Everyone the countryside over was convinced of the truth of the old
superstition one fall when a tragedy unheard-of overtook Millie at
sorghum-making.
No one ever knew how it happened. But some said that Brock Cyrus's
half-witted boy was the cause of it. He shouted, "Look out thar!" and
Millie, looking up from her task of feeding cane stalks into the mill,
saw, or thought she saw, her babe, Little Robert, toddling toward the
boiling pans. She screamed and lunged forward, and as she did so the
mule started on a run. The beam to which it was hitched whirled about
and struck Millie helpless. Before anyone could reach her side or stop
the frightened mule, her right hand was drawn into the mill, then her
left. With another revolution of the iron teeth of the cane mill both of
her arms were chopped into shreds.
It was necessary for old Doc Robbins to amputate both at the shoulders.
Everyone thought it would take Millie Burns out and they said as much.
But she lived long, long years, even raised a family. All her days she
sat in a strange chair that Robert made. A chair with a high shelf on
which her babes, each in turn, lay to nurse at her breast.
And always the armless woman was pointed out as a warning to young
courting couples, "Don't get married on horseback! It brings ill luck,
no end of ill luck."