Tom Slade, Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer

by Percy Keese Fitzhugh

He waded cautiously into the water and found to his infinite relief that the submerged bank formed a gentle slope. He could not go far enough to lift his machine, but he could reach to wiggle it off its hook and then guide it, in some measure, enough to ease its fall and keep its damageable parts clear of the water. At least he believed he could. In any event, he had no alternative choice and time was flying. After what he had already done he felt he could do anything. Success, however wearying and exhausting, gives one a certain working capital of strength, and having succeeded so far he would not now fail. His success in crossing had given him that working capital of resolution and incentive whence came his superhuman strength and overmastering resolve in that lonely tree. And he would not fail now.

Yet he could not bring himself to look at his watch. He was willing to venture a guess, from the sun, as to what time it was, but he could not clinch the knowledge by a look at the cruel, uncompromising little glass-faced autocrat in his pocket. He preferred to work in the less disheartening element of uncertainty. He did not want to know the hard, cold truth—not till he was moving.

Here now was the need of nice calculating, and Tom eyed the shore and the tree and the machine with the appraising glance of a wrestler eyeing his opponent. He broke several branches from the tree, laying them so as to form a kind of springy, leafy mound close to the brink. Then standing knee-deep he wiggled the wheel's rim very cautiously out to the end of its hanger, so that it just balanced there.

One more grand drive, one more effort of unyielding strength and accurate dexterity and—he would be upon the road.

The thought acted as a stimulant. Lodging one hand under the seat of the machine and the other upon a stout bar of the mechanism which he thought would afford him just the play and swing he needed, he joggled the wheel off its hanger, and with a wide sweep, in which he skillfully minimized the heavy weight, he swung the machine onto the springy bed which he had made to receive it.

Then, as the comrade of a wounded soldier may bend over him, he knelt down beside his companion upon the makeshift, leafy couch.

"Are you all right?" he asked in the agitation of his triumphant effort.

Uncle Sam did not answer.

He stood the machine upright and lowered the rest so that it could stand unaided; and he tore away the remnant of mud-guard which Uncle Sam had sacrificed in his role of combination engine and paddle-wheel.

"You've got the wires all tangled up in your spokes," Tom said; "you look like a—a wreck. What do you want with those old sticks of shingles? How are you off for gas—you—you old tramp?"