United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Deacon had the good luck to find his old friend, the Herd-Boss, who took a deep interest in the matter. He offered to have as good a team as he had at the crib the next morning, with the wagon-bed filled with cedar-boughs, to make as easy a couch as possible for the rough ride over the mountains.
Some two or three weeks went by, and the farmer who had driven to town when Hobert was about to set out on his long journey, starting so smartly, and making so light of the farewells, drove thither again, and this time his wagon-bed was empty, except for the deep cushion of straw.
A great singing of frogs filled the sonorous solitude. On the river-road Pallura's wagon blocked the way. It was empty, but still soiled, here and there, with blood. Angry curses broke suddenly from the mob. Giacobbe shouted: "Let us put the saint in it!" So the bust was placed in the wagon-bed and drawn by many arms into the ford. The battleline thus crossed the frontier.
Nevertheless he was getting wet to no purpose. There was the tool-house and carpenter's shed near the bank; its floor was thickly covered with sawdust and pine-wood shavings, and there was a mouldy buffalo skin which he had once transported thither from the old wagon-bed.
It was a superficial wound, but it was incontestable. He became wider awake, and kept up the lumbering run to Canyon City. He found a man, with a team of horses and a wagon, who got out of bed and harnessed up for twenty dollars. Churchill crawled in on the wagon-bed and slept, the gripsack still on his back.
When a rear wheel breaks down upon a march, the best method I know of for taking the vehicle to a place where it can be repaired is to take off the damaged wheel, and place a stout pole of three or four inches in diameter under the end of the axle, outside the wagon-bed, and extending forward above the front wheel, where it is firmly lashed with ropes, while the other end of the pole runs six or eight feet to the rear, and drags upon the ground.
He would often do the buying for the store and take measurements of grain, and my father trusted him implicitly. Once a friend of my father said to him, as Newton was passing along the street with his team: "George, I'll give you seventeen hundred dollars for that negro." My father said: "If you would fill that wagon-bed full of gold, you could not get him." A few weeks after that Newton died.
As soon as all were on land, the woman, hugging her children with one arm, knelt at my feet and clasping me about the knees sobbed as though her heart would break, as she kept repeating that I had saved their lives, and expressing her thanks for the rescue. As soon as I could collect my wits I began to tug at the wagon-bed, and then the woman helped, and together we got it where it was safe.
Sister had run indoors and changed her shabby and soiled frock for a new gingham; but when she came down to the porch, and stood bashfully in the doorway, none of the girls from town spoke to her. Hiram drove up with the farm-wagon. Most of the girls had accepted the adventure in the true spirit now, and they climbed into the wagon-bed on the clean straw with laughter and jokes.
She was radiantly bright, and smiled merrily as she extended her hand and shook his over the rickety fore-wheel as she leaned forward from the dilapidated, sagging seat, the springs of which rested on the sides of the wagon-bed. "I told you I'd be in," she laughed, "and, if the market is off to-day, back I go to my shanty. Nothing but the best prices catch me."
Word Of The Day