LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Shag Pond Road—a five-mile cir­cuit, now the judge’s only safety.

      Dana Cole leaped to the telephone and hurled hot messages broadcast all up and down the farmers’ amal­gamated lines:

      “Ev’body clear th’ roads! Teams, youngins, poultry, pigs, keep off! Jedge Bartlett’s run away with by a motorcycle! He’s lickin’ it raound th’ lake!”

      Thus Amos had a clear track. Hastily all traffic was diverted into barnyards and front doors. Infants and animals were impounded. And fences all along the line began to fringe themselves with an anxious yet a well-pleased populace.

      Old Dr. Chase hastily laid out splints, needles, bandages, and chloroform, to­gether with a bottle of Gribbins’s Peer­less Horse Liniment, the only embro­cation in his veterinary stock.

      “Reckon mebbe I’ll git a job yit!” he murmured, nodding with joyous anticipation.

      Thus began the judge’s motordrome.

      Inside of five minutes, having made the complete circle, he once more leaped through the village. A crowd gathered on the platform of Coffin’s general store. Some of the younger bloods on the store platform began to time the judge after the fourth com­plete circuit.

      Silas Hennberry, who once had been an assistant track-manager at the South Paris fair, got his stopwatch into action. The fifth round gave a record of 4.28.

      Then the betting began, even money that the judge would be making it in 4.25, inside of half an hour.

      Old Pop Bicknall offered two to one that the judge would “come up ’mongst the missin’” before the end of the tenth heat. ’Raish Cole took him, and Uncle Sessions held the total stakes of seventy-five cents.

      The news spread over the country­side like an oil-film on water. Obser­vation-parties began to coagulate at vantage points. Every impinging road brought in its quota by “rig” or afoot.

      The semi-occasional trolley from Mil­ton Plantation to Pinhook began run­ning specials of the entire rolling stock of one car, with record-breaking crowds aboard.

      Luella Bartlett, the judge’s wife, ar­rived at the Bean place at 7.32 behind a lathering nag, just in time to catch sight of a vanishing whirl of dust. At this she waved her umbrella, scream­ing:

      “Amos! You, Amos! My soul an’ body, Ame! You stop, this ’tarnal minute! Hear me?”

      Then she collapsed in hysterics. They had to throw water over her, which they rushed in pails from the horse-trough at the barn.

      Meanwhile, other and more serious matters were shaping. For “Deak” Saunders, driving into town be­hind his goose-necked calico mare, sud­denly became aware of serious trouble impending.

      Hardly had he struck into the Lake Road when his ruminations about the Brooks land case received a ghastly jolt.

      Thus were his pleasant assurances running:

      “I got Jeff Brooks where I want him now, by gary! Ef the case is called, an’ don’t default—an’ it’s a goin’ to be called or I’m a preacher—ef it’s called, that there mowin’ lot’s as good as mine a’ready! Oh, I got him fer sure!”

      Into these cheerful reflections ex­ploded impending disaster in the shape of a crackling, fire-spitting comet be­stridden by a half-glimpsed form that grimly clung and crouched and van­ished down the pike.

      “Whoa, durn ye!” he exhorted, sawing at the lines. “By the Gre’t Deludian! What’s that?”

      Even as faint cheers became audible from the direction of Pinhook, Ronello Bowker came running, waving wild arms.

      “Git out o’ the road! Clear th’ road!” he panted. “Ain’t ye heerd?”

      “Heerd what?”

      “Jedge Bartlett!”

      “Huh?”

      “He’s in a hell of a quand’y! Went an’ got himself run away with on a motorcycle, an’—”

      “Sho’! Was that—”

      “Yup! An’ fer Heaven’s sake, git off’n the road! He’ll be raound agin in less’n no time!”

      Deak stared and went yellow.

      “But—but—” he stammered. “It can’t be! He’s a goin’ to hear that case at nine, an’—”

      “Hear nawthin’! You hyper!”

      Rudely Ronello hauled the mare into Orrington’s barnyard.

      “Now, ye ’tarnation fool!” he shouted. “You keep off’n the track! Want a wreck, do ye? Ef he hits ye, neither o’ you’ll last as long as Jed Perkins stayed in heaven.”

      “Y’ mean that’s really th’ jedge, Ronello?” insisted Deak. “My crimus! How long—”

      “He’s be’n goin’ better part of an hour a’ready. Raound an’ raound th’ lake. Dassent git off’n that road looks like. His only chanst is to hang right to it till his napthy gins out or suthin’ busts on him.”

      “My land o’ livin! An’ ye say he ain’t goin’ to stop fer court?”

      “How in Tunket kin he? He’s fer­got how t’ stop her! He’ll mebbe keep it up all day—that is, ef he don’t peg out fust an’ tumble off. Why, what’s the matter? You look bluer’n a whetstun!”

      Deak Saunders, suddenly vitalized into intense activities, leaped from his buckboard.

      “Jeems Rice!” he bellowed. “Ef that ’ar case ain’t called I stand t’ lose thirty dollars! Quick! Git an auto-mobyle! I’ll chase him! I’ll holler to him how t’ shet her off!”

      Ronello snorted.

      “Hain’t no machine in this caounty kin ketch him!”

      Far down the road a distant sound of cheering once more began to float upon the morning air. Then, bursting into the sphere of Deak’s conscious­ness, leaped a crackling roar.

      Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! Zip-p-p-p-p-p-p-p!

      Once more the comet streaked and vanished.

      “By gosh all lightnin’!” execrated Saunders, clinging to the fence and staring with horror-smitten eyes. “That’s my finish! Thirty—”

      He whirled on Ronello.

      “Gimme a sheet—brush—paint! I’ll make a big sign—tell him how t’ shet off th’ spark or dreen th’ napthy-tank, an’—

      “Sign?”

      “Yup! An’ hang it ’cross th’ road—”

      “Idjit! He lost his glasses, teeth, hat an’ wig an’ every durn thing ’t would come off’n him ’fore he’d went raound six times! An’ even ef he had his specs, he couldn’t read no sign, clip he’s goin’! Now, you better fergit it an’—”

      But Deak heard him not.

      Already he had turned and was leg­ging it at full speed through the barn­yard toward the lake.

      After him stared Ronello.

      “Plumb crazed!” he muttered, sha­king his head.

      Deak, however, was far from crazed.

      Even in his seeming madness lay a very definite meaning. At the best gait of his gangling, rawhide-booted legs he racked through the orchard and down to the shores of Shag Pond.

      “It ain’t more’n half a mile wide here!” he panted, “I kin row over to the icehouse in ten minutes. Say, ef I ever needed t’ dig in it’s naow!”

      Mightily he dug in, with Ronello’s punt and oars, borrowed sans formali­ties in the way of asking permission. As never, the waters foamed

Скачать книгу