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

ALIGN="center"> CHAPTER V. JACK OGDEN'S RIDE.

Jack needed only a few minutes to put on the suit he had worn when fishing.

"There, now," he said; "if there's going to be a big flood in the creek I'm going down to see it, rain or no rain. There's no telling how high it'll rise if this pour keeps on long enough. It rattles on the roof like buckshot!"

"That's the end of the old tavern," said Jack to Mary, as he stood in the front room looking out.

He was barefooted, and had come so silently that she was startled.

"Jack!" she exclaimed, turning around, "they might have all been killed when the steeple came down. I heard what Joe Hawkins said, and I led out the class."

"Good for Joe!" said Jack. "We need a new meeting-house, any way. I heard the elder say so. Less steeple, next time, and more church!"

"I'd like to see a real big church," said Mary,—"a city church."

"You'd like to go to the city as much as I would," said Jack.

"Yes, I would," she replied emphatically. "Just you get there and I'll come afterward, if I can. I've been studying twice as hard since I left the academy, but I don't know why."

"I know it," said Jack; "but I've had no time for books."

"Jack! Molly!" the voice of Aunt Melinda came up the stairway. "Are you ever coming down-stairs?"

"What will the elder say to my coming down barefoot?" said Jack; "but I don't want shoes if I'm going out into the mud."

"He won't care at such a time as this," said Mary. "Let's go."

It was not yet supper-time, but it was almost dark enough to light the lamps. Jack felt better satisfied about his appearance when he found how dark and shadowy the parlor was; and he felt still better when he saw his father dressed as if he were going over to work at the forge, all but the leather apron.

The elder did not seem disturbed. He and Mr. Murdoch were talking about all sorts of great disasters, and Mary did not know just when she was drawn into the talk, or how she came to acknowledge having read about so many different things all over the world.

"Jack," whispered his mother, at last, "you'll have to go to the barn and gather eggs, or we sha'n't have enough for supper."

"I'll bring the eggs if I don't get drowned before I get back," said Jack; and he found a basket and an umbrella and set out.

He took advantage of a little lull in the rain, and ran to the barn-yard gate.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "Now I'll have to wade. Why it's nearly a foot deep! There'll be the biggest kind of a freshet in the Cocahutchie. Isn't this jolly?"

The rain pattered on the roof as if it had been the head of a drum. If the house was gloomy, the old barn was darker and gloomier. Jack turned over a half-bushel measure and sat down on it.

"I want to think," he said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I never felt it so before. I'd as lief live in this barn as stay in Crofield."

He suddenly sprang up and shook off his blues, exclaiming: "I'll go and see the freshet, anyhow!"

He carried the eggs into the house.

All the time he had been gone, Elder Holloway had been asking Mary very particularly about the Crofield Academy.

"I don't wonder she says what she does about the trustees," remarked Aunt Melinda. "She took the primary room twice, for 'most a month each time, when the teacher was sick, and all the thanks she had was that they didn't like it when they found it out."

The gutter in front of the house had now become a small torrent.

"All the other gutters are just like that," said Jack. "So are the brooks all over the country, and it all runs into the Cocahutchie!"

"Father," said Jack, after supper, "I'm going down to the creek."

"I wish you would," said his father. "Come back and tell us how it's looking."

"Could a freshet here do any damage?" asked Mr. Murdoch.

"There's a big dam up at Four Corners," said the blacksmith. "If anything should happen there, we'd have trouble here, and you'd have it in Mertonville, too."

Jack heard that as he was going out of the door. He carried an umbrella; but the first thing he noticed was that the force of the rain seemed to have slackened as soon as he was out of doors. It was now more like mist or a warm sleet, as if Crofield were drifting through a cloud.

"The Washington House needs all the rain it can get," said Jack, as he went along; "but half the roof is caved in. I'm glad Livermore's insured."

When Jack reached the creek he felt his heart fairly jump with excitement. The Cocahutchie was no longer a thin ribbon rippling along in a wide stretch of sand and gravel. It was a turbid, swollen, roaring flood, already filling all the space under its bridge; and the clump of old trees was in the water instead of on dry land.

"Hurrah!" shouted Jack. "As high as that already, and the worst is to come!"

He could not see the dam at first, but the gusts of wind were making openings in the mist, and he soon caught glimpses of a great sheet of foaming brown water.

"I'll go and take a look at the dam," he said; and he ran to the mill.

"It's just level with the dam," he said, after one swift glance. "I never thought of that. I must go and tell old Hammond what's coming."

The miller's house was not far away, and he and his family were at supper when there came a bang at the door. Then it opened and Mrs. Hammond exclaimed:

"Why, John Ogden!"

"I'm out o' breath," said Jack excitedly. "You tell him that the water's 'most up to the lower floor of the mill. If he's got anything there that'd be hurt by getting wet—"

"Goodness, yes!" shouted the miller, getting up from the table, "enough to ruin me. There are sacks of flour, meal, grain,—all sorts of stuff. It must all go up to the second floor. I'll call all the hands."

"But," said his wife, "it's Sunday!"

"Can't help it!" he exclaimed; "the Cocahutchie's coming right up into the mill. Jack, tell every man you see that I want him!"

Off went Jack homeward, but he spoke to half a dozen men on the way. He did not run, but he went quickly enough; and when he reached the house there was something waiting for him.

It was a horse with a blanket strapped on instead of a saddle; and by it stood his father, and near him stood his mother and Aunt Melinda and Mary, bareheaded, for it was not raining, now.

"Mount, Jack," said the blacksmith quietly. "I've seen the creek. It's only four and a half miles to the Four Corners. Ride fast. See how that dam looks and come back and tell me. Mr. Murdoch will have his buggy ready to start when you get back. See how many logs there are in the saw-mill boom."

"Oh, Jack!" exclaimed Mary, in a low suppressed voice. "I wish that I were you! It's a great day for you!"

He had sprung to the saddle while his father was speaking, and he felt it was out of his power to utter a word in reply. He did not need to speak to the horse, for the moment Mr. Ogden released the bit there was a quick bound forward.

"This horse is ready to go," said Jack to himself, as he felt that motion. "I've seen her before. I wonder what's made her so excited?"

There was no need for wonder. The trim, light-limbed sorrel mare he was riding had been kept in the hotel stables until that day. She had been taken out to a neighboring stable, at the morning alarm of fire, and when the blacksmith went to borrow her he found her laboring under a strong impression that things in Crofield were going wrong. She was therefore inclined to go fast, and all that Jack had to do was to hold her in. The blacksmith's son was at home in the saddle. It was not yet dark, and he knew the road to the Four Corners. It was a muddy road, and there was a little stream of water along each side of it. Spattered and splashed from head to foot were rider and horse, but the miles vanished rapidly and the Four Corners was reached.

A smaller village than Crofield, further up among the hills, it had a higher dam, a three times larger pond, a bigger grist-mill, and a large saw-mill. That was because there were forests of timbers among the yet higher hills beyond, and Mr. Ogden had been thinking seriously about the logs from those forests.

"I know what father means," said Jack aloud, as he galloped into the village.

There were hardly any people stirring about its one long street; but there was a reason for that and Jack found out what it was when he pulled up near the mill.

"Everybody has come to watch the dam," he exclaimed. "No use asking about the logs, though; there they are."

The crowd was evidently excited, and the air was filled with shouts and answers.

"The boom got unhitched and swung round 'cross the dam," said one eager speaker; "and there's all the logs, now,—hundreds on 'em,—just a-pilin' up and a-heapin' up on the dam; and when that breaks, the dam'll go, mill and all, bridge and all, and the valley below'll be flooded!"

The moon was up, and the clouds which had hidden it were breaking away as Jack looked at the threatening spectacle before him.

The sorrel mare was tugging hard at the rein and pawing the mud under her feet, while Jack listened to the talk.

"Stand it? No!" he heard a man say. "That dam wasn't built to stand any such crowdin' as that. Hark!"

A groaning, straining, cracking sound came from the barrier behind which the foaming flood was widening and deepening the pond.

"There it goes! It's breaking!"

Jack wheeled the sorrel, as a dull, thunderous report was answered by a great cry from the crowd; and then he dashed away down the homeward road.

"I must get to Crofield before the water does," he said. "Glad the creek's so crooked; it has twice as far to travel as I have."

Not quite, considering how a flood will sweep over a bend instead of following it. Still, Jack and the sorrel had the start, and nearly all the way it was a downhill road.

The Crofield people gathered fast, after the sky cleared, for a rumor went around that there was something wrong with the dam, and that a man had gone to the Four Comers to warn the people there.

All the men that could crowd into the mill had helped Mr. Hammond get his grain up into the second story, but the water was a hand-breadth deep on the lower floor by the time it was done.

There came a moment when all was silent except the roar of the water, and through that silence the thud of hoofs was heard coming down from Main Street. Then a shrill, excited voice shouted:

"All of you get off that bridge! The Four Corners dam's gone. The boom's broken, and the logs are coming!"

There was a tumult of questioning, as men gathered around the sorrel, and there was a swift clearing of people from the bridge.

"Why, it's shaking now!" said the blacksmith to Mr. Murdoch. "It'll go down with the first log that strikes it. You drive your best home to Mertonville and warn them. You may be just in time."

Away went the editor, carrying with him an extraordinary treasure of news for the next number of his journal. Jack dismounted, and her owner took the sorrel to her stable; she was very muddy but none the worse for the service she had rendered.

The crowd stood waiting for what was sure to come. Miller Hammond was anxiously watching his threatened and already damaged property. Jack came and stood beside him.

"Mr. Hammond," he said, "all the gravel that you were going to sell to father is lying under water."

"More than two acres of it," said