“Some of us yelled at him to ‘hold up,’ but, bless you, before the words were fairly out of our mouths, Crawford had dashed out and was pitching into that driver, and giving him as pretty a pommeling as you’d want to see; put him right down there in the street and licked him well. Then he yanked him up, and ordered him to take the horse out of the shafts. The fellow refused at first, and threatened to ‘have the law’ on Crawford; but that didn’t scare Crawford a bit, and then the rascal began to whine and swear by turns; and finally asked how he could get his cart home without the horse.
“‘I’ll fix that,’ said Crawford, ‘but that horse is going to have a rest for one week, and all he wants to eat, and he’s going to have ’em in the stable where my horses are kept.’
“‘An’ phwat will I be doin’ ahl that week, with niver a hoss to me cart?’ said the man.
“‘I’ll hire a horse for you to use that week,’ said Crawford.
“The man looked at him.
“‘An’ phwat if I say No?’ said he, looking as if he would like to give Crawford a black eye, if he dared.
“‘Then I’ll go this moment, and enter a complaint against you. Any officer of the Humane Society would order that poor brute killed rather than see him driven as he is now, to say nothing of seeing him beaten as shamefully as you beat him just now,’ said Crawford.
“The man looked around at us all. Of course, we’d crowded ’round to see the thing out—and then he began slowly to unfasten the poor old nag. It was so weak that I thought it would have to be propped up against a fence or something, but it did manage to stand.
“‘Now phwere’ll I take him?’ said the man, and I know he added some hot words under his breath.
“‘You’ll come along with me,’ said Crawford. ‘I’m not going to trust that horse out of my sight’; and I just wish you’d seen ’em going up the street together, almost holding up that poor old skeleton between ’em, with a crowd of street boys who had gathered, tagging on behind, hooting and yelling.”