“Well, you old fool, after this you can call in vain if anything happens to you. I'll never bother with you.”
“Oh, vell, ven I got a little excitement I got to yell about it, ain't it?”
“Maybe you have—and after this you can, for all of me,” and the wrathful sheriff departed. He was new in the community or he would have known that the plowing of Charlie Price and Lizzie was a regular event of each season, for which an audience gathered to lay bets for and against the probability of his dying of apoplexy before it was finished.
The plowing progressed in this manner:
Charlie put the point of the plow in the soft earth and roared at the motor-power. Lizzie started off at a nimble lope. The plow cut a pretty curve and flew out of the ground. Charlie reefed the reins at once, completely turning off the power. Then he put the reins about his neck, grasped the handles of the plow with both hands, and zoomed commands again at the champing power. “Power” jumped ahead. The reins nearly snapped old Charlie's head off, but effectually brought the mare to a standstill.
“Vait, you dunder-undt-blitzen apful peelings! You—you think dot plowing is not high-toned enough, yet—hey? Vell, I show you!”
He picked up a huge clod of soft dirt held it aloft in both hands and banged it down on Lizzie's back—whereupon she promptly ran away! She galloped furiously to the end of the field with the plow banging in scoops and leaps, and old Charlie, dangling on the end of the reins, flying along in seven-league jumps behind her. As soon as he caught his breath sufficiently for renewed directions, the cavalcade returned to the grandstand and operations were repeated.
Charlie had been a sailor before he came to California, and he plowed (?) each furrow with a collection of forceful admonitions, delivered in a voice of thunder, from a different language. It was all the same to Lizzie! She loathed plowing just as thoroughly in wildcat Spanish, as she did in Dutch or Cingalese, and she did not hesitate to prove it.
Jim Hutch and Jimmie Greeley drifted down to Rattlesnake at sundown and joined the laughter-weakened group perched upon Charlie's snake fence.
“The man grows more daft every year. 'Tis strange, what charms the Widow Schmitt.” Old Jimmie merely growled in his beard. “Charlie, mon,” he called, “the mare is warm and weary, and so's yoursel'. Come on to town for a bit.”