Under such circumstances it was nearly inevitable that something
should happen. It had seemed to Jarvis, as he was rushed along, that
the only thing probable, since Miss Farnsworth had proved her ability
to ride the mare, was that he himself should meet disaster in some
form. The black team were, to all intents and purposes, and until the
cause of their high-headedness should be removed, running away. They
were nearing a place which he could see was likely to prove the
rockiest and most winding of any part of this rocky and winding New
England road.
But, as usual, it was not the foreseen which happened, but the
unforeseen. A particularly vigorous lurch of the wagon displaced one
of the two trunks from its position, and the next roll and pitch sent
it off. The brown mare swerved, but she was so near the back of the
wagon that her wheel to the right did not carry her beyond the trunk,
itself bounding to the right. The unexpected sheer did not unhorse her
rider, but the mare went down in a helpless sprawl over the great
obstacle in her path, and the girlish figure in the saddle went with
her.
Jarvis had recognized the fall of the trunk, and in the one quick
glance back he was able to give he saw the mare go down. His team,
startled afresh by the crash, leaped ahead. Although he had been using
every muscle more and more strenuously for the last fifteen minutes,
new power rushed into his arms. He used every means in his power to
quiet the pair, and, after a little, it began to tell. The ceasing of
the mare's hoofbeats upon the road behind withdrew from the situation
what had been its most dangerous element, and at length, coming to a
sudden sharp rise in the road, Jarvis succeeded in pulling the colts
down to a walk. The instant it became possible he turned them about.
"Now," he said, aloud, to them--and his voice was harsh with
anxiety--"spoil you or not, you may go back at the top of your speed,"
and he sent them, wild-eyed and breathing hard, straight back over
their tracks. And as he neared the place where the mare had fallen, he
held his breath and his heart grew sick within him.
It was an unfrequented road, and no one had come over it since
himself. As he turned the bend he saw just what he had expected to
see, and a great sob shook him. Then he gathered himself, with a
mighty grip upon his whole being, for what there might be left to do
for her.
The brown mare lay in a pitiful heap, her fore legs doubled under her.
Beneath her, kept from being thrown over Betty's head by her foot in
the stirrup, and caught under the roll of the mare's body, lay the
slender figure of her rider.
"Oh--God!" groaned the man, as he threw himself upon the ground beside
her. But as he fearfully turned her head toward him, that he might see
first the worst there was, two dark-lashed, gray eyes slowly unclosed
and looked up into his, and a smile, so faint that it was but the hint
of a smile, trembled about her mouth.
In the swiftness of his relief Jarvis had to lay stern hands upon his
own impulses. He smiled back at her with lips not quite steady. Then
he set about releasing her.
When he had her out upon the grass she lay very white and still again.
"Can you tell me where you are hurt?" he begged. Then, as she did not
answer, he dashed off to a brook which gurgled in a hollow a rod away,
and, coming back with a soaked handkerchief, gently bathed her face
and hair. After a little her eyes unclosed again.
"I--don't think I'm--badly hurt. My shoulder and--my--knee----"
"I'll get you home as soon as you feel able."
She turned her head slowly toward the road. Divining her thought,
Jarvis quietly placed himself between her eyes and the body of the
brown mare. She understood.
"Is she dreadfully hurt?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Alive?"
He nodded. The girl lay still an instant, then she threw one arm
across her eyes, and Jarvis saw that she was softly sobbing. He
watched her for a little, then he took her other hand in his, holding
it close and tenderly, as one would soothe an unhappy child.
"When I have taken you home," he said, very gently, "I will come back
to Betty."
She drew her hand away quickly. "Take me home now," she whispered.
So Jarvis, as best he could, took her home. It was a hard journey,
which he would have made easier for her if he could have got her to
lean against him. But she sat erect, holding herself with a white face
and compressed lips, and Jarvis, thinking things he dared not put into
words, drove with as little jolt and jar as might be back to the
Hempstead Farms.
Joe, coming across the barnyard, saw them, looked at them a second
time, and strode hurriedly forward. Jarvis would have given the horses
into his charge and looked after the girl himself, but she forestalled
him, and it was Joe, the man of overalls and wide straw hat, who
helped her to her room, the porch being for the moment mercifully
bereft of boarders. It was the sunny hour of the morning there.
But presently she sent for him. He went at once, for he was preparing,
with Joe, to go to the injured horse. Mrs. Hempstead took him to Miss
Farnsworth's room, and stayed stiffly by while he crossed to the bed
where the girl lay, still in her riding habit. As he came to her she
held out her hand.
"Please forgive me," she said, with her head turned away. "I might
have killed--you."
"No--you couldn't. I've something to live for, so I'm
invulnerable--till I get it."
"Will you do something for me?" she asked. As she lay, with her head
turned from him, the warm white curves at the back of her neck
appealed to him more irresistibly than ever.
"Anything!"
She thrust one hand down under the folds of her skirt, drew out
something heavy and shining which had lain there, and put it into his
hand. Then she buried her face in the pillow. "Please----" she
began--and could not finish.
Jarvis looked around at his landlady, standing by like the embodiment
of propriety. He turned again to the girlish figure shaking with its
passionate regret. Then he took the little revolver from her, bent and
whispered, "I understand," and went quickly and silently away.
* * * * *
When Jarvis returned to Joe Hempstead, getting ready the flat drag
known in country parlance as a "stone boat," his first words were
eager.
"Joe, I don't know that there's the slightest hope of saving the mare,
but I'd like to bring her home and try. It was out of the question to
look her over much there. She went down on her knees--smash--and one
leg was certainly broken below the knee. But I've a hope the leg I
couldn't get at may only be bruised."
Joe nodded. "We'll do the best we can by her--for the little girl's
sake," he declared. "She's a high-spirited young critter--the human
one, I mean--but I guess she's a-takin' this pretty hard, and I'd like
to help her out."
So presently brown Betty, lifting dumb eyes full of pain at the sound
of a caressing voice, found herself in the hands of her friends.
"Well--it's a question, Joe," said Jarvis, slowly, ten minutes later.
He was sitting with a hand on the mare's flank, after a thorough and
skillful examination. Betty's head lay in Joe's lap, held firmly by
hands which were both strong and tender. "It's a question whether it
wouldn't be the kindest thing to end her troubles for her. I expect
she'd tell us to, if she could talk. She'll have to be put in a sling,
of course, and kept there for weeks."
"That there sprained leg----" Joe began, doubtfully.
"Yes--it'll be about as tough a proposition as the broken one.
But----"
The two men looked at each other.
"If you say so----" agreed Joe.
"Let's try it," urged Jarvis. "It's a question of human suffering, or
brute--and there's a possibility of success. I shall be here a day or
two longer--over the Fourth. I'll play nurse as long as I stay--I'd
like nothing better. I was born and brought up with horses--in
Kentucky."
"What I ain't picked up about 'em I knew when I was born," said Joe,
with a laugh and a pat of the mare's head. "All right--we'll turn
ourselves into a couple of amachure vet'rinaries--seein' they ain't
none hereabouts."
Between them they had soon bestowed the mare upon the stone boat in
the best possible position for enduring the ride.
"Seems as if she understands the whole thing," Joe said, at length,
looking down into the animal's face as her head lay quietly upon the
blanket. "You're a lady," he said, softly, to Betty. The mare's
beautiful liquid eyes looked dumbly back at him, and he stooped and
rubbed her nose. "Yes, you're a lady," he repeated, "and we'll do our
level best to deserve your trustin' us--poor little wreck."
In a roomy stall they put Betty. It was an afternoon's work to arrange
it for the scientific treatment of the broken leg. Joe, with the
readiness of a surgeon--he was, indeed, an amateur veterinary, and was
consulted as such by the whole countryside--set the leg and put it in
plaster of Paris. The two men rigged a sling which should keep the
weight of the mare off the injured legs and support her body. With the
help of two farm hands, Betty was put into this gear in a way which
made it impossible for her to move enough to hurt the broken leg. A
rest was provided for her head, and her equine comfort was in every
way considered. When all was done, the farmer and the electrical
engineer looked at each other with exceeding satisfaction.
"She'll get well," said Jarvis, with conviction. "I never saw it
better done than you have managed it."
"Me?" returned Joe, with a laugh. "Well, say--I wouldn't mind havin'
you for chief assistant when I go into the business perfessionally."
Jarvis spent the rest of the day, more or less, in the box stall. The
evening was occupied in assisting Betty to receive the entire houseful
of boarders, whom the news of the accident had reached at about supper
time.
At midnight, having tried without success for an hour to sleep, he got
up, dressed and went out through the warm July starlight to tell the
brown mare he was sorry for her. He found a man's figure standing
beside that of the animal.
"Well!" Joe greeted him. "You're another. I can't seem to sleep,
thinkin' about this poor critter, slung up here--sufferin'--and not
understandin'. They like company--now I'm sure of it. It's a good
thing she can't know how many days and nights she's got to be strung
here, ain't it?"
His hand was gently stroking the mare's shoulder, as if he thought it
must ache. He looked around at Jarvis, standing in the rays of light
from a lantern hanging on a peg near by.
"Go back to bed, Joe," advised Jarvis. "You've plenty to do to-morrow.
I'll stay with the patient a while. I shall like to do it--I'm as bad
as you, I can't sleep for thinking of her."
"Course you can't," thought Joe, going back to the house. "But you
didn't say which 'her' 'twas that keeps you awake. I guess it's one's
much as 'tis t'other."
It was about two o'clock in the morning that Jarvis, in a corner of
the box stall, where the mare could see him, lying at full length upon
a pile of hay, his hands clasped under his head, heard light and
uneven footsteps slowly approaching across the barn floor. He was
instantly alert in every sense, but he did not move.
"Betty dear," said a soft voice. Then a slender figure came into view
in the dim light, walking with a limp and painfully. A loose blue robe
trailed about her, and two long brown braids, curling at the ends,
hung over her shoulders. She came slowly into the stall and stood and
looked at Betty. Suddenly she put both arms around the mare's neck,
laid her cheek against the animal's face, and spoke to her.
"Poor Betty," she said, pitifully. "Did you fall into the hands of a
cruel girl, who hurt you for all the rest of your life? Can you
forgive her, Betty? She didn't mean to do it, dear. She was out of
temper herself, because she couldn't have her own way--when she didn't
_want_ her own way--Betty--can you understand? You were doing the best
you could--she made you act such a silly part. Dear little Betty--she
would stand beside you all night long, just to punish herself, if she
could--but----"
She leaned against the side of the stall, and sank slowly down to the
ground, with a hand pressed to her knee. Jarvis, on the hay, stirred
involuntarily, and with a little cry of alarm the girl struggled to
her feet again. At the next instant, as Jarvis spoke gently and his
face came into view in the lantern light, she leaned once more,
breathing quickly, against the side of the stall. Her face as she
stared at him was like that of a startled child.
"You mustn't stand, you're not fit," he said, anxiously. "You ought
not to have come. Let me help you back."
She gazed at him beseechingly. "Please let me stay a few minutes," she
said. Was this meek creature the willful young person of the morning?
"I can't sleep for thinking of her, and I want to make her understand
that I'm sorry."
"I think she does. If she doesn't, she at least appreciates the tone
of your voice. Even a horse might have sense enough for that. Let me
bring you something for a seat, if you will stay."
He found an empty box, covered it with a new blanket, and set it by
the side of the stall. She sat down and studied the arrangement of the
appliances for the keeping of the mare in the quiet necessary to the
healing of the broken leg. Jarvis explained it all to her, and she
listened eagerly and attentively. But when he had finished she asked
him abruptly:
"Did you hear what I said to Betty?"
"I could hardly help it."
"Then you heard me say that about being out of temper at not having my
own way this morning--when I--really didn't want my own way." Her eyes
were on Betty's patient little head.
"Do you expect me to believe that?" he asked, smiling.
"Did I seem to want it?"
"Very decidedly."
"Yet--if you had let me have it--do you know how I should have felt
toward you?"
"I know how I should have felt toward myself."
"How would you?" she asked, curiously.