The Busted Ex-Texan, and Other Stories

by W. H. H. Murray

He was, in sooth, an animal of most unique and extraordinary appearance; for, in the first place, he was quite seventeen hands in height, and long in proportion. He was also the reverse of shapely in the fashion of his build: for his head was long and bony, and his hip bones sharp and protuberant; his tail was what is known among horsemen as a rat-tail, being but scantily covered with hair, and his neck was even more scantily supplied with a mane, while in color he could easily have taken any premium put up for homeliness, being an ashen roan, mottled with flecks and patches of divers hues; but his legs were flat and corded like a racer's, his neck long and thin as a thoroughbred's, his nostrils large, his ears sharply pointed and lively, while the white rings around his eyes hinted at a cross, somewhere in his pedigree, with Arabian blood. A huge, bony, homely-looking horse he was, who drew the deacon and Miranda into the village on market days and Sundays, with a loose, shambling gait, making altogether an appearance so homely and peculiar that the smart village chaps riding along in their jaunty turn-outs used to chaff the good deacon on the character of his steed, and satirically challenge him to a brush. The deacon always took their badinage in good part, although he inwardly said more than once, "If I ever get a good chance, when there ar'n't too many around, I'll go up to the turn of the road beyond the church, and let Jack out on them;" for Dick had given him a hint of the horse's history, and told him "he could knock the spots out of thirty," and wickedly urged the deacon to take the starch out of them airy chaps some of these days. Such was the horse, then, that the deacon had ahead of him, and the old-fashioned sleigh, when, with the parson alongside, he struck into the principal street of the village.

Now, New Year's Day is a lively day in many country villages, and on this bright one especially, as the sleighing was perfect, everybody was out. Indeed, it had got noised abroad that certain trotters of local fame were to be on the street that afternoon, and, as the boys worded it, "there would be heaps of fun going on." And so it happened that everybody in town, and many who lived out of it, were on this particular street, and just at the hour, too, when the deacon came to the foot of it, so that the walk on either side was lined darkly with lookers-on, and the smooth snow-path between the two lines looked like a veritable homestretch on a race-day.

Now, when the deacon had reached the corner of the main street and turned into it, it was at that point where the course terminated and the "brushes" were ended, and at the precise moment when the dozen or twenty horses that had just come flying down were being pulled up preparatory to returning at a slow gait to the customary starting-point at the head of the street, a half-mile away, so that the old-fashioned sleigh was surrounded by the light, fancy cutters of the rival racers, and old Jack was shambling awkwardly along in the midst of the high-spirited and smoking nags that had just come flying down the stretch.

"Hellow, deacon," shouted one of the boys, who was driving a trim-looking bay, and who had crossed the line at the ending of the course second only to a pacer that could "speed like a streak of lightning," as the boys said,—"Hellow, deacon; ain't you going to shake out old shamble-heels, and show us fellows what speed is to-day?" And the merry-hearted chap, son of the principal lawyer of the place, laughed heartily at his challenge, while the other drivers looked at the great angular horse that, without any check, was walking carelessly along, with his head held down, ahead of the old sleigh and its churchly occupants.

"I don't know but what I will," answered the deacon, good-naturedly; "don't know but what I will, if the parson don't object, and you won't start off too quick to begin with; for this is New Year's, and a little extra fun won't hurt any of us, I reckon."

The Deacon and Parson.

"Do it, do it; we'll hold up for you," answered a dozen merry voices. "Do it, deacon: it'll do old shamble-heels good to go a ten-mile-an-hour gait for once in his life, and the parson needn't fear of being scandalized by any speed you'll get out of him, either;" and the merry chaps haw-hawed as men and boys will, when every one is jolly and fun flows fast.

And so, with any amount of good-natured chaffing from the drivers of the "fast 'uns," and from many that lined the road too,—for the day gave greater liberty than usual to bantering speech,—the speedy ones paced slowly up to the head of the street, with old Jack shambling demurely in the midst of them.