Free The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper Page B

side towards the valley, and this was now buried in the snow. The sleigh was easily forced across so slight an impediment; and before Richard became conscious of his danger, one half of the vehicle was projected over a precipice, which fell, perpendicularly, more than a hundred feet. The Frenchman, who, by his position, had a full view of their threatened flight, instinctively threw his body as far forward as possible and cried, “Ah! Mon cher monsieur Deeck! Mon Dieu! Que faites vous!”
    â€œDonner and blitzen, Richart,” exclaimed the veteran German, looking over the side of the sleigh with unusual emotion. “Put you will preak ter sleigh and kilt ter horses.”
    â€œGood Mr. Jones,” said the clergyman, “be prudent, good sir—be careful.”
    â€œGet up, obstinate devils!” cried Richard, catching a bird’s-eye view of his situation, and, in his eagerness to move forward, kicking the stool on which he sat—“Get up, I say—Cousin ’duke, I shall have to sell the grays too; they are the worst broken horses—Mr. Le Quaw!” Richard was too much agitated to regard his pronunciation, of which he was commonly a little vain; “Monsieur Le Quaw, pray get off my leg; you hold my leg so tight that it’s no wonder the horses back.”
    â€œMerciful Providence!” exclaimed the Judge. “They will be all killed!”
    Elizabeth gave a piercing shriek, and the black of Agamemnon’s face changed to a muddy white.
    At this critical moment, the young hunter, who during the salutations of the parties had sat in rather sullen silence, sprang from the sleigh of Marmaduke to the heads of the refractory leaders. The horses, who were yet suffering under the injudicious and somewhat random blows of Richard, were dancing up and down with that ominous movement that threatens a sudden and uncontrollable start, still pressing backwards. The youth gave the leaders a powerful jerk, and they plunged aside and re-entered the road in the position in which they were first halted. The sleigh was whirled from its dangerous position, and upset with the runners outwards. The German and the divine were thrown, rather unceremoniously, into the highway, but without danger to their bones. Richard appeared in the air, describing the segment of a circle of which the reins were the radii, and landed at the distance of some fifteen feet, in that snowbank which the horses had dreaded, right end uppermost. Here, as he instinctively grasped the reins, as drowning men seize at straws, he admirably served the purpose of an anchor. The Frenchman, who was on his legs in the act of springing from the sleigh, took an aerial flight also, much in the attitude which boys assume when they play leapfrog, and flying off in a tangent to the curvature of his course, came into the snowbank head foremost, where he remained, exhibiting two lathy legs on high, like scarecrows waving in a cornfield. Major Hartmann, whose self-possession had been admirably preserved during the whole evolution, was the first of the party that gained his feet and his voice.
    â€œTer deyvel, Richart!” he exclaimed, in a voice half serious, half comical. “Put you unloat your sleigh very hantily.”
    It may be doubtful whether the attitude in which Mr. Grant continued for an instant after his overthrow was the one into which he had been thrown, or was assumed, in humbling himself before the power that he reverenced, in thanksgiving at his escape. When he rose from his knees, he began to gaze about him, with anxious looks, after the welfare of his companions, while every joint in his body trembled with nervous agitation. There was some confusion in the faculties of Mr. Jones also; but as the mist gradually cleared from before his eyes, he saw that all was safe, and, with an air of great self-satisfaction, he cried, “Well—that was neatly saved, anyhow!—It was a lucky thought in me to hold on