The steepness of the hillock did the rest.
At the summit Dad was alongside. He reached for the boy’s bridle.
As his fingers were almost closing on the rein, a vagrant gust of wind snatched up from under a bush (whither another gust had evidently whisked it) a piece of white paper.
The paper swirled upward in the very track of the runaway like a sentient thing, and danced in air before his bloodshot eyes.
The fear-crazed brute forgot his exhaustion long enough to swerve violently to the right. Dad’s clutching hand closed upon nothingness.
Jimmie remained stationary in mid air—the horse having shied from under him—for the most infinitesimal fraction of a second.
Then he descended to earth with considerable force; landed, still in a sitting posture, with an impact that knocked the breath completely out of him; and stared dazedly upward at his grandfather.
Dad, slipping from his horse, picked the boy up and stood him on his feet.
“Are you hurt, dear lad?” he cried. “Are you badly hurt?”
“No,” responded Jimmie, albeit uncertainly. “But—but it’s blamed lucky for me I got so many spankings from father when I was home. They’ve—they’ve kind of calloused me, I guess. Gee, Dad, but that was one gorgeous ride; and I stuck on, all right, didn’t I, Dad? As long as we kept going. What’s the matter, sir? You’re all gray-white and you look ’most a hundred.”