The child nodded, grasping the dashboard firmly. With the ease of long practice, Split got to the big wheel and leaped to the ground. She had noticed the big stone which Baldy Bob had slipped in front of the hind wheel, and she fancied it was part of the reason why the stagecoach could not be moved.
She was mistaken: it was the whole reason. And when Split had pushed and tugged and kicked with all her strength, laying herself flat at last and bracing her toes against the other wheel to get a leverage, her first feeling when she saw the coach move above her head was of delight at the unexpected. Her second was of unmixed terror; for, gaining an impetus from its descent on the inclined plane that led from the platform, the coach rattled briskly down Sutton Avenue, headed for the cañon, with Frank clutching the dashboard and laughing aloud in glee.
Split Madigan had always fancied she could run. She never knew how impotent human fleetness is till she saw that lumbering coach go plunging swiftly and more swiftly away from her, across B Street, and tearing down the next hill with a speed that made her puny efforts laughable.
Baldy Bob, emerging from the saloon on the corner with that feverishly distorted view of the world due to never going back home after dinner downtown, saw his coach come down upon him as if to demand the washing so long promised. If it had been morning, he would have been properly afraid of getting in the way of the monster let loose. But in the evening Bob was accustomed to the occurrence of peculiar things. So he ran—at that time of day he could run better than walk—out to the middle of the street, threw up his arms, and called hoarsely upon the mad thing to stop.
It did—for a moment, when it came in contact with his body; but it was long enough for its course to be deflected from the steep hill below and turned northward down the comparatively level cross street.
When Bob picked himself up and followed, he found a thin, white-faced, red-haired girl running swiftly beside him. Later he accompanied her and the plucky little Frank (still smiling and chuckling over her fine ride) up the hill to the home of Mr. Francis Madigan, where he demanded damages—both personal and mechanical.
"And fa-ther tooked her in his own room," Frank said with shuddering unction, as she told the tale, "and she's in there yet!"
It was Fom who awakened a sense of the beautiful in Frank. She and Bep were continually playing London Bridge, in the course of which it became necessary to demand:
"Which would you rather have (that means, like best): a diamond horse covered with stars, or a golden cradle with red silk pillows?"