We were driving a buckskin horse Owen had just bought and a newly broken mare, a handsome, high spirited creature called Beauty. She danced and she pranced and forged ahead of the new horse which became nervous and excited in trying to keep up with her.
We were going up a long hill. Beauty was pulling and tugging on the bit when suddenly she gave a toss to her head and to our horror we saw the bridle fall back around her neck. The bit had broken. Like a flash she was off, the other horse running with her. Owen spoke to them. He wound the reins about his arms and pulled on them with all his strength.
At the top of the hill there was a fairly level space where Owen tried to circle them, hoping to tire them out, but he had no control over Beauty and she wheeled about starting back over the road we had come, the buggy bouncing and swaying behind. There was a fence corner with an old post standing about ten feet from it. The horses headed straight for it. I closed my eyes, expecting that we would be wrecked, but they turned and raced across a gulch, the buggy lurched, tipped, struck one side and then the other, but by a miracle did not upset.
I saw that Owen was trying to head them into a fence and braced myself for the shock, realizing that he hoped to entangle them in the barbed wire and so throw them, but just as we reached it Beauty veered to one side almost overturning the buggy. We were so close the skirt of Owen’s fur coat caught on the barbs and was instantly torn to ribbons and we heard the vibrating “ping” of the wire along its entire length as the wheels struck the fence.
On and on the maddened horses raced, up hills, down long slopes, through gulches in which it seemed we must be wrecked, until at length we reached the crest of a hill at the bottom of which, angling with the fence, ran a deep gulch with high cut banks. We knew that if the frantic horses reached the edge of that bank at the rate we were going there was no escape for us and we should plunge over the embankment with the horses. To jump was impossible. I was in despair, realizing that Owen, pulling on the horses with all his might, was nearly exhausted.
“Owen, isn’t there something I can do?” It was the first time a word had been spoken.