Robert was glad Zene aimed as he did.

"Then the man jumps and yells, and the woman jumps and yells, and
the old gray he rears up and breaks loose. He run right past the
straw pile, and before you could say Jack Robinson, I had him by the
hitch-strap--it was draggin'--and hoppin' against the straw, I jumped
on him."

"Jack Robinson," Zene's hearer tried half-audibly. "Then what? Did
the man and woman run?"

"I makes old Gray jump the straw pile, and I comes at them just like
I rose out of the ground! Yes," acknowledged Zene forbearingly, "they
run. Maybe they run toward the house, and maybe they run the other
way. I got a-holt of old White's hitch-strap and my boot; then I
cantered out and hitched up, and went along the road real lively. It
wasn't till towards mornin' that I turned off into the woods and tied
up for a nap. Yes, I slept _part_ of the night in the wagon."

Robert sifted all these harrowing circumstances.

"_Maybe_ they weren't stealing the horses," he hazarded. "Don't
folks ever unhitch other folks' horses to put 'em in their stable?"

Zene drew down the corners of his mouth to express impatience.

"But I'd hated to been there," Robert hastened to add.

"I guess you would," Zene observed in a lofty, but mollified way,
"if you'd seen the pile of bones I passed down the road a piece from