“Gosh! I started in the thick of it,” Menzies was proclaiming. “An’ hard work I had to make the top, with this mud-crunching outfit.” He pointed to the dripping leader, whose whinnying snorts told the story of that upward, raving struggle, amid peril of fireball and falling tree.
“Did you walk beside them—climb beside them, all the way?” asked the Guardian.
“Yes’m. And I could hardly hold ’em to the trail, even then, lightning searing their eyeballs—trees going up around ’em! But Mr. Grosvenor’s daughter! To think o’ her being exposed up here!” The farmer’s voice rocked to the swish of the “shoe-bree”, the water that filled his waist-high boots.
“Pshaw! ’twouldn’t hurt her—didn’t hurt her. We were above the storm—for the most part,” declared Pemrose stoutly. “This is the cushioned chair in which Treff said she was wheeled through life—always would be,” she murmured to herself, with a cogitative wink, settling down beside Una in what stood just now for the lap of the “chair”—luxury’s lap—this year’s perfumed hay. “To-night, aren’t we in luck to occupy it with her?”
“I can’t get ye back to yer camp ’fore morning. A washout on the old mountain ’tween here and there!” The farmer was wheeling his sputtering tandem, drawing the fifteen-foot hay wagon, now full, girls blissfully cuddling close to each other, putting the rubber covering between them and the last peckings of the angry rain-crow. “But, luck with us, we can reach the valley—the horse-farm—by a roundabout trail ... though it may be a ‘wild-bear’ game, going down,” with a grin.
“Some tear-in-two jolts I expect,” prophesied Lura. “Ouch! Beginning—already,” as she fell over on Naomi. “I always wanted to ride behind a tandem—never thought ’twould be like this!”
“That tall leader is a hero. I’m in love with him.” Dorothy lifted a corner of the rubber coverlet, to peep out at the black form of the plunging horse, tackling the miry, downward trail, lightning tickling his ears, spent thunder hooting at him. “Oh-h! the wild-bear game is beginning, indeed,” she screamed, a minute later, as the whole mud-crunching outfit stuck fast in a quagmire.
“Don’t mind if ye overhear some swearing in the teeth o’ judgment!” growled Menzies whimsically, hauling upon his groaning tandem, in to its knees. “Hi! there, you Yank,” to the game leader, “You’re all right; you’ll come through.”
“The Yanks are pulling through—pulling out!” gasped Pemrose. “But, goodness! what an Adventure this is!” as the wagon resumed its way through the torn, dark woods.
“Lucky for ye all that this happened to-night—if ’twas bound to happen,” murmured Menzies, ages later, as the mountain trail plunged downward into a gutted road. “To-morrow, I’d ha’ been away.”