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They were shapely and black and polished, and ran about here and there on the floor, just like intelligent little horseless carriages; then they would pause with their immovable eyes fixed on me, seeing or in some mysterious way divining my presence; their pliant horns waving up and down, like delicate instruments used to test the air.

Car and man appeared there as advertised. Very ostentatiously, he bought one horse, and had it taken aboard the car before the gaze of the admiring populace. At night, when the A.P. had gone to bed, many men appeared, and into the horseless end of that car, they loaded thousands of ruffed grouse.

He called it a contraption, and said it would be against the laws of God and common sense. Later he proscribed the horseless carriage as an impracticable toy. Of flying he had affirmed that the fools who tried it would deservedly break their necks, and he had gustily raged at the waste of a hundred and seventy-five acres of good pasture land when golf was talked.

He was evidently a man of quick action, for he saw the girl and horseless wagon at a glance, touched the reins, stopped the horse, and jumped out before Fannie could think, taking off his hat and saying: "Lady in distress, runaway horse, lucky not to have upset load can I be of any use?" all in one breath.

The sun blazed down on the shadeless prairie, and the very air smelled of heat. The grain was shriveled and burnt. And for shelter from that vast furnace, a tar-paper shack with a low roof. As we reached the creek, Crazy Weed, smelling water, leaped to the creek bed, breaking the tugs as she went, leaving the horseless buggy, the empty cans and me high and dry on the bank.

I will scourge them for the sneer, for the venom that they carry; I will shake their hearts with fear as the land around I harry: They shall find the midnight raid waking them from fitful slumbers; They shall find the ball and blade daily thinning out their numbers: Barn in ashes, cattle slain, hearth on which there glows no ember, Neatless plough and horseless wain; thus the rebels shall remember Jack, the Regular!"

It had rained earlier in the week and Martin was obliged to be careful of the chuck-holes in the sticky, heavy gumbo soon to be the bane of pioneers venturing forth in what were to be known for a few short years as "horseless carriages." Bumping along he recalled to his mind the various girls with whom he had gone to school.

Then Sharon spoke of rumours that the new horseless carriage would soon do away with horses. He didn't believe the rumours, and he spoke scornfully of the new machines as contraptions. Still he had seen some specimens in Buffalo, and they might have something in them. They might be used in time in place of horse-drawn busses and ice wagons and drays. Wilbur was chilled by this prediction.

"Well, here we are, safe across, horseless, and well belike to freeze to death," he commented. "What next?" I made him a bow. "You are on my demesne of Appleby Hundred, Captain Jennifer, and it shall go hard with us if we can not find a fire to warm a guest and a horse to mount him withal. Let us go to the manor house and see what we can discover."

It occurred to me, as I remember somewhat vaguely, that precisely the same idea might be applied to a carriage or a wagon on the road. A horseless carriage was a common idea.