One of them relieved herself by spitting snuff over the dashboard, while
the other took it out on me, deprecating the day when "Sech folks an'
things blocks up ther public trail--an' so help me, ain't that thar
Mister Jack, an' my old man bred this mar' by his say so!
Jack,--Ananias," she sniffed, as she drove off.
The next were right on us, two slick, three-year-old sugar-mules,
hauling a load of darkies. They came on at a rattling clip, making more
noise than a freight train, jollying, laughing and cackling. The men
were on plank seats across the wagon, the women in high-back hickory
chairs, squatting low and feeling as good as Senegambians usually do in
a white man's country, where he does all the worrying and thinking and
they do all the loafing and eating.
They passed us without a wabble. I expected that, for a mule, like a
negro, never sees anything until he has passed it. I saw the gate of
the wagon had been taken out in the rear to let the damsels in: also the
chickens, the coop of ducks, a bundle of coon-skins, pumpkins, a sack of
unwashed wool, some spare ribs and a tub of only such nice chitlings as
a country mammy can prepare. They passed, and then the scare got into
those three-year-old corn feds good by way of their tails. For I saw
these straighten out first, then their ears. I saw the big driver fall
back on the lines, and--
"Whoa, dar!"
They jumped twenty feet in the first jump, and ran half a mile in spite
of his lugging and sawing. But the first jump was enough. The damage
was done then, for everything in it but the driver, who held on to the
reins, came boiling out of the rear. Up the road for half a mile was a
telegraph line of chitlings, the rest were mixed up. They all rose but
one damsel, weighing close to 468 pounds. She sat still. A young buck
went to help her up.
"G'way f'm heah, nigger, wait till I see ef my condiments is busted,"
she cried, feeling her sides and her chest. "'Sides, I wants Brer Simon
to hope me up."
Brother Simon helped her and she was all right.
We gave her a dollar and the others a quarter each. It was expensive,
but I deemed it just.
The following then passed with more or less hesitancy, shying and
plunging: a surrey and team; a boy and his best girl; a log wagon and
four mules, the leaders rushing by in terror, pulling the wheelers by
the neck, as they were trying to go the other way.
Then came Old 'Squire Jones on his roan Hal pacer. The horse got
half-way by before he decided that the goggle eyes on the roadside had
him. Well--no goggle eyes had ever caught any of his tribe--not yet!
In bucking to wheel, he tapped the old 'Squire in the mouth with his
poll. The old man had been raised a Presbyterian, with Baptist
propensities, and he made the ozone sulphuric. He brought his horse
back to the scratch, spurring and swearing. It was all right this time,
till the old horse looked into the back of the machine. True to the
fool in his pedigree, he knew what the machine was, because he had never
seen one before; but the dogs--they were things he had seen all his
life, and he bolted backward again, jamming the old 'Squire's stomach
against the pommel and his back against the cantle. It was the time to
go, and we shot out, leaving the old horse waltzing into town on his
hind legs.
"I didn't hear his last remarks," I said, as we went along. "They
seemed to be rather personal."
"Let 'em go," said Horace. "You wouldn't want to put them in your
scrap-book."
"I don't think the mare and buggy would have made us all these enemies,"
I remarked, "and we would have been there by now. Do you know it's
eleven o'clock?"
"We've got a fine run, now," he apologized. "We'll be there in thirty
minutes."
"We'll be there by night," I snarled. "Say, we'll just call it a possum
hunt, eh?"
This made him mad, and he did not speak till he got to the big hill.
Here at the foot we stopped and sat, throbbing.
Horace fumbled with a side brake a moment, touched a pedal and looked
wise.
"What's all this for?" I said.
"I'm resting for a little headway before taking that steep hill. And
say, while we're at it, you ought to know something about a machine, you
might be called on to help me in an emergency."
I turned pale. Up to this time I had felt secure. Now I understood
something of the feelings of that pair of mules that never saw danger
until they had passed it.
"Why, I thought you knew all about it," I began.
"Of course I do, but something might happen to me. You might be thrown
on your own resources. Now here," he went on. "This little lever on
the wheel is the spark-control--it quickens things--the next one is the
throttle; that means more power. This is the switch-plug here: this is
the clutch, and this the brake. Now, remember, and watch me start."
He did, the thing starting slowly up the hill and then beginning to go
in little jumps, exactly like a horse galloping.
"Pull him down," I growled, "he's broken his gait." For I felt every
moment as if it would soon wabble and quit. But he kept galloping and I
settled down and began unconsciously to wabble my body as I would in
motion to a galloping horse. I couldn't help it. I glanced at Horace,
he was doing the same, but hitching at the side lever all the time, and
we were bobbing like two Muscovy ducks over a mud hole.
It was uncomfortable, it was uncanny.
"Confound you," I growled, "I tell you the thing's galloping--he's all
tangled up; bring him down."
_Snap_ went something, and Horace breathed easy.
"All right now," he said, as we began to climb the hill beautifully.
Over the top we went, and then--down--down! How she did fly! My heart
jumped into my throat! I held my breath and felt that same feeling I
used to feel pumping in a swing when I'd soar up to the top and start
down again, the same when I started down the elevator from the 19th
story of the Masonic Temple and felt my legs give way and threw my arms
around the neck of the elevator boy and begged him for heaven's sake to
stop until I got my breath and my legs in speaking distance of each
other, and collected the rest of myself.
"Stop her," I cried, "down-this-hill-I'm-feeling-queer-Lord-I'm-stop, I
tell you!"
"It's easy," he laughed. "Do it yourself--on that brake--there--just to
teach you--there!"
Gasping for breath and pale with fright, I kicked up a little pedal.
The thing jumped twenty feet!
"Don't!" I heard him yell, "Good Lord, that's the throttle!"
I saw a big ditch on the other side of us. I saw his hand dart quickly
to his side.
Like all man and woman-kind, in emergencies with a horse, I do the fool
thing, grab at the reins. This instinct overpowered me. I grabbed the
brakes to help him. I over-did it. It stopped too quickly; it actually
kicked up behind. It stopped like a twelve-inch ball striking armor
plate. I went over clear across the ditch. The three dogs were
faithful and they followed.
Horace tried it, but the steering wheel stopped him.
"It was my fault," I said, as I limped up, after the dogs got off of me.
"I grabbed at your reins, I guess--thought you were running away."
But the sudden stop had sprung something, and Horace was out fixing it.
He had pulled off his cap and got under the machine, and I saw the
beaded sweat begin to rise on the crown of his bald head, like bubbles
on a mill pond.
This did me a world of good. I lighted a cigar, propped up and began to
smoke.
For half an hour he tinkered and tinkered. I smoked and gave him such
bits of sarcastic encouragement as happened into my head. I reminded
him that Tempus was fugiting, and that it was already quite 9:50 and we
were still ten miles from nowhere; that the little mare would have been
there by now, and we would still have some friends left on the pike.
"Consider the lilies that ride in automobiles," I quoted, "they toil
not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that old gray mare, in
all her glory, never worked as hard as you are working now."
It was my time, and Dick and I enjoyed it, sensible dog that he was.
After every bit of such talk he'd wink and fairly guffaw.
Horace was working hard. He was groveling in the dirt to do it, too,
and that suited me also. I could gauge his efforts by the sweat drops
that arose on his bald spot, growing and then bursting like soap
bubbles, to roll down his collar.
"Plague it!" he said at last, rising, "I can't see very well without my
glasses. Say, stop your guying, now, and look under here and see if you
can see what's wrong."
I got out as leisurely as a lord; all I could see was a small coil of
wire, red hot. "I see it," I said, solemnly. "The thing's appendix is
red hot. Give me an axe and I'll open it up."
Dick howled with delight. I thought he'd die. Horace smiled grimly, but
it was a smile that said, "I'll even this up yet."
"Put in your shells; we'll hunt around toward that farm house, and up
there I'll 'phone to town and have Smith come out and fix it."
Thus he spoke, and I agreed. In fact, there was nothing else to do. We
rolled the machine aside, the dogs were let out, and we were soon
quartering a field toward a farm house.
"Whose place is this?" I asked, as the dogs began to hunt down the wind.
"Old Bogair's, a French Canadian. He came here three years ago from
Canada; ticklish old fellow, but he knows me, and it's all right."
I felt secure, for while the game law is very strict, requiring written
permission to hunt on one's premises, intended as a guard against pot
hunters, no gentleman ever objected to another hunting on his farm.
We started through a cedar wood in a gladey spot and I saw Dick
beginning to nose the wind and to throw up his head for quail. Then I
heard my companion calling lustily for me to come. I rushed up, Dick at
my heels.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A coon--a big coon--up in that cedar tree. Get on the other side,
quick!"
I ran around, and, sure enough, up among the branches, trying to hide,
but showing the end of a brindled and streaked tail, was the coon.
In a trice I let him have it, and he came crashing through the branches.
Dick ran up and seized it, shaking. I saw yellow eyes, ears laid back,
and the coon spitting and fighting for life. It was dying, but struck
out, tearing Dick's nose to threads. I ran up and planted the heel of
my hunting boot on its neck, while Dick howled with his lacerated nose.
"That's a funny looking coon," I said, as I eyed the thing suspiciously.
I heard Horace laugh and saw him turn and make a break for the road. I
looked up. Old Bogair had run up, red-faced and breathless.
"By gar," he yelled, as soon as he saw what I'd done, "vut fur you
keeled ze house cat fur? Vut fur?"
It was true; but never had I seen a tomcat look more like a coon. On a
distant hillside I could see my deserting friend rolling on the grass
and shouting.
In vain I apologized. Old Bogair kept dancing around and shouting, "Vut
fur you keel ze house cat fur? Vut fur?"
"What are you damaged?" I said at last, with disgust.
"Ah, en passant--dees one from T'ronto, I breeng. Hee's
registraire--fife taller, an' fife fur treespaire."
I paid it like a man. Old Bogair smiled and bowed, with his hand on his
stomach.
"Eet vus all right now."