“Mother, do something for me,” he moaned in the old, little-boy way.

Abbie heard some one, who seemed not herself, saying, in a steady cool voice, “Yes, John, trust Mother.”

The horses, frothing, now, at the bits and flanks, were standing against the fence at the far side of the field, trying to reach green corn-ears over the wire. Across the hay-stubble Abbie ran to them. On the way she kept saying, “Oh, God . . . one more thing . . . help me through this one more thing.” With frantic movements, she unhitched and led the team back into the yard and hitched them to the lumber-wagon. She seemed to have acquired Amazonian strength. Isabelle, who had run out, was crying in silent fright. “Bring pillows from the beds,” Abbie called. Back into the field she drove in the wagon. Fearful to leave the horses, which had not yet settled down to their usual docility, she tied them to the fence post.

“Mother . . . do something.”

“Yes, John,—trust Mother.”

Together, Abbie and Isabelle, pulling and lifting, got the suffering boy into the wagon with his head on a pillow. Already the apron was scarlet. Abbie jerked off the wagon-seat, piling the other pillows on it, and propped up the mangled foot. She jumped out, untied the team, and climbed back over the wheel into the wagon-box.

“Look after the baby,” she called to Isabelle, and started the horses out of the field on a gallop. Against the dashboard she stood and clung to the lines which almost cut her as they sawed through her hands. The wagon bounced and careened and rocked. The pins came from Abbie’s hair, and the red-brown mass, faded now, and with a few graying streaks, fell over her shoulders.

In Cedartown, people ran out of their houses and looked after her. As she reached Dr. Hornby’s, she had to use all her strength to get the team stopped. Men, running out from the little stores, came to help, catching the horses by the bits and tying them to one of the long row of hitching posts. Dr. Hornby and Henry Lutz and Asy Drumm carried the boy into the one-story office.

“Stay by me, Mother.”

“Yes, John, I won’t leave you.”

Abbie held the boy’s hand, her thick hair still tumbled over her shoulders while Dr. Hornby cut and cleansed and tied. When the last neat bandage was fastened, Abbie Deal slipped to the floor in a crumpled heap.

John’s life was saved only by a few moments,—only by the time gained through Abbie’s wild drive into town. For weeks, his foot propped in its one position, he suffered all the agonies of a cut and tortured tendon of Achilles. And always he was to carry a horny scar.

It was the nearest that death had come to the family since Abbie’s long illness. Will and Abbie, sitting on the side porch, on a warm August evening, talked of it in low tones.