Crowded Out o' Crofield; or, The Boy who made his Way by William O. Stoddard (read my book txt) 📗

afraid he will be hurt," remarked Miss Glidden, kindly and benevolently; but all the rest shouted "Hurrah!" again.

Fierce was the strain upon the young runner, for a moment, and then his hands were on the back-board of the bouncing wagon. A tug, a spring, a swerve of the wagon, and Jack Ogden was in it, and in a second more the loosely flying reins were in his hands.

The strong arms of his father, were they twice as strong, could not at once have pulled in those horses, and one man on the sidewalk seemed to be entirely correct when he said, "He's a plucky little fellow, but he can't do a thing, now he's there."

The Runaway.

His sister was trembling all over, but she was repeating: "He did it splendidly! He can do anything!"

Jack, in the wagon, was thinking only: "I know 'em. They're old Hammond's team. They'll try to go home to the mill. They'll smash everything, if I don't look out!"

It is something, even to a greatly frightened horse, to feel a hand on the rein. The team intended to turn out of Main Street, at the corner, and they made the turn, but they did not crash the wagon to pieces against the corner post, because of the desperate guiding that was done by Jack. The wagon swung around without upsetting. It tilted fearfully, and the nigh wheel was in the air for a moment, until Jack's weight helped bring it down again. There was a short, sharp scream across the street, when the wagon swung and the wheel went up.

Down the slope toward the bridge thundered the galloping team, and the blacksmith ran out of his shop to see it pass.

"Turn them into the creek, Jack!" he shouted, but there was no time for any answer.

"They'd smash through the bridge," thought Jack. "I know what I'm about."

There were wheel-marks down from the street, at the left of the bridge, where many a team had descended to drink the water of the Cocahutchie, but it required all Jack's strength on one rein to make his runaways take that direction. They had thought of going toward the mill, but they knew the watering-place.

Not many rods below the bridge stood a clump of half a dozen gigantic trees, remnants of the old forest which had been replaced by the streets of Crofield and the farms around it. Jack's pull on the left rein was obeyed only too well, and it looked, for some seconds, as if the plunging beasts were about to wind up their maddened dash by a wreck among those gnarled trunks and projecting roots. Jack drew his breath hard, and there was almost a chill at his young heart, but he held hard and said nothing.

Forward—one plunge more—hard on the right rein—

"That was close!" he said. "If we didn't go right between the big maple and the cherry! Now I've got 'em!"

Splash, crash, rattle! Spattering and plunging, but cooling fast, the gray team galloped along the shallow bed of the Cocahutchie.

"I wish the old swimming-hole was deeper," said Jack, "but the water's very low. Whoa, boys! Whoa, there! Almost up to the hub—over the hub! Whoa, now!"

And the gray team ceased its plunging and stood still in water three feet deep.

"I mustn't let 'em drink too much," said Jack; "but a little won't hurt 'em."

The horses were trembling all over, but one after the other they put their noses into the water, and then raised their heads to prick their ears back and forth and look round.

"Don't bring 'em ashore till they're quiet, Jack," called out the deep, ringing voice of his father from the bank.

There he stood, and other men were coming on the run. The tall blacksmith's black eyes were flashing with pride over the daring feat his son had performed.

"I daren't tell him, though," he said to himself. "He's set up enough a'ready. He thinks he can do 'most anything."

"Jack," wheezed a mealy voice at his side, "that's my team—"

"I know it," said Jack. "They 're all right now. Pretty close shave through the trees, that was!"

"I owe ye fifty dollars for a-savin' them and the wagin," said the miller. "It's wuth it, and I'll pay it; but I've got to owe it to ye, jest now. Times are awful hard in Crofield. If I'd ha' lost them hosses and that wagin—"

He stopped short, as if he could not exactly say how disastrous it would have been for him.

There was a running fire of praise and of questions poured at Jack, by the gathering knot of people on the shore, and it was several minutes before his father spoke again.

"They're cool now," he said. "Turn 'em, Jack, and walk 'em out by the bridge, and up to the mill. Then come home to dinner."

Jack pretended not to see quite a different kind of group gathered under the clump of tall trees. Not a voice had come to him from that group of lookers-on, and yet the fact that they were there made him tingle all over.

Two large, freckle-faced, sandy-haired women were hugging each other, and wiping their eyes; and a very small girl was tugging at their dresses and crying, while a pair of girls of from twelve to fourteen, close by them, seemed very much inclined to dance. Two small boys, who at first belonged to the party, had quickly rolled up their trousers and waded out as far as they could into the Cocahutchie. Just in front of the group, under the trees, stood Mary Ogden, straight as an arrow, her dark eyes flashing and her cheeks glowing while she looked silently at the boy on the wagon in the stream, until she saw him wheel the grays. Even then she did not say anything, but turned and walked away. It was as if she had so much to say that she felt she could not say it.

"Aunt Melinda! Mother!" said one of the girls, "Jack isn't hurt a mite. They'd all ha' been drowned, though, if there was water enough."

"Hush, Bessie," said one of the large women, and the other at once echoed, "Hush, Bessie."

They were very nearly alike, these women, and they both had long straight noses, such as Jack's would have been, if half-way down it had not been Roman, like his father's.

"Mary Ann," said the first woman, "we mustn't say too much to him about it. He can only just be held in, now."

"Hush, Melinda," said Jack's mother. "I thought I'd seen the last of him when the gray critters came a-powderin' down the road past the house"—and then she wiped her eyes again, and so did Aunt Melinda, and they both stooped down at the same moment, saying, "Jack's safe, Sally," and picked up the small girl, who was crying, and kissed her.

The gray team was surrendered to its owner as soon as it reached the road at the foot of the bridge, and again Jack was loudly praised by the miller. The rest of the Ogden family seemed to be disposed to keep away, but the tall blacksmith himself was there.

"Jack," said he, as they turned away homeward, "you can go fishing this afternoon, just as I said. I was thinking of your doing something else afterward, but you've done about enough for one day."

He had more to say, concerning what would have happened to the miller's horses, and the number of pieces the wagon would have been knocked into, but for the manner in which the whole team had been saved.

When they reached the house the front door was open, but nobody was to be seen. Bob and Jim, the two small boys, had not yet returned from seeing the gray span taken to the mill, and the women and girls had gone through to the kitchen.

"Jack," said his father, as they went in, "old Hammond'll owe you that fifty dollars long enough. He never really pays anything."

"Course he doesn't—not if he can help it," said Jack. "I worked for him three months, and you know we had to take it out in feed. I learned the mill trade, though, and that was something."

Just then he was suddenly embarrassed. Mrs. Ogden had gone through the house and out at the back door, and Aunt Melinda had followed her, and so had the girls. Molly had suddenly gone up-stairs to her own room. Aunt Melinda had taken everything off the kitchen stove and put everything back again, and here now was Mrs. Ogden back again, hugging her son.

"Jack," she said, "don't you ever, ever, do such a thing again. You might ha' been knocked into slivers!"

Molly had gone up the back stairs only to come down the front way, and she was now a little behind them.

"Mother!" she exclaimed, as if her pent-up admiration for her brother was exploding, "you ought to have seen him jump in, and you ought to have seen that wagon go around the corner!"

"Jack," broke in the half-choked voice of Aunt Melinda from the kitchen doorway, "come and eat something. I felt as if I knew you were killed, sure. If you haven't earned your dinner, nobody has."

"Why, I know how to drive," said Jack. "I wasn't afraid of 'em after I got hold of the reins."

He seemed even in a hurry to get through his dinner, and some minutes later he was out in the garden, digging for bait. The rest of the family remained at the table longer than usual, especially Bob and Jim; but, for some reason known to herself, Mary did not say a word about her meeting with Miss Glidden. Perhaps the miller's gray team had run away with all her interest in that, but she did not even tell how carefully Miss Glidden had inquired after the family.

"There goes Jack," she said at last, and they all turned to look.

He did not say anything as he passed the kitchen door, but he had his long cane fishing-pole over his shoulder. It had a line wound around it, ready for use. He went out of the gate and down the road toward the bridge, and gave only a glance across at the shop.

"I didn't get many worms," he said to himself, at the bridge, "but I can dig some more if the fish bite. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't."

Over the bridge he went, and up a wagon track on the opposite bank, but he paused for one moment, in the very middle of the bridge, to look up stream.

"There's just enough water to run the mill," he said. "There isn't any coming over the dam. The pond's even full, though, and it may be a good day for fish. I wish I was in the city!"

CHAPTER II. THE FISH WERE THERE.

Saturday afternoon was before Jack Ogden, when he came out at the water's edge, near the dam, across from the mill. That was there, big and red and rusty-looking; and the dam was there; and above them was the mill-pond, spreading out over a number of acres, and ornamented with stumps, old logs, pond-lilies, and weeds. It was a fairly good pond, the best that Cocahutchie Creek could do for Crofield, but Jack's face fell a little as he looked at it.

"There are more fellows than fish here," he said to himself, with an air of disgust.

There was a boy at the end of the dam near him, and a boy in the middle of it, and two boys at the flume, near the mill. There were three punts out on the water, and one of them had in it a man and two boys, while the second boat held but one man, and the third contained four. A big stump near the north shore supported a boy, and the old snag jutting out from the south shore held a boy and a man.

There they all were, sitting perfectly still, until, one after another, each rod and line came up to have its hook and bait examined, to see whether or not there had really been a bite.

"I'm fairly crowded out," remarked Jack. "Those fellows have all the good places. I'll have to go somewhere else; where'll I go?"

He studied that problem for a full minute, while every fisherman there turned to look at him, and then