"Here's a runaway! Hug the right of the road!"
They were turning a bend, but across the angle through the bushes a pair of coal-black horses could be seen heading toward them. The farmer's jerking at the reins was comical but effective. In a twinkling he had his nag squeezed against the wall which bounded the narrow road.
"Get up, Aladdin!" whispered the rider, and the horse, a powerful roadster or steeplechaser, yet with limbs like a stag's, cantered forward, as if to meet the wild blacks. But suddenly his master turned him about and began trotting gently back, keeping to the other side of the road and turning his head over his left shoulder toward the approaching runaways. As they slewed around the bend their coachman was flung from his seat into the grass border of the roadside.
"Rosalie!" exclaimed the waiting cavalier, cutting his horse over the flanks. It bounded away abreast of the team. Emily remembered a vague whirl of spangled reins and a frightened face of rare beauty blushing through its silver veil.
"He's killed!" she cried, dismounting and running toward the coachman. But the grass was like a cushion in its midsummer thickness, and he had already picked himself up uninjured, save for bruises and a tattered sleeve.
"It was the gobbler frightened 'em," he said, starting off at a lame dog-trot after the retreating carriage. Emily turned just in time to witness a rare exhibition of coolness and skill. The chestnut had kept abreast of the blacks with ease. At the right moment his rider, clinging to the saddle and stirrup like a cossack, reached over with his left hand and caught the reins of the foaming pair. Then gradually he slowed up his steeplechaser, jerking powerfully at the bridles. The added weight was too much for the runaways to pull, and all three were ambling peacefully when they faded from sight in a cloud of dust.
"I guess we'll start for hum," said the farmer. Emily was standing with her finger on her lip, unconscious of his presence.
"Putty slick on a horse, ain't he?"
"Who?"
"Young Arnold. He kin stick on like a clothes-pin, I tell yew."