The Day's Work - Part 01

"How old are you?" he said to the yellow horse.

"Nigh thirteen, I guess."

"Mean age; ugly age; I'm gettin' that way myself. How long hev ye been pawin' this firefanged stable-litter?"

"If you mean my principles, I've held 'em sence I was three."

"Mean age; ugly age; teeth give heaps o' trouble then. 'Set a colt to actin' crazy fer a while. You've kep' it up, seemin'ly. D'ye talk much to your neighbours fer a steady thing?"

"I uphold the principles o' the Cause wherever I am pastured."

"'Done a heap o' good, I guess?"

"I am proud to say I have taught a few of my companions the principles o' freedom an' liberty."

"Meanin' they ran away er kicked when they got the chanst?"

"I was talkin' in the abstrac', an' not in the concrete. My teachin's educated them."

"What a horse, specially a young horse, hears in the abstrac', he's liable to do in the Concord. You was handled late, I presoom."

Four, risin' five."

"That's where the trouble began. Driv' by a woman, like ez not — eh?"

"Not fer long," said the yellow horse, with a snap of his teeth.

"Spilled her?"

"I heerd she never drove again."

"Any childern?"

"Buckboards full of 'em."

"Men too?"

"I have shed conside'ble men in my time."

"By kickin'?"

"Any way that come along. Fallin' back over the dash is as handy as most."

"They must be turr'ble afraid o' you daowntaown?"

"They've sent me here to get rid o' me. I guess they spend their time talkin' over my campaigns.""I wanter know!"

"Yes, sir. Now, all you gentlemen have asked me what I can do. I'll just show you. See them two fellers lyin' down by the buggy?"

"Yep; one of 'em owns me. T'other broke me," said Rod.

"Get 'em out here in the open, an' I'll show you something. Lemme hide back o' you peoples, so 's they won't see what I'm at."

"Meanin' ter kill 'em?" Rod drawled. There was a shudder of horror through the others; but the yellow horse never noticed.

"I'll catch 'em by the back o' the neck, an' pile-drive 'em a piece. They can suit 'emselves about livin' when I'm through with 'em."

"'Shouldn't wonder ef they did," said Rod. The yellow horse had hidden himself very cleverly behind the others as they stood in a group, and was swaying his head close to the ground with a curious scythe-like motion, looking side-wise out of his wicked eyes. You can never mistake a man-eater getting ready to knock a man down. We had had one to pasture the year before.

"See that?" said my companion, turning over on the pine-needles.

"Nice for a woman walking 'cross lots, wouldn't it be?"

"Bring 'em out!" said the yellow horse, hunching his sharp back.

"There's no chance among them tall trees. Bring out the — oh!

Ouch!"

It was a right-and-left kick from Muldoon. I had no idea that the old car-horse could lift so quickly. Both blows caught the yellow horse full and fair in the ribs, and knocked the breath out of him.

"What's that for?" he said angrily, when he recovered himself; but I noticed he did not draw any nearer to Muldoon than was necessary.

Muldoon never answered, but discoursed to himself in the whining grunt that he uses when he is going down-hill in front of a heavy load. We call it singing; but I think it's something much worse, really. The yellow horse blustered and squealed a little, and at last said that, if it was a horse-fly that had stung Muldoon, he would accept an apology.

"You'll get it," said Muldoon, "in de sweet by-and-bye — all de apology you've any use for. Excuse me interruptin' you, Mr. Rod, but I'm like Tweezy — I've a Southern drawback in me hind legs."

"Naow, I want you all here to take notice, an' you'll learn something," Rod went on. "This yaller-backed skate comes to our pastur'-"

"Not havin' paid his board," put in Tedda.

"Not havin' earned his board, an' talks smooth to us abaout ripplin' brooks an' wavin' grass, an' his high-toned, pure-souled horsehood, which don't hender him sheddin' women an' childern, an' fallin' over the dash onter men. You heard his talk, an' you thought it mighty fine, some o' you."

Tuck looked guilty here, but she did not say anything.

"Bit by bit he goes on ez you have heard."

"I was talkin' in the abstrac'," said the yellow horse, in an altered voice.

"Abstrac' be switched! Ez I've said, it's this yer blamed abstrac' business that makes the young uns cut up in the Concord; an' abstrac' or no abstrac', he crep' on an' on till he come to killin' plain an' straight — killin' them as never done him no harm, jest beca'se they owned horses."

"An' knowed how to manage 'em," said Tedda. That makes it worse."

Waal, he didn't kill 'em, anyway," said Marcus. "He'd ha' been half killed ef he had tried."

"'Makes no differ," Rod answered. "He meant to; an' ef he hadn't — s'pose we want the Back Pasture turned into a biffin'-ground on our only day er rest? 'S'pose we want our men walkin' round with bits er lead pipe an' a twitch, an' their hands full o' stones to throw at us, same 's if we wuz hogs er hooky keows? More'n that, leavin' out Tedda here — an' I guess it's more her maouth than her manners stands in her light — there ain't a horse on this farm that ain't a woman's horse, an' proud of it. An' this yer bogspavined Kansas sunflower goes up an' daown the length o' the country, traded off an' traded on, boastin' as he's shed women — an' childern. I don't say as a woman in a buggy ain't a fool. I don't say as she ain't the lastin'est kind er fool, ner I don't say a child ain't worse — spattin' the lines an' standin' up an' hollerin' — but I do say, 'tain't none of our business to shed 'em daown the road.""We don't," said the Deacon. "The baby tried to git some o' my tail for a sooveneer last fall when I was up to the haouse, an' I didn't kick. Boney's talk ain't goin' to hurt us any. We ain't colts."

"Thet's what you think Bimeby you git into a tight corner, 'Lection day er Valley Fair, like 's not, daown-taown, when you're all het an' lathery, an' pestered with flies, an' thirsty, an' sick o' bein' worked in an aout 'tween buggies. Then somethin' whispers inside o' your winkers, bringin' up all that talk abaout servitood an' inalienable truck an' sech like, an' jest then a Militia gun goes off; er your wheels hit, an' — waal, you're only another horse ez can't be trusted. I've been there time an' again. Boys — fer I've seen you all bought er broke — on my solemn repitation fer a three-minute clip, I ain't givin' you no bran-mash o' my own fixin'. I'm tellin' you my experiences, an' I've had ez heavy a load an' ez high a check 's any horse here. I wuz born with a splint on my near fore ez big 's a walnut, an' the cussed, three-cornered Hambletonian temper that sours up an' curdles daown ez you git older. I've favoured my splint; even little Rick he don't know what it's cost me to keep my end up sometimes; an' I've fit my temper in stall an' harness, hitched up an' at pasture, till the sweat trickled off my hooves, an' they thought I wuz off condition, an' drenched me."

"When my affliction came," said Tweezy, gently, "I was very near to losin' my manners. Allow me to extend to you my sympathy, suh."

Rick said nothing, but he looked at Rod curiously. Rick is a sunny-tempered child who never bears malice, and I don't think he quite understood. He gets his temper from his mother, as a horse should.

"I've been there too, Rod," said Tedda. "Open confession's good for the soul, an' all Monroe County knows I've had my experriences."

"But if you will excuse me, suh, that pusson" — Tweezy looked unspeakable things aat the yellow horse — "that pusson who has insulted our intelligences comes from Kansas. An' what a ho'se of his position, an' Kansas at that, says cannot, by any stretch of the halter, concern gentlemen of our position. There's no shadow of equal'ty, suh, not even for one kick. He's beneath our contempt."

"Let him talk," said Marcus. "It's always interestin' to know what another horse thinks. It don't tech us."

"An' he talks so, too," said Tuck. "I've never heard anythin' so smart for a long time."

Again Rod stuck out his jaws sidewise, and went on slowly, as though he were slugging on a plain bit at the end of a thirty-mile drive:

"I want all you here ter understand thet ther ain't no Kansas, ner no Kentucky, ner yet no Vermont, in our business. There's jest two kind o' horse in the United States-them ez can an' will do their work after bein' properly broke an' handled, an' them as won't. I'm sick an' tired o' this everlastin' tail-switchin' an' wickerin' abaout one State er another. A horse kin be proud o' his State, an' swap lies abaout it in stall or when he's hitched to a block, ef he keers to put in fly-time that way; but he hain't no right to let that pride o' hisn interfere with his work, ner to make it an excuse fer claimin' he's different. That's colts' talk, an' don't you fergit it, Tweezy. An', Marcus, you remember that hem' a philosopher, an' anxious to save trouble, — fer you ate, — don't excuse you from jumpin' with all your feet on a slack-jawed, crazy clay-bank like Boney here. It's leavin' 'em alone that gives 'em their chance to ruin colts an' kill folks. An', Tuck, waal, you're a mare anyways — but when a horse comes along an' covers up all his talk o' killin' with ripplin' brooks, an wavin grass, an' eight quarts of oats a day free, after killn' his man, don't you be run away with by his yap. You're too young an' too nervous."

"I'll — I'll have nervous prostration sure ef there's a fight here," said Tuck, who saw what was in Rod's eye; "I'm — I'm that sympathetic I'd run away clear to next caounty."

"Yep; I know that kind o' sympathy. Jest lasts long enough to start a fuss, an' then lights aout to make new trouble. I hain't been ten years in harness fer nuthin'. Naow, we're goin' to keep school with Boney fer a spell."

"Say, look a-here, you ain't goin' to hurt me, are you? Remember, I belong to a man in town," cried the yellow horse, uneasily. Muldoon kept behind him so that he could not run away.

"I know it. There must be some pore delooded fool in this State hez a right to the loose end o' your hitchin'-strap. I'm blame sorry fer him, but he shall hev his rights when we're through with you," said Rod.

If it's all the same, gentlemen, I'd ruther change pasture.

'Guess I'll do it now."

"'Can't always have your 'druthers. 'Guess you won't," said Rod.

"But look a-here. All of you ain't so blame unfriendly to a stranger. S'pose we count noses."

"What in Vermont fer?" said Rod, putting up his eyebrows. The idea of settling a question by counting noses is the very last thing that ever enters the head of a well-broken horse.

"To see how many's on my side. Here's Miss Tuck, anyway; an' Colonel Tweezy yonder's neutral; an' Judge Marcus, an' I guess the Reverend [the yellow horse meant the Deacon] might see that I had my rights. He's the likeliest-lookin' Trotter I've ever set eyes on. Pshaw. Boys. You ain't goin' to pound me, be youyou? Why, we've gone round in pasture, all colts together, this month ' Sundays, hain't we, as friendly as could be. There ain't a horse alive I don't care who he is — has a higher opinion o' you, Mr. Rod, than I have. Let's do it fair an' true an' above the exe. Let's count noses same 's they do in Kansas." Here he dropped his voice a little and turned to Marcus: "Say, Judge, there's some green food I know, back o' the brook, no one hain't touched yet. After this little fracas is fixed up, you an' me'll make up a party an' 'tend to it."Marcus did not answer for a long time, then he said: "There's a pup up to the haouse 'bout eight weeks old. He'll yap till he gits a lickin', an' when he sees it comin' he lies on his back, an' yowls. But he don't go through no cirkituous nose-countin' first. I've seen a noo light sence Rod spoke. You'll better stand up to what's served. I'm goin' to philosophise all over your carcass."

I'm goin' to do yer up in brown paper," said Muldoon. "I can fit you on apologies."

"Hold on. Ef we all biffed you now, these same men you've been so dead anxious to kill 'u'd call us off. 'Guess we'll wait till they go back to the haouse, an' you'll have time to think cool an' quiet," said Rod.

"Have you no respec' whatever fer the dignity o' our common horsehood?" the yellow horse squealed.

"Nary respec' onless the horse kin do something. America's paved with the kind er horse you are — jist plain yaller-dog horse — waitin' ter be whipped inter shape. We call 'em yearlings an' colts when they're young. When they're aged we pound 'em — in this pastur'. Horse, sonny, is what you start from. We know all about horse here, an' he ain't any high-toned, pure souled child o' nature. Horse, plain horse, same ez you, is chock-full o' tricks, an' meannesses, an' cussednesses, an' shirkin's, an' monkey-shines, which he's took over from his sire an' his dam, an' thickened up with his own special fancy in the way o' goin' crooked. Thet's horse, an' thet's about his dignity an' the size of his soul 'fore he's been broke an' rawhided a piece. Now we ain't goin' to give ornery unswitched horse, that hain't done nawthin' wuth a quart of oats sence he wuz foaled, pet names that would be good enough fer Nancy Hanks, or Alix, or Directum, who hev. Don't you try to back off acrost them rocks. Wait where you are! Ef I let my Hambletonian temper git the better o' me I'd frazzle you out finer than rye-straw inside o' three minutes, you woman-scarin', kid-killin', dash-breakin', unbroke, unshod, ungaited, pastur'-hoggin', saw-backed, shark-mouthed, hair-trunk-thrown-in-in-trade son of a bronco an' a sewin'-machine!"

" I think we'd better get home," I said to my companion, when Rod had finished; and we climbed into the coupe, Tedda whinnying, as we bumped over the ledges: "Well, I'm dreffle sorry I can't stay fer the sociable; but I hope an' trust my friends'll take a ticket fer me."

"Bet your natchul!" said Muldoon, cheerfully, and the horses scattered before us, trotting into the ravine.

Next morning we sent back to the livery-stable what was left of the yellow horse. It seemed tired, but anxious to go.

End of "A WALKING DELEGATE"

THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF

It was her first voyage, and though she was but a cargo-steamer of twenty-five hundred tons, she was the very best of her kind, the outcome of forty years of experiments and improvements in framework and machinery; and her designers and owner thought as much of her as though she had been the Lucania. Any one can make a floating hotel that will pay expenses, if he puts enough money into the saloon, and charges for private baths, suites of rooms, and such like; but in these days of competition and low freights every square inch of a cargo-boat must be built for cheapness, great hold-capacity, and a certain steady speed. This boat was, perhaps, two hundred and forty feet long and thirty-two feet wide, with arrangements that enabled her to carry cattle on her main and sheep on her upper deck if she wanted to; but her great glory was the amount of cargo that she could store away in her holds. Her owners — they were a very well known Scotch firm came round with her from the north, where she had been launched and christened and fitted, to Liverpool, where she was to take cargo for New York; and the owner's daughter, Miss Frazier, went to and fro on the clean decks, admiring the new paint and the brass work, and the patent winches, and particularly the strong, straight bow, over which she had cracked a bottle of champagne when she named the steamer the Dimbula. It was a beautiful September afternoon, and the boat in all her newness she was painted lead-colour with a red funnel — looked very fine indeed. Her house-flag was flying, and her whistle from time to time acknowledged the salutes of friendly boats, who saw that she was new to the High and Narrow Seas and wished to make her welcome.

"And now," said Miss Frazier, delightedly, to the captain, "she's a real ship, isn't she? It seems only the other day father gave the order for her, and now — and now — isn't she a beauty!" The girl was proud of the firm, and talked as though she were the controlling partner.

"Oh, she's no so bad," the skipper replied cautiously. "But I'm sayin' that it takes more than christenin' to mak' a ship. In the nature o' things, Miss Frazier, if ye follow me, she's just irons and rivets and plates put into the form of a ship. She has to find herself yet."

"I thought father said she was exceptionally well found.""So she is, said the skipper, with a laugh. "But it's this way wi' ships, Miss Frazier. She's all here, but the parrts of her have not learned to work together yet. They've had no chance."

"The engines are working beautifully. I can hear them."

"Yes, indeed. But there's more than engines to a ship. Every inch of her, ye'll understand, has to be livened up and made to work wi' its neighbour — sweetenin' her, we call it, technically."

"And how will you do it?" the girl asked.

"We can no more than drive and steer her and so forth; but if we have rough weather this trip — it's likely — she'll learn the rest by heart! For a ship, ye'll obsairve, Miss Frazier, is in no sense a reegid body closed at both ends. She's a highly complex structure o' various an' conflictin' strains, wi' tissues that must give an' tak' accordin' to her personal modulus of elasteecity." Mr. Buchanan, the chief engineer, was coming towards them. "I'm sayin' to Miss Frazier, here, that our little Dimbula has to be sweetened yet, and nothin' but a gale will do it. How's all wi' your engines, Buck?"

"Well enough — true by plumb an' rule, o' course; but there's no spontaneeity yet." He turned to the girl. "Take my word, Miss Frazier, and maybe ye'll comprehend later; even after a pretty girl's christened a ship it does not follow that there's such a thing as a ship under the men that work her."

"I was sayin' the very same, Mr. Buchanan," the skipper interrupted.

"That's more metaphysical than I can follow," said Miss Frazier, laughing.

"Why so? Ye're good Scotch, an'- I knew your mother's father, he was fra' Dumfries — ye've a vested right in metapheesics, Miss Frazier, just as ye have in the Dimbula," the engineer said.

"Eh, well, we must go down to the deep watters, an' earn Miss Frazier her deevidends. Will you not come to my cabin for tea?" said the skipper. "We'll be in dock the night, and when you're goin' back to Glasgie ye can think of us loadin' her down an' drivin' her forth — all for your sake."

In the next few days they stowed some four thousand tons dead-weight into the Dimbula, and took her out from Liverpool. As soon as she met the lift of the open water, she naturally began to talk. If you lay your ear to the side of the cabin, the next time you are in a steamer, you will hear hundreds of little voices in every direction, thrilling and buzzing, and whispering and popping, and gurgling and sobbing and squeaking exactly like a telephone in a thunder-storm. Wooden ships shriek and growl and grunt, but iron vessels throb and quiver through all their hundreds of ribs and thousands of rivets. The Dimbula was very strongly built, and every piece of her had a letter or a number, or both, to describe it; and every piece had been hammered, or forged, or rolled, or punched by man, and had lived in the roar and rattle of the shipyard for months. Therefore, every piece had its own separate voice, in exact proportion to the amount of trouble spent upon it. Cast-iron, as a rule, says very little; but mild steel plates and wrought-iron, and ribs and beams that have been much bent and welded and riveted, talk continuously. Their conversation, of course, is not half as wise as our human talk, because they are all, though they do not know it, bound down one to the other in a black darkness, where they cannot tell what is happening near them, nor what will overtake them next.

As soon as she had cleared the Irish coast, a sullen, grey-headed old wave of the Atlantic climbed leisurely over her straight bows, and sat down on the steam-capstan used for hauling up the anchor. Now the capstan and the engine that drove it had been newly painted red and green; besides which, nobody likes being ducked.

"Don't you do that again," the capstan sputtered through the teeth of his cogs. "Hi! Where's the fellow gone?"

The wave had slouched overside with a plop and a chuckle; but "Plenty more where he came from," said a brother-wave, and went through and over the capstan, who was bolted firmly to an iron plate on the iron deck-beams below.

"Can't you keep still up there?" said the deckbeams. "What's the matter with you? One minute you weigh twice as much as you ought to, and the next you don't!"

"It isn't my fault," said the capstan. "There's a green brute outside that comes and hits me on the head."

"Tell that to the shipwrights. You've been in position for months and you've never wriggled like this before. If you aren't careful you'll strain us."

"Talking of strain," said a low, rasping, unpleasant voice, are any of you fellows — you deck-beams, we mean — aware that those exceedingly ugly knees of yours happen to be riveted into our structure — ours?"

"Who might you be?" the deck-beams inquired.

"Oh, nobody in particular," was the answer. "We're only the port and starboard upper-deck stringers; and if you persist in heaving and hiking like this, we shall be reluctantly compelled to take steps."

Now the stringers of the ship are long iron girders, so to speak, that run lengthways from stern to bow. They keep the iron frames (what are called ribs in a wooden ship) in place, and also help to hold the ends of the deck-beams, which go from side to side of the ship. Stringers always consider themselves most important, because they are so long.

"You will take steps — will you?" This was a long echoing rumble. It came from the frames — scores and scores of them, each one about eighteen inches distant from the next, and each riveted to the stringers in four places. "We think you will have a certain amount of trouble in that"; and thousands and thousands of the little rivets that held everything together whispered: "You Will! You will! Stop quivering and be quiet. Hold on, brethren! Hold on! Hot Punches! What's that?"

Rivets have no teeth, so they cannot chatter with fright; but they did their best as a fluttering jar swept along the ship from stern to bow, and she shook like a rat in a terrier's mouth.

An unusually severe pitch, for the sea was rising, had lifted the big throbbing screw nearly to the surface, and it was spinning round in a kind of soda-water — half sea and half air — going much faster than was proper, because there was no deep water for it to work in. As it sank again, the engines — and they were triple expansion, three cylinders in a row — snorted through all their three pistons. "Was that a joke, you fellow outside?It's an uncommonly poor one. How are we to do our work if you fly off the handle that way?"

"I didn't fly off the handle," said the screw, twirling huskily at the end of the screw-shaft. "If I had, you'd have been scrap-iron by this time. The sea dropped away from under me, and I had nothing to catch on to. That's all."

That's all, d'you call it?" said the thrust-block, whose business it is to take the push of the screw; for if a screw had nothing to hold it back it would crawl right into the engine-room. (It is the holding back of the screwing action that gives the drive to a ship.) "I know I do my work deep down and out of sight, but I warn you I expect justice. All I ask for is bare justice. Why can't you push steadily and evenly, instead of whizzing like a whirligig, and making me hot under all my collars?" The thrust-block had six collars, each faced with brass, and he did not wish to get them heated.