Of course, Chieftain could not tell Tim of all those vague longings which had to do with new grass and springy turf, nor could he know that Tim had similar longings. These thoughts each kept to himself. But if Chieftain was of Norman blood, a horse whose noble sires had ranged pasture and paddock free from rein or trace, Tim was a Doyle whose father and grandfather had lived close to the good green sod, and had done their toil in the open, with the cool and calm of the country to soothe and revive them.
Of such delights as these both Chieftain and Tim had tasted scantily, hurriedly, in youth; and for them, in the lapses of the daily grind, both yearned, each after his own fashion.
And, each in his way, Tim and Chieftain were philosophers. As the years had come and gone, toil-filled and uneventful, the character of the man had ripened and mellowed, the disposition of the horse had settled and sweetened.
In his earlier days Tim had been ready to smash a wheel or lose one, to demand right of way with profane unction, and to back his word with whip, fist, or bale-hook. But he had learned to yield an inch on occasion and to use the soft word.
Chieftain, too, in his first years between the poles, had sometimes been impatient with the untrained mates who from time to time joined the team. He had taken part in mane-biting and trace-kicking, especially on days when the loads were heavy and the flies thick, conditions which try the best of horse tempers. But he had steadied down into a pole-horse who could set an example that was worth more than all the six-foot lashes ever tied to a whip-stock.
It was during the spring of Chieftain's eighth year with the company that things really began to happen. First there came rheumatism to Tim. Trucking uses up men as well as horses, you know. While it is the hard work and the heavy feeding of oats which burn out the animal, it is generally the exposure and the hard drinking which do for the men. Tim, however, was always moderate in his use of liquor, so he lasted longer than most drivers. But at one-and-forty the wearing of rain-soaked clothes called for reprisal. One wet May morning, after vainly trying to hobble about the stable, Tim, with a bottle of horse liniment under his arm, gave it up and went back to his bunk.
Team No. 47 went out that day with a new driver, a cousin of the stable-boss, who had never handled anything better than common, light-weight express horses. How Chieftain did miss Tim those next few days! The new man was slow at loading, and, to make up the time, he cut short their dinner-hour. Now it is not the wise thing to hurry horses who have just eaten eight quarts of oats. The team finished the day well blown, and in a condition generally bad. Next day the new man let the off horse stumble, and there was a pair of barked knees to be doctored.
Matters went from bad to worse, until on the fourth day came the climax. Sludge acid is an innocent-appearing liquid which sometimes stands in pools near gas-works. Good drivers know enough to avoid it. It is bad for the hoofs. The new man still had many things to learn, and this happened to be one of them. In the morning Team 47 was disabled. The company's veterinary looked at the spongy hoofs and remarked to the stable-boss: "About three weeks on the farm will fix 'em all right, I guess; but I should advise you to chuck that new driver out of the window; he's too expensive for us."
That was how Chieftain's yearnings happened to be gratified at last. The company, it seems, has a big farm, somewhere "up State," to which disabled horses are sent for rest and recuperation. Invalided drivers must look out for themselves. You can get a hundred truck drivers by hanging out a sign: good draught horses are to be had only for a price.
Chieftain and Tim parted with mutual misgivings. To a younger horse the long ride in the partly open stock-car might have been a novelty, but to Chieftain, accustomed to ferries and the sight of all manner of wheeled things, it was without new sensations.