Page:Such Is Life.djvu/62

48 leaders’ yoke to the pole-cap. The wagon crept forward. A low grumble, more a growl than a bellow, passed from beast to beast along the team—sure indication that the wagon wouldn’t stop again if it could be taken through. The off front wheel rose slowly on harder ground; the off hind wheel rose in its turn; both near wheels ploughed deeper beneath the top-heavy weight of thirty-eight bales

“She’s over!” thundered Cooper. “Keep her goin’—it’s her on’y chance!”

Then the heavy pine whipsticks bent like bulrushes in the drivers’ skilful hands, while a spray of dissevered hair, and sometimes a line of springing blood, followed each detonation—the libretto being in keeping. A few yards forward still, while both off wheels rose to the surface, and both near wheels sank till the naves burrowed in the ground; then the wagon swung heavily over on its near side.

“Good-bye, John,” said Cooper, with fine immobility. “Three-man job, by rights. Will you give us a hand, Collins?” For Price and Mosey were silently returning to their teams.

“Certainly, I will.”

“Well, it’s a half day’s contract. I’ll git some breakfast ready, while you (fellows) unloosens the ropes.”

Thompson and I released the bullocks from the pole, unfastened the ropes, and brought the wagon down to its wheels again. Then Cooper summoned us to breakfast.

“You’ll jist take sort o’ pot-luck, Collins,” he remarked. “I should ’a’ baked some soda bread an’ boiled some meat last night, on’y for bein’ too busy doin’ nothing. Laziness is catchin’. That’s why I hate a lot o’ fellers campin’ together; it’s nothing but yarn, yarn; an’ your wagon ain’t greazed, an’ your tarpolin ain’t looked to; an’ nothin done but yarn, yarn; an’ you floggin’ in your own mind at not gittin’ ahead o’ your work. That’s where women’s got the purchase on us (fellows). When a lot o’ women gits together, one o’ them reads out something religious, an’ the rest all wires in at sewin’, or knittin’, or some (adj.) thing. They can’t suffer to be idle, nor to see anybody else idle—women can’t.” Cooper was an observer. It was pleasant to hear him philosophise.

The work of reloading was made severe and tedious by the lack of any better skids than the poles of the two wagons—was, indeed, made impossible under the circumstances, but for Cooper’s enormous and well-saved strength. Our toil was enlivened, however, by an argument as to the esoteric cause of the capsize. Cooper maintained that nothing better could have been hoped for, after leaving Kenilworth shed on a Friday; Thompson, untrammelled by such superstition, contended that the misadventure was solely due to travelling on Sunday; whilst I held it to be merely a proof that Cooper, in spite of his sins, wasn’t deserted yet. Each of us supported his argument by a wealth of illustrative cases, and thus fortified his own stubborn opinion to his own perfect satisfaction. Then, descending to more tangible things, we discussed Cleopatra. Here we were unanimous in deciding that the horse had, as yet, disclosed only two faults, and these not the faults of the Irishman’s horse in the