The passengers in the second car could just see what had caused the frightened shouts from their friends in the first car. A gaunt farm horse was standing on his hind legs pawing the air madly, while a rickety old spring wagon seesawed uncertainly on the edge of a deep ditch beside the road. But the driver of the horse was on the road, hanging on to the bridle while plying a stout hickory stick freely over the animal's back.
"Git down! Will yuh come to arth, yuh rascal?" shouted the irate woman who was garbed in a man's farm hat and a long duster.
"Do you need any assistance?" called Mrs. Vernon, anxiously.
"Not ef I kin git him to plant his feet on arth agin. He ain't got no spunk left to run away, 'cause he's ben out plowing all day, and it w'ar a shame to drive him to the store. But it hed to be, 'cuz the ole man tuk t'other hoss to go to a meetin'."
As the unusual character talked, she tugged at the bridle until she finally had the horse quieted down again. Then he allowed his long ears to droop lazily, his spine to sag in the middle, and his erstwhile springy legs to bend as if he felt too weary to stand up.
The woman with the weather-beaten face and toughened hands was a fluent speaker, even though she paid little attention to the latest style in dress for women. She leaned against the shaft of the wagon and plied her questions to the tourists as freely as she had plied the hickory stick to the horse.
"Be you-all out fer a lark?" asked she, eyeing the number of girls in both cars.
Jim thought to move his car gradually along the road so the scouts in his charge could join in the conversation with the woman. But the moment the horse saw the automobile crawling towards him, he jumped aside. The wagon-wheel turned suddenly and the unexpected happened; the woman who had been leaning heavily on the wheel was unceremoniously dropped to a sitting posture in the dusty road.
Several of the scouts had to smother with handkerchiefs, a keen desire to laugh, but the owner of the horse seemed to take the situation good-naturedly.
"Wal, ef that ain't jus' like Samson! He does the mos' onexpected tricks, so's that he keeps us guessin' what next."