“Whoa there!” cried Dave, soothingly. “Whoa, Jerry! Whoa, Bill!” And thus he continued to talk to the team while the sleigh bumped along through the deep snow and over the uneven ground.
Running away on the smooth surface of the highway had been one thing; keeping up such a gait over a ploughed field and in snow almost a foot deep was quite another. Soon the fiery grays broke from their mad gallop into a trot, and a minute later Dave had no trouble in bringing them to a halt. There they stood in the snow and the furrows of the field, snorting, and emitting clouds of steam from their nostrils.
“Hold ’em, Dave, while I get out and go to their heads!” cried Ben, and an instant later was out in the snow and had hold of the steeds. Each of the horses was trembling a little, but the run seemed to have done neither of them any harm.
“Oh, Dave! Dave!” gasped Jessie. She tried to go on, but could not.
“Oh, how thankful I am that you did not attempt to go around that corner!” came from Laura. “If you had tried that we would have been upset and maybe all killed!” and she shuddered.
“It was just the right thing to do, Dave,” was Ben’s comment. “But I don’t know that I would have thought of it. You are a quick thinker, and I guess we have you to thank for saving our lives.”
“Well, we’ve broken down somebody’s fence,” returned Dave, not knowing what else to say. “We’ll have to fix that, I suppose.”
“Huh! What’s a broken fence to saving one’s neck!” snorted Ben. “Besides, we only busted a couple of rails, and they are not worth a great deal.”
“Dave, do you think it will be safe to ride behind that team any more?” questioned Laura.