CHAPTER X--"TOUCH AND GO"
As it chanced, Mr. Steele's groom, who had been sent with the coach andwho sat beside Bob, was on the wrong side to give any assistance at thiscrucial moment. To have jumped from the seat threatened to send himplunging down the undefended hillside--perhaps with the coach rollingafter him!
For some seconds it did seem as though the horses would go down in atangle and drag the coach and its occupants after them.
Bob was doing his best with the reins, but the frisky nigh leader wasdancing and plunging, and forcing his mate off the firm footing of theroad. Indeed, the latter animal was already slipping over the brink.
"Get him!" yelled Bob, meaning the horse that had broken the trace andhad stirred up all the trouble.
But who was to "get him"? That was the difficulty. The groom could notclimb over the young driver to reach the ground.
There was at least one quick-witted person aboard the Sunrise coach inthis "touch and go" emergency. Ruth was not afraid of horses. She hadnot been used to them, like Ann Hicks, all her life, but she was theperson now in the best position to help Bob.
To reach the ground on the nigh side of the coach Ann Hicks would haveto climb over a couple of boys. Ruth was on that end of the seat and sheswung herself off smartly, and landed firmly on the road.
"Look out, Ruth!" shrieked her chum, "you'll be killed!"
Ruth had no intention of getting near the heels of the horse that hadbroken its harness. She darted around to his head and seized his bridle.His mate was already scattering gravel down the hillside as he plunged.
Ruth, paying no attention to the shrieks of the girls or the commands ofthe groom and the boys, jerked the nigh horse's head around, and so gavehis mate a chance to obtain firm footing again. She instantly led bothhorses toward the inside of the road.
Tom was off his perch by now and had dashed forward to her aid. Amid thegabble of the others, they seemed the only two cool persons in theparty.
"Oh! hold them tight, Tom!" cried his sister. "Don't let them run."
"Pshaw! they don't want to run," growled Bobbins.
The groom climbed carefully over him and leaped down into the road. Tomwas looking at Ruth with shining eyes.
"You're the girl for me, Ruthie," he whispered in a sudden burst ofenthusiasm. "I never saw one like you. You always have your wits aboutyou."
Ruth smiled and blushed. A word of approbation from Tom Cameron wassweeter to her than the praise of any other of her young friends. Shegave him a grateful look, and then turned back to the coach, where thegirls were still as excited as a swarm of bees.
They all wanted to get down into the road, until Madge positivelyforbade it, and Ruth swung herself up to her seat again.
"You can't do any good down there, and you'd only be in the way," Madgesaid. "And the danger's over now."
"Thanks to Ruthie!" added Helen, squeezing her chum.
"Oh, you make too much fuss about it," said Ruth. "I just grabbed thebridle."
"Yes," said Mercy, from inside. "I thought I'd need my aeroplanes to flywith, when that horse began to back over the edge of the hill. You're agood child, Ruthie. I always said so."
The others had more or less to say about Ruth's action and she was gladto turn the conversation to some other subject.
Meanwhile the groom had mended the harness, and now he and Tom led theleaders to straighten out the team, and the four horses threw themselvesinto their collars and jerked the coach-wheel out of the gutter.
The trouble had delayed them but slightly, and soon Tom was cheerfullywinding the horn, and the horses were rattling down a more gentledescent into the last valley.
From this to the top of the hill on which the Steele home stood was asteady ascent and the horses could not go rapidly. Bob and Madge pointedout the objects of interest as they rolled along--the farmhouses thatwere to be torn down, the fences already straightened, and the dykes andwalls on which Mr. Steele's men were at work.
"When this whole hill is father's, you'll see some farm," crowedBobbins.
"But whose place is _that?_" demanded one of the girls, behind him,suddenly.
The coach had swung around a turn in the road where a great, bald rockand a border of trees on the right hand, hid all that lay beyond on thisgentle slope. The other girls cried out at the beauty of the scene.
A gable-roofed farmhouse, dazzlingly white, with green blinds, stood endto the road. There were great, wide-branched oaks all about it. The sodwas clipped close and looked like velvet. Yet the surroundings of thehomestead were rather wild, as though Nature had scarcely been disturbedby the hand of man since the original clearing was made here in thehillside forest.
There were porches, and modern buildings and "ells" added to the greatold house, but the two huge chimneys, one at either end, pronounced thebuilding to be of the architecture of the earliest settlers in thissection of the State.
There were beds of old-fashioned flowers; there was a summerhouse on thelawn, covered with vines; altogether it was a most beautiful and "homey"looking place.
"Whose place is it?" repeated the questioner.
"Oh, that? Caslon's," grunted Bob. "He's the chap who won't sell out tofather. Mean old thing."
"Why, it's a love of an old place!" exclaimed Helen.
"Yes. It is the one house father was going to let stand on the hillbeside our own. You see, we wanted to put our superintendent in it."
Just then an old gentleman came out of the summer house. He was aportly, gray mustached, bald-headed man, in clean linen trousers and awhite shirt with a short, starched bosom. He wore no collar or necktie,but looked clean and comfortable. He smiled at the young people on thecoach jovially.
Behind him stood a motherly lady some years his junior. She was buxomand smiling, too.
Bobbins jerked his head around and snapped his whip over the leaders'ears. "These are the people," he said.
"Who?" asked Belle Tingley.
"The Caslons."
"But they're real nice looking people," Helen exclaimed, in wonder.
"Well, they're a thorn--or a pair of thorns--in my father's flesh. You'dbetter not boost them before him."
"And they don't want to sell their old home?" queried Ruth, softly. Thento herself, she whispered: "And who could blame them? I wouldn't sellit, either, if it were mine."