One fun-maker turned in three post-cards and a two-cent stamp; while another convulsed the company on the curb, now five deep and swelling rapidly, by volunteering to give his necktie in lieu of a quarter. It was no small relief to Grace when at last they rode out of the depot amid the cheers of the mult.i.tude, and took their swift way down Fairfield Avenue. But the three young rowdies, far from subsiding, egged one another on to fresh enormities. They would whoop at every pa.s.sing automobile, shout audible remarks about the personal appearance of its occupants, tell an old gentleman, cautiously picking his way across the street, to skin out or they"d take his leg off! It was a wild and mortifying progress, and as the streets gradually gave way to country roads, and Grace antic.i.p.ated that the worst was over, the three young men discovered a new means of making themselves objectionable. They insisted on stopping at every roadhouse, tooting loudly for the bartender to come out and serve them, and tossing off, in the course of a dozen miles, an uncountable number of gla.s.ses of beer.
Had it not been for the presence of the farmer, seated placidly in the tonneau of the car with the rooster on his lap, Grace would have been terrified at her predicament. But his large, friendly bulk, his heavy shoulders, his big hands and honest face were immensely comforting to her. He resisted all the importunities of the others to drink with them, refusing with the greatest good-nature, and maintaining throughout a certain aloofness and detachment. They called him Judge Hayseed, and guyed him mercilessly; but his deep, hearty laugh never showed the least sign of resentment, even when imaginary misadventures, of the blow-out-the-gas order, were fathered on him.
In the midst of an unceasing and vociferous hilarity, as they were bowling along at twelve miles an hour, which Grace would have made twenty if the engine hadn"t worked so queerly, she felt the sharp dig of a finger against her back, and one of the young men cried out: "Say, young chafer, you"ve plunked a tire!"
She stopped the car and got out, and there, sure enough, one of the rear tires presented itself to her view in a state of melancholy collapse. It had picked up a horseshoe together with the three jagged nails adhering to it, and was patently, hopelessly, irretrievably punctured. Grace had seen a hundred repairs made on the road, but up to now she had never put her hands to the task herself. She brimmed over with the most correct theory, but had invariably relegated the practice to a skilful young man. As she dejectedly scanned the faces of her pa.s.sengers, and met nothing in return but blank and dispirited stares, she manfully got out her little jack and started in on her own account. But she had hardly raised the wheel free from the ground, and was in the act of uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the valve, when the wrench was suddenly taken out of her hand by Judge Hayseed, who asked in a very businesslike manner if there was an inner tube in the kit.
"I took notice of a feller doing this on my farm once," he drawled, "and it"s kind of stuck in my head ever since." It had certainly stuck remarkably well, for the farmer attacked the shoe with the precision of a veteran. Loosening the lugs, and using the two strippers against each other with adroitness and strength, he quickly reached the point where he could easily draw out the inner tube.
When the tire was pumped up, and Grace was again about to take her place at the steering-wheel, the farmer sprang a fresh surprise.
"Hold on a minute," he said. "What"s been making you miss so horribly on the off cylinder?"
"Oh, the whole engine has been acting like the d.i.c.kens," she returned distressfully. "It hasn"t been developing half its power. It"s in one of its mean humors to-day, and behaving like a pig."
"Couldn"t you take off that front thing and let"s see what"s the trouble?" said the countryman, jumping back into his drawl.
And then, wrench in hand, he made a prolonged examination of the machinery. Then he turned over the engine and listened; then he turned over the engine again and listened some more. Then he crawled in under the wagon, reappearing with a lick of grease over one eye.
"It gets me," he said. "I ran a little oil out of the crank-case on general principles, and chased up the magnets--but everything"s tip-top as far as I can see!"
"Suppose you crank up and let"s try again," said the girl.
But the car went worse than ever. Instead of missing occasionally the engine began to run now in gasps. Just when Grace waited for it to die altogether it would give another cough and take another spurt ahead, progressing the car in a series of agonizing little rushes, every one promising to be the last. To add to Grace"s discomfiture there was a fairly steep hill looming in front of them, and she foresaw their being stalled at the bottom. They made another stop. A pair of new spark-plugs was put in, but, instead of improving, the gasping got gaspier than ever. Still another stop, to replace the high tension wires.
But no improvement was effected. A weird, whizzling sound added itself to the other noises. Every gasp brought them nearer the hill, where, at the foot, the engine gave one awful hiccough and died dead.
"We might manage to crawl home the way we came," said Grace, at her wits" end.
"No, there"s only one thing to do," said the farmer decisively, "and that"s to start all over again and ferret out the trouble."
He got out again. So did Grace. So did the three touts. So did the rooster. It was a depressing moment.
Grace took off her long coat, laid it on one side of the road, and deposited her cap, mask and gauntlets. It would take time to put the car to rights, and she didn"t wish to be hampered. Her dark, glowing, girlish face came as a revelation to the three sports. She had been hidden behind so much gla.s.s and leather that the transformation was startling. The horsy gentlemen uttered murmurs of surprise and gratification. One of them sidled up to her with a leer.
"We"ve had a b.u.m ride in your b.u.m wagon," he said, "and now you"ve stuck us down here nine miles from the nearest beer! You"ve a lot to answer for, you have."
"I shall certainly return your money," returned Grace coldly. "I can"t do more than that, can I?"
"Oh, yes, you can, you wicked little chafer," he said, giving a wink over his shoulder to his companions. "What"s the matter with a kiss?" And with that he pa.s.sed his arm around her waist.
What happened next happened quicker than it takes to write it.
The farmer"s right hand descended on the young man"s collar, and his left executed a succession of slaps on the young man"s countenance, which, for vigor and swiftness, could not have been done better by machinery. Then he trailed him to one side of the road, still shaking him in an iron grasp, and kicked him into the ditch.
"Help!" roared the young man repeatedly in the course of these proceedings. "Help!"
This brought to the rescue his two friends, who, for the last instant, had been too spellbound to move. The farmer squared his fists and received the newcomers on his knuckles. He was a clean hitter, and from the way he pirouetted and skipped you would have said he could dance, too. The three young sports, considerably the worse for wear, fled pell-mell for the barbed-wire fence that bordered the road, and went over it in the twinkling of an eye.
Only a few bits of what they would probably have called "n.o.bby pants," speckled here and there on the barbs, betrayed to later wayfarers this new instance of man"s inhumanity to man.
"Do you know, we have never looked at the contact-box," said the farmer, returning to the car quite calmly to take up the interrupted thread of his conversation.
The tears were streaming down Grace"s face, and her voice was scarcely controllable.
"It"s a b-brush s-s-system," she said, "and it has always worked b-b-beautifully, and I never could have f-f-forgiven myself if they had h-h-hurt you!"
The farmer did not hear more than half the sentence. He was on his knees peering down into the works. Suddenly he raised his head with an expression of triumph.
Bing! A stone struck one of the kerosene lamps with a vicious crash.
Bing! Another just missed the countryman"s rumpled hair.
Bing! A mud-guard shook with a loud and tinny reverberation.
The enemy, lined up in the neighboring field, and yelling shrilly, were opening up a rear-guard action with artillery.
"The contact-box is upside down," cried the farmer. "I can"t see how it ever worked at all. Yank me out a screw-driver quick!"
The contact-box was on the exposed side. The farmer tried to hunch himself into the least compa.s.s possible, but his broad back and powerful frame interfered with his efforts to make a human hedgehog of himself. He was. .h.i.t twice, once by a grazing shot that brought out blood on his cheek, the other a stinger on the hand.
"Scratch up a few rocks," he called to Grace, doggedly continuing his work, and keeping a careful eye on the screws he was taking out.
She got a dozen or so, and pa.s.sed them over to him in a piece of chamois leather taken from the tool kit. He caught it up and ran for the fence, the enemy retiring precipitately out of range.
But if he made no bull"s-eyes he had a pleasant sense, for a moment or two, of dominating the situation. Then he returned hurriedly to the car.
"I wonder if you and I couldn"t push her around," he said to Grace. "They"ll be back again in a minute, and then it will be altogether too sunny on this side." The pair of them laid on to the spokes of the driving-wheels, and with a yeo-heave-yeo managed to head the Despardoux in the direction of its native Stackport. Then the farmer settled to work again, Grace scurried about searching for ammunition, and the three young touts rained shower on shower of stones. If ever delicate adjustments were made under difficulties, it was on that Despardoux on that fateful occasion. The only alleviation of an otherwise intolerable situation was the magnificent behavior of the contact-box, which now, right side up and readjusted, showed every symptom of meaning to do its duty.
It was anxiously put to the test, and, on the engine being started, the farmer and Grace were rewarded by the chippetty, chippetty, chippetty, chippetty of perfect sparking and combustion.
The farmer rolled back the enemy, recovered Grace"s coat and his own rooster, seated himself at the wheel, gave the girl a hand in, threw in his clutches and speeded up.
"Slow down!" cried Grace. "Slow down, please. I want to leave their horrid money on the road."
"Not on your life," said the farmer. "That three dollars belongs to the St. John"s Home for Incurable Children!"
"You oughtn"t to know anything about the St. John"s Home," said Grace.
"Oh, I forgot--I don"t," he retorted brazenly. "Only that three dollars is going to stay on board this car. If anybody ever earned three dollars by the sweat of their brow I guess it was you and me!"
Grace put her hands up to his head and deliberately drew off his hat, drew off his red wig, drew off his red whiskers, and tossed them all back into the tonneau.
"Are you sorry I came?" said Coal Oil Johnny.
"There are some emotions that can not be put into words," she answered. "I won"t try to say anything. I can"t. But if I should ever seem unkind, or distant, or forgetful, or anything but the joy of your whole future existence--just you say contact-box, and I"ll melt!"
JONES