Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/144

Rh obey, and I've thrown you down, and I'll do it again if you bite me, so take care."

Scamp tossed her pretty head, and took little pieces of Mr. Wood's shirt sleeve in her mouth, keeping her cunning brown eye on him as if to see how far she could go. But she did not bite him. I think she loved him, for when he left her she whinnied shrilly, and he had to go back and stroke and caress her.

After that I often used to watch her as she went about the farm. She always seemed to be tugging and striving at her load, and trying to step out fast and do a great deal of work. Mr. Wood was usually driving her. The men didn't like her, and couldn't manage her. She had not been properly broken in.

After Mr. Wood finished his work he went and stood in the doorway. There were six horses altogether: Dutchman, Cleve, Pacer, Scamp, a bay mare called Ruby, and a young horse belonging to Mr. Harry, whose name was Fleetwood.

"What do you think of them all?" said Mr. Wood, looking down at me. "A pretty fine-looking lot of horses, aren't they? Not a thoroughbred there, but worth as much to me as if each had a pedigree as long as this plank walk. There's a lot of humbug about this pedigree business in horses. Mine have their manes and tails anyway, and the proper use of their eyes which is more liberty than some thoroughbreds get.

"I'd like to see the man that would persuade me to put blinders or check-reins or any other instrument of torture on my horses. Don't the simpletons know that blinders are the cause of—well, I wouldn't like to say how many of our accidents, Joe, for fear you'd think me extravagant, and the check-rein drags up a horse's head out of