Instead of turning east at the cross-roads, Mr. Cummings drove drowsily ahead on the Windless Road, although the Cummings place is east on the Salem; so that the hay was plainly going to the little pasture barn, three miles off, all one to us, and better for the Free Traveller, as it appeared after. But he was not interested then, being in a fair way to sleep. We lay deep in the hay and looked up at the blue of the sky and the white of the creeping clouds, till the pine trees closed suddenly over the road, the cliffs of Windless Mountain on one side and the Mill Stream on the other, deep under its bank. A strong south wind came under the pines, skirting the corner of the mountain, hissed through the pine needles, and rumpled the hay.
And there was a great smoke and blaze about us. “Humph!” said the Free Traveller.
He went off the back of the hay-cart into the middle of the road, and we too fell off immediately, each in his own way, on the pine needles. Mr. Cummings came up over the top of the load with a tumult of mixed language, and the horses ran away.
The great load sped down the green avenue smoking, crackling, blazing, taking with it Mr. Cummings to unknown results, and leaving the Free Traveller sitting up in the middle of the road and looking after it mildly. He heaved himself up puffing. “There!” he said. “There goes my pipe.”
“It's all your fault,” shouted Moses Durfey. “You shouldn't smoke on hay-loads.”
“Maybe Mr. Cummings is a deader,” said Chub Leroy, thoughtfully.
The Free Traveller rubbed his leg.
“You're same as me. If he ain't dead he'll come back with a strap and lam some of us. That ain't me. I'm going to light out.”
He slid under the rail and down the bank to the stream, handling himself wonderfully for so weighty a man; for he seemed to accommodate himself to obstacles like a jellyfish, and somehow to get around them. So he was over the bowlders and across the stream, which there divides Windless Mountain from the Great South Woods.
We were indignant that he should leave us to be “lammed” for his carelessness. We shouted after, and Moses Durfey said he was a “chump.”