"Don't let 'em, Ford," exclaimed Dab, giving his whole energies to the horses. "They'll break their necks if they do. Hold 'em in."
Ford, who was in the middle, promptly seized an arm of each of his panic-stricken cousins, while Frank clambered over the seat to help him. They were all down on the bottom now, serving as a, weight to hold the evergreen branches, as the light wagon bounced and rattled along over the smooth, level road.
In vain Dab pulled and pulled at the ponies. Run they would, and run they did; and all he could do was to keep them fairly in the road.
Bracing strongly back, with the reins wound around his tough hands, and with a look in his face that should have given courage even to the Hart boys, Dab strained at his task as bravely as when he had stood at the tiller of "The Swallow" in the storm.
There was no such thing as stopping those ponies.
And now, as they whirled along, even Dabney's face paled a little.
"I must reach the bridge before he does: he's just stupid enough to keep right on."
It was very "stupid," indeed, for the driver of that one-horse "truck-wagon" to try and reach the little narrow unrailed bridge first. It was an old, used-up sort of a bridge, at best.
Dab loosened the reins a little, but could not use his whip.
"Why can't he stop!"