recollection of your gasolene milker, the one that exploded and 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 my poor wife out of harm's way.”
Hawkins favored me with a stare that would have withered a row of hardy sunflowers 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 work horse, facetiously christened Maud S. The superstructure was the most remarkable collection of mechanism I ever saw.
Four tall steel rods stuck into the air at the four corners of the animal. They seemed to be connected in some way to a machine strapped to the back of the saddle.
I presume the machine was logical enough if you understood it, but beyond noting that it bore striking resemblance to the vital organs of a clock, I cannot attempt a description.
“That will do, Patrick,” said Hawkins, taking the bridle and regarding his handiwork with an enraptured smile. “Well, Griggs, frankly, what do you think of it?”
“Frankly,” I said, “when I look at that thing, I feel somehow incapable of thought.”
“I rather imagined that it would take your eye,” replied Hawkins, complacently. “Now, just see the simplicity of the thing, Griggs. Drop your childish prejudices for a minute and examine it.
“Let us suppose that this brake is fitted to a fiery saddle-horse. The rider has lost all control. In another minute, unless he can stop the beast, he will be dashed to the ground and kicked into pulp. What does he do? Simply pulls this lever—thus! The animal can't budge!”
An uncanny clankety-clankety-clank accompanied his words, and the rods dropped suddenly. In their descent they somehow managed to gather two steel cuffs apiece.
When they ceased dropping, Maud S. had a steel bar down the back of each leg, with a cuff above and a cuff below the knee. Hawkins was quite right—so far as I could see; Maud was anchored until some
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