Chapter III

About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along smoothly
over the road--so smoothly that our cradle only rocked in a gentle,
lulling way, that was gradually soothing us to sleep, and dulling our
consciousness--when something gave away under us! We were dimly aware of
it, but indifferent to it. The coach stopped. We heard the driver and
conductor talking together outside, and rummaging for a lantern, and
swearing because they could not find it--but we had no interest in
whatever had happened, and it only added to our comfort to think of those
people out there at work in the murky night, and we snug in our nest with
the curtains drawn. But presently, by the sounds, there seemed to be an
examination going on, and then the driver's voice said:

"By George, the thoroughbrace is broke!"

This startled me broad awake--as an undefined sense of calamity is always
apt to do. I said to myself: "Now, a thoroughbrace is probably part of a
horse; and doubtless a vital part, too, from the dismay in the driver's
voice. Leg, maybe--and yet how could he break his leg waltzing along
such a road as this? No, it can't be his leg. That is impossible,
unless he was reaching for the driver. Now, what can be the
thoroughbrace of a horse, I wonder? Well, whatever comes, I shall not
air my ignorance in this crowd, anyway."

Just then the conductor's face appeared at a lifted curtain, and his
lantern glared in on us and our wall of mail matter. He said:
"Gents, you'll have to turn out a spell. Thoroughbrace is broke."

We climbed out into a chill drizzle, and felt ever so homeless and
dreary. When I found that the thing they called a "thoroughbrace" was
the massive combination of belts and springs which the coach rocks itself
in, I said to the driver:

"I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I can
remember. How did it happen?"

"Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days' mail--
that's how it happened," said he. "And right here is the very direction
which is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which was to be put out for the
Injuns for to keep 'em quiet. It's most uncommon lucky, becuz it's so
nation dark I should 'a' gone by unbeknowns if that air thoroughbrace
hadn't broke."

I knew that he was in labor with another of those winks of his, though I
could not see his face, because he was bent down at work; and wishing him
a safe delivery, I turned to and helped the rest get out the mail-sacks.
It made a great pyramid by the roadside when it was all out. When they
had mended the thoroughbrace we filled the two boots again, but put no
mail on top, and only half as much inside as there was before. The
conductor bent all the seat-backs down, and then filled the coach just
half full of