I said, “Nix on that, it doesn’t do any good. What’s the use of licking a donkey when you’ve got a gas engine to move him with? You leave it to us, we’ll move him.”
The man said, “Mova de donk; hey boss, mova de donk!”
“Sure,” I said, “we’ll move him; we go to the movies and we know all about moving. Have you got some rope?”
I don’t know where the rope came from; maybe it came from the train and maybe it came from the wagon. Anyway we fastened it through one of the holes in the fly-wheel and wound it a couple of times round the shaft. Then we dragged the rope over to a tree on the edge of the woods, behind the wagon and tied it there. Everybody was laughing and the Italian was shouting, “Hey, maka de gas, boss! Pulla de donk!”
We told him to start the engine and let it run very slowly. Goodnight! Laugh? First there was a kind of straining and creaking, but we knew the engine was fixed solid because it was bolted right through a heavy engine bed to the floor of the wagon. The rope was so tight it looked as if it would snap. Pretty soon the donkey began to feel the pulling because he braced his hind legs; he looked awful funny.
“I bet on the donkey,” somebody shouted.
“I bet on the gas engine,” somebody else put in.
Everybody was laughing and the Italian was all excited, waving his whip in the air and running about shouting, “Hey, giva de gas! Pulla de donk!”
All of a sudden the donkey gave way and back he went after the wagon. He kept trying to brace himself but it wasn’t any use; the little engine went ck, ck, ck, ck, ck, ck, shaking and trembling, and back went the donkey after the wagon, till the whole outfit was off the track.
“He followed his leader all right,” Bert Winton shouted.