supper, and I suppose it isn’t good manners to hang around while they are eating, even if this is a public place. So here goes,” and throwing in the clutch he started the “Red Scout” off toward camp.
The liveliest interest, not unmixed with envy, was shown by the other boys at the recital by the auto squad of the afternoon’s adventure.