CHAPTER X-"TOUCH AND GO"
As it chanced, Mr. Steele"s groom, who had been sent with the coach and who sat beside Bob, was on the wrong side to give any a.s.sistance at this crucial moment. To have jumped from the seat threatened to send him plunging down the undefended hillside-perhaps with the coach rolling after him!
For some seconds it did seem as though the horses would go down in a tangle and drag the coach and its occupants after them.
Bob was doing his best with the reins, but the frisky nigh leader was dancing and plunging, and forcing his mate off the firm footing of the road. Indeed, the latter animal was already slipping over the brink.
"Get him!" yelled Bob, meaning the horse that had broken the trace and had stirred up all the trouble.
But who was to "get him"? That was the difficulty. The groom could not climb over the young driver to reach the ground.
There was at least one quick-witted person aboard the Sunrise coach in this "touch and go" emergency. Ruth was not afraid of horses. She had not been used to them, like Ann Hicks, all her life, but she was the person now in the best position to help Bob.
To reach the ground on the nigh side of the coach Ann Hicks would have to climb over a couple of boys. Ruth was on that end of the seat and she swung herself off smartly, and landed firmly on the road.
"Look out, Ruth!" shrieked her chum, "you"ll be killed!"
Ruth had no intention of getting near the heels of the horse that had broken its harness. She darted around to his head and seized his bridle.
His mate was already scattering gravel down the hillside as he plunged.
Ruth, paying no attention to the shrieks of the girls or the commands of the groom and the boys, jerked the nigh horse"s head around, and so gave his mate a chance to obtain firm footing again. She instantly led both horses toward the inside of the road.
Tom was off his perch by now and had dashed forward to her aid. Amid the gabble of the others, they seemed the only two cool persons in the party.
"Oh! hold them tight, Tom!" cried his sister. "Don"t let them run."
"Pshaw! they don"t want to run," growled Bobbins.
The groom climbed carefully over him and leaped down into the road. Tom was looking at Ruth with shining eyes.
"You"re the girl for me, Ruthie," he whispered in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. "I never saw one like you. You always have your wits about you."
Ruth smiled and blushed. A word of approbation from Tom Cameron was sweeter to her than the praise of any other of her young friends. She gave him a grateful look, and then turned back to the coach, where the girls were still as excited as a swarm of bees.
They all wanted to get down into the road, until Madge positively forbade it, and Ruth swung herself up to her seat again.
"You can"t do any good down there, and you"d only be in the way," Madge said. "And the danger"s over now."
"Thanks to Ruthie!" added Helen, squeezing her chum.
"Oh, you make too much fuss about it," said Ruth. "I just grabbed the bridle."
"Yes," said Mercy, from inside. "I thought I"d need my aeroplanes to fly with, when that horse began to back over the edge of the hill. You"re a good child, Ruthie. I always said so."
The others had more or less to say about Ruth"s action and she was glad to turn the conversation to some other subject.
Meanwhile the groom had mended the harness, and now he and Tom led the leaders to straighten out the team, and the four horses threw themselves into their collars and jerked the coach-wheel out of the gutter.
The trouble had delayed them but slightly, and soon Tom was cheerfully winding the horn, and the horses were rattling down a more gentle descent into the last valley.
From this to the top of the hill on which the Steele home stood was a steady ascent and the horses could not go rapidly. Bob and Madge pointed out the objects of interest as they rolled along-the farmhouses that were to be torn down, the fences already straightened, and the d.y.k.es and walls on which Mr. Steele"s men were at work.
"When this whole hill is father"s, you"ll see some farm," crowed Bobbins.
"But whose place is _that?_" demanded one of the girls, behind him, suddenly.
The coach had swung around a turn in the road where a great, bald rock and a border of trees on the right hand, hid all that lay beyond on this gentle slope. The other girls cried out at the beauty of the scene.
A gable-roofed farmhouse, dazzlingly white, with green blinds, stood end to the road. There were great, wide-branched oaks all about it. The sod was clipped close and looked like velvet. Yet the surroundings of the homestead were rather wild, as though Nature had scarcely been disturbed by the hand of man since the original clearing was made here in the hillside forest.
There were porches, and modern buildings and "ells" added to the great old house, but the two huge chimneys, one at either end, p.r.o.nounced the building to be of the architecture of the earliest settlers in this section of the State.
There were beds of old-fashioned flowers; there was a summerhouse on the lawn, covered with vines; altogether it was a most beautiful and "homey"
looking place.
"Whose place is it?" repeated the questioner.
"Oh, that? Caslon"s," grunted Bob. "He"s the chap who won"t sell out to father. Mean old thing."
"Why, it"s a love of an old place!" exclaimed Helen.
"Yes. It is the one house father was going to let stand on the hill beside our own. You see, we wanted to put our superintendent in it."
Just then an old gentleman came out of the summer house. He was a portly, gray mustached, bald-headed man, in clean linen trousers and a white shirt with a short, starched bosom. He wore no collar or necktie, but looked clean and comfortable. He smiled at the young people on the coach jovially.
Behind him stood a motherly lady some years his junior. She was buxom and smiling, too.
Bobbins jerked his head around and snapped his whip over the leaders"
ears. "These are the people," he said.
"Who?" asked Belle Tingley.
"The Caslons."
"But they"re real nice looking people," Helen exclaimed, in wonder.
"Well, they"re a thorn-or a pair of thorns-in my father"s flesh. You"d better not boost them before him."
"And they don"t want to sell their old home?" queried Ruth, softly. Then to herself, she whispered: "And who could blame them? I wouldn"t sell it, either, if it were mine."
CHAPTER XI-TOBOGGANING IN JUNE