He had several ways of opening and closing his single eye, which were very different from winking it naturally. He would wink with the whole side of his face, thereby conveying various subtle meanings which words could not express.
As we departed, the old man, with a final wave of his hand, disappeared into his shanty to prepare his breakfast. John had brought him a few fresh eggs, and Sipes hoped that “they wouldn’t hatch ’fore they got to the kittle.”
The poor old horse had rather a hard time pulling the additional burden through the sand. This interesting animal was quite a character. He was somewhere in the early twenties, and his name was “Napoleon.” John had bought him from a farmer for ten dollars. The horse was sick and not expected to live, but it transpired that what he really needed was a long rest. This he was in a fair way of getting when John came to look at him.
Napoleon
The old fisherman built a little shanty for him, put a lot of dead leaves and straw into it, fed him well, and in the course of a few weeks the patient began to evince an interest in his surroundings. “Doc” Looney came over to see him and volunteered to prescribe, but John refused to permit Doc to give anything but an opinion. Sipes claimed that John had thereby greatly safeguarded the original investment.
“If Doc wouldn’t give patients nothin’ but opinions, most of ’em would pull through, but ’is opinions’ll make me sick even when I’m well,” Sipes declared.
Napoleon was finally able to get into the harness that was constructed for him out of various straps and odds and ends of other harnesses that John had picked up around the country. Several pieces of rope and frayed clothes-line were also utilized, and when it was all assembled it was quite an effective harness.
The convalescent was taken only on short trips at first, but he gradually became stronger, and, with the exception of a limp in his left foreleg, he got along very well. His speed was not great. He walked most of the time, but occasionally broke into a peculiar trot that was not quite as fast as his walk. His trotting was mostly up and down. Like many people, whom we all know, he was inclined to mistake motion for progress. He was more successful when he recognized his limitations, and adhered strictly to the method of locomotion to which he was naturally adapted.
His intelligence might be called selective. He understood “Whoa!” perfectly, and obeyed it instantly, but “Giddap!” was not quite so clear to him. He could not talk about his rheumatic leg, and thus suffered from one great disadvantage that made him more agreeable to those around him.