"This is pretty good," I admitted. "I begin to see how you people soon
become speed-crazy. We'll get the birds to-day," I warmed up, "and I
thank you for--look out! Stop!"
He stopped, but not in time. It was a nervous-looking, old, fleabitten,
gray mare, full of Stackpole, Traveler, Dan Rice and Boston blood. I
had seen it so often that I knew the very turn of its tail. In the
buckboard she was pulling were three country girls, fat, solid, happy,
their lines wabbling around anywhere, and the old mare going where she
listeth. They were the kind of girls I knew and loved in my sappy days.
I used to commence to kiss 'em about Christmas, knowing they'd wake up
and respond about the Fourth of July. Two of them amply filled up the
buckboard, but, as usual, a third one had piled on top of the others
somewhere, and--
"Great heaven, Horace!" I shouted. "Stop--that one there on top is
holding a baby!"
I sprang out, for I saw the old mare begin to squat, her old, scared,
brown eyes blazing in her white face like holes in a big lard can. I
heard her snort like a scared bear and saw her feet pattering jigs all
over the pike. Then she whirled, running into a fence, where, between
the overturned buckboard, the shafts and the rail fence, she stood
wedged upon her hind legs, pawing the air.
But the girls surprised me. Without a change in their fat, immutable,
expressionless faces, they simply rolled out on the pike in a bunch, the
baby on top, like snow folks tilted over by a boy.
They got up, dusting their frocks. They had taken it for granted. It
was all right. There was not a squawk, not even from the baby, as one
of them picked it up and I grabbed the bits and straightened out the old
mare.
"I hope you ladies aren't hurt," said my friend from the roadside, in
his machine.
"Sally, is you hurt?" asked the fattest one.
"Naw," she grunted.
"Mamie, is you?"
Mamie merely wiggled.
"Is Tootsy hurt?"
Tootsy was eating an apple, with unblinking eyes fixed on the wonderful
machine.
Nothing was hurt but the harness.
That was hurt before they started, but I had to spend the next twenty
minutes patching it up. Finally we got them all in, Tootsy on top. No
word had they spoken, but I could see they were eyeing me, with that
country suspicion that makes every maid of them rate every man she meets
in the road as Lothario, Jr., or a prince in disguise.
"Now, ladies, you are all right," I said, trying to keep cheerful. "And
I am so glad none of you was hurt."
Then one of them drawled, but looking over toward the distant horizon,
"Ain't you named Mister Jack?"