Horses Nine | Page 7

So-o-o! Dern yer crazy-quilt hide. Body'd think yer
never see that stun afore in yer life. Gee-long a-a-ap!" Uncle Enoch
would growl, accenting his words by jerking the lines.
A scarecrow in the middle of a cornfield, an auction bill tacked to a
stump, an old hat stuffing a vacant pane and proclaiming the
shiftlessness of the Aroostook Billingses, would serve when nothing
else offered excuse for skittishness. Even sober Old Jeff, the off horse,
sometimes caught the infection for a moment. He would prick up his
ears and look inquiringly at the suspected object, but so soon as he saw
what it was down went his head sheepishly, as if he was ashamed of
having again been tricked.
This morning, however, it was no false alarm. When Old Jeff was
roused out of his accustomed jog by Calico's nervous snorts he looked
up to see such a spectacle as he had never beheld in all his goings and
comings up and down the Bangor road. Looming out of the mist was a
six-horse team hitched to the most foreign-looking rig one could well
imagine. It had something of the look of a preposterous hay-cart, with
the ends of blue-painted poles sticking out in front and trailing behind.
Following this was a great, white-swathed wheeled box drawn by four
horses. It was certainly a curious affair, whatever it was, but neither
Calico nor Old Jeff gave it much heed, nor did they waste a glance on
the distant tail of the procession, for behind the wheeled box was a

thing which held their gaze.
In the gray four o'clock light it seemed like an enormous cow that
rolled menacingly forward; not as a cow walks, however, but with a
swaying, heaving motion like nothing commonly seen on a Maine
highway. Instinctively both horses thrust their muzzles toward the thing
and sniffed. Without doubt Old Jeff was frightened. Perhaps not for
nine generations had any of his ancestors caught a whiff of that
peculiarly terrifying scent of which every horse inherits knowledge and
dread.
As for Calico, he had no need of such spur as inherited terror. He had
fearsomeness enough of his own to send him rearing and pawing the air
until the whiffle-trees rapped his knees. Old Jeff did not rear. He stared
and snorted and trembled. When he felt his mate spring forward in the
traces he went with him, ready to do anything in order to get away from
that heaving, swaying thing which was coming toward them.
"Whoa, ye pesky fools! Whoa, dod rot ye!" Uncle Enoch, wakened
from the half doze which he had been taking on the wagon-seat, now
began to saw on the lines. His shouts seemed to have aroused the
heaving thing, for it answered with a horrid, soul-chilling noise.
By this time Calico was leaping frantically, snorting at every jump and
forcing Old Jeff to keep pace. They were at the top of a long grade and
down the slope the loaded wagon rattled easily behind them. Uncle
Enoch did his best. With feet well braced he tugged at the lines and
shouted, all to no purpose. Never before had Calico and Old Jeff met a
circus on the move. Neither had they previously come into such close
quarters with an elephant. One does not expect such things on the
Bangor road. At least they did not. They proposed to get away from
such terrors in the shortest possible time.
Now the public ways of Maine are seldom macadamized. In places they
are laid out straight across and over the granite backbone of the
continent. The Bangor road is thus constructed in spots. This slope was
one of the spots where the bare ledge, with here and there six-inch
shelves and eroded gullies, offered a somewhat uneven surface to the

wheels. A well built Studebaker will stand a lot of this kind of banging,
but it is not wholly indestructible. So it happened that half-way down
the hill the left hind axle snapped at the hub. Thereupon some two
hundred dozen ears of early green-corn were strewn along the flinty
face of the highway, while Uncle Enoch was hurled, seat and all,
accompanied by four dozen eggs and ten pounds of Aunt Henrietta's
best butter, into the ditch.
When the circus caravan overtook him Uncle Enoch had captured the
runaways and was leading them back to where the wrecked wagon lay
by the roadside. More or less butter was mixed with the sandy chin
whiskers and an inartistic yellow smooch down the front of his coat
showed that the eggs had followed him.
"Rather lively pair of yours; eh, mister?" commented a red-faced man
who dropped off the pole-wagon.
"Yes, ruther lively," assented Uncle Enoch, "'Specially when ye don't
want 'em to be.