“Why don’t he get out of the way? Why don’t he?” the Elder suddenly found himself shouting. He had forgotten the day he had kept to the middle of the road himself with his load of hay, and held this very car back.
But Janice was not to be balked. She did not slow down an atom. She knew this Upper Road to Middletown like a book now.
“My soul, girl! you ain’t going to ram that wagon, air you?” called the excited Elder, clinging with both hands to the back of the front seat, his beard almost over Janice’s shoulder.
“Hang on!” the girl advised, grimly, and suddenly turned the wheel a little. The automobile darted to one side, ran up the smooth bank, and passed the wagon on a long curve, roaring down into the plain pathway again with scarcely a jounce.
The Elder was worked up to a high pitch now. He glared back at the amazed driver of the team and yelled:
“Whee!”
Then he instantly dropped back into the seat, and gasped: “My soul and body! what will Bill Embers think of me?” For if he had led three rousing cheers from his place in the amen corner at prayer and conference meeting, the Elder could have no more surprised himself.
The car rushed on, Janice hanging to the wheel, and without a word for her companion. They passed some of the dwellings along the way so swiftly that it is doubtful if the occupants recognized the Elder’s well-known figure in the back of the vehicle. Certainly, it was the last place they would have ever expected to see him.
The car came in sight of Si Littlefield’s barns, and there they were just turning the young stock out of one yard on one side of the road into another yard on the other side. The Elder uttered a wild yell and Janice punched the siren button a couple of times.
Si’s hired man—a lout of a fellow—did not know enough to shut the gate and so keep the remainder of the herd off the road. He merely stood and gaped, while the heifers and young steers bawled, and ran up the road ahead of the automobile, tails in the air and heads down.