SLEEPY HOLLOW, N.Y. (AP) – Suddenly they were at it again, the Headless Horseman charging after the terrified Ichabod Crane, their horses trampling the undergrowth and kicking up dust, the decapitated rider about to throw a leering jack-o’-lantern at the superstitious schoolteacher.

You could almost hear the hoofbeats.

With the installation of an action-packed sculpture, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow was enshrined Tuesday, near the setting of its climax. And on Halloween, no less.

The 18-by-18-foot monument to Washington Irving’s 1819 story was hoisted from a flatbed truck Tuesday morning and gently set down onto a concrete base beneath a weeping willow on a grassy island between Route 9 and Old Broadway. A crowd of about 50 people, dining on a spread of coffee, doughnuts and candy corn, cheered. Two wrinkly pugs in pumpkin costumes just watched.

“This is so exciting,” said Elena Malunis, chairwoman of the committee that chose the design and raised the $175,000 to bring in the monument. “I drive down Route 9 every day, and I’ve been imagining what it would look like.”

As in the story, the riders are headed north, just a few galloping strides from the Old Dutch Church and the Pocantico River, both recognizable in the legend. Just up the road is Irving’s grave in Sleepy Hollow cemetery.

“This is the right place, the right time for this symbol of our village,” said Mayor Philip Zegarelli. “We are proud to have this one-of-a-kind monument here in Sleepy Hollow. We are reclaiming our heritage.”

The sculpture could become a magnet for history and literature buffs who visit the area. Sleepy Hollow is banking on tourist dollars in its long recovery from the closing of a General Motors plant a decade ago. In December 1996, residents voted to change the village’s name from North Tarrytown.

The pre-rusted sculpture, designed and made at the Milgo-Bufkin firm in Brooklyn, didn’t quite make its early morning trip intact. It was too tall to stand upright on the truck and too wide to make the trip on its side. So a 2-foot-long section of the right front leg of Crane’s horse, Gunpowder, was cut off before the trip and bolted back on afterward, said Bruce Gitlin, chairman of the firm. Even so, a back foot of the other horse, Daredevil, was scraped just a bit by a toll booth on Interstate 87 in Yonkers. The damage was not noticeable once the statue was upright.

To make the sculpture, Milgo-Bufkin used computer-guided lasers to cut through 20 plates of three-eighths-inch-thick steel, which were then bolted together with spacers between the plates. The spacers and cutouts in the plates produced an unusually airy, kinetic sculpture.

“It has depth and light,” Zegarelli said. Elaborate landscaping – and a Dec. 17 dedication ceremony – are planned.

As the sun rose over the trees Tuesday morning, sunlight burnished the horses’ right flanks and played inside the work, between the steel slabs. The mayor said nighttime lighting would heighten the “spooky” aspect.

Irene Amato, 76, said she would have preferred a more traditional monument but added, “It’s about time we did something, at least.”

“I’ve lived here my whole life and believe me, they gave us this story in school and we all knew the connection to the village,” she said. “Now people can come from anywhere and learn that there’s a real Sleepy Hollow.”