“Old Jinx” was for sale by auction.
“Gentlemen, this here is a mule that is known to everybody in this parish. He’s got the legs on him and he’s got the bones on him, and he’s got a good, sound mind in a good, sound body, both ripened by long years of toil and experience. Some of you remember when Jinx first came to Tickfall Parish, but none of you can remember how old Jinx is now and how old he was when you first saw him. You can estimate the age of a cow by the rings on her horns and the age of a tree by the concentric rings on its trunk, and the age of a horse or mule by the teeth. But Jinx is an exception to all rules. He’s a mystery. He has no pride of ancestry, no hope of posterity, and his future is behind him. How much am I bid for Jinx?”
There were guffaws of laughter and sly jokes passed among the men, but there were no bidders.
“Don’t be afraid of Jinx, gentlemen!” the auctioneer pleaded. “He’s done a lot of work in his time and he’s got a lot more work in his system if anybody can get it out. He’s perfectly harmless, a woman or a child can drive him or ride him or work him in the field. He’s as deaf as a post, so you can cuss him in any known language without causing offense to the cussee. He’s nearly a hundred years old, I reckon, but his age ain’t nothing against him. I knew a man who was one hundred years old and he married a woman who was ninety years old and they had a little baby that was born with a pair of spectacles on his nose and a full set of teeth. How much am I bid for Jinx?”
“Five dollars!” some wag shouted.
“Five! Five! Five! I’m bid five!” the auctioneer began with a monotonous, bark-like chant. “Five dollars, I’m bid, only five! Somebody make it six, make it six, make it six! Six dollars—somebody bid six, as a token of love and esteem for old Jinx—the only mule which has survived the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the recent Mexican War, and the mule behind that dragged the guns in the great world war.
“Veteran and survivor of four great wars, and yet this mule never smelt powder or heard a cap pop! This mule with all his rich and varied experiences, is like a feller who spends a dollar riding on a merry-go-round. He spends all his money, gets off at the same place he got on, and where’s he been at? Nothing but a round trip for Jinx! To my positive knowledge, I’ve auctioned him off in front of this court-house twenty-two times in the past twenty-two years! Am I bid six?”
“Six!”
Then began the monotonous pleading and chanting of the auctioneer, his singsong appeal for seven dollars, interspersed with feeble jokes about Jinx.
As he stood leaning against a tree in listless inattention, Mustard Prophet saw Miss Virginia Gaitskill pass in an automobile with Captain Kerley Kerlerac. Ten minutes later he saw Mrs. Gaitskill enter the Tickfall bank, of which Colonel Gaitskill was president. Casting his eyes about him, he beheld Orren Randolph Gaitskill playing with Little Bit on a plot of grass beside the court-house. Then Mustard woke up!