WORSE THAN A WILD HORSE.
Annoyed and amazed by the inexplicable and cantankerous behavior of
the automobile, Nathan Wiggin was, at the same time, aroused to
resentment and wrath. The confounded thing was acting exactly like a
wild, viciously ugly, unbroken colt. Immediately the judge’s
fighting blood rose. He was stirred by the tingling joy of contest;
it throbbed in every vein of his body. Still holding the throttle
wide open with one foot, he planted the other on the brake, and
sawed at the wheel.
The things the automobile did then made it seem more than ever like
a strong and furious young horse battling against restraint and
mastery. It bucked and plunged in jerky jumps; it “pitched
fence-cornered” from side to side, after the style of a Western
broncho; it snorted and choked and snorted again.
“Whoa, you dratted catamaran!” snarled the judge. “You’ve gotter
whoa or I’ll take your jaw off!”
Only for the down grade he might have stalled the engine before the
racking of the car caused his foot to fly off the brake pedal. When
that happened, it continued on its way down the hill toward the
wooden bridge that spanned the Swampscott River, swaying from one
side of the road to the other. At times it threatened to climb trees
or telephone poles, or crash through fences and plunge like a
battering-ram into the fronts of houses or stores. But always the
crazy machine swerved in time to avoid disaster, and shot across to
the other side of the road.
When his right hand slipped from the wheel, the judge grabbed the
side of the car body, and his clutching thumb jammed down the button
that operated the electric siren. The button stuck, and the siren
howled like a doomed demon of despair, causing Nathan Wiggin’s hair
to stand up stiff as the bristles on a horse brush.
The fearsome sound of the wailing whistle brought people running to
windows to behold a sight no one in Greenbush had ever expected to
see—Judge Wiggin driving an automobile! To say that he was driving
it more than borders on hyperbole; it would be far closer to the
truth to state that it was driving him—frantic! He was not
habitually a profane man, but he possessed a broad vocabulary of
vigorous expletives of a more or less impious nature; and it must be
admitted that the language he addressed to that motor car would have
shocked a parson. Those who dashed to their windows in time to see
him shoot zigzagging past beheld a man that was little short of
raving mad.
Hens that had been scratching peacefully in the village street fled,
squawking. Barking furiously, a yellow dog charged out. The car
leaped at the animal, struck it with one forward wheel, and sent it,
spinning and howling, into the gutter.
Deaf as a doormat, old Betsy Tucker, going to market with a hand
basket containing two dozen eggs, neither saw nor heard until the
runaway auto was perilously close upon her and the judge was howling
like a maniac for her to “clear the road.” Then she gave a yell and
threw up her arms, flinging basket and eggs into the air. She was
saved by sheer luck, for the judge, plunging at the wheel, turned
the machine so that it missed her by less than a foot. The basket
came down, bottom up, on Nathan Wiggin’s head, and the eggs—well,
for some moments thereafter the judge could not have seen to drive,
had he possessed the required skill. From his shoulders up he
resembled the initial preparation of an omelet.
“Holy sassafras!” he spluttered. “It’s raining fish glue! Everything
happens at once!”
As soon as he could blink a pair of peepholes through that golden
film—he did not dare let go with his hands to wipe his eyes—he saw
that the foot of the hill was almost reached, and that the bridge
across the peacefully flowing river lay just ahead. It was not a
very wide bridge, and Tobias Blaisdell, perched on a load of hay
drawn by two horses, was just driving on to the far end.
“Back up, you blinkety-blank jay-hawker!” yelled the judge. “Make a
clear passage or I’ll bore a tunnel in ye!”
Had he been less excited he would have realized that it was much too
late for such a cumbersome obstruction to get out of the way.
Blaisdell had time only to check his horses and stare in horror at
the shrieking engine of destruction that was charging upon him. He
did not recognize Nathan Wiggin in the egg-bespattered wild man who
seemed to be guiding the humming mechanism of disaster, but he knew
that, in about four seconds, unless a miracle intervened, horses,
motor car, hay, and human beings were going to be mixed in a
spectacular and tragic smash.
Then, as the uncontrolled automobile reached the middle span of the
bridge, the miracle took place. Shooting suddenly to one side, the
machine struck the wooden railing, and went through it as if it had
been constructed of clay pipestems. Into the deepest part of the
river it plunged, flinging up a great sulash of spray, and
disappeared from view. Nathan Wiggin, of Greenbush, vanished with
it.