“What! you not ’bey orders? you ole screw—you unnat’ral villin—you obs’nit lump o’ hoss-flesh! Stan’ still, I say!”
Need we say that the horse refused to stand still?
Again, and again, and over again, the negro tried to lay hands on the animal, and as often did he fail. Quashy, however, was not to be easily beaten. His was a resolute and persevering nature; but the misfortune on that occasion was that he had to do with a creature possessed of greater resolution and perseverance than himself. He spent hours over the effort. He coaxed the horse. He wheedled it. He remonstrated with and reproved it. He tried the effect of the most endearing entreaties, and assurances of personal esteem. Losing—no, becoming less amiable, he flew round to the other extreme, and accused it of ingratitude, indefensible even in an ass. Then he sought to bribe it with offers of free forgiveness. After that he tried to frighten it with threats of the most painful and every way horrible consequences; but whatever effect all these varied influences might have had upon the horse’s mind, the one unvarying effect on its body was to send its tail and heels towards the sky, while it neighed joyously and trotted around. Poor Quashy went up to it smilingly—after that, frowningly; he cringed towards it; he advanced straightforwardly; he sidled slily; he ran at it; he rushed at it; he bounced at it; he yelled at it; he groaned at it; he perspired after it; he went nearly mad over it, and, finally, he sat down before it, and glared in deadly silence in its innocent face!
Then the unfortunate man, having spent a very considerable part of the day thus, bethought him of trying to catch the other horse, but with it he was also unsuccessful—indeed, the failure was even more emphatic, for Lawrence’s steed refused to let him come within even hopeful distance of it.
At last, in the profoundest state of despair to which he was ever known to have sunk, he returned to camp. Lawrence had got there before him, saw him coming, and advanced to meet him.
“Well, Quashy, I have failed,” he said, with a sigh.
“So’s I,” returned Quashy, with a growl.
“This losing of our horses,” remarked Lawrence, “is the worst that could have befallen us.”
“No, massa,” said the negro, with more of sulkiness—or less of amiability—than he had exhibited since they first met on the western side of the Andes, “breakin’ our legs would be wuss—smashin’ our necks would be wusser still. But de hosses is not lost. Dey’s on’y spunkerblued.”
“How? What d’you mean?”