Bill still refused, until at last, as they approached the town, they heard a heavy, rumbling sound. It was the roll of cars in the distance, and starting up, Mr. Delafield seized the negro by the shoulder and in thunder tones called out, “Whistle.”
“Lord, mars’r I will, I will,” gasped Bill, terrified at the fiery gleam of his master’s eye, and from his mouth there issued a most unearthly sound, which mingled with the shriek of the fast coming engine, urged on the jaded horses to one more desperate effort.
A few more mad plunges and they reached the dépôt, covered with foam and frothing at the mouth, just as the train was moving slowly away. With one pitying farewell glance at his dying greys, Mr. Delafield exclaimed, “Cut the harness instantly,” and then with a bound sprung upon the platform, which he reached just as Bill called after him in mournful accents, “Ferd’s dead, mars’r, Ferd is,” while, mingled with the roar of the machinery he caught the faint echo of something about “t’other half bucket of water!”
But little cared he for that. Rosa Lee was to be overtaken, and to accomplish this, he would willingly have sacrificed every horse of which he was owner, even were they twice as valuable as the dappled greys.
So, wishing him a successful journey, and leaving him on the same seat with a Yankee peddler, who saw him when he came up and “guessed he was after a runaway nigger,” we return for a moment to Bill, who with tears streaming from his eyes, patched the struggles of Fred until the noble animal was dead, bringing him water which he vainly coaxed him to drink, while the bystanders, who crowded around, asked him innumerable questions as to why they drove so fast and where his master was going.
To the first Bill could not reply, but to the last he promptly answered, as he patted the remains of the departed Ferdinand, “Gwine to the devil, in course! Whar you spect a white man to go, what treats hosses in dis kind of style, won’t let ’em hev all the water dey wants and drives ’em till dey draps dead in der tracks.”
The story of the half bucket was duly rehearsed, Bill firmly believing that if Ferd had drank it, he would undoubtedly have lived “dis minit and been as spry as a cricket. But now he’s dead and Fred, too,” continued the negro, as the latter ceased to move. “Sich another span of hosses, that ain’t in all Georgy,” and laying his black face upon the neck of the insensible Ferd, the negro cried like a child.
“There is one comfort, at least, my boy,” said a gentlemanly looking man, who stood near and who knew Mr. Delafield, “your horses didn’t suffer, for they were too much excited.”
This in a measure consoled Bill, who, wiping his eyes, asked what he was to do with them, saying he “never could dig thar grave.”
“My negroes shall do it for you,” answered the stranger, and in a short time several stalwart men were busy in an adjacent field making a grave for the dappled greys, which they carefully buried, while on a stump, with his head resting on his knees, sat Bill as chief mourner.