There followed a crunching grinding crash.
"Thave me! Oh, thave me!" screamed Tommy.
With a ripping sound the canopy top was stripped clear of the vehicle and left dangling from the low hanging limbs of the trees under which the buck-board wagon had been dragged.
"Hold fast! Don't try to jump!" commanded Miss Elting without the least trace of excitement in her voice. Hazel placed a firm hand on the arm of the terror-stricken Tommy.
The right forward wheel of the wagon collided with a tree. The wheel was shattered, and the end of the axle broken off short. At the same instant the horse sprang sharply to the left evidently in an effort to get back into the log road, facing almost in the opposite direction.
Jasper being on the downhill side when the wheel collapsed, plunged head first from the seat, landing heavily on the ground. His head coming into contact with the base of the tree, Jasper sank over on his side, unconscious.
Harriet had not lost her head for a second. As the driver fell she snatched at the reins. She caught one of them, the other falling to the ground on the wrecked side of the wagon.
The thills of the wagon broke off short with reports like the explosions of a pistol. Then the horse bolted. Harriet grasping the one rein with both hands shot over the dashboard of the wagon as though she had been projected from a cannon. Hazel and Tommy were also pitched from the vehicle, Miss Elting and Margery clinging to the seats as the wagon toppled over on its side.
"Let go!" shouted Miss Elting. "You'll be killed!"
But Harriet clung to the single rein, the frantic animal dragging her away at a frightful rate of speed.