XXVIII
UNEXPECTED HELP
Farmer Green had just had the bad luck to have a loaded wagon sink hub-deep in a boggy place in the meadow, near the barnyard. The pair of bays were harnessed to the wagon. And they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—pull it out of the mire.
Farmer Green walked to the horse-barn, where his son Johnnie and the hired man were working.
“The load is stuck fast in the mud,” he told them. “If Bright and Broad weren’t ’way up in the back pasture they’d pull the wagon out. But it would take a good hour to drive them down here.”
The oxen, Bright and Broad, were a famous pair. They were wonderfully strong—and wonderfully slow, too.
“There’s old Ebenezer. You might hitch him in front of the bays,” the hired man suggested.
Farmer Green shook his head.
“The old horse would pull until he dropped. I’m afraid he might hurt himself,” he replied.
“Why don’t you use the mule?” cried Johnnie Green.
“I could try him, I suppose,” said his father. “But I’m almost certain he wouldn’t pull an ounce.”
“Oh, do try him, Pa!” Johnnie Green begged. When he wasn’t driving Mistah Mule himself, Johnnie liked to see that stubborn fellow balk.
Both the old horse Ebenezer and Mistah Mule, who stood side by side in the barn, pricked up their ears and listened to all this talk.
“Huh!” Mistah Mule grunted, as he cocked an eye at his neighbor. “They needn’t think I’se a-goin’ to hurt myself a-pullin’ on their ole wagon.”
“I don’t blame you the least bit,” the old horse Ebenezer told him. “To be sure, you’re a stout chap. Maybe you could yank the wagon out of the hole—if the bays would pull too—without much trouble. But why should you do that?”
It amazed Mistah Mule to hear such advice from old Ebenezer. And a very stubborn look came over his face.
“I could twitch that wagon out quick—if I wanted to,” he declared.
“But you don’t want to,” said Ebenezer. “If you tried—and failed——”
“Don’t talk to me, ole hoss!” snapped Mistah Mule. “You got ’nuff to ’tend to if you only minds your own bus’ness.”
Old Ebenezer said no more. But he chuckled to himself when Farmer Green came and led Mistah Mule away.
He chuckled again when Mistah Mule came back a little later, holding his head very high.
“I showed ’em!” Mistah Mule brayed loudly. “I done pulled the load an’ those no-account bays too.”
Farmer Green told the hired man he was never so surprised in his life.
THE END