“Why not? Do you fancy I 'll bring her into the States, and see her claimed in every town of the Union? Why, man, she's been stolen once a month, that mare has, since she was a two-year-old. I knew an old general up in the Maine frontier had her last year; and he rid her away from a 'stump meeting' in Vermont, in change of his own mule,—blind,—and never know'd the differ till he was nigh home. I sold her twice, myself, in one week. Scott of Muckleburg stained her off fore-leg white, and sold her back, as a new one, to the fellow who returned her for lameness; and she can pretend lameness, she can.”
A roar of very unbelieving laughter followed this sally, but Seth resumed,—
“Well, I'll lay fifty dollars with any gentleman here that she comes out of the stable dead lame, or all sound, just as I bid her.”
Nobody seemed to fancy this wager; and Seth, satisfied with having established his veracity, went on,—
“You 've but to touch the coronet of the off-foot with the point of your bowie,—a mere touch, not draw blood,—and see if she won't come out limping on the toe, all as one as a dead breakdown in the coffin joint; rub her a bit then with your hand,—she 's all right again! It was Wrecksley of Ohio taught her the trick; he used to lame her that way, and buy her in, wherever he found her.”
“Who's won her this time?” cried another.
“I have, gentlemen,” said I, slapping my boot with my cane, and affecting a very knowing air as I spoke. The company turned round and surveyed me some seconds in deep silence.
“You an't a-goin' to ride her, young 'un?” said one, half contemptuously.
“No, he an't; the gent's willin' to sell her,” chimed in another.
“He's goin' to ax me three hundred dollars,” said a third, “an' I an't a-goin' to gi' him no more than two hundred.”