John Henry Smith Part 24

I intended to write of our automobile trip, but the hour is late and I must postpone it until some other time. Good night, John Henry Smith!

ENTRY NO. XV

THE AUTO AND THE BULL

I started to tear out what I wrote last night, but on second thought will let it remain. Its perusal in future years may amuse me. I will now resume the trail of Woodvale happenings.

The touring car won from her father by Miss Harding is a ma.s.sive and beautiful machine. Luckily I am familiar with the mechanism of this particular make, and, as a consequence, am called in for advice when any trifling question arises. Harding scorns a professional chauffeur.

"Next to running one of these road engines," he declares, "the most fun is in pulling them apart to see how they are made. I would as soon hire a man to eat for me as to shawf one of these choo-choo cars."

Shortly after the big machine arrived Mr. Harding received a letter from a gentleman named Wilson, who is spending the summer at the Oak Cliff Golf and Country Club. Wilson challenged him to come to Oak Cliff and play golf, and to bring his family and a party of friends with him.

Harding read the letter and laughed.

"Here's my chance to win a game," he declared. "I can't beat the Kid, but I'll put it all over Wilson, you see if I don't."

"Don't be too sure, papa," cautioned Miss Harding.

"Wilson only started golf this year, and the only game he can beat me at is hanging up pictures," insisted Harding. "He stands six-foot-four, and weighs about one hundred and fifty. He looks like a pair of compa.s.ses, but he's all right, and we must go up and see him. Do you know the road, Smith?"

"Every foot of it."

"How far is it?"

"About forty miles."

"Good!" declared the magnate. "I'll wire Wilson we'll be there to-morrow. We'll fill up the buzz wagon, take an early start, and put in a whole day at it. Smith shall be chief shawfer, and the Kid and I will take turns when he gets tired."

And we did. We started at seven o'clock with a party consisting of Mr.

and Mrs. Harding, Miss Harding, Chilvers and his wife, Miss Dangerfield, Carter, and myself.

There are many hills intervening and some stretches of indifferent road, but we figured we should make the run in two hours or less--but we didn't.

The few early risers gave us a cheer as we rolled away from the club house and careened along the winding path which leads to the main road.

The dew yet lay on the gra.s.s, and little lakes of fog hung over the fair green. It was a perfect spring morning, and the ozone-charged air had an exhilarating effect as we cleaved through it.

Miss Harding was in the seat with me. I don't imagine this exactly pleased Carter, but it suited me to a dot. My lovely companion was in splendid spirits.

"Now, Jacques Henri," she said to me in French, pretending that I was a professional chauffeur, "you are on trial. Unless you show marked proficiency we shall dispense with your services."

"And if I do?" I inquired.

"Then you may consider yourself retained," she laughed.

"For life?" I boldly asked.

I was so rattled at this rather broad insinuation that I swung out of the road and struck a rut, which gave the car a thorough shaking.

"If that's the way you drive you will be lucky if you're not discharged before we reach Oak Cliff," Miss Harding declared, and I did not dare look in her eyes to see if she were offended or not.

For the following minutes I attended strictly to business. The steering gear and other operating parts were a bit stiff on account of newness, but I soon acquired the "feel" of them, and we ate up the first ten miles in seventeen minutes.

We were following a sinuous brook toward its source, now skirting its quiet depths along the edge of reedy meadows, and then chasing it into the hills where it boiled and complained as it dashed and spumed amid rocks and boulders.

"Hold on there, Smith!" shouted Harding from the rear seat in the tonneau.

"Stop, Jacques Henri!" ordered my fair employer, and then I dared look into her smiling eyes.

"I want to cut some of those willow switches," explained Harding, as the car stopped.

"What do you want of willow switches, John?" asked Mrs. Harding.

"Going to make whistles out of them," he said, cutting several which sprouted out from the edge of a spring. "Besides they're good things to keep the flies from biting the tonneau. Smith runs so slow that they are stealing a ride."

"Defend me," I said to my employer.

"Jacques Henri is doing as he is told," declared Miss Harding.

The spring was so inviting that we sampled its clear, cold water.

Harding in the meantime whittling industriously on his willow switch.

When he found that his whistle would "blow" he was as pleased as if he had designed a new type of locomotive.

A mile farther on we pa.s.sed sedately through a country village and aroused the fleeting interest of the loungers in front of the combined post-office and news store. Then we entered a fine farming country, and from it plunged into a forest so dense that the overhanging boughs almost spanned our pathway.

Moss-covered stone walls lined both sides of the road. Everywhere was a profusion of wild flowers, their petals brushing against our tires, and their flaunting reds, yellows, and blues brightening the gloom of the encompa.s.sing wood. A gray squirrel scampered across our path and impudent chipmunks chattered to right and left. And then we came to a small clearing filled with the wagons, tents and litter of a gipsy camp.

"Let's stop and have our fortunes told!" cried Miss Dangerfield, but my employer vetoed that proposition. It was a vivid flash of colour. The brightly painted wagons with their canvas tops, the red-shirted men, black of hair and eyes, olive of skin, and graceful in their laziness; the older women bare-headed, bent of shoulder, and brilliantly shrouded in shawls; the younger women straight as arrows, bold and keen of glance, and decked in ribbons and jewelry, and on every hand swarms of gipsy children, more or less clothed. The blue smoke of their camp-fires twisted through the dark green of the fir trees in the background.

Again the forest closed upon us. The grade became steeper, and in places our road had been blasted through solid rock. And then we reached the summit of this ridge, and like a flash the superb panorama of the Hudson burst upon us. At our feet lay the broad bosom of the Tappan Zee, its waters glistening in the sunlight, the spires of a village in the foreground, and the distance blue-girt with cliffs, hills, and mountains.

I have seen it a thousand times, but it is ever new.

"Stop; Jacques Henri!" commanded Miss Harding, and I stopped.

"What's the matter?" asked Harding. "Something busted?"

"We're going to sit right here a minute or more and admire this,"

declared Miss Harding.

"Great; isn't it?" admitted Harding. "Who owns it, Smith? Does it cost anything to look at it?"

"Not a penny," I said.