ENTRY NO. XV
THE AUTO AND THE BULL
I started to tear out what I wrote last night, but on second thought will let it remain. Its perusal in future years may amuse me. I will now resume the trail of Woodvale happenings.
The touring car won from her father by Miss Harding is a massive and beautiful machine. Luckily I am familiar with the mechanism of this particular make, and, as a consequence, am called in for advice when any trifling question arises. Harding scorns a professional chauffeur.
"Next to running one of these road engines," he declares, "the most fun is in pulling them apart to see how they are made. I would as soon hire a man to eat for me as to shawf one of these choo-choo cars."
Shortly after the big machine arrived Mr. Harding received a letter from a gentleman named Wilson, who is spending the summer at the Oak Cliff Golf and Country Club. Wilson challenged him to come to Oak Cliff and play golf, and to bring his family and a party of friends with him. Harding read the letter and laughed.
"Here's my chance to win a game," he declared. "I can't beat the Kid, but I'll put it all over Wilson, you see if I don't."
"Don't be too sure, papa," cautioned Miss Harding.
"Wilson only started golf this year, and the only game he can beat me at is hanging up pictures," insisted Harding. "He stands six-foot-four, and weighs about one hundred and fifty. He looks like a pair of compasses, but he's all right, and we must go up and see him. Do you know the road, Smith?"
"Every foot of it."
"How far is it?"
"About forty miles."
"Good!" declared the magnate. "I'll wire Wilson we'll be there to-morrow. We'll fill up the buzz wagon, take an early start, and put in a whole day at it. Smith shall be chief shawfer, and the Kid and I will take turns when he gets tired."
And we did. We started at seven o'clock with a party consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Harding, Miss Harding, Chilvers and his wife, Miss Dangerfield, Carter, and myself.
There are many hills intervening and some stretches of indifferent road, but we figured we should make the run in two hours or less—but we didn't.
The few early risers gave us a cheer as we rolled away from the club house and careened along the winding path which leads to the main road. The dew yet lay on the grass, and little lakes of fog hung over the fair green. It was a perfect spring morning, and the ozone-charged air had an exhilarating effect as we cleaved through it.
Miss Harding was in the seat with me. I don't imagine this exactly pleased Carter, but it suited me to a dot. My lovely companion was in splendid spirits.
"Now, Jacques Henri," she said to me in French, pretending that I was a professional chauffeur, "you are on trial. Unless you show marked proficiency we shall dispense with your services."
"And if I do?" I inquired.
"Then you may consider yourself retained," she laughed.
"For life?" I boldly asked.
I was so rattled at this rather broad insinuation that I swung out of the road and struck a rut, which gave the car a thorough shaking.
"If that's the way you drive you will be lucky if you're not discharged before we reach Oak Cliff," Miss Harding declared, and I did not dare look in her eyes to see if she were offended or not.
For the following minutes I attended strictly to business. The steering gear and other operating parts were a bit stiff on account of newness, but I soon acquired the "feel" of them, and we ate up the first ten miles in seventeen minutes.
We were following a sinuous brook toward its source, now skirting its quiet depths along the edge of reedy meadows, and then chasing it into the hills where it boiled and complained as it dashed and spumed amid rocks and boulders.
"Hold on there, Smith!" shouted Harding from the rear seat in the tonneau.
"Stop, Jacques Henri!" ordered my fair employer, and then I dared look into her smiling eyes.
"I want to cut some of those willow switches," explained Harding, as the car stopped.
"What do you want of willow switches, John?" asked Mrs. Harding.
"Going to make whistles out of them," he said, cutting several which sprouted out from the edge of a spring. "Besides they're good things to keep the flies from biting the tonneau. Smith runs so slow that they are stealing a ride."
"Defend me," I said to my employer.
"Jacques Henri is doing as he is told," declared Miss Harding.
The spring was so inviting that we sampled its clear, cold water.
Harding in the meantime whittling industriously on his willow switch.
When he found that his whistle would "blow" he was as pleased as if he
had designed a new type of locomotive.
A mile farther on we passed sedately through a country village and aroused the fleeting interest of the loungers in front of the combined post-office and news store. Then we entered a fine farming country, and from it plunged into a forest so dense that the overhanging boughs almost spanned our pathway.
Moss-covered stone walls lined both sides of the road. Everywhere was a profusion of wild flowers, their petals brushing against our tires, and their flaunting reds, yellows, and blues brightening the gloom of the encompassing wood. A gray squirrel scampered across our path and impudent chipmunks chattered to right and left. And then we came to a small clearing filled with the wagons, tents and litter of a gipsy camp.
"Let's stop and have our fortunes told!" cried Miss Dangerfield, but my employer vetoed that proposition. It was a vivid flash of colour. The brightly painted wagons with their canvas tops, the red-shirted men, black of hair and eyes, olive of skin, and graceful in their laziness; the older women bare-headed, bent of shoulder, and brilliantly shrouded in shawls; the younger women straight as arrows, bold and keen of glance, and decked in ribbons and jewelry, and on every hand swarms of gipsy children, more or less clothed. The blue smoke of their camp-fires twisted through the dark green of the fir trees in the background.
Again the forest closed upon us. The grade became steeper, and in places our road had been blasted through solid rock. And then we reached the summit of this ridge, and like a flash the superb panorama of the Hudson burst upon us. At our feet lay the broad bosom of the Tappan Zee, its waters glistening in the sunlight, the spires of a village in the foreground, and the distance blue-girt with cliffs, hills, and mountains.
I have seen it a thousand times, but it is ever new.
"Stop; Jacques Henri!" commanded Miss Harding, and I stopped.
"What's the matter?" asked Harding. "Something busted?"
"We're going to sit right here a minute or more and admire this," declared Miss Harding.
"Great; isn't it?" admitted Harding. "Who owns it, Smith? Does it cost anything to look at it?"
"Not a penny," I said.
"First time I've got something for nothing since I struck New York," was the comment of that gentleman.
Four or five miles across the Tappan Zee the blue of the mountain was splattered with the white of straggling houses. To the left was a checker-board of farms, an area hundreds of square miles in extent basking in the rays of a cloudless sun. Yet beyond, the Orange mountains lifted their rounded slopes. To the south was the grim line of the Palisades, blue-black save where trees clung to their steep sides. On the north Hook Mountain dipped its feet into the Hudson, and to our ears came the dull boom of explosions where vandals are blasting away its sides and ruining its beauty.
"Right over there," said Carter, pointing toward Piermont, "is where André landed when he crossed the river on the mission to Benedict Arnold which ended in his capture and death. Beyond the mountain is the monument which marks the spot where he met with what our school books term 'an untimely fate.'"
"A short distance to the south," I added, "is the old house where Washington made his headquarters during the most discouraging years of the Revolution, and in which he and Rochambeau planned the campaign which ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. And not far away is 'Sleepy Hollow,' where Washington Irving lived, wrote, and died."
"Yes, yes," contributed Chilvers, "and on this sacred soil there now is bunched a cluster of millionaires, any one of whom could pay the entire expense of the War of the Revolution as easily as I can settle for a gas bill."
We had not noticed Harding, who suddenly appeared in front of the machine with his driver and a handful of golf balls.
"The future historian will record," he declared, "that from this spot
Robert L. Harding drove a golf ball into that pond below!"
"Suppose you can, Robert," observed his wife, "what earthly good will it do you, and what will it prove?"
"It will prove that I can drive one of these blamed things into that pond," he grinned. "I've got to break into history some way."
On the fifth trial he had the satisfaction of driving a ball into that pond. It was not much of a drive, but it pleased him immensely.
"I got my money's worth out of those five balls," he declared as he climbed back into the car.
"See how the sun strikes the sail of that schooner!" exclaimed Miss Harding. "And how it glances from the brass work of those yachts at anchor! There goes an auto boat darting through a swarm of sail boats like a bird through fluttering butterflies. It is a glorious view from here!"
"It makes the Rhine look like counterfeit money," asserted Chilvers, whose similes usually are grotesque. "Any time you hear an American raving over the wonderful scenery of Europe you can place a bet that he has never seen that of his own country."
"That's right, Chilvers," said Harding. "We have all kinds of scenery out West that has never been used. It's a drug in the market, laying around out-of-doors for the first one that comes along."
We made the next ten miles at a rapid gait through one of the finest country-residence sections in this fair land of ours. Then we entered a sparsely settled agricultural district. We were opposite a meadow which recently had been mowed. It was a gentle slope with picturesque rocks flanking its sides, and near the road was a pond.
[Illustration: "It was not much of a drive">[
"Whoa there, Smith!" shouted Harding. I jammed on brakes and turned to see what was the matter.
"What is it, papa?" asked Miss Harding.
"This is just the place I've been looking for," he said, standing and surveying the meadow with the eye of an expert.
"What for?"
"To paste a ball in," he asserted, reaching for his clubs.
"Drive ahead, Jacques Henri!" ordered my charming employer. "Papa Harding, we're not going to stop every time you see a place where you wish to drive a ball!"
"Just this once, Kid," pleaded her father. "Let me soak a few balls out there, and I won't say another word until we get to Oak Cliff. Be good, Grace, we've got lots of time."
"Very well," she consented, looking at her watch. "We'll wait ten minutes for you."
"Here's where I get some real practice," he said, arming himself with a driver and a box of balls. "Come on, Chilvers, you and Carter help me chase 'em."
"Robert Harding, you are hopeless!" declared his good wife. "You have become a perfect golf crank."
"Let me alone," he grinned, as he climbed the fence. "I'm on my vacation. Keep your eyes on this one, boys!"
Before we started from Woodvale he declared that it was all nonsense to take along a change of clothes, and he was dressed in that wonderful costume, plaids, red coat and all.
We lay back in our seats and smilingly watched his efforts. He has shown signs of improvement recently, and is imbued with the enthusiasm of the novice who realises that his practice has counted for something.
He drove the first half-dozen balls indifferently, but the next one was really a good one.
"There was a beaut!" he exclaimed, turning to us as the ball disappeared with a bound over the crest of the slope. "What's the matter with you folks? Why don't you applaud when a man makes a good shot?"
"That's balls enough, papa, dear," said Miss Harding. "By the time you have found them your time will be up."
"Right you are, Kid," he admitted. "I'm proud of that last one, and I'm going to pace it. Help me pick 'cm up, boys, I'll drive 'em back, and then we'll go on."
He started to pace the distance of the longer ball, counting as he strode along. When he reached the crest of the slope we could hear him droning, "one hundred twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three," etc. Carter was hunting for the balls to the right and Chilvers for those to the left.
The red coat and plaid cap disappeared over the hill. Miss Dangerfield was chattering about something, I know not what. I was looking at Miss Harding, and did not hear her.
I did hear some sound which resembled distant thunder. A moment later I saw the top of that plaid cap bob above the hill. Then I saw the shoulders of that red coat, and the huge figure of the railroad magnate fairly shot into view.
He was running as fast as his stout legs would carry him, waving his club and occasionally looking quickly to his rear.
I knew in an instant what was the matter.
"What is papa running for?" exclaimed Miss Harding. That question was speedily answered.
"Run! Run, boys!" he yelled as he plowed down that slope. "Run like hell; he's after us!"
Carter and Chilvers took one glance and the three of them came tearing down that hill.
There came into view the lowered head and humped shoulders of a Holstein bull close on the trail of the lumbering millionaire. The women screamed.
"He will be killed; he will be killed!" moaned Mrs. Harding. "Oh, do something to save him, Mr. Smith; please do something!"
I am rather proud of my generalship at that critical moment. I have a certain amount of wit in an emergency, and luckily it did not fail me. It is not an easy matter to head off an enraged bull in an open field, but I saw a chance and took it.
[Illustration: "Run! Run, boys!">[
I grasped Miss Harding and fairly threw her to the ground.
"Jump! Jump!" I yelled to the others.
Mrs. Chilvers and Miss Dangerfield instantly obeyed, but Mrs. Harding was too terrified to comprehend my orders. Her eyes were fixed on her husband, and she neither saw nor heard me. There was not a second to lose.
I swung that heavy touring-car in a backward curve, so as to face the fence over which Mr. Harding had climbed. Turning on full speed I headed for it.
The powerful machine quivered for the fraction of a second and then leaped from the roadway. There was a crash of splintered fence posts and boards, a glimpse of flying lumber, and we were in the meadow.
It takes some time to tell this, but it was not long in happening. When we went through that fence Harding was probably seventy yards away and to our left. The bull was not twenty feet back of him and gaining rapidly at every jump. I saw nothing of Carter or Chilvers.
Harding had dropped his club and was running desperately. I feared every moment that he would fall. He was headed for the pond, but never would have reached it.
"Drop down! Drop down!" I shouted to Mrs. Harding.
We went over a hummock where a drain-pipe had been laid and I thought we were done for. The shock hurled Mrs. Harding to the floor. Beyond that point the ground was hard and fairly smooth and our speed became terrific.
[Illustration: "Then I struck the bull">[
The distance between the bull and his intended victim had decreased to so small a space that I despaired of cutting him off. I cannot tell exactly what happened. I only know that I kept my eye on that bull as religiously as one attempts to obey the golf mandate, "keep your eye on the ball."
Then I struck the bull.
I caught him with the left of the front of the car. The collision was at an angle of about thirty degrees, I should say. I missed Harding by not more than six feet. I presume we were travelling at a rate of a mile a minute, and that bull certainly was going one-third that fast.
As the front of the machine was upon the animal I ducked, but did not release my firm grip on the steering-wheel. There was photographed on my brain an impression of a shaggy head, short and sharp horns, rage-crazed eyes, a wet nose and lolling tongue, of turf cast up by flying hooves, of a bearded face with staring eyes, of a red coat and a bewildering plaid—and then the machine was upon them.
The shock of the collision was so slight that I feared I had missed my target. I shut off the power and swung sharply to the right. One glance proved that Mrs. Harding was uninjured.
Two objects were on the ground over which I had passed, and Carter and Chilvers were running toward them. Had I struck Harding? I suffered agonies in those moments, and I was the first to reach his side.
As I sprang from the car he raised to a sitting posture and attempted to speak, but it was impossible to do so. Before Mrs. Harding could reach him he was on his feet, making gestures to indicate that he was not hurt.
"He's all right!" shouted Chilvers, rushing up to us. "Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Harding, he only stumbled and fell. He's winded but will catch his breath in a minute!"
Mr. Harding panted, and between gasps bowed and made pantomimic signs to indicate that Chilvers had correctly diagnosed his ailment.
His wife has too much sense to give way to her emotions at such a time.
She brushed his clothes and wiped the perspiration from his face. Miss
Harding and the others were on the scene before his voice came back to
him.
"I'm—all—right!" he declared with much effort, walking and swinging his arms to prove it to himself and us. Then he shook hands with me, and I noted that his violent exercise had not impaired the strength of his grip. We walked over and looked at the dead bull.
"That was a good shot, Smith," he said. "That was great work. Do you know how close you came to hitting me?"
"It was very close, but I had one eye on you," I replied.
"I honestly believe it was the rush of air from the machine that keeled me over, but I was about done for. I doubt if I would have made that pond."
"Governor," said Chilvers, "he would have nailed you in two more jumps.
That was as pretty a piece of interference as I ever saw."
There was not a mark on the dead animal, whose neck must have been broken.
"When you struck him," said Chilvers, "the air was full of surprised beef. That bull went at least twelve feet in the air, and he never moved after he came down. It was a glancing shot, and you could not have done better, Smith, if you made a hundred trials."
"Once is enough for me," I said.
I turned my attention to the automobile, and as I started toward it Miss
Harding intercepted me.
"That was very brave of you, Jacques Henri," she said, offering both of her hands. "You are an excellent chauffeur, and we all thank you."
"Don't praise me too much or I shall be tempted to demand an exorbitant salary," I declared. "I'm glad I had the sense to think of it in time. Let's see if much damage was done to the machine."
It was a happy moment for John Henry Smith, and I would tackle a bull every day under the same circumstances if I knew that there was waiting for me the reward of such a glance from those eyes and the clasp of those little hands.
The forward lamps were smashed beyond repair and several rods were slightly bent, but aside from these trifles I could not see that any damage had been done. Mr. Harding and the others joined us.
"I suppose somebody owns that bull," he said. "Do you happen to know who runs this farm, Smith?"
I had no idea. There was no farmhouse in sight, and Harding was in a quandary. He thought a moment and then produced one of his cards.
"Write this for me, Smith. My hand is too shaky. Let's see," and then he dictated the following: "While playing golf I was attacked by this bull. Send bill for bull to Woodvale Club."
"I should say that was all right," he said, reading it carefully. "It is short and does not go into unnecessary details."
We tied the card to the animal's horns, and I have an idea the owner of that unfortunate beast will be mystified to account for the fate which befel him. Having repaired the fence as best we could we resumed our journey to Oak Cliff, and Mr. Harding was content to remain in his seat until we reached there.
Later in the day Chilvers drew a diagram of this exploit on the back of a menu card, and I paste it in here as a droll memento of this incident.
[Illustration]
Chilvers attempted to explain to Harding and the rest of us that the collision between the auto and the bull resulted in "pulled or hooked shot," the bull taking the place of a golf ball and the machine serving as the face of the driver. It is quite accurate as showing the relative positions of the various factors, but I should not term it an art product.
"I am familiar with the road from here to Oak Cliff," said Miss Harding when we had gone a mile or so. "You may rest, Jacques Henri, and I'll take your place."
She did so, and handled the big car with the skill of an expert. I did not talk to her for fear of distracting her attention from the task she had assumed. I was contented to watch her, to be near her and to know that I had had the rare good fortune to do an unexpected turn for one who was near and dear to her.
I will tell of our day in Oak Cliff in my next entry.