JACK OGDEN'S RIDE.
Jack needed only a few minutes to put on the suit he had worn when
fishing.
"There, now," he said; "if there's going to be a big flood in the creek
I'm going down to see it, rain or no rain. There's no telling how high
it'll rise if this pour keeps on long enough. It rattles on the roof
like buckshot!"
"That's the end of the old tavern," said Jack to Mary, as he stood in
the front room looking out.
He was barefooted, and had come so silently that she was startled.
"Jack!" she exclaimed, turning around, "they might have all been killed
when the steeple came down. I heard what Joe Hawkins said, and I led
out the class."
"Good for Joe!" said Jack. "We need a new meeting-house, any way. I
heard the elder say so. Less steeple, next time, and more church!"
"I'd like to see a real big church," said Mary,--"a city church."
"You'd like to go to the city as much as I would," said Jack.
"Yes, I would," she replied emphatically. "Just you get there and I'll
come afterward, if I can. I've been studying twice as hard since I
left the academy, but I don't know why."
"I know it," said Jack; "but I've had no time for books."
"Jack! Molly!" the voice of Aunt Melinda came up the stairway. "Are
you ever coming down-stairs?"
"What will the elder say to my coming down barefoot?" said Jack; "but I
don't want shoes if I'm going out into the mud."
"He won't care at such a time as this," said Mary. "Let's go."
It was not yet supper-time, but it was almost dark enough to light the
lamps. Jack felt better satisfied about his appearance when he found
how dark and shadowy the parlor was; and he felt still better when he
saw his father dressed as if he were going over to work at the forge,
all but the leather apron.
The elder did not seem disturbed. He and Mr. Murdoch were talking
about all sorts of great disasters, and Mary did not know just when she
was drawn into the talk, or how she came to acknowledge having read
about so many different things all over the world.
"Jack," whispered his mother, at last, "you'll have to go to the barn
and gather eggs, or we sha'n't have enough for supper."
"I'll bring the eggs if I don't get drowned before I get back," said
Jack; and he found a basket and an umbrella and set out.
He took advantage of a little lull in the rain, and ran to the
barn-yard gate.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "Now I'll have to wade. Why it's nearly a foot
deep! There'll be the biggest kind of a freshet in the Cocahutchie.
Isn't this jolly?"
The rain pattered on the roof as if it had been the head of a drum. If
the house was gloomy, the old barn was darker and gloomier. Jack
turned over a half-bushel measure and sat down on it.
"I want to think," he said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I
never felt it so before. I'd as lief live in this barn as stay in
Crofield."
He suddenly sprang up and shook off his blues, exclaiming: "I'll go and
see the freshet, anyhow!"
He carried the eggs into the house.
All the time he had been gone, Elder Holloway had been asking Mary very
particularly about the Crofield Academy.
"I don't wonder she says what she does about the trustees," remarked
Aunt Melinda. "She took the primary room twice, for 'most a month each
time, when the teacher was sick, and all the thanks she had was that
they didn't like it when they found it out."
The gutter in front of the house had now become a small torrent.
"All the other gutters are just like that," said Jack. "So are the
brooks all over the country, and it all runs into the Cocahutchie!"
"Father," said Jack, after supper, "I'm going down to the creek."
"I wish you would," said his father. "Come back and tell us how it's
looking."
"Could a freshet here do any damage?" asked Mr. Murdoch.
"There's a big dam up at Four Corners," said the blacksmith. "If
anything should happen there, we'd have trouble here, and you'd have it
in Mertonville, too."
Jack heard that as he was going out of the door. He carried an
umbrella; but the first thing he noticed was that the force of the rain
seemed to have slackened as soon as he was out of doors. It was now
more like mist or a warm sleet, as if Crofield were drifting through a
cloud.
"The Washington House needs all the rain it can get," said Jack, as he
went along; "but half the roof is caved in. I'm glad Livermore's
insured."
When Jack reached the creek he felt his heart fairly jump with
excitement. The Cocahutchie was no longer a thin ribbon rippling along
in a wide stretch of sand and gravel. It was a turbid, swollen,
roaring flood, already filling all the space under its bridge; and the
clump of old trees was in the water instead of on dry land.
"Hurrah!" shouted Jack. "As high as that already, and the worst is to
come!"
He could not see the dam at first, but the gusts of wind were making
openings in the mist, and he soon caught glimpses of a great sheet of
foaming brown water.
"I'll go and take a look at the dam," he said; and he ran to the mill.
"It's just level with the dam," he said, after one swift glance. "I
never thought of that. I must go and tell old Hammond what's coming."
The miller's house was not far away, and he and his family were at
supper when there came a bang at the door. Then it opened and Mrs.
Hammond exclaimed:
"Why, John Ogden!"
"I'm out o' breath," said Jack excitedly. "You tell him that the
water's 'most up to the lower floor of the mill. If he's got anything
there that'd be hurt by getting wet--"
"Goodness, yes!" shouted the miller, getting up from the table, "enough
to ruin me. There are sacks of flour, meal, grain,--all sorts of
stuff. It must all go up to the second floor. I'll call all the
hands."
"But," said his wife, "it's Sunday!"
"Can't help it!" he exclaimed; "the Cocahutchie's coming right up into
the mill. Jack, tell every man you see that I want him!"
Off went Jack homeward, but he spoke to half a dozen men on the way.
He did not run, but he went quickly enough; and when he reached the
house there was something waiting for him.
It was a horse with a blanket strapped on instead of a saddle; and by
it stood his father, and near him stood his mother and Aunt Melinda and
Mary, bareheaded, for it was not raining, now.
"Mount, Jack," said the blacksmith quietly. "I've seen the creek.
It's only four and a half miles to the Four Corners. Ride fast. See
how that dam looks and come back and tell me. Mr. Murdoch will have
his buggy ready to start when you get back. See how many logs there
are in the saw-mill boom."
"Oh, Jack!" exclaimed Mary, in a low suppressed voice. "I wish that I
were you! It's a great day for you!"
He had sprung to the saddle while his father was speaking, and he felt
it was out of his power to utter a word in reply. He did not need to
speak to the horse, for the moment Mr. Ogden released the bit there was
a quick bound forward.
"This horse is ready to go," said Jack to himself, as he felt that
motion. "I've seen her before. I wonder what's made her so excited?"
There was no need for wonder. The trim, light-limbed sorrel mare he
was riding had been kept in the hotel stables until that day. She had
been taken out to a neighboring stable, at the morning alarm of fire,
and when the blacksmith went to borrow her he found her laboring under
a strong impression that things in Crofield were going wrong. She was
therefore inclined to go fast, and all that Jack had to do was to hold
her in. The blacksmith's son was at home in the saddle. It was not
yet dark, and he knew the road to the Four Corners. It was a muddy
road, and there was a little stream of water along each side of it.
Spattered and splashed from head to foot were rider and horse, but the
miles vanished rapidly and the Four Corners was reached.
A smaller village than Crofield, further up among the hills, it had a
higher dam, a three times larger pond, a bigger grist-mill, and a large
saw-mill. That was because there were forests of timbers among the yet
higher hills beyond, and Mr. Ogden had been thinking seriously about
the logs from those forests.
"I know what father means," said Jack aloud, as he galloped into the
village.
There were hardly any people stirring about its one long street; but
there was a reason for that and Jack found out what it was when he
pulled up near the mill.
"Everybody has come to watch the dam," he exclaimed. "No use asking
about the logs, though; there they are."
The crowd was evidently excited, and the air was filled with shouts and
answers.
"The boom got unhitched and swung round 'cross the dam," said one eager
speaker; "and there's all the logs, now,--hundreds on 'em,--just
a-pilin' up and a-heapin' up on the dam; and when that breaks, the
dam'll go, mill and all, bridge and all, and the valley below'll be
flooded!"
The moon was up, and the clouds which had hidden it were breaking away
as Jack looked at the threatening spectacle before him.
The sorrel mare was tugging hard at the rein and pawing the mud under
her feet, while Jack listened to the talk.
"Stand it? No!" he heard a man say. "That dam wasn't built to stand
any such crowdin' as that. Hark!"
A groaning, straining, cracking sound came from the barrier behind
which the foaming flood was widening and deepening the pond.
"There it goes! It's breaking!"
Jack wheeled the sorrel, as a dull, thunderous report was answered by a
great cry from the crowd; and then he dashed away down the homeward
road.
"I must get to Crofield before the water does," he said. "Glad the
creek's so crooked; it has twice as far to travel as I have."
Not quite, considering how a flood will sweep over a bend instead of
following it. Still, Jack and the sorrel had the start, and nearly all
the way it was a downhill road.
The Crofield people gathered fast, after the sky cleared, for a rumor
went around that there was something wrong with the dam, and that a man
had gone to the Four Comers to warn the people there.
All the men that could crowd into the mill had helped Mr. Hammond get
his grain up into the second story, but the water was a hand-breadth
deep on the lower floor by the time it was done.
There came a moment when all was silent except the roar of the water,
and through that silence the thud of hoofs was heard coming down from
Main Street. Then a shrill, excited voice shouted:
"All of you get off that bridge! The Four Corners dam's gone. The
boom's broken, and the logs are coming!"
There was a tumult of questioning, as men gathered around the sorrel,
and there was a swift clearing of people from the bridge.
"Why, it's shaking now!" said the blacksmith to Mr. Murdoch. "It'll go
down with the first log that strikes it. You drive your best home to
Mertonville and warn them. You may be just in time."
Away went the editor, carrying with him an extraordinary treasure of
news for the next number of his journal. Jack dismounted, and her
owner took the sorrel to her stable; she was very muddy but none the
worse for the service she had rendered.
The crowd stood waiting for what was sure to come. Miller Hammond was
anxiously watching his threatened and already damaged property. Jack
came and stood beside him.
"Mr. Hammond," he said, "all the gravel that you were going to sell to
father is lying under water."
"More than two acres of it," said the miller. "The water'll run off,
though. I'll tell you what I'll do, Jack. I'll sell it for two
hundred dollars, considering the flood."
"If father'll take it, will you count in the fifty you said you owed
me?" inquired Jack.
The miller made a wry face for a moment, but then responded, smiling:
"Well! After what you've done to-night, too: saved all there was on
the first floor,--yes, I will. Tell him I'll do it."
They all turned suddenly toward the dam. A high ridge of water was
sweeping down across the pond. It carried a crest of foam, logs,
planks, and rubbish, shining white in the moonlight, and it rolled on
toward the mill and the dam as if it had an errand.
Crash--roar--crash--and a plunging sound,--and it seemed as if the
Crofield dam had vanished. But it had not. Only a section of its top
work, in the middle, had been knocked away by the rushing stroke of
those logs.
A frightened shout went up from the spectators, and it had hardly died
away before there followed another splintering crash.
"The bridge!" shouted Jack.
The frail supports of the bridge, brittle with age and weather, already
straining hard against the furious water, needed only the battering of
the first heavy logs from the boom, and down they went.
"Gone!" exclaimed Mr. Ogden. "The hotel's gone, and the meeting-house,
and the dam, and the bridge. There won't be anything left of Crofield,
at this rate."
"I'm going to get out of it," said Jack.
"I'll never refuse you again," replied his father, with energy. "You
may get out any way you can, and take your chances anywhere you please.
I won't stand in your way."
The roar of the surging Cocahutchie was the only sound heard for a full
minute, and then the miller spoke.
"The mill's safe," he said, with a very long breath of relief; "the
breaking of that hole in the dam let the water and logs through, and
the pond isn't rising. Hurrah!"
There was a very faint and scattering cheer, and Jack Ogden did not
join in it. He had turned suddenly and walked away homeward, along the
narrow strip of land that remained between the wide, swollen
Cocahutchie and the fence.
At the end of the fence, where he came into his own street, away above
where the head of the bridge had been, there was a large gathering.
That around the mill had been nearly all of men and boys. Here were
women and girls, and the smaller boys, whose mothers and aunts held
them and kept them from going nearer the water. Jack found it of no
use to say, "Oh, mother, I'm too muddy!" She didn't care how muddy he
was, and Aunt Melinda cared even less, apparently. Bessie and Sue had
evidently been crying; but Mary had not; and it was her hand on Jack's
arm that led him away, up the street, toward their gate.
"Oh, Jack!" she exclaimed, "I'm so proud! Did you ride fast? I'm glad
I can ride! I could have done it, too. It was splendid!"
"Molly," said Jack, "I don't mind telling you. The sorrel mare
galloped all the way, going and coming, up hill and down; and Molly, I
kept wishing and thinking every jump she gave,--wishing I was galloping
to New York, instead of to the Four Corners!
"Molly," he added quickly, "father gives it up and says I may go!"