“Pshaw! That didn’t hurt the sharves. They wuz good an’ wide, an’ I lay down keerful. The folks kep’ me hitched up nigh an hour ’fore they started; an’ larfed—why, they all but lay down themselves with larfin’. Say, Boney, if you’ve got to be hitched to anything that goes on wheels, you’ve got to be hitched with somefin’.”
“Go an’ jine a circus,” said Muldoon, “an’ walk on your hind legs. All de horses dat knows too much to work [he pronounced it ‘woik,’ New York fashion] jine de circus.”
“I am not sayin’ anythin’ again’ work,” said the yellow horse; “work is the finest thing in the world.”
“Seems too fine fer some of us,” Tedda snorted.
“I only ask that each horse should work for himself, an’ enjoy the profit of his labours. Let him work intelligently, an’ not as a machine.”
“There ain’t no horse that works like a machine,” Marcus began.
“There’s no way o’ workin’ that doesn’t mean goin’ to pole er single—they never put me in the Power-machine—er under saddle,” said Rick.
“Oh, shucks! We’re talkin’ same ez we graze,” said Nip, “raound an’ raound in circles. Rod, we hain’t heard from you yet, an’ you’ve more know-how than any span here.”
Rod, the off-horse of the pair, had been standing with one hip lifted, like a tired cow; and you could only tell by the quick flutter of the haw across his eye, from time to time, that he was paying any attention to the argument. He thrust his jaw out sidewise, as his habit is when he pulls, and changed his leg. His voice was hard and heavy, and his ears were close to his big, plain Hambletonian head.
“How old are you?” he said to the yellow horse.