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Smiling at the brash act he contemplated, Bowers threw the brake mechanically as the front wheels of the wagon sank into a chuck-hole and the jolt all but landed him on the broad rump of Old Peter. As he raised his eyes he saw a sight charged with significance to one familiar with it. Neifkins's sheep were coming down the side of the mountain like a woolly avalanche.
It was one little schooner all by herself, drug along by two poor old cavallos that couldn't have pulled my hat off. Their tongues was out, and every once in a while they'd stick in a chuck-hole. Then a man would get down and put his shoulder to the wheel, and everybody'd take a heave, and up they'd come, all a-trembling and weak. Tim and I rode down just to take a look at the curiosity.
The "oh" was literally jolted out of her. Turning rather a sudden curve at a pretty good clip, the wagon slipped over the edge of a chuck-hole a little deeper than the ordinary. Happening as it did in just the right place, it caught the weakened wheel and wrenched it off as neatly and as suddenly as a dentist wrenches a tooth out of the jaw of an unwilling patient.
She would bring them up to us and hand them in through the chuck-hole, which the village blacksmith had repaired and once more reinforced with extra bars, "so them bastards won't even think of sawing out again," as the jailer had expressed it. The evening she handed the keys in to us we were so excited we wanted to have "Whip the Devil" played again for our singing and dancing.
The man trembled as with a chill as he started to his feet, clambered over the fence, and mounted his wheel. But it was his chance and he knew it. The terror was no longer between him and Mill Valley. He sped at a breakneck rate down the hill, but in the turn at the bottom, in the deep shadows, he encountered a chuck-hole and pitched headlong over the handle bar.
I don't know how much of a jar it would take to make this thing go off. A chuck-hole might do it." Pachuca, evidently depressed, relapsed into silence. It was growing colder and darker would they never get there? However, she would not have been Polly had she kept still. "Señor Pachuca, what did you mean by requisitioning goods? You aren't working for the government, are you?" "No."
"Got down that bank fine as silk," he volunteered companionably, "and then when I'd passed camera and was outa the scene, by thunder, I tangled up with a deep chuck-hole that was grown over with weeds, and like to have broken my fool neck. How's that for luck?" He took the cigar from his lips and smiled again with half-closed, measuring eyes.
"You are so pretty and so disagreeable," he said. "Are all Chicago ladies like you?" "No. Some of them are not so pretty and are more agreeable," replied the girl, nervously. "Please you just missed that chuck-hole!" "Why should I care? I do not want to go to Athens." "No, but you don't want to go to Heaven, either, do you? Or well, you know what I mean.
We knew it was all up when, one morning at breakfast, the sheriff came in with the jailer. "Boys, all back into your cells!" he growled. The long bar was thrown over our closed doors. The sheriff stooped down and inspected the chuck-hole. "Why, Jesus Christ, they'd of been through in two more nights.
"Some driver, some driver," Billy muttered. "I take my hat off to 'm whoever he is, hittin' a pace like that on a road like this. Listen to that! He's got powerful brakes. Zocie! That WAS a chuck-hole! Some springs, Saxon, some springs!" Where the road zigzagged above, they glimpsed through the trees four sorrel horses trotting swiftly, and the flying wheels of a small, tan-painted trap.
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