Cy Whittaker's Place Part 39

"Springs? What springs? Let go my arm, will you? It's goin' to sleep."

Mrs. Beasley let go of the arm momentarily.

"I mean the springs on this carriage," she explained. "Last time I lent it to anybody--Solon Davis, 'twas--he said the bolts underneath was pretty nigh rusted out, and about all that held the wagon part on was its own weight. So we'll have to be kind of careful."

"Well--I--swan--to--MAN!" was Mr. Bangs's sole comment on the amazing disclosure; however, as an expression of concentrated and profound disgust it was quite sufficient. He spoke but once during the remainder of the trip to the "Center." Then, when his pa.s.senger begged to know if "that Whittaker man" had been well since she left, he shouted: "Yes--EVER since," and relapsed into his former gloomy silence.

The widow's stop at the Atwood house, which was in the immediate rear of the Atwood store, was of a half hour's duration. Bailey refused to leave the seat of the sulky and sat there, speaking to no one; not even replying to the questions of a group of loungers who gathered to inspect the ancient vehicle, and professed to be in doubt as to whether it had been washed in with the tide or been "left" to him in a will.

At last Debby made her appearance, her arms filled with newspapers. The latter she piled under the carriage seat, and then climbed to her former place beside the driver. Henry, in response to a slap from the reins, got under way once more. The axles squeaked and screamed.

"Gee!" cried one youngster, from the steps of the store. "It's the steam calliope. When's the rest of the show comin'?"

"Hi!" yelled another. "See how close they're hugged up together. Ain't they lovin'! It's a weddin'!"

"Shut up!" roared the tortured Bailey, whose hat had blown back into the body of the sulky, leaving his bald head exposed to the cutting wind.

The audience begged him to give them a lock of his hair, and added other remarks of a personal nature concerning the youth and beauty of the bridal couple and their chariot. Mr. Bangs was in a state of dumb frenzy. Debby, who, without her trumpet, had heard nothing of all this, was smiling and garrulous.

"I found all the papers," she said. "They're right under the seat. I'm goin' to look 'em over so's to have the interestin' parts all ready to show Miss Dorcas when we get home. Ain't it nice I found 'em?"

In spite of her driver's remonstrances, unheard because of the nonadjustment of the trumpet, she reached under the seat and brought out the pile of Blazeton weeklies. With her feet upon the pile to keep it from blowing away, she proceeded to unfold one of the papers. It crackled and snapped in the wind like a loose mainsail.

"Keep that dratted thing out of my face, won't you?" shrieked the agonized Bailey. "How'm I goin' to see to steer with that smackin' me between the eyes every other second?"

"Hey? Did you speak to me?" asked the widow sweetly.

"Did I SPEAK? No, I screeched! What in tunket--"

"I want you to see this picture of the mayor's house in Blazeton. Eva, my husband's niece, lives right acrost the road from him. Many's the time I've set on their piazza and seen him come out and go to the City Hall."

"Keep it out of my face, I tell you! Reef it! Furl it, you--you woman! I wish to thunder the piazza had caved in on you! I never see such an old fool in my born days. TAKE IT AWAY!"

Mrs. Beasley removed the paper, but only to subst.i.tute another.

"Here's Eva's brother-in-law," she screamed. "He's one of the prominent business men out there, so they put him in the paper. Ain't he nice lookin'?"

Bailey's comments on the prominent business man's appearance were anything but flattering. Debby continued to reach for more papers, carefully replacing those she had inspected in the pile beneath her feet. The wind blew as hard as ever; even harder, for it was now almost dead ahead. Henry plodded along. They were in the hollow at the foot of the last long hill, that from which the blacksmith shop had first been sighted.

"I know what I'll do," declared the pa.s.senger. "I'll hunt for that missin' husband advertis.e.m.e.nt of Desire Higgins's. Let's see now! 'Twill be down at the bottom of the pile, 'cause the paper it's in is a last year one."

She bobbed down behind the high dashboard. Mr. Bangs stood up in order that her gymnastics might interfere, to a lesser degree, with his driving. The equipage began to move up the slope of the hill, bouncing and twisting in the frozen ruts.

"Here 'tis!" exclaimed Debby. "I remember it's in this number, 'cause there's a picture of the Palace Hotel on the front page. Let's see--'Dog lost'--no, that ain't it. 'Corner lot for sale'--wish I had money enough to buy it; I'd like nothin' better than to live out there. 'Information wanted of my husband'--Here 'tis! Um--hum!"

She straightened up and eagerly began reading the advertis.e.m.e.nt. The hill was very steep just at its top, and the sulky slanted backward at a sharp angle. A terrific burst of wind tore around the corner of the bluff. It eddied through the sulky between the dashboard and the curtained sides. The widow, in her excitement at finding the advertis.e.m.e.nt, had inadvertently removed her feet from the pile of papers. In an instant the air was filled with whirling copies of the Blazeton Weekly Courier.

Henry, the horse, was a sober animal who had long ago reached the age of discretion. But to have his old ears and eyes suddenly blanketed with a flapping white thing swooping apparently from nowhere was too much even for his sedate nerves. He jumped sidewise. The reins were jerked from the driver's hands and fell in the road.

"Mercy on us!" shrieked Debby, clutching her companion about the waist.

"What--"

"Let go of me!" howled Bailey, pus.h.i.+ng her violently aside. "Whoa! Stand still!"

But Henry refused to stand still. The flapping paper still clung to his agitated head. He reared and pranced, jerking the sulky back and forth, its wheels still wedged in the ruts. Bailey sprang to the ground to pick up the reins. He seized them, but fell as he did so. The tug at his bits turned Henry's head, literally and figuratively. He reared and whirled about. The sulky rose on two wheels. The screaming Mrs. Beasley collapsed against its downward side. Another moment, and the whole upper half of the sulky--body, seat, curtains, and Debby--tilted over the lower wheels, and, the rusted bolts failing to hold, slid with a thump to the frozen road. The wind, catching it underneath as it slid, tipped it backward. Then Henry ran away.

Miss Dawes, left alone in the house at the foot of the hill, had amused herself for a time with the Beasley library, which partially filled a shelf in the sitting room. But "The Book of Martyrs" and "A Believer's Thoughts on Death" were not cheering literature, particularly as the author of the latter volume "thought" so dismally concerning the future of all who did not believe precisely as he did. So the teacher laid down the book, with a shudder, and wandered about the room, inspecting the late Mr. Beasley's portrait, the photographs in splintwork frames, the "alum basket" on the mantel, the blue castles, blue trees, and blue people pictured on the window shades, and other works of art in the apartment. She even peeped into the parlor, but the musty, shut-up smell of that dusky tomb was too much for her, and she sat down by the sitting-room window, under the empty bird cage, to look up the road and watch for the return of the sulky and its occupants.

Sitting there, she was a witness of the alarming catastrophe on the hilltop, and reached the front gate just in time to see Henry go galloping by, dragging the four wheels and springs of the sulky, while, sprawled across the rear axle and still clinging to the reins, hung a familiar, howling, and most wickedly profane individual by the name of Bangs.

The runaway dashed on toward the blacksmith shop. Phoebe, bareheaded and coatless, ran up the hill. Before she reached the crest, she was aware of m.u.f.fled screams, which sounded as if the screamer was shut up in a trunk.

"O-o-oh!" screamed Mrs. Beasley. "O-o-oh! Ow! Let me out! Help! I'm stuck! My back's broke! He-e-lp!"

The upper part of the sulky, with its boxlike curtained top, lay on its side in the road. From somewhere within the box came the groans and screams. The gale swept the hilltop, and, for a quarter mile to leeward, the scenery was animated by soaring, fluttering copies of the Blazeton Courier, that swooped and ducked like mammoth white b.u.t.terflies.

The panting and alarmed teacher stooped and peered into the dark shadow between the dashboard and the back curtain. All she could make out at first were a pair of thin ankles and "Congress" shoes in agitated motion. These bobbed up and down behind the overturned seat and its displaced cus.h.i.+on.

"O Mrs. Beasley!" screamed Phoebe. "Are you hurt?"

Debby, of course, did not hear the question. She continued to groan and scream for help. Her lungs were not injured, at all events. The schoolmistress, dropping on her knees, reached into the sulky top and tugged at the seat. It was rather tightly wedged, but she managed to loosen it and pull it toward her.

The widow raised herself on an elbow and looked out between the flowers of her smashed bonnet.

"Who is it?" she demanded. "Oh, is that you, Miss Dorcas? Oh, my soul and body! Oh, my stars! Oh, my goodness me!"

"Are you hurt?" shrieked Phoebe.

"Hey? I don't know! I don't know WHAT I be! I don't know nothin'!"

"Can you help yourself? Can you get up?"

"Hey? I don't know. Maybe I can if you haul that everlastin' seat out of the way. Oh, my sakes alive!"

Her rescuer pulled the seat forward, and, with an effort, tumbled it clear of the curtains. Debby raised herself still higher.

"Oh!" she groaned. "Talk about--Land sakes! who's comin'? Men, ain't it?

Let me out of here quick! QUICK!"

She scrambled out of her prison on hands and knees, and jumped to her feet with rea.s.suring alacrity. Her fur-collared cape was draped in a roll about her neck, and her bonnet hung jauntily over her left eye.

"I'm a sight, ain't I?" she asked. "Haul this bunnet straight, quick's ever you can. Hurt? No, no! I ain't hurt none but my feelin's. Hurry UP! S'pose I want them men folks to see me with everything all hind side to?"

Miss Dawes, relieved to find that the accident had had no serious consequences, and trying her hardest not to laugh, a.s.sisted the widow to rearrange her wearing apparel. The blacksmith and his helper came running up the hill.

"h.e.l.lo, Debby!" hailed the former. "What's the matter? Hurt, be you?"