In face of his threatening peril, Jessica forgot all else—the restive horse, the child. She sprang to the ground, her face pained and indignant, and started to run across the street. But with a cry of dismay she turned back. The horse had caught sight of the red automobile, and, snorting and wild-eyed, had swung into the roadway.
"It's Devlin's kid!" some one cried out, and Devlin, turning, went suddenly ashen. The baby was the one soft spot in his ruffianly heart. He sprang toward the animal, but the movement and the hands clutching at the bridle sent it to a leaping terror. In another instant it had broken through the ring of bystanders, and, frenzied at its freedom, dashed down the long, level street with the child clinging to the saddle-pommel.
It was all the work of a moment, one of panic and confusion, through which rang Jessica's scream of remorse and fright. Torpor held the crowd—all save one, whose action followed the scream as leap follows the spur. In a single step Harry gained the automobile. With an instantaneous movement he pushed the lever down and jerked the throttle wide. The machine bounded into its pace, the people rolling back before it, and, gathering headway, darted after the runaway.
The spectators stood staring. "He'll never catch him," said Michael Halloran, who had joined the crowd. "Funeral Hollow's only a mile away." With others he hurried to the hotel balcony, where he could watch the exciting race. Jessica stood stock-still, as blanched as Devlin, wringing her hands.
Harry Sanderson had acted with headlong intention, without calculation, almost without consciousness of mental process. Standing on the pavement, with the subtle lure of the motor creeping in his veins, his whole body responding—as his fingers had tingled at sight of the violin—to the muffled vibrations of that halted bundle of steel, in the sharp exigency he had answered an overmastering impulse. In the same breath he had realized Jessica's presence and the child's peril, both linked in that anguished cry. With the first bound of the car under him, as the crowd was snatched behind, a weird, exultant thrill shot through every nerve. Each bolt and bar he knew as one would tell his fingers. Somewhere, at some time, he had known such flight—through mellow sunlight, with the air singing past. Where? When?
Not for the fraction of a second, however, did his gaze waver. He knew that the flat on which the town was built fell away in a hollow ravine to the southward—he could see it from the cabin doorway—a stretch of breakneck road only a mile ahead. Could the child hold on? Could he distance those frenzied hoofs in time? The arrow of the indicator stole forward on the dial.
Far behind, as the crowd watched, a cry rose from the hotel balcony. It was Barney McGinn, the freighter, with a glass at his eye. "He's gaining!" he shouted. "He has almost overtaken the horse!"
The horse's first fury of speed was tiring. The steel steed was creeping closer. A thunder of hoofs in pursuit would have maddened the flying animal, but the gliding thing that was now so close to him came on with noiseless swiftness. Harry had reserved, with the nicety of a practised hand, a last increment of speed. With the front wheels at the horse's flank, he drew suddenly on this. As the car responded, he swerved it sharply in, and, holding with one hand, leaned far out from the step, and lifted the child from the saddle.
The automobile halted again before the hotel amid a hush. The men who a little while before had been ripe for violence, now stood in shamefaced silence. It was Jessica who ran forward and took the child, still sobbing a little, from Harry's hands. One long look passed between them—a look on her part brimming with a great gratitude for his lifting of her weight of dread and compunction, and with something besides that mantled her cheeks with rich color. She kissed the child and placed her in her father's arms.
Devlin's countenance broke up. He struggled to speak, but could not, and, burying his face in the child's dress and crying like a baby, he crossed the street hastily to his own door.