Before this Betty had noted the ice-hung telephone and telegraph wires
strung beside the road. Sheeted in the frozen rain and snow the heavy
wires had dragged many of the poles askew. Here and there a wire was
broken.
It never entered the girl's mind that there was danger in those wires.
And, perhaps, in most of them there was not. But across this ravine into
which the road plunged, and slantingly, were strung much heavier
wires--feed cables from the Cliffdale power station over the hill.
"Why, look at those icicles!" exclaimed Betty, with big eyes and watching
the hanging wires ahead. "If they fell they would kill a person, I do
believe!"
She tugged with all her might at Ida Bellethorne's reins, and now, well
breathed, the mare responded to the unuttered command. She came into a
walk. Betty continued to stare at the heavily laden wires spanning the
road, the heavier power wires above the sagging series of telephone and
telegraph wires.
In watching them so closely the girl discovered another, and even more
startling fact. One of the poles bearing up the feed wires was actually
pitched at such an angle from the top of the bank on the right hand that
Betty felt sure the wires themselves were all that held the pole from
falling.
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