Old Caravan Days | Page 3

seeds over his eyes. His affection for Johnson was extreme. He looked
up to Johnson. If he startled a bird at the roadside, or scratched at the

roots of a tree after his imagination, he came back to Johnson for
approval, wagging his tail until it made his whole body undulate.
Johnson sometimes condescended to rub a nose against his silly head,
and this threw him into such fire of delight that he was obliged to get
out of the wagon-track, and bark around himself in a circle until the
carriage left him behind. Then he came up to Johnson again, and panted
along beside him, with a smile as open and constant as sunshine.
No such caravan as the Padgett family has been seen moving West
since those days when all the States were in a ferment: when New York
and the New England States poured into Ohio, and Pennsylvania and
Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee into Indiana, Illinois, and even--as a
desperate venture, Missouri. The Old National Turnpike was then a
lively thoroughfare. Sometimes a dozen white-covered wagons
stretched along in company. All classes of society were represented
among the movers. There were squalid lots to--be avoided as thieves:
and there were carriages full of families who would raise Senators,
Presidents, and large financiers in their new home. The forefathers of
many a man and woman, now abroad studying older civilization in
Europe, came West as movers by the wagon route.
Aunt Corinne and her nephew were glad when Zene drove upon the
'pike, and the carriage followed. The 'pike had a solid rumbling base to
offer wheels. You were comparatively in town while driving there, for
every little while you met somebody, and that body always appeared to
feel more important for driving on the 'pike. It was a glittering white
highway the ruts worn by wheels were literally worn in stone. Yet
never were roadsides as green as the sloping 'pike sides. No trees
encroached very close upon it, and it stretched in endless glare. But
how smoothly you bowled along! People living aside in fields, could
hear your progress; the bass roar of the 'pike was as distinct, though of
course not as loud, as the rumble of a train.
Going through Reynoldsburg however, was the great triumphal act of
leave-taking. The Padgetts went to church in Reynoldsburg. To-day it
is a decayed village, with many of its houses leaning wearily to one
side, or forward as if sinking to a nap. But then it was a lively coach

town, the first station out from the capital of the State.
[Illustration: THE STAGE SWEPT BY LIKE A FLASH.]
The Reynoldsburgers looked forth indifferently. They saw movers
every hour of the day. But with recognition growing in their faces,
many of them hastened to this particular carriage for parting words with
grandma Padgett and the children. Robert Day set up against the high
back, accepting his tribute of envious glances from the boys he knew.
He was going off to meet adventures. They--had to stay at home and
saw wood, and some of them would even be obliged to split it when
they had a tin box full of bait and their fish-poles all ready for the
afternoon's useful employment. There had been a time when Robert
thought he would not like to be called "movers." Some movers fell
entirely below his ideas. But now he saw how much finer it was to be
travelling in a carriage than on the swift-shooting cars. He felt sorry for
the Reynoldsburg boys. One of them hinted that he might be expected
out West himself some day, and told Robert to watch down the road for
him. He appeared to think the West was a large prairie full of benches,
where folks sat down and told their adventures in coming.
Bobaday considered his position in the carriage the only drawback to
the Reynoldsburg parade. He ought to be driving. In the course of the
journey he hoped grandma Padgett would give up the lines--which she
had never yet done.
They drove out of Reynoldsburg. The tin-covered steeple on the church
dazzled their eyes for perhaps the last time.
Then coming around a curve in the 'pike appeared that soul-stirring
sight, the morning stage from Columbus. Zene and grandma Padgett
drew off to the side of the road and gave it a wide passage, for the stage
had the same right of way that any regular train now has on its own
track. It was drawn by six of the proudest horses in the world, and the
grand-looking driver who guided them, gripped the complication of
lines in his left hand while he held a horn to his mouth with the right,
and through this he blew a mellow peal to let the