550 
FOREST AND STREAM 
a little streak that appears brighter than the 
rest of it. Below the streak it’s dark as a coal 
hole, and you know that there’s where the moun¬ 
tain stretches along. The streak tapers off into 
darkness in either direction, so that you can’t 
exactly tell where it begins and where it ends. 
If you watch the streak for a while, you can see 
it slowly extending out in both directions; and 
while you are looking from one end to the other, 
the middle of it keeps getting brighter and 
brighter till, almost before you know it the top 
oi the mountain pops up into it, and there’s the 
aim outline of the old, “wagon top” rock that 
has stood at the head of Buttermilk gorge ever 
since the chaos of Creation left it there millions 
of years ago. 
Looking a little longer, you can just make out 
the “Kneebreaker” off at the left stretching up 
and down the side of the mountain like a great, 
big caterpillar. You climb the Kneebreaker when 
you go huckleberrying way up on the flat places 
under High Point. When there’s plenty of rain 
the water rushes down it in a regular brook; 
but if the weather is dry you can use the big 
rocks at the bottom of it for steps, in climbing 
to the top. By the time the Kneebreaker is in 
plain sight, the end of the big streak of sun¬ 
light has shot from behind High Point and 
flattened out against the side of the big knoll 
beyond Buttermilk gorge; and in another minute 
or two there’s the bald and shiny pate of the 
sun itself, peeking up over the top of High 
Point; and he looks down at you just as a boy 
does when he is looking for you in a hogshead 
in which you have hidden, and isn’t tall enough 
to look over the edge farther than the bottom of 
his nose. 
Well, when you get to Colonel Nevin’s barn, 
there are the Colonel and the other men, and 
two horses hitched to a wagon, all ready to 
start off. The men all take a look under the 
seats in order to see that nothing that’s wanted 
is left behind, and then everybody but the 
Colonel gets into the wagon. Daddy or one of 
the other men picks up the lines, clucks to the 
horses, and off you go. The driver stops the 
horses out on the street, and waits for the 
Colonel who has staid behind to close the barn 
doors and put out the lantern. He comes out 
and climbs into his seat, and this time you are 
off for good. 
You can’t expect to feel any better than you 
do whqn you start for Sullivan County early in 
the morning that way, to fish for trout—that is, 
if you are a boy. You guess a man feels pretty 
good, too. Daddy and the others get to talking 
about horses, hunting and fishing, and pretty 
nearly everything you can think of, as the horses 
trot along; and when one can’t think of a story 
another can. They are all smoking pipes; and 
from the way they talk and laugh over the 
stories, you judge they must be having a good 
time. 
The road you are on leads up to Grahamville 
and Claryville—two hamlets well up in the 
county. You keep to the main road when you 
are going to the West branch; but if you want 
the East branch you turn off the main road 
before you get to Grahamville, and then you 
learn what a corduroy road is like when it’s old, 
and every third log is rotted out. 
When the wagon gets to the beginning of the 
corduroy road, there’s a man waiting for you 
that Mr. Johnson has sent to take the rig the 
rest of the way. Daddy and the others get out 
and walk, and the man follows with the horses 
and wagon. You have a notion it is great fun 
to ride over such a road as that is, and stick to 
the wagon; but you soon find out what a mutton 
head you are. The way the body of the wagon 
goes down, first in front and then behind, makes 
you think of the walking beam of a river 
steamboat. Teetering is good enough fun; but 
the kind of teetering you get in going over a 
played out corduroy road in a wagon is just like 
having the other boy drop off his end of the 
teeter when your end is up in the air; only in the 
wagon you get that kind of jolt three or four 
times a minute. A boy that ever teetered with 
lorn Gifford knows how he feels; it’s pretty 
nearly the same as having One-Eye Ditmas- 
swat you with a barrel stave when he’s behind 
you and has a fair show. There isn’t much 
difference. In either case you don’t feel like 
teetering for several days. 
After the wagon seat chases you up into the 
air and hits you a few cracks before you come 
down again, you make up your mind to get out 
and walk. You don’t have to stay with the 
others; so you run ahead of them and come 
across a fine hornet’s nest as big as a bushel 
measure, hanging up in a tree not far from the 
road. You wonder whether there are hornets in 
it and peg a few stones at it to find out. Pretty 
soon you peg a stone right through the middle 
of it, and find there are hornets in it surely 
enough—the little, yellow kind that can see a 
boy with a stone in his hand forty rods away. 
You don’t stay around there any considerable 
length of time after the stone plunks through 
the nest, but grab off your hat so as to be 
ready for business, and start walking backward 
up the road. You remember it is better to back 
away from a hornet’s nest that you have pegged 
with anything, than it is to run straight ahead 
in the regular way. You can see what’s coming 
after you when you back away. 
You forget all about your being on a corduroy 
road; but you remember it pretty soon. About 
a hundred hornets come flying out to look for 
the one that put a new, front entrance into their 
house, and three or four get their eyes on you. 
Just then you step backward into a hole in the 
road and drop your hat out of your hand; and 
when you are scrambling to get up, two or three 
hornets catch up to you. One jabs you under 
the eye, and the other on the lip. You don’t 
stand any show with a hornet when you are 
down and have no hat in your hand with which 
to fight back. 
There’s plenty of mud in the road; so you 
make up a couple of poultices and plaster them 
on the burnt spots. By the time you see the 
next chipmunk your under lip sticks out as big 
as a crabapple, and your eye has a wen under 
it about the size of a marble. You don’t peg 
stones at the chipmunk, because you don’t feel 
like pegging stones any more. You just walk 
right along looking out for holes in the road. 
After a while you turn your back to see why the 
wagon doesn’t come along, and find it just 
’round a bend with the front wheels down in a 
hole. The horses are unhitched from it and 
standing a few yards off. 
When you get to the wagon, there are Daddy 
and the insurance man prying up the wheels with 
a fence rail, while the others are prying under 
the axle with another rail. The wagon comes 
up out of the hole all right, and the driver lets 
go of the rail to put blocking under the wheels 
when, all of a sudden the chock flies from under 
the rail with which Daddy and the insurance 
man are prying, and they both fall down on their 
hands and knees. Then the wagon tips down on 
that side, away goes the chock under the other 
rail, and back into the hole goes the wheels 
again. The driver begins to talk the way Phot 
Stickles did when his balky horse backed the 
wagon through a picket fence. Phot uses a 
good many swear words right along in his regu¬ 
lar conversation; but when he is mad he uses a 
private stock of custom made ones that he keeps 
for particular occasions, and that driver talks as 
if he went to school to Phot. 
The moment the driver begins to get off mixed 
conversation, everyone looks at Daddy, but he is 
fixing up another chock and doesn’t appear to be 
paying attention. The driver keeps at it hammer 
and tongs, till Colonel Nevin walks over to him, 
gives him a nudge with his elbow and nods to¬ 
ward Daddy. That is a bad thing for the 
Colonel to do; for the driver roars at him, then, 
and he says between swear words: 
“What’s the matter? Ain’t I doin’ this right?” 
“O, yes. O, yes,” the colonel answers in a 
mild, almost scared way. 
“This ain’t no time for foolin’,” the driver 
says back to him, “if you want to wet your feet 
in the Branch this afternoon and see fish on 
your plate for supper.” 
The next time the rails boost up the wagon, 
the driver gets the chocks under the front wheels 
all right. Then he steers with the pole till the 
others push the wagon ahead and clear of the 
hole. After that the horses are hitched on again 
and the driver starts off. Pretty soon Daddy 
notices you and asks : 
“What on earth is the matter with your face, 
boy?” 
“Hornet,” you tell him, and all the others 
laugh. 
“Hmm,” Daddy says. “He’s been stoning a 
nest, very likely.” 
“He’s getting his elementary lessons in natural 
history,” he goes on, talking to the others. 
“Very practical experiment he has been making; 
and the result are like those obtained by the 
fabled individual who tickled the heels of a mule. 
That boy needs a good many prayers; but in 
this instance there appears to be no call for 
effort in that direction.” 
“Now, there’s that driver,” Daddy keeps on. 
“I suspect he hasn’t the faintest conception of 
Divine displeasure, and I don’t know that it 
would make any difference with him if he had, 
because of lack of a practical demonstration of 
it; but if the Almighty were to send a hornet 
to operate on him every time he let out an oath, 
he would quickly acquire a widened perception. 
The times of Pharoah are past; but I’ve often 
thought a plague at the right time and place 
would be useful.” 
Everybody except the driver who goes ahead 
with the horses and wagon, walks along behind 
the rig for another mile or two, and then the 
corduroy ends. You get into the wagon with 
the others, and the horses make pretty good 
time till you come to Mr. Johnson’s. 
(To be continued.) 
