"Git out o' this! Yip!" yelled Bill to his bays, but Marc merely made a lunging leap and tugged at the lines as if asking for more liberty.

Milton gave him his head and laughed to see the great limbs rise and fall like the pistons of an engine. They swept over the weeds like a hawk skimming the stubble of a wheat field.

"Get out o' the way or I'll run right over your back," yelled Milton again.

"Try it," was the reply.

"Grab hold of me, Bettie, and lean to the right. When we turn this corner I'm going to take the inside track and pa.s.s 'em."

"You'll tip us over"----

"No, I won't! Do as I tell you."

They were nearing a wide corner, where the road turned to the right and bore due south through the woods. Milton caught sight of the turn, gave a quick twist of the lines around his hands, leaned over the dasher and spoke shrilly:

"Git out o' this, Marc!"

The splendid brute swerved to the right and made a leap that seemed to lift the sleigh and all into the air. The snow flew in such stinging showers Milton could see nothing. The sleigh was on one runner, heeling like a yacht in a gale; the girl was clinging to his neck; he could hear the bells of the other sleigh to his left; Marc was pa.s.sing them; he heard shouts and the swish of a whip. Another convulsive effort of the gray, and then Milton found himself in the road again, in the moonlight, where the apparently unwearied horse, with head out-thrust, nostril wide-blown and body squared, was trotting like a veteran on the track.

The team was behind.

"Stiddy, boy!"

Milton soothed Marc down to a long, easy pace; then turned to Bettie, who had uncovered her face again.

"How d' y' like it?"

"My sakes! I don't want any more of that. If I'd 'a' known you was goin'

t' drive like that I wouldn't 'a' come. You're worse'n Ed. I expected every minute we'd be down in the ditch. But, oh! ain't he jest splendint?" she added, in admiration of the horse.

"Don't y' want to drive him?"

"Oh, yes; let me try. I drive our teams."

She took the lines, and at Milton's suggestion wound them around her hands. She looked very pretty with the moon shining on her face, her eyes big and black with excitement, and Milton immediately put his arm around her and laid his head on her shoulder. "Milton Jennings, you don't"----

"Look out," he cried in mock alarm, "don't you drop those lines!" He gave her a severe hug.

"Milton Jennings, you let go me!"

"That's what you said before."

"Take these lines."

"Can't do it," he laughed; my hands are cold. Got to warm them, see?" He pulled off his mitten and put his icy hand under her chin. The horse was going at a tremendous pace again.

"O-o-o-oh! If you don't take these lines I'll drop 'em, so there!"

"Don't y' do it," he called warningly, but she did, and boxed his ears soundly while he was getting Marc in hand again. Bettie's rage was fleeting as the blown breath from Marc's nostrils, and when Milton turned to her again all was as if his deportment had been grave and cavalier.

The stinging air made itself felt, and they drew close under their huge buffalo robes as Marc strode steadily forward. The dark groves fell behind, the clashing bells marked the rods and miles and kept time to the songs they hummed.

"Jingle, bells! Jingle, bells!

Jingle all the way.

Oh, what joy it is to ride In a one-horse open sleigh."

They overtook another laughing, singing load of young folks--a great wood sleigh packed full with boys and girls, two and two--hooded girls, and boys with caps drawn down over their ears. A babel of tongues arose from the sweeping, creaking bob-sleigh, and rose into the silent air like a mighty peal of laughter.

II.

A school-house set beneath the shelter of great oaks was the center of motion and sound. On one side of it the teams stood shaking their bells under their insufficient blankets, making a soft chorus of fitful trills heard in the pauses of the merry shrieks of the boys playing "pom-pom pullaway" across the road before the house, which radiated light and laughter. A group of young men stood on the porch as Milton drove up.

"h.e.l.lo, Milt," said a familiar voice as he reined Marc close to the step.

"That you, Shep?"

"Chuss, it's me," replied Shep.

"How'd you know me so far off?"

"Puh! Don't y' s'pose I know that horse an' those bells--Miss Moss, allow me"---- He helped her out with elaborate courtesy. "The supper and the old folks are _here_, and the girls and boys and the fun is over to Dudley's," he explained as he helped Bettie out.

"I'll be back soon's I put my horse up," said Milton to Bettie. "You go in and get good 'n' warm, and then we'll go over to the house."

"I saved a place in the barn for you, Milt. I knew you'd never let Marc stand out in the snow," said Shephard as he sprang in beside Milton.

"I knew you would. What's the news? Is Ed here t'night?"

"Yeh-up. On deck with S'fye Kinney. It'll make him _swear_ when he finds out who Bettie come with."

"Let him. Are the Yohe boys here?"

"Yep. They're alwiss on hand, like a sore thumb. Bill's been drinking, and is likely to give Ed trouble. He never'll give Bettie up without a fight. Look out he don't jump onto _your_ neck."

"No danger o' that," said Milton coolly.

The Yohe boys were strangers in the neighborhood. They had come in with the wave of harvest help from the South and had stayed on into the winter, making few friends and a large number of enemies among the young men of "the crick." Everybody admitted that they had metal in them, for they instantly paid court to the prettiest girls in the neighborhood, without regard to any prior claims.

And the girls were attracted by these Missourians, their air of mysterious wickedness and their muscular swagger, precisely as a flock of barnyard fowl are interested in the strange bird thrust among them.

But the Southerners had muscles like wild-cats, and their feats of broil and battle commanded a certain respectful consideration. In fact, most of the young men of the district were afraid of the red-faced, bold-eyed strangers, one of the few exceptions being Milton, and another Shephard Watson, his friend and room-mate at the Rock River Seminary. Neither of these boys being at all athletic, it was rather curious that Bill and Joe Yohe should treat them with so much consideration.

Bill was standing before the huge cannon stove, talking with Bettie, when Milton and Shephard returned to the school-house. The man's hard, black eyes were filled with a baleful fire, and his wolfish teeth shone through his long red mustache. It made Milton mutter under his breath to see how innocently Bettie laughed with him. She never dreamed and could not have comprehended the vileness of the man's whole life and thought. No lizard reveled in the mud more hideously than he. His conversation reeked with obscenity. His tongue dropped poison each moment when among his own s.e.x, and his eye blazed it forth when in the presence of women.

"h.e.l.lo, Bill," said Milton, with easy indifference. "How goes it?"