“Yes, madame.”
She had the butler help the man into the house and herself followed up the steps. At the top she turned; shivered in the warm spring air; lifting hand to brow, again strained her gaze up the Avenue.
That her niece, whom she expected always to be dependable, should have caught the epidemic wildness of this Westerner—that Jane should have leaped her horse and started at top speed after him! And that Mills Harford, after following and overtaking her, should prove too afraid of her temper forcefully to stop her! Worst of all that her own Irene should join the disgraceful and dangerous street race and actually outrun the other two!
A hand against a heart heavy with foreboding the matron pressed as she looked.... The cow-creature—it was swerving from the straight-away.... Was it about to—Yes, it did clear the park wall at a bound.... The two hurdling after probably were Pape and the puncher. A mother’s hope that the next horse to top the hazard might be Jane’s died in a groan as she caught the red flash of the roses to which her daughter had clung through all the excitement of the start.... Would she land safely on the other side—this young lady of to-day who once had been her babe-at-breast?
Evidently Jane, too late to save the situation, but in good time to save herself a possible fall, had come into some degree of discretion. She and Mills were turning in at a convenient gate.
What was it the Why-Not person had said? “Nothing—positively nothing is impossible.”... Perhaps it would do no harm to go inside and pray. There was nothing else a woman of yesterday could do. It might help to bring them all back alive and unbroken as to bones. These modern young folks, what were they coming to—more appropriately, where were they going?
CHAPTER XXII—BEEF ON THE HOOF
Often the entrances to Central Park had spanned a couple of thousand miles for Peter Pape and his “Friend Equus.” Now it seemed to do as much for the Montana bovine. In the expanses he sighted freedom. Off the spring breeze he breathed the joy of life. More riotously tossed his horns. Faster and harder pounded his hoofs in a fresh access of speed.
Through the early afternoon lull, his passage was terrifying, indeed. Slow-strollers and bench-warmers suddenly became animated into record retreat. Nursemaids shrieked as they trundled baby-carriages behind protecting tree trunks or snatched toddlers out of danger’s path. An equestrian pair who came cantering along took the nearest bank like chamois. Fortunate was it that the season and hour were not later, when the great, green melting-pot would have been brimful and possibilities of casualty greater.
So far, any interference along the way had served but to accelerate the steer’s stampede. The one pedestrian on the avenue who had dared seize the snake-writhing lariat that trailed from its unyielding horn-hold had been thrown to a fall on the oiled asphalt before he could snub the rope about a tree. A policeman on beat who had essayed the same feat farther along had let go in time to save himself a worse sprawl. Now the rope was suffering a rapid curtailment as it frayed against shrubs, trees and rocks.