Shall I ever forget the look on Dad's face! He brandished the scraper and sprang wildly at Joe and yelled, "Damn y', you whelp! what do you want here?"
Joe left. The horse lay in the furrow. Blood was dropping from its mouth. Dave pointed it out, and Dad opened the brute's jaws and examined them. No teeth were there. He looked on the ground round about—none there either. He looked at the horse's mouth again, then hit him viciously with his clenched fist and said, "The old , he never did have any!" At length he unharnessed the brute as it lay—pulled the winkers off, hurled them at its head, kicked it once—twice—three times—and the furrow-horse jumped up, trotted away triumphantly, and joyously rolled in the dam where all our water came from, drinking-water included.
Dad went straightaway to Smith's place, and told Smith he was a dirty, mean, despicable swindler—or something like that. Smith smiled. Dad put one leg through the slip-rails and promised Smith, if he 'd only come along, to split palings out of him. But Smith did n't. The instinct of self-preservation must have been deer) in that man Smith Then Dad went home and said he would shoot the horse there and then, and went looking for the gun. The horse died in the paddock of old age, but Dad never ploughed with him again.
Dad followed the plough early and late. One day he was giving the horses a spell after some hours' work, when Joe
