"Wait!" shouted Graham, taking on the role of the calm and collected boy with a plan.
"Wait for what?" asked Lindsay. "I'll wait for nothing until I see that lousy Lambert get his just rewards!"
"He will," spoke the boy. "Yes. But not that way!"
"What …"
"If you try to fight all of those thugs at once, you'll just be outnumbered. I have a better idea. I know of a way to save Jeanne-Marie without anyone getting hurt."
"Then spill it, my boy! What is this plan?"
Foreman Lambert took the rest of the day off. He carefully researched the best place to sell a captured unicorn. He planned to get enough wealth to buy the entire farm and spend the rest of his days sipping strawberry daiquiris and conversing with MacDonald Lindsay about the joys of being affluent. As he sat and pored over the pages of The Encyclopedia of Places Where Unicorns Can be Successfully Sold on the Black Market With No Questions Asked Except When the Salesman Happens to be a Mangaboo: Vol. 224, he heard a peculiar clattering noise outside. Fearing it might affect his own happiness in some way, Lambert ran outside to see what was the matter. The sight that met his eyes was hardly what he would have expected. There before him was a huge Ox tethered to a wagon. One wheel had fallen from the wagon, and the wagonmaster was jumping up and down, shouting angry expletives at the ox. "You filthy pile of oxtail soup!" shouted the young man. "You are as able to locate the proper roads as Dorothy was in The Road to Oz! Now just look what your lack of brains has caused us! You dragged us off the road, and now we have another busted wheel to bother about! You are just a lousy old coot!"
"Now, now," said Lambert. "You needn't speak so unkindly to this fine animal. I'll be happy to take him off your hands if he's such a … a coot, I think you said?"
"Yeah!" begged the ox. "Let him have me! I can work on this big farm!"
"Not a cotton-picking chance!" blurted the human. "I need a work-horse to pull this wagon. If I had another animal, maybe a horse or a pony, I'd gladly unload your crummy old worthless hide in a heartbeat! But such beasts are sure to be expensive in these parts, especially to a stranger like me. And all I have are these forty-eight diamonds, a bag of square emeralds, and a couple of rubies to spare."