Mark nodded. “I d-d-didn’t b’lieve they could have s-s-said it all,” he says.
“When you going?” I asked.
“Right after we eat,” says uncle, and with that he got up and commenced getting supper. In half an hour all seven of us were crowded around the little table, and I want to say if Ole and Jerry couldn’t talk they could eat. If all Swedes eat like they did I bet the farmers in Sweden have to raise whopping big crops to have enough to go around.
After supper Jerry and Ole got a buckboard out of the barn and hitched their horse to it. Uncle threw in a canvas bag of clothes and climbed in.
“If you git to needin’ anything you kin git it up to Larsen’s, I guess,” uncle said. He was going to say something else, but right in the middle of it the old horse jumped all his feet off the ground and started down the road a-kiting. Uncle and Ole and Jerry came pretty nearly being left behind. They all keeled over in a heap, with arms and legs waggling in the air, and there wasn’t any good reason why all of them weren’t jounced out on the ground in the first fifty feet. But they weren’t. Finally Ole got to his feet and caught hold of the lines. He pulled and sawed and yelled, but on the old horse went until he jumped out of sight around a bend in the road. I heard Mark Tidd chuckle.
RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT THE OLD HORSE JUMPED ALL HIS FEET OFF THE GROUND AND STARTED DOWN THE ROAD A-KITING
“B-b-bet those Swedes never started anywhere as quick as that b-b-before,” he says.
I looked at him sharp. He had his sling-shot in his hand.
“Did you shoot the horse?” I asked, sort of provoked, because it didn’t look like a polite thing to do.