At this critical point of our story it is necessary that we should
return for a brief space to Raymond Challoner, whom we left still at
Newport, though the Ocean House was just about closing for the season.
He had not put in an appearance when Queenie Trevalyn and her mother
drove to the depot--not even to say good-by to the girl to whom he had
been such a devoted lover for the whole season. With the loss of her
fortune his interest waned. He did not get up from his comfortable
chair as the hotel ’bus whirled past the door, with the girl and her
mother as passengers, to take even a last look at the beauty of the
season.
“Good-by, sweetheart, good-by!” he murmured, with a grim laugh, as
he lighted a fresh Havana--then he proceeded forthwith to forget the
Queenie Trevalyn romance and to look forward to conquests in pastures
new.
He was terribly short of funds, and concluded that, under the present
condition of affairs, he could not afford to settle his board bill just
yet. Consequently, when the clerk of the hostelry sent up to the young
millionaire’s apartments for the trifling amount which was still on the
books against Mr. Raymond Challoner, that gentleman was found to be
missing, bag and baggage.
Ray Challoner had shaken off the dust of Newport from his heels, and
had gone as far away from the scene of his late social triumphs, and
failure to secure a matrimonial prize, as possible. Was it fate that he
should choose New Orleans as his place of destination? Who shall say?
He was anxious to reach there in time for the races; to recoup, if
possible, his dwindling amount of cash. But once again fate seemed
determined to balk him.
As they reached a little station the telegraph messenger rushed out and
signaled the conductor, and a few hurried words passed between them.
The conductor seemed greatly disturbed, and the faces of the trainmen
who gathered about them also appeared troubled.
Then came the statement by the conductor that there had been an
accident to the mail train just ahead and it would be impossible to
proceed. The express was ordered to remain at that station until
further orders from the manager of the road.
The uneasiness among the passengers was met with the assurance that
they could be transferred to another line, which would bring them into
New Orleans some five hours late--that was the best that could be done
for them.
Ray Challoner fairly foamed as he cursed his luck--the races would be
over by the time he could reach the track--and thus fled his hopes of
replenishing his pocketbook with the funds of which he stood so sorely
in need.
“Is there no way of reaching there save the one you have mentioned,
conductor?” he inquired, pacing nervously up and down.
“Well, there is another way--you might stand a ghost of a chance
of finding a horse here that might carry you over to Greenville, a
distance of some twenty miles across the roughest road you ever struck;
once at Greenville you might get a conveyance to take you the other
thirty miles--or a horse, or something of that kind; and if you met no
mishaps and pushed rapidly on you might land in New Orleans by noon, or
a little after.”
“By George! I’ll act upon your suggestion,” declared Challoner,
eagerly. “I cannot more than miss, and that’s what I would be doing
if----” But here he stopped short, for some one was calling for the
conductor, and that functionary was obliged to excuse himself in all
haste and hurry away.
Ray Challoner did not wait to see the passengers transferred, but made
all haste into the village in which he found himself.
It consisted of a few straggling houses, a blacksmith shop and a couple
of general stores, and a farmers’ inn.
Toward the latter place Challoner bent his steps, losing no time in
making known his wants to his host, but he soon found, to his chagrin,
that a horse could not be hired for love nor money.
“Could I buy a cheap animal hereabouts?” he inquired in desperation.
That put a different face on the matter. The man was quite willing to
dispose of an ancient animal he owned if the stranger would pay him his
price.
“And what is your price?” queried Challoner, impatiently.
“Fifty dollars,” answered the man, promptly.
Challoner quickly concluded the bargain, although he had scarcely half
that amount left in his purse.
An exclamation of intense wrath, not to say an imprecation, broke from
his lips on beholding his purchase; but it did little good to invoke a
torrent of anger upon the host of the inn, who already had his money
pocketed.
“Why, that animal will not carry me five miles!” he cried, when the
horse, already saddled, was led around to the front porch. “He is
falling down already, and hasn’t a sound leg to stand on; and you could
hang your hat on his projecting bones.”
“A lean horse for a long race, my friend,” remarked his host, sagely;
“you’ll find that Roger--that’s his name--will carry you the twenty
miles to Greenville all right.”
“And drop down dead when I get there,” said Challoner, with still
another and more fierce imprecation.
“I didn’t agree that he could go much farther than to Greenville,”
responded the late owner of Roger; “that would depend upon how much
rest you gave him when you reach there, friend.”
“No doubt I can dispose of him for enough to hire a horse that is a
horse to pursue the rest of my journey,” declared the disgruntled young
man.
“Most likely,” remarked his host. But he said to his buxom wife, who
stood by, as the stranger mounted the horse and rode off at a rattling
pace: “If he keeps that gait up very long, Old Roger will surely rebel
and refuse to go a step for him, that’s all there is about that. He
might lash him to death and he wouldn’t stir a leg when the balky
notion hits him. He’ll be glad enough to swap him for a five-dollar
note by the time he gets to Greenville--and Roger will soon be walking
home to us again.”
Roger had been a profitable animal to mine host. More than once he had
sold him, and the new owner was always glad to sell him back to his
previous owner at any cost.
Meanwhile the new owner was galloping away at the top of the speed of
his new purchase, much to the discomfiture of Roger.
Mile after mile was thus traversed, until, at length, the town he
was so anxious to reach loomed up in the distance before him. It was
not until then that Roger’s impatience began to show itself. When he
reached a green lane which led past a grand old place, the animal
absolutely refused to go another step forward. This was a dilemma
Challoner had not counted upon.
“Besides being as slow as molasses, he’s a balker, as well,” he
muttered, and, taking his whip well in hand, he began to lash the tired
beast most inhumanly, a fierce imprecation accompanying each cut of the
lash.
One, two, three, four, five strokes of the sizzling rawhide had been
brought down upon the quivering flank of the animal, when, forth from
the branches of the tree overhead, a blow from a twig fell full upon
the face of the startled horseman, a small brown hand was thrust down
from among the green branches and a shrill, girlish voice cried, while
the blows were rained down faster and faster upon the head of the young
man, who was too astounded to make the slightest defense, or make a
retreat:
“Take that, and that, and that! you outrageous monster, for lashing a
poor, defenseless horse. Oh, I hope that I have hurt you as much as you
hurt him--so there!” each word being accompanied by a whack from the
stinging twig.
Ray Challoner looked up, as well as his amazement would permit, and saw
overhead, sitting on a broad bough, a girl, and surely the angriest
creature that he had ever beheld, gazing down at him.
Even in that moment, as he began to dodge the blows, he could not help
but notice that the elfish, gypsyish-looking girl had a fine pair of
dark eyes, even though they were at that moment blazing with passion,
and that the head, crowned with a mass of dark curls, was well set and
dainty, the lips were scarlet and curved like Cupid’s bow, and the
brune face like a picture he had once seen in a foreign art gallery,
of a Spanish princess--though, instead of the filmy lace dress of the
former, this one wore a brown linsey dress, which made no pretense of
covering the brown feet and ankles dangling down from it.
Challoner recovered his usual coolness instantly.
“Ah!” he said, backing away from the reach of that strong, belligerent
young arm, that could deal such tremendous blows with the twig, “my
assailant is a young girl, it would seem; therefore I am unable to
defend myself from this uncalled-for attack.”
“Uncalled for!” exclaimed the girl, still more shrilly, for she was
thoroughly angry at the stranger; “you provoked it by cruelly abusing
your poor horse; I only wish he had reared and thrown you, as you
deserved.”
“Thank you,” remarked Challoner, sneeringly and mockingly, but before
he could utter the rest of the sentence which was on his lips, the
horse, as though he had heard the suggestion and thought the idea a
capital one, immediately reared backward with the quickness of motion
that unseated his rider in a single instant, and in the next, Raymond
Challoner found himself measuring his full length on the greensward,
and the animal, freed from his obnoxious rider, had plunged forward
into an adjacent thicket, and was lost to view.