I WAS awake so long in the night I overslept next morning, of course.
Breakfast had been cleared away by the time I got dressed and was
down-stairs.
I had made up my mind to have a run-in with my uncle, but I was starting
with a disadvantage. Coming late to breakfast in that busy household
amounted almost to a crime, and the look of disgust my aunt Lucretia
set on my face made my courage drop tail. She was never amiable, and she
considered me an intruder in the family, as well I knew.
“I have left your doughnuts and coffee in the but’ry--and your uncle
wants you in the stable.” She turned her back and went on with what she
was doing at the stove.
I ate the doughnuts on my way to the stable, trying to whip up my
rancor. I expected to be received with a hoot and a howl, and depended
on those spurs to start my own temper on the gallop.
Uncle Deck was just pushing a bottle back into the oats in the bin. He
slammed down the cover and wiped his mouth and grinned at me. He was in
the best of good humor. I was chewing on food his money had bought, and,
I repeat, he was as pleasant as a basket of chips. In the face of that I
couldn’t screw a mean word out of myself.
“She sure was some operator with her claws,” he remarked. But he
wouldn’t listen to my indignant explanation; he plainly had his own
business on his mind that morning, and it was business which seemed
to be affording much satisfaction. He gave me a push toward the
harness-room, the sanctum where he performed most of his deviltry in
horse matters.
In that harness-room was hitched the worst-looking old pelter of a plug
I had ever laid eyes on.
Uncle Deck put his hands on his hips and swapped looks between myself
and the horse. He was master of a certain kind of cheap, horse-jockey
patter which he employed at fairs when he wanted to call a crowd around.
He struck a pose and “orated.”
“Having a knowledge of hoss pedigree, relatives, previous condition of
servitude, religious preferences, and other matters pertaining to, and
so forth, even going back to the fact that the hoss Bucephalorus, that
was owned by the late Aleck the Great, cocked his left hind leg when he
stood in the stall, had a nicked right ear, and a wind-gall puff behind
each fore shoulder, I want to say that I reckon that never before was
there gathered, collected, and assembled on four legs every kind of a
pimple, bump, wheeze, scratch, spavin, horn ail, hock bunch, trick,
and bobblewhoop, that’s laid down by old Medicombobulus, in his book
entitled ‘Things a Hoss Can Get Along Without.’ I call this ancient
Gothic ruin ‘Carpenter Boy,’ sired by Pod Auger, dammed by Hemlock
Maid--and, in fact, damned by everybody who has ever owned him. Speed
is developed in him by feeding the celebrated spiral oats, produced by
crossing shoe-pegs with bed-springs, which in process of being digested
uncoil and carry the animile in leaps like the mountain-goat.”
After that outburst I definitely, in my own mind, set forward to some
future date the matter of an understanding with my uncle.
“How did it ever happen that anybody could unload this on you?” I asked
him.
“Because I went out hunting for it, sonny. It was the worst I could do
on short notice. If it had looked worse and had had more ailments and
outs I would have paid more for it. Now ask no more questions, but lend
a hand to what I tell you to do.”
I have no time to go into the details of what my uncle Deck did to
that equine framework, but if I could describe it all I’d be furnishing
considerable of a handbook for the uses of tricky horse-swappers. I had
helped in many similar jobs in that back room of his stable, but I had
never seen him put so much art and soul into the work before; he seemed
to have special reasons for his painstaking toil. He chuckled whenever
he secured a particularly good result; at times he gritted his teeth and
swore under his breath regarding some party whom he did not name. But
I gathered that this transformation of a horse was intended as
satisfaction of one of his bitterest grudges.
He had everything to do with in that horse beauty-parlor of his. There
were ointments and colorings, false hair for mane and tail, skin-patches
and disguises for puffs and swellings. But still the horse remained
gaunt; the rafters of his ribs suggested that he needed to be shingled
in. To my general wonderment as to what my uncle was about, anyway,
was now added more lively curiosity; how was this living skeleton to be
disguised as to skinniness? I found out before long. My uncle put on the
poor brute a bridle with a wicked twist-bit and told me to hold him, no
matter how much he kicked about.
Then Uncle Deck brought out a bit of board into which shoe-pegs had been
set thickly. He began to clap the pegged board against the horse’s skin.
I had my work cut out for me after that, I can tell you. The pain must
have been excruciating, for the bradding-pegs raised blisters. In a
little while the ribs were hidden by this new and deceptive plumpness.
The horse took on the appearance of an animal which had been well cared
for in the food line. And he certainly displayed the spirit of Phoebus’s
nigh wheel-horse. His nostrils snorted furiously and his eyes flamed.
It seemed incredible that this animal with flowing mane and tail, with
round barrel and smooth limbs, was the decrepit old creature I had seen
on my arrival in the room.
Lastly, my uncle Deck oiled the horse from stem to stem, smoothing the
hair into place, and then stood and admired his handiwork.
“Now let’s see what the needle will do for style and knee action,” he
said. He gave the horse a jab with the hypodermic--I had seen him do
that at horse-trots just before the race was started. He hitched a long
rope into the bridle and led the animal out into the yard. In a few
moments the horse was prancing and curveting and whickering like a
blueblood of youth and spirit.
“But he won’t last this way!” I said.
My uncle turned withering side-glance on me. “Do you think you’re
telling me something I didn’t know? Of course he won’t last. I don’t
want him to last. If he would pop like a blown-up paper bag when I got
ready to have it happen I’d like it all the better. But, as it is, it’ll
be bad enough. Don’t you know a good name for him out of some of those
books you have read, son?”
But while I was hesitating my uncle dipped in with his usual impatience.
“I have thought of it already! ‘Judge,’ that’s his name. When she hears
Trufant call him ‘Judge’ the coincidence will catch her interest, likely
enough. She will prick up her ears!”
Right then I pricked up my own ears. I understood mighty sudden. I had
seen the writing tacked on the notice-board in the post-office the day
before. Judge Kingsley had let it be known that he was in the market for
a driving-horse, suitable for use by ladies. I had read it with mingled
emotions, realizing that Celene Kingsley had grown to girlhood out of
childhood; no longer a pony-cart for her!
“But he’ll never buy a horse from you?” I blurted, staring at my uncle.
“Who won’t?”
“Judge Kingsley.”
“Probably he wouldn’t if he thought it came from _me_. But I’m baiting a
hook that he’ll swallow or I’m no guesser.”
My eyes were full of questions and he saw fit to humor me.
“Seeing it’s all in the family, son, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to let out
a few holes in my surcingle or I’ll bust. ‘Squealing John’ Runnels, of
Carmel, will drive this hoss into Judge Kingsley’s dooryard to-night,
around dusk, representing that he is a poor woman who needs money in a
hurry so that she can get her husband out of trouble. ‘Squealing John’
has got a woman’s voice, and he will wear some of his wife’s clothes.”
“I don’t see how you can get a man to do that,” I objected.
My uncle raised his hand above his head and slowly clinched his fingers.
“A man will do ‘most anything when you’ve got a foreclosure clutch on
his weazen. I’m making the whole thing plenty crazy so that the laugh
will be bigger when the truth comes out. He’ll buy this hoss--there’s no
doubt of it. Old John will give him only twenty minutes to decide. Short
notice on account of the hypo juice I’ll shoot in up around the turn of
the street! Must have a quick decision because I reckon the hoss will
stagger up against a fence and die mighty soon after old John gets
out of sight. Clek-clek! Gid-dap!” He yanked on the rope and the horse
frolicked. “Whoa, Judge! Plenty of knee action! Sound in wind, limb,
and peepers! Safe for the ladies!” He pulled in on the rope, grabbed the
bridle, and led the horse to a stall. “If we get over two hundred I’ll
slip you ten dollars for your part of the job,” he called to me. “It’s
time for you to understand that there’s good money in a sharp dicker.”