Mr Hawkins Humorous Adventures | Page 2

dropping, Maud S. had a steel bar down the back of each leg, with a cuff above and a cuff below the knee. Hawkins was quite right-- so far as I could see; Maud was anchored until some well-disposed person brought a hack-saw and cut off her shackles.
"You see how it acts when she is standing still?" chuckled the inventor, replacing the rods. "Just keep your eyes open and note the suddenness with which she stops running."
"Hawkins," I cried, despairingly, as he led the animal up the road, "don't go to all that trouble on my account. I can see perfectly that the thing is a success. Don't try it again."
"My dear Griggs," said Hawkins, coldly, "this trial trip is for my own personal satisfaction, not yours. To tell the truth, I had no idea that you or any one else would be here to witness my triumph."
He went perhaps three or four hundred feet up the road; then he turned Maud's nose homeward and clambered to her back.
As I waited behind the hedge, I grieved for the old mare. Hawkins evidently intended urging her into something more rapid than the walk she had used for so many years, and I feared that at her advanced age the excitement might prove injurious.
But Maud broke into such a sedate canter when Hawkins had thumped her ribs a few times with his heels, and her kindly old face seemed to wear such a gentle expression as she approached, that I breathed easier.
"Now, Griggs!" cried Hawkins, coming abreast. "Watch--now!"
He thrust one hand behind, grasped the lever, and gave it a tug. The little rods remained in the air.
A puzzled expression flitted over Hawkins' face, and as he cantered by he appeared to tug a trifle harder.
This time something happened.
I heard a whir like the echo of a sawmill, and saw several yards of steel spring shoot out of the inwards of the machine. I heard a sort of frantic shriek from Maud S. I saw a sudden cloud of pebbles and dust in the road, such as I should imagine would be kicked up by an exploding shell--and that was all.
Hawkins, Maud, and the infernal machine were making for the county town with none of the grace, but nearly all the speed, of a shooting star.
For a few seconds I stood dazed.
Then it occurred to me that Hawkins' wife would later wish to know what his dying words had been, and I went into the auto with a flying leap, sent it about in its own length, almost jumped the hedge, and thus started upon a race whose memory will haunt me when greater things have faded into the forgotten past.
My runabout, while hardly a racer, is supposed to have some pretty speedy machinery stored away in it, but the engine had a big undertaking in trying to overhaul that old mare.
It was painfully apparent that something--possibly righteous indignation at being the victim of one of Hawkins' experiments--had roused a latent devil within Maud S. Her heels were viciously threshing up the dirt at the foot of the hill before I began my blood-curdling coast at the top.
How under the sun anything could go faster than did that automobile is beyond my conception; yet when I reached the level ground again and breathed a little prayer of thanks that an all-wise Providence had spared my life on the hill, Hawkins seemed still to have the same lead.
That he was traveling like a hurricane was evidenced by the wake of fear-maddened chickens and barking dogs that were just recovering their senses when I came upon them.
I put my lever back to the last notch.
Heavens, how that auto went! It rocked from one side of the road to the other. It bounded over great stones and tried to veer into ditches, with the express purpose of hurling me to destruction.
It snorted and puffed and rattled and skidded; but above all, it went!
There is no use attempting a record of my impressions during that first half mile--in fact, I am not aware that I had any. But after a time I drew nearer to Hawkins, and at last came within thirty feet of the galloping Maud.
Hawkins' face was white and set, he bounced painfully up and down, risking his neck at every bounce, but one hand kept a death-like grip on the lever of the horse-brake.
"Jump!" I screamed. "Throw yourself off!"
Hawkins regarded me with much the expression the early Christians must have worn when conducted into the arena.
"No," he shouted. "It's"--bump--"it's all right. It'll"--bump--"work in a minute."
"No, it won't! Jump, for Heaven's sake, jump!"
I think that Hawkins had framed a reply, but just then a particularly hard bump appeared to knock the breath out of his body. He took a better grip on the bridle and