Part 18

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."

I took up the cat by the tail.

"Vut fur? You don't vant heem?" he gasped.

"Yes, I do," I said, hotly. "He's mine. I've paid for him and I want to take him over yonder and rub him under the nose of that villain that induced me to go hunting in an automobile and steered me on the premises of a damned Dago who keeps registered cats that look exactly like coons when up a tree."

He thought I was complimenting him.

"Voila--I t'ank you," he said, bowing again, with his hand on his stomach.

I hunted around an hour before I went to the machine. I waited to cool off. Dick found a fine covey, and I missed them right and left. I had lost my nerve and my luck.

When I reached the machine, Horace was in, blinking, and we said not a word. It was my time to freeze. Smith had run out from town and fixed it. A little wire the size of a pencil-point had got an inch out of place, and it had been as dead as a log wagon on us.

It was now exactly 3:30, but we decided we still had a chance to get a covey. We made the next three miles in beautiful time, meeting only one man driving a game, high-headed horse that swept by us without giving us the least notice.

"If they were all bred like that one," I said, "a man in a machine might think he had some rights on the road."

"Glad you are beginning to see the other side," said Horace.

"We'll be there by four," he said; "just the time the birds begin to feed good. Oh, we'll get a few yet. It's a long lane, you know. Our luck is turning."

"This is fun," I said, as we flew along the newly-graveled road parallel with the creek, "fine, give it to her."

The scenery was beautiful; the bluffs were draped in clustering red berries, and the woods old gold and crimson. The water foamed over the lime rocks, glowing iridescent in the sun, and the air was bracing as we buzzed along.

_Honk! Honk!_ "Let her out!" I cried, as a touch of speed mania got into me. "Say, I see how it is," I said, "why a man soon gets the speed mania in him. Horsemen can't blame you, for they have got it, too."

"Oh, we're riding," he cried. "You have an hour yet."

We were indeed riding, along a narrow path of the road rising to a rather abrupt hill. Rising and peeping over, I saw a long procession of creeping things, their ears just shining above the hill we were both ascending.

"Halt! Stop!" I cried.

It was too late, everlastingly too late! We were meeting a negro funeral procession, that of good old Uncle Thomas, as good an old time darky as ever lived. I had known him well, a fellow of infinite jest. But I did not recognize him promptly now.

I hate to write what followed. I felt faint and sick.

Be it known that every negro loves to be buried behind white mules. It is his glory and his religion. This kind was hauling Uncle Thomas. Now, a white mule is an old mule, and the older the mule, the bigger the fool, and when they peeped over the top of that hill, only to butt into a goggle-eyed demon, they did what mules always do. When I first saw them I was looking at the north end of that negro hearse. The next instant I was looking at the south end. And as the thing turned over once to adjust itself to different direction, a venerable old darkey shot out of the rear end of that hearse, followed by a two-dollar coffin, and everything in that two miles of vehicles turned tail at the same time.

I jumped out, grabbing my hunting coat, which I knew held a flask of whiskey, and rushed pell-mell through the woods for the creek bank. All I wanted was a little water in that whiskey.

After satisfying myself I would not faint, I went back in time to see that everything had been fixed and the procession headed north again.

"No, sah, it didn't hurt Brer Thomas," the preacher was explaining to Horace; "but it did upsot some of the sisterin, an' they fainted when he come outer the back end of that kerridge so nachul an' briefly. No, sah; nobody's hurt, sah; it wuz jes' a sivigerus accerdent."

"How much money have you, Horace? I've spent all mine on dead and registered cats," I said, bitterly.

He had plenty, and tipped the whole two miles of them, as they passed by, singing: "_Jordan is a hard road to travel._"

Never had that old song seemed so real to me!

"I stop right here," I said, after assuring myself that I would not faint again. "The sun is setting; we've been out all day, and found nothing but a cat and a corpse."

Our experience had taken our nerve, and we waited two hours by the roadside, way after dark, until we'd seen everything we met in the morning go back home.

Then we lit up, and reached home at ten o'clock.

Eloise and the twins met me at the gate, scared to death.

"So glad you're safe," she cried, kissing me. "I know you've got a full bag, you've never failed, and, oh, dearie, I've invited a dozen ladies over to-morrow for lunch, promising quail on toast, so I hope nothing has happened."

By this time one of the twins was climbing over me, shouting, "Daddy, show me old Bob White--show me old Brer Rabbit." And the other echoed, "Daddy, show me old Bob White--show me old Brer Rabbit."

The bitterness of it went into me.

"Quail on toast?" I cried with sarcasm. "Change it now, my dear; write them all a note at once and tell them tomcat is better, for that's all I've killed to-day! Just make it tomcat on toast!"

Eloise looked at me curiously. "Jack, I believe you have taken one of those cheap drinks."

"One?" I said. "I drank a flask of it. I had to or faint when I saw poor old Uncle Thomas come out of the rear end of that hearse as natural as life."

"Oh!" said Eloise, putting her fingers in her ears. "Come in, dearie, and I'll give you another, poor dear!"

But it was rubbed in on me that night. It was midnight when Eloise came to my room. I heard one of the twins crying. "Come here, Jack," she said laughing. "One of them wants you, has waked up crying for you."

She was sitting up in bed and her lamentations were loud. At sight of me she broke out, "Daddy--you brought sister a dead cat and--and--wouldn't--bring me--me--one!"

To jolly her into good humor, as I often did, I picked her up and turned her a somersault in the bed: I was unfortunate again--that accursed cat and automobile!

Accidentally her head was bumped.

In blazing indignation, she sat up and spat upon me!

I retreated as best I could: "Your mother will spank you for that"--I said.

She quieted--ashamed: but almost instantly the other one sat up in bed, crying lustily.

"What do _you_ want?" I said. "I thought you were asleep."

"Tum back here," she wailed heart-brokenly, "_and let me spit on you too!_"

I heard Eloise laugh.

"Hang an automobile and a dead cat," I said, as I went out--"they are two Jonahs that will always smell alike to me hereafter!"

*CHAPTER V*

*THE SICK TREE*

The going of my old grandsire was pathetic, for towards the last he lost interest in the living, in everything except the great elm he had always loved because his mother had nursed him under it.

"And it is dying, Jack, just as I am going; but I do so want it to live until I am gone!"

"It shall, Grandfather," I said, "it is sick, but with a little surgery I can save it. It shall live twenty years longer."

The old tree, tall and beautiful even in death, was half rotted as it stood. Any violent wind was likely to snap it off. Any great storm would beat it to the earth.

Every morning the old man would rise and look first of all to see if his tree was still standing.

He was greatly interested in the way I cured it. I cut away the dead rot up the entire trunk; and when I had finished, little, except a shell, remained. Into this I drove a section of iron railing from a railway track, fully fifteen feet high, driven five feet into the ground, down among the old roots of the tree. Around this and entirely filling the hollow to the top of the iron rail, I poured cement, casing it in to fit the old body that was gone, tucking sheets of zinc under the edges of the bark whose layers carry the sap up and down.

When this was painted and treated to a coating of tar, it looked like the great tree in its youth, and under a strong wind it swayed, supported by the cement and its rod of steel, with all the strength of its younger days.

There one evening, clasping it in the twilight, we found the old General asleep. It was the last sleep of a second childhood, and having no mother for the lullaby, he had slept, his arms around the tree she had loved.

The sun had set; the twilight had come; the great trees shadowed the eternal hills.

The old warrior had died a tree-lover; the young tree-lover had been forced, of God, to fight.

We plan, and, like the rough ashlar, we cut and hew; but the Sculptor is God....

I do not know why Eloise should have risked it, but she did; and though I would not have her try it again for The Home Stretch nor feel again that memory-pang of horror when, for one brief second, I saw what she meant to do, yet when it was done my heart beat fiercely with pride and love for her. How blessed are those children who have a mother both brave and beautiful!

We had ridden to town one day, as we often did when the weather was fit. And for a pretense she had me ride out to the Fair Grounds to see a new colt in training. I suspect she had fixed it all before; for I had seen her practicing Satan on nearly every little ride, at jumps, stone walls, mainly, and old rail fences up to four feet.

"Oh, it's just to see if age and the campaigns of honorable war," she laughed, "have stiffened the old fellow's muscles or softened his heart"; and she would reach over and pat his great neck.

At the track the old bars stood across.

I sickened at the sight of them, remembering. But Eloise, pretending not to notice, glanced quickly at me.

"Who's put them back there?" I asked, paling with fear of my own suspicion. "I'll tear them down now and burn them," I said, dismounting quickly.

But Eloise was too quick for me. Even Satan knew her thought and at the sound of her bantering laugh and the old sideway flash of the whip above his ears, he flew like a winged horse at the bars.

I did not breathe, when, for one short, awful moment, I saw them mount straight up toward the sky. Then, realizing that age and service had hampered his driving power behind, the game horse threw his front easily over, and like a great see-saw swung across, bringing his rear limbs, not straight, to tap the bars and be tangled, but sidewise and parallel, barely saving his neck!

"Well, I did it!" She rode up laughing, Satan trembling so with excitement and the effort I could see his knees quivering, his flank fluttering wildly. And in Eloise's face there was the white flag of peril yet lingering before the red of victory.

She rode up close to me, her eyes lit with the tenderness of love's light, and bedewed with its tears: "_Kiss me, Jack, dearest--for that is what I had sworn all the time I would do. If--if they had only let me break the world's record that first time._"

THE END