Chapter X: All Is Not Gold That Glitters

Quite unsuspicious of the foregoing plans for his apprehension, Sammy Pinkney was journeying on, going steadily away from Milton, and traveling much faster now that he did not have to carry the extension-bag.

The boy had no idea who could have stolen his possessions; but he rubbed his knuckles in his eyes, forced back the tears, and pressed on, feeling that freedom even without a change of garments was preferable to the restrictions of home and all the comforts there to be found.

He walked two miles or more and was very hungry before he came to the first house. It stood just at the edge of the big wood in which Sammy had spent the night.

It was scarcely more than a tumbled-down hut, with broken panes of glass more common than whole ones in the windows, these apertures stuffed with hats and discarded garments, while half the bricks had fallen from the chimney-top. There were half a dozen barefooted children running about, while a very wide and red-faced woman stood in the doorway.

"Hullo, me bye!" she called to Sammy, as he lingered outside the broken fence with a longing eye upon her. "Where be yez bound so airly in the marnin'?"

"I'm just traveling, Ma'am," Sammy returned with much dignity. "Could--could you sell me some breakfast?"

"Breakfast, is it?" repeated the smiling woman. "Shure, I'd give yez it, if mate wasn't so high now. Come in me kitchen and sit ye down. There's tay in the pot, and I'll fry yez up a spider full o' pork and taters, if that'll do yez?"

The menu sounded tempting indeed to Sammy. He accepted the woman's invitation instantly and entered the house, past the staring children. The two oldest of the group, a shrewd-faced boy and a sharp-featured girl, stood back and whispered together while they watched the visitor.

Sammy was so much interested in the bountiful breakfast with which the housewife supplied him that he thought very little about the children peering in at the door and open windows. When he had eaten the last crumb he asked his hostess how much he should pay her.

"Well, me bye, I'll not overcharge ye," she replied. "If yez have ten cents about ye we'll call it square--an' that's only for the mate, as I said before is so high, I dunno."

Sammy produced the knotted handkerchief, put it on the table and untied it, displaying the coins it held with something of a flourish. The jingle of so many dimes brought a sigh of wonder in unison from the young spectators at door and windows. The woman accepted her dime without comment.

Sammy thanked her politely, wiped his mouth on his sleeve (napery was conspicuous by its absence in this household) and started out the door. The smaller children scattered to give him passage; the older boy and girl had already gone out of the badly fenced yard and were loitering along the road in the direction Sammy was traveling.

"Hullo! Here's raggedy-pants," said the girl saucily, when Sammy came along.

"How did you get them holes in your breeches, kid?" added the boy.

"Never you mind," rejoined Sammy gruffly. "They're _my_ pants."

"Stuck up, ain't you?" jeered the girl and stuck out her tongue at him.

Sammy thought these were two very impolite children, and although he was not rated at home for his own chivalrous conduct, he considered these specimens in the road before him quite unpleasant young people.

"Ne'er mind," said the boy, looking at Sammy slyly, "he don't know everything. He ain't seen everything if he is traveling all by himself. I bet he's run away."

"I ain't running away from you," was Sammy's belligerent rejoinder.

"You would if I said 'Boo!' to you."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Ya!" scoffed the girl, leering at Sammy, "don't talk so much. Do something to him, Peter."

Peter glanced warily back at the house. Perhaps he knew the large, red-faced woman might take a hand in proceedings if he pitched upon the strange boy.

"I bet," he said, starting on another tack, "that he never saw a cherry-colored calf like our'n."

"I bet he never did," crowed the girl in delight.

"A cherry-colored calf," scoffed Sammy. "Get out! There ain't such a thing. A calf might be red; there _are_ red cows--"

"This calf is cherry-colored," repeated the boy earnestly. "It's down there in our pasture."

"Don't believe it," said Sammy flatly.

"'Tis so!" cried the girl.

"I tell you," said the very shrewd-looking boy. "We'll show it to you for ten cents."

"I don't believe it," repeated Sammy, but more doubtfully.

The girl laughed at him more scornfully than before. "He's afraid to spend a dime--an' him with so much money," she cried.

"I don't believe you've got a cherry-colored calf to show me."

"Gimme the dime and I'll show you whether we have or not," said Peter.

"No," said the cautious Sammy. "I'll give you a dime _if_ you show it to me. But no foolin'. I won't give you a cent if the calf is any other color."

"All right," shouted the other boy. "Come on and I'll show you. Come on, Liz."

"All right, Peter," said the girl, quite as eagerly. "Hurry up, raggedy-pants. We can use that dime, Peter and me can."

The bare-legged youngsters got through a rail fence and darted down a path into a scrubby pasture, as wild as unbroken colts. Sammy, feeling fine after the bountiful breakfast he had eaten, chased after them wishing that he had thought to remove his shoes and stockings too. Peter and Liz seemed so much more free and untrammeled than he!

"Hold on!" puffed Sammy, coming finally to the bottom of the slope. "I ain't going to run my head off for any old calf--Huh!"

From behind a clump of brush appeared suddenly a cow--a black and white cow, probably of the Holstein breed. There followed a scrambling in the bushes. Liz jumped into them with a shriek and drove out a little, blatting, stiff-legged calf. It was all of a glossy black, from its nose to the tip of its tail.

"That's him! That's him!" shrieked Liz. "A cherry-colored calf."

"What did I tell you?" demanded the boy, Peter. "Give us the dime."

"You go on!" exclaimed Sammy. "I knew all the time you were story-telling. That's no cherry-colored calf."

"'Tis too! It's just the color of a black-heart cherry," giggled Liz. "You got to give up ten cents."

"Won't neither," Sammy declared.

"I'll take it off you," threatened Peter, growing belligerent.

"You won't," stubbornly declared Sammy, who did not propose to be cheated.

Peter jumped for him and Sammy could not run. One reason why he could not retreat was because Liz grabbed him from the rear, holding him around the waist.

She pulled him over backward, while her brother began to pummel Sammy most heartily from above. It was a most unfair attack and a most uncomfortable situation for the runaway. Although he managed to defend his face for the most part from Peter's blows, he could do little else.

"Lemme up! Lemme up!" bawled Sammy.

"Gimme the dime," panted Peter.

"I won't! 'Tain't fair!" gasped Sammy, too plucky to give in.

Liz had now squirmed from under the struggling boys. She must have seen at the house in which pocket Sammy kept the knotted handkerchief, for she thrust her hand into that pocket and snatched out the hoard of dimes before the owner realized what she was doing.

"Hey! Stop! Lemme up!" roared Sammy again.

"I got it, Peter!" shrieked Liz, and, springing up, she darted into the bushes and disappeared.

"Stop! She's stole my money," gasped Sammy in horror and alarm.

"She never! You didn't have no money!" declared Peter, and with a final blow that stunned Sammy for the moment, the other leaped up and followed his wild companion into the brush.

Sammy, weeping in good earnest now, bruised and scratched in body and sore in spirit, climbed slowly to his feet. Never before in any of his runaway escapades had he suffered such ignominy and loss.

Why! he had actually fallen among thieves. First his bag and all his chattels therein had been stolen. Now these two ragamuffins had robbed him of every penny he possessed.

He dared not go back to the house where he had bought breakfast and complain. The other youngsters there might fall upon and beat him again!

Sammy Pinkney at last was tasting the bitter fruits of wrong doing. Even weeding another beet-bed could have been no more painful than these experiences which he was now suffering.