“We kept going faster, and dad began to get frightened and asked me to slow up, but I couldn't. We must have got in the country about eight miles, and dad was getting scared, and his face was just the color of salt pork, and he said:
“'Hennery, this excursion is going to wind up in a tragedy, and if I die I want you to have a post-mortem examination made, just to see if I am right about those doctors leaving that monkey wrench in me. For heaven's sake make the machine jump that fence, for here comes a drove of cattle in the road, more'n a hundred horned steers, and we never can pass them alive.'”
“Gee, but when I saw those cattle ahead and the machine running away, I tried to pray, and then I steered her towards an old rail fence that looked as though it was rotten, and then there was a crash, the air was full of rails, and dad said, 'This is no hurdle race,' and we landed in a field where there was an old hard snow bank. She went up on the side, hit the frozen snow, turned a summersault, the gasoline tank exploded and I didn't remember anything till some farmers that were spreading manure in the field turned me over with a pitchfork and asked me who the old dead man was standing on his head in the snow bank with his plug hat around his neck. As soon as I came to I went to dad, and he was just coming out of a trance, and asked him if he didn't think a little excitement sort of made the sluggish blood circulate, and he looked at the blood on the snow, and said he thought there was no doubt about the circulation of his blood.
{Illustration: “The farmer had graced hold of a wire sign across the street."}
“He got up, got his hat untangled, told the farmers he was obliged to them for their courtesy and then he called me one side and said:
“'Hennery, this attempt on your part to murder me was not the success that you expected, but you keep on and you will get me all right. Now, as a business man, I want to say we have got to get out of this town to-night or we will be arrested and sent to the penitentiary; besides, I will have to pay a thousand dollars damage at the least calculation. Get me a carriage for home, and you stay and set this machine on fire and skip back to town in time for the evening train south, and we will go where the climate is more genial.'
“Just then the steers we saw in the road came into the field through the fence we had broken, and when they smelled the blood they began to paw and beller, and look like they would run at dad, so the farmers got dad into a milk wagon that was going to town, and when the wagon started dad was pouring a cup of milk on him where the gasoline had scorched him when it exploded, and I walked in town helping the fellows drive the steers, and here I am, alive and ready to travel at 8 p. m.
