CHAOS AND CONFUSION
Whatever the dog’s business he evidently had no time to lose and he
chose the quickest and shortest route, which was straight under the
oxen’s legs. He was scarcely beneath the patient beasts when he
encountered an altogether surprising set back.
Something, he knew not what, hit him upon his democratic little nose. He
snapped quickly for this and immediately found himself enmeshed in a
hopeless entanglement. He knew nothing of the recent festivities at
Snailsdale and was quite unaware of the bunting streamers which waved so
flauntingly from the swishing tails of the oxen. It was one of these
that had assailed him, and as he snapped at it and then backed away
pulling it after him, it seemed to him as if he had suddenly aroused an
enraged surrounding army.
Eight sturdy legs, reinforced by two violently swishing tails equipped
with a hundred million entangling lashes enclosed him and assailed him
from every direction. He was presently enshrouded with wet streamers,
lying on his back, biting, kicking, while the oxen stamped and lashed
their patriotic appendages to his utter confusion. It must have seemed
to the humble little traveller that the whole world had risen against
him and were holding him in a kind of diabolical maze assaulting from
every angle and pouring their blighting strokes from above.
But he held his own bravely as the oxen, aroused to life at last, backed
and reared and pulled against each other in their yoke. As in the World
War all nations were eventually drawn into the maelstrom, so now the
neutral masters of the caravan were drawn into the chaotic affray,
striving to hold the rearing, frightened beasts, and at the same time
conducting a flank attack against the bewildered and enmeshed dog.
At last the little warrior who had brought this allied host of eight
legs, two tails, two boys and ten billion streamers as it seemed,
against him, emerged from the gory field of battle with his colors
flying and went scooting off with a red, white and blue streamer held
between his teeth and waving like a pennant in the fog. Where he went to
no mortal ever knew. But he was never seen upon that road again.
Probably he thought it was haunted by all the fiends of perdition.
He started the conflagration but he did not finish it. The oxen, once
aroused to action, could not be subdued. Even Scout Harris could not
“handle” them. They stood at right angles to their shaft, pulling,
jerking, wrenching, and though Simon by the dextrous use of his whip and
a series of uproarious “_geeee’s_” succeeded in restoring them to
companionable position, they straightway adapted a new and altogether
unexpected maneuver, in which the magic word of _geee_ seemed to have
lost its potent spell. They backed up.
“Geee—_up_!” shouted Simon, standing beside him and exhibiting the whip
like a magnet for them to follow, “geeeeee—_up_!”
But instead they continued to gee back. Pee-wee was in the
superstructure (or whatever you choose to call it) when the climax
occurred. He was getting his scout staff with which to handle the
situation. The two rear wheels of the float were now off the road and on
the grassy slope. Simon tried with might and main to drive the beasts
forward but to no avail. Something was pulling from the rear and why
should they set themselves against that? By a continued and thunderous
use of the magic word, Simon at last persuaded the stolid beasts to
stand still. But this was the utmost concession they would make.
And then the climax occurred. Near the end of the shaft a long iron bolt
was driven through it up and down. The shaft rested in a groove on the
yoke which kept it from moving too much from side to side. At this point
the pin went through both shaft and yoke. The nut which should have
screwed on this bolt below had long since gone the way of nuts which
belong on Fords, yes and on Packards too.
The position of the wagon was slanting, it was nearly half on the slope.
This had a tendency to raise the end of the shaft. Thus the bolt was
lifted out. And with medley of squeaks and groans as the ramshackle
caravan adjusted itself to the hubbly hillside, Pee-wee’s architectural
masterpiece, with our hero inside it, went rolling down the slope and
into the dense fog below.
Thus the returning legion was divided, Pee-wee and the float
constituting one division, and Simon and the oxen the other.