There was no bend in the highway for some distance, but the overhanging trees masked the track completely, save for a few hundred yards. The horse, whether driven or running at large, was plainly spurred by fright.
Into the peacefulness of this place its hoof-beats were bringing the element of peril.
Lying prostrate on the sloping trunk, Hiram could see much farther up the road. The outstretched head and lathered breast of a tall bay horse leaped into view, and like a picture in a kinetoscope, growing larger and more vivid second by second, the maddened animal came down the road.
Hiram could see that the beast was not riderless, but it was a moment or two—a long-drawn, anxious space of heart-beaten seconds—ere he realized what manner of rider it was who clung so desperately to the masterless creature.
“It's a girl—a little girl!” gasped Hiram.
She was only a speck of color, with white, drawn face, on the back of the racing horse.
Every plunge of the oncoming animal shook the little figure as though it must fall from the saddle. But Hiram could see that she hung with phenomenal pluck to the broken bridle and to the single horn of her side-saddle.
If the horse fell, or if she were shaken free, she would be flung to instant death, or be fearfully bruised under the pounding hoofs of the big horse.
The young farmer's appreciation of the peril was instant; unused as he was to meeting such emergency, there was neither panic nor hesitancy in his actions.
He writhed farther out upon the limb of the leaning oak until he was direct above the road. The big bay naturally kept to the middle, for there was no obstruction in its path.