"I guess not! There was too much to do. I was likely to be called on any day to finish seedin', or hayin', or help butcher, or what not, so be he was short-handed."
"But now, with all your little children to take care of," Harry began, but she stopped short.
She had been watching the little cayuse ponies, divided between fear of their suddenly running away and admiration of the cool steadiness with which Mrs. Robinson held them in check; but as they went down the bank of a creek that had been dug out deep by the spring freshet, the woman's foot slipped from the brake and the wagon rolled upon the ponies' heels. Mrs. Robinson pulled up hard on the reins, but the ponies plunged, clattered across the shallow ford, and, with their ears back, dashed up the opposite bank.
"Now, you ornery varmints! Quit it! Quit it! Yes, you will, too! Whoa, you! If I don't beat the buttons off you for that!"
Pouring a vivid flood of language upon the ponies, Mrs. Robinson threw the brake and sawed sharply at their mouths. Suddenly there was a jerk and a snap; the cheek strap of the off horse's bridle swung loose.
Harry saw the leather strap fly back, and saw the pony shake its head and shy; involuntarily she pressed the baby close to her. But Mrs. Robinson was too quick for the cayuse. Pulling the ponies square across the road, she faced them toward the boulders that marked the edge of the "bench"; then, whipping the lines round the brake, she stepped over the dashboard and out along the pole, and swung herself down at the horses' heads.
"Now, if that ain't the meanest team you ever saw, tell me!" she drawled, as she wiped her face with her apron and looked contemptuously at the ponies. "To bust up the harness when there ain't a thing handy for me to mend it with! I suppose there ain't an inch of balin' wire in the wagon. You couldn't look, could you, girlie? I don't want to leave this fool pony."
"Here's something! I don't know whether it's baling wire," Harry said, after making a careful survey of the wagon box, "but there's a piece of wire round the whip socket."
"Sure thing, I'd forgot that. Lay the young one down and get it for me, will you?"
Harry obeyed, and Mrs. Robinson, cool and unconcerned, mended the bridle. Then she climbed into the wagon, started the horses, and took up the conversation as if it had never been broken off.