Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures

  Produced by Steen Christensen, Tom Chappell, Suzanne L.Shell, Charles Franks and the Online DistributedProofreading Team

  MR. HAWKINS' HUMOROUS ADVENTURES

  By Edgar Franklin

  1904

  "That's enough, Hawkins," I said, "come home."]

  CHAPTER I.

  Hawkins is part inventor and part idiot.

  Hawkins has money, which generally mitigates idiocy; but in his case italso allows free rein to his inventive genius, and that is a bad thing.

  When I decided to build a nice, quiet summer home in the Berkshires, Ipaid for the ground before discovering that the next villa belonged toHawkins.

  Had I known then what I know now, my country-seat would be locatedsomewhere in central Illinois or western Oregon; but at that time myknowledge of Hawkins extended no farther than the facts that he resideda few doors below me in New York, and that we exchanged a kindly smileevery morning on the L.

  One day last August, having mastered the mechanism of our little steamrunabout, my wife ventured out alone, to call upon Mrs. Hawkins.

  I am not a worrying man, but automobile repairs are expensive, and whenshe had been gone an hour or so I strolled toward our neighbors.

  The auto I was relieved to find standing before the door, apparently ingood health, and I had already turned back when Hawkins came trottingalong the drive from the stable.

  "Just in time, Griggs, just in time!" he cried, exuberantly.

  "In time for what?"

  "The first trial of--"

  "Now, see here, Hawkins--" I began, preparing to flee, for I knew toowell the meaning of that light in his eyes.

  "The Hawkins Horse-brake!", he finished, triumphantly.

  "Hawkins," I said, solemnly, "far be it from me to disparage your work;but I recall most distinctly the Hawkins Aero-motor, which moted you tothe top of that maple tree and dropped you on my devoted head. I alsohave some recollection of your gasolene milker, the one that explodedand burned every hair off the starboard side of my best Alderney cow.If you are bent on trying something new, hold it off until I can get mypoor wife out of harm's way."

  Hawkins favored me with a stare that would have withered a row of hardysunflowers and turned his eyes to the stable.

  Something was being led toward us from that direction.

  The foundation of the something I recognized as Hawkins' aged workhorse, facetiously christened Maud S. The superstructure was the mostremarkable collection of mechanism I ever saw.

  Four tall steel rods stuck into the air at the four corners of theanimal. They seemed to be connected in some way to a machine strapped tothe back of the saddle.

  I presume the machine was logical enough if you understood it, butbeyond noting that it bore striking resemblance to the vital organs of aclock, I cannot attempt a description.

  "That will do, Patrick," said Hawkins, taking the bridle and regardinghis handiwork with an enraptured smile. "Well, Griggs, frankly, what doyou think of it?"

  "Frankly," I said, "when I look at that thing, I feel somehow incapableof thought."

  "I rather imagined that it would take your eye," replied Hawkins,complacently. "Now, just see the simplicity of the thing, Griggs. Dropyour childish prejudices for a minute and examine it.

  "Let us suppose that this brake is fitted to a fiery saddle-horse. Therider has lost all control. In another minute, unless he can stop thebeast, he will be dashed to the ground and kicked into pulp. What doeshe do? Simply pulls this lever--thus! The animal can't budge!"

  An uncanny clankety-clankety-clank accompanied his words, and the rodsdropped suddenly. In their descent they somehow managed to gather twosteel cuffs apiece.

  When they ceased dropping, Maud S. had a steel bar down the back ofeach leg, with a cuff above and a cuff below the knee. Hawkins was quiteright--so far as I could see; Maud was anchored until some well-disposedperson brought a hack-saw and cut off her shackles.

  "You see how it acts when she is standing still?" chuckled the inventor,replacing the rods. "Just keep your eyes open and note the suddennesswith which she stops running."

  "Hawkins," I cried, despairingly, as he led the animal up the road,"don't go to all that trouble on my account. I can see perfectly thatthe thing is a success. Don't try it again."

  "My dear Griggs," said Hawkins, coldly, "this trial trip is for my ownpersonal satisfaction, not yours. To tell the truth, I had no idea thatyou or any one else would be here to witness my triumph."

  He went perhaps three or four hundred feet up the road; then he turnedMaud's nose homeward and clambered to her back.

  As I waited behind the hedge, I grieved for the old mare. Hawkinsevidently intended urging her into something more rapid than the walkshe had used for so many years, and I feared that at her advanced agethe excitement might prove injurious.

  But Maud broke into such a sedate canter when Hawkins had thumped herribs a few times with his heels, and her kindly old face seemed to wearsuch a gentle expression as she approached, that I breathed easier.

  "Now, Griggs!" cried Hawkins, coming abreast. "Watch--now!"

  He thrust one hand behind, grasped the lever, and gave it a tug. Thelittle rods remained in the air.

  A puzzled expression flitted over Hawkins' face, and as he cantered byhe appeared to tug a trifle harder.

  This time something happened.

  I heard a whir like the echo of a sawmill, and saw several yards ofsteel spring shoot out of the inwards of the machine. I heard a sort offrantic shriek from Maud S. I saw a sudden cloud of pebbles and dust inthe road, such as I should imagine would be kicked up by an explodingshell--and that was all.

  Hawkins, Maud, and the infernal machine were making for the county townwith none of the grace, but nearly all the speed, of a shooting star.

  For a few seconds I stood dazed.

  Then it occurred to me that Hawkins' wife would later wish to know whathis dying words had been, and I went into the auto with a flying leap,sent it about in its own length, almost jumped the hedge, and thusstarted upon a race whose memory will haunt me when greater things havefaded into the forgotten past.

  My runabout, while hardly a racer, is supposed to have some prettyspeedy machinery stored away in it, but the engine had a big undertakingin trying to overhaul that old mare.

  It was painfully apparent that something--possibly righteous indignationat being the victim of one of Hawkins' experiments--had roused a latentdevil within Maud S. Her heels were viciously threshing up the dirt atthe foot of the hill before I began my blood-curdling coast at the top.

  How under the sun anything could go faster than did that automobileis beyond my conception; yet when I reached the level ground againand breathed a little prayer of thanks that an all-wise Providence hadspared my life on the hill, Hawkins seemed still to have the same lead.

  That he was traveling like a hurricane was evidenced by the wake offear-maddened chickens and barking dogs that were just recovering theirsenses when I came upon them.

  I put my lever back to the last notch.

  Heavens, how that auto went! It rocked from one side of the road to theother. It bounded over great stones and tried to veer into ditches, withthe express purpose of hurling me to destruction.

  It snorted and puffed and rattled and skidded; but above all, it went!

  There is no use attempting a record of my impressions during that firsthalf mile--in fact, I am not aware that I had any. But after a timeI drew nearer to Hawkins, and at last came within thirty feet of thegalloping Maud.

  Hawkins' face was white and set, he bounced painfully up and down,risking his neck at every bounce, but one hand kept a death-like grip onthe lever of the horse-brake.

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p; "Jump!" I screamed. "Throw yourself off!"

  Hawkins regarded me with much the expression the early Christians musthave worn when conducted into the arena.

  "No," he shouted. "It's"--bump--"it's all right. It'll"--bump--"work ina minute."

  "No, it won't! Jump, for Heaven's sake, jump!"

  I think that Hawkins had framed a reply, but just then a particularlyhard bump appeared to knock the breath out of his body. He took a bettergrip on the bridle and said no more.

  I hardly knew what to do. Every minute brought us nearer to the town,where traffic is rather heavy all day.

  Up to now we had had a clear track, but in another five minutes acollision would be almost as inevitable as the sunset.

  I endeavored to recall the "First Aid to the Injured" treatment forfractured skulls and broken backs, and I thanked goodness that therewould be only one auto to complete the mangling of Hawkins' remains,should they drop into the road after the smash.

  Would there? I glanced backward and gasped. Others had joined thepursuit, and I was merely the vanguard of a procession.

  Twenty feet to the rear loomed the black muzzle of Enos Jackson'strotter, with Jackson in his little road-cart. Behind him, threebicyclists filled up the gap between the road-cart and Dr. Brotherton'sbuggy.

  I felt a little better at seeing Brotherton there. He set my hired man'sleg two years ago, and made a splendid job.

  There was more of the cavalcade behind Brotherton, although the dustrevealed only glimpses of it; but I had seen enough to realize that ifHawkins' brake did work, and Hawkins' mare stopped suddenly, there wasgoing to be a piled-up mass of men and things in the road that for sheermixed-up-edness would pale the average freight wreck.

  Maud maintained her pace, and I did my best to keep up.

  By this time I could see the reason for her mad flight. When theexplosion, or whatever it was, took place in the brake machinery,a jagged piece of brass had been forced into her side, and there itremained, stabbing the poor old beast with conscientious regularity atevery leap.

  I was still trying to devise some way of pulling loose the goad andpersuading Maud to slow down when we entered town.

  At first the houses whizzed past at intervals of two or three seconds;but it seemed hardly half a minute before we came in sight of the squareand the court house. We were creating quite an excitement, too. Peoplescreamed frantically at us from porches and windows and the sidewalk.

  Occasionally a man would spring into the road to stop Maud, think betterof it, and spring out again.

  One misguided individual hurled a fence-rail across the path. It didn'tworry Maud in the slightest, for she happened to be all in the air whilepassing over that particular point, but when the auto went over the railit nearly jarred out my teeth.

  Another fellow pranced up, waving a many-looped rope over his head. Ithink Maud must have transfixed him with her fiery eye, for before hecould throw it his nerve failed and he scuttled back to safety.

  Those who had teams hitched in the square were hurrying them out ofdanger, and when we whirled by the court-house only one buggy remainedin the road.

  That buggy belonged to Burkett, the constable. The town pays Burkett apercentage on the amount of work he does, and Burkett is keen on lookingup new business.

  "Stop, there!" he shouted, as we came up. "Stop!"

  Nobody stopped.

  "Stop, or I'll arrest the whole danged lot of ye fer fast drivin'!"roared Burkett, gathering up reins and whip.

  And with that he dashed into the place behind Enos Jackson and crowdedthe bicyclists to the side of the road.

  Our county town is a small one, and at the pace set by Maud it didn'ttake us long to reach the far side and sweep out on the highway whichleads, eventually, to Boston.

  I began to wonder dimly whether Maud's wind and my water and gasolenewould carry us to the Hub, and, if so, what would happen when we hadpassed through the city.

  Just beyond Boston, you know, is the Atlantic Ocean.

  At this point in my meditations we started down the slope to the bigcreamery.

  The building is located to the right of the road. On the left, a rathersteep grassy embankment drops perhaps thirty feet to the little river.

  On this beautiful sunny afternoon, the creamery's milk cans, somethinglike a hundred in number, were airing by the roadside, just on the edgeof the embankment; and as we thundered down I smiled grimly to think ofthe attractive little frill Maud might add to her performance by kickinga dozen or two of the milk cans into the river as she passed.

  Maud, however, as she approached the cans, kept fairly in the middle ofthe road--and stopped!

  Heavens! She stopped so short that I gasped for breath. All in atwinkling the steel rods dropped into position beside her legs, thecuffs snapped, and the Hawkins Horse-brake had worked at last!

  Poor old Maud! She slid a few yards with rigid limbs, squealing interror, and then crashed to the ground like an overturned toy horse.

  Hawkins shot off into space, and at the moment I didn't care greatlywhere he landed. I was vaguely conscious that he collided head-on withthe row of milk-cans, but my main anxiety was to shut off my power, setthe brake, point the auto into the ditch, and jump.

  And I did it all in about one second.

  After the jump, my recollection grows hazy. I know that one of my feetlanded in an open milk-can, and that I grabbed wildly at several others.Then the cans and I toppled headlong over the embankment and went down,down, down, while, fainter and fainter, I could hear something like:

  "Whoa! Whoa! Gol darn ye! Ow! Stop that hoss! Bang! Rattle! Rattle!Bang! Whoa! Stop, can't ye?"

  Then a peculiarly unyielding milk-can landed on my head and I seemed tofloat away.

  I have reason to believe that I sat up about two minutes later. Thecrash was over and peace had settled once more upon the face of nature.

  From far away came the sound of galloping hoofs, belonging, no doubt, tosome of the horses who had participated in the late excitement.

  The embankment was strewn with men and milk-cans, chiefly the latter. Noone seemed to be wholly dead, although one or two looked pretty near it.

  A few feet away, Burkett, the constable, was having a convulsion in hisvain endeavour to extricate his cranium from a milk-can. The sounds thatissued from that can made me blush.

  Jackson was sitting up and staring dully at the river, while Dr.Brotherton, with his frock-coat split to the collar, was fishingfragments of his medicine case out of another can.

  Others of the erstwhile procession were distributed about the embankmentin various conditions, but, as I have said, nobody seemed to have partedcompany with the vital spark.

  Hawkins alone was invisible, and as I struggled to my feet this factpuzzled me considerably.

  A pile of milk-cans balanced on the river's edge, and on the chanceof finding the inventor's remains, I tipped them into the stream.Underneath, stretched on the cold, unsympathetic ground, his feetdabbling idly in the water, his clothes in a hundred shreds, a greatlump on his brow, was Hawkins, stunned and bleeding!

  As I turned to summon Brotherton, Hawkins opened his eyes.

  I am not one to cherish a grudge. I felt that Hawkins' invention hadbeen its own terrible punishment. So I helped him to his feet as gentlyas possible, and waited for apologetic utterances.

  "You see, Griggs," began Hawkins, uncertainly--"you see, the--theratchet on the big wheel--stuck. I'll put a new--a new ratchet there,and oil--lots of oil--on the--the----"

  "That's enough, Hawkins," I said.

  "Come home."

  "Yes, but don't you see," he groaned, holding fast to his batteredskull as I helped him back to the road, "if I get that one little pointperfected--it--it will revol----"

  "Let it!" I snapped. "Sit here until I see what's left of myautomobile."

  Ten minutes later, Patrick having appeared to take charge of Maud S.,Hawkins and I were making our homeward way in the runabout, which hadmercifully been spared.
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  Something in my face must have forbidden conversation, for Hawkinswrapped the soiled fragments of his raiment about him in offendeddignity, and was silent on the subject of horse-brake.

  Nor have I ever heard of the thing since. Possibly Mrs. Hawkinssucceeded in demonstrating the fallacy of the whole horse-brake theory;in fact, from the expression on her face when we reached the house, I aminclined to think that she did.

  Mrs. Hawkins can be strong-minded on occasion, and her tongue is in noway inadequate to the needs of her mind. At any rate, a friend of minein the patent office, whom I asked about the matter some time ago,tells, me that the Hawkins Horse-brake has never been patented, so thatI presume the invention is in its grave. As a public spirited citizen, Iventure to add that this is a blessing.