“Robert’s ranch has been put back at least three years. I don’t suppose Mrs. Strafford realises that yet. But it is very hard on her, and cruel for him. He has worked untiringly, poor chap, and used every means in his power to reach success. Well, I simply cannot speak of it, Jesse. It chokes me. Look out now. There’s something ahead. Don’t go an inch out of the road, or we shall get mired.”
As they came nearer, they saw that a cart, heavily laden with large bales of hay, had stuck in the mud. Two men were leading the horses away.
“Can we pass?” Ben asked of them.
“There’s just enough room to manage it,” one of them answered.
“We’ll try for it,” said Holles. “Get up, boys!”
They might have been able to creep past in safety, but that one of the team shied at the bales of hay, and swerved about three feet from the road. In an instant, the horses were plunging in the mud, and the spring-waggon had sunk up to the hubs. Ben took the black snake, and whipped up the poor brutes, and, together with Holles, shouted, coaxed, and swore.
But they had gone down so deep that they could not free themselves. They plunged and paddled and struggled hard to drag out the waggon, until at last one of them, more faint-hearted than the other, gave up trying, and began nibbling the grass.
Ben and Holles jumped down, and walked very gingerly over the soft ground, which, in the neighbourhood of the horses’ hoofs, was precisely like pea-soup. They unhitched the animals, who then sprang forward and gained firm footing once more. There they stood tired and panting, their long tails looking like house-painter’s brushes steeped in rich brown colouring.
“I won’t be worried again into bringing my team out so soon after a storm,” said Ben, half humorously, as he stroked both the horses. “They don’t care about a mud bath.”
“It won’t hurt them,” answered Holles. “In fact it is a capital thing for the health. My maiden aunt used to go every year to Karlsbad for the mud baths, and after the tenth season she really began to feel the benefit of them. All the same, Ben, I am glad we had not to dig out the horses. That is the very devil. Now for the waggon. I have a brilliant idea.”