In an incredible time the principal street of Tickfall was swept clean of all its live stock and of all its men, but it was littered everywhere with pieces of broken buggies, broken wagons, broken harness, and a dust-cloud was settling upon that vacated street as if Mother Nature was trying to bury what was left out of her sight.
Now for the luck which attends the escapades of youth: every person on the street had looked toward the teams which were running away, and not back at what had originally caused their flight. Those boys had careened over the court-house yard, had come to smash in the middle of the hitching-lot, and had got up and gone away from there without being seen by a single person who identified them as the source of all the trouble. As for Colonel Gaitskill’s buggy, he never missed it, and if he had, he could never have identified it among the smashed and broken vehicles that were junked in the hitching-lot after the animals broke loose.
The farmers knew that if one mule runs away every other mule follows; so the poor mule who first saw the buggy and uttered his frightened bawl was blamed for the whole catastrophe!
As for Skeeter Butts and Dazzle Zenor, they were about two blocks from the court-house when they heard that first terrified bray behind them. In a moment the braying and bawling and bleating and squealing and barking and yelling increased greatly.
We have the best authority for the statement that the wicked flee where no man pursueth.
Skeeter and Dazzle decided that all the inhabitants of Tickfall were after them for the theft of the rabbit-foot!
Skeeter took one look behind him at that cloud of dust, caught hold of his spark lever and pulled it down to the last notch, then slowly opened his throttle until it could go no farther. The speed of his flight broke all records in Louisiana for his make of automobile.
His eyes were upon the road just as far ahead of him as he could see, for he knew that going at his present speed it would take a long time to stop. In less than a minute he was drawing near to the bridge over the little branch where Org and Little Bit had played with the “cannon” a short time before to the complete wreckage of that frail structure. Skeeter knew this bridge was too narrow for him to cross at his present rate of progress, and he began to slow up.