IVCROWDING THE POLE
Onthe next day after Mistah Mule’s arrival at Farmer Green’s place there followed something that the old horse Ebenezer had been dreading. Farmer Green harnessed Mistah Mule and Ebenezer to a strong wagon.
“I suppose I ought not to complain, if this helps Farmer Green,” Ebenezer thought. “But I can’t help feeling that he might have spared me this disgrace. To be harnessed with a good-natured Mule would be bad enough. But to be harnessed with a kicking, balky fellow like this Mistah Mule is a thousand times worse.”
Ebenezer sighed as Farmer Green climbed into the wagon and picked up the reins. But he started willingly, as he always had, when Farmer Green spoke.
To Ebenezer’s surprise, his mate started too. He had expected Mistah Mule to balk.
“I see you’ve decided to behave,” Ebenezer remarked to him.
“Just you wait, ole hoss, until he asks me to draw a load,” Mistah Mule answered. “I doesn’t mind pullin’ a empty wagon a little ways. I likes to stretch my legs once in a while. But I doesn’t aim to do any reg’lar work. I never has done any. Why should I now?”
On the whole, Ebenezer had little fault to find with Mistah Mule’s behavior on their drive. Farmer Green put no load into the wagon. He merely jogged Mistah Mule and Ebenezer around what everybodyin Pleasant Valley knew as the “Four-mile Square”; then drove them home. And Mistah Mule trotted along and stopped and started whenever Farmer Green gave the word.
Mistah Mule was almost a gentleman, except for one thing. He kept “crowding the pole,” as Farmer Green called it. He insisted on squeezing himself up against the wagon-pole, which was between him and Ebenezer. More than once Ebenezer told him to “move over.” But Mistah Mule might have had no ears at all, instead of great long ones, for all he seemed to hear.
This unpleasant trick annoyed Ebenezer. But he did not let it worry him. He had known young colts that tried it. And Ebenezer remembered that Farmer Green had a way of stopping it.
After Farmer Green had led Ebenezerinto his stall, and backed Mistah Mule into his, he called to the boy Johnnie: “Bring me an old piece of leather, some long tacks, and a hammer!”
When he heard that, Ebenezer pricked up his ears.
“What’s this Farmer Green aimin’ to do now?” Mistah Mule asked him.
“You’ll find out the next time he drives us,” Ebenezer told him. And he would say nothing more.