Adopting an Abandoned Farm | Page 7

I would pet her, and how fond she would become of me. Two lumps of sugar at least, every day for her, and red ribbons for the whip. How she would dash along! A horse for me at last! About 1.45 A.M., of the next day, a carriage was heard slowly entering the yard. I could hardly wait until morning to gloat over my gentle racer! At early dawn I visited the stable and found John disgusted beyond measure with my bargain. A worn-out, tumble-down, rickety carriage with wobbling wheels, and an equally worn-out, thin, dejected, venerable animal, with an immense blood spavin on left hind leg, recently blistered! It took three weeks of constant doctoring, investment in Kendall's Spavin Cure, and consultation with an expensive veterinary surgeon, to get the whilom race horse into a condition to slowly walk to market. I understood now the force of the one truthful clause--"She will go better at the end of the drive than at the beginning," for it was well-nigh impossible to get her stiff legs started without a fire kindled under them and a measure of oats held enticingly before her. It was enraging, but nothing to after experiences. All the disappointed livery men, their complaisance and cordiality, wholly a thing of the past, were jubilant that I had been so imposed upon by some one, even if they had failed. And their looks, as they wheeled rapidly by me, as I crept along with the poor, suffering, limping "Nellie," were almost more than I could endure.
Horses were again brought for inspection, and there was a repetition of previous horrors. At last a man came from Mossgrown. He had an honest face; he knew of a man who knew of a man whose brother had just the horse for me, "sound, stylish, kind, gentle as a lamb, fast as the wind." Profiting by experience, I said I would look at it. Next day, a young man, gawky and seemingly unsophisticated, brought the animal. It looked well enough, and I was so tired. He was anxious to sell, but only because he was going to be married and go West; needed money. And he said with sweet simplicity: "Now I ain't no jockey, I ain't! You needn't be afeard of me--I say just what I mean. I want spot cash, I do, and you can have horse, carriage, and harness for $125 down." He gave me a short drive, and we did go "like the wind." I thought the steed very hard to hold in, but he convinced me that it was not so. I decided to take the creature a week on trial, which was a blow to that guileless young man. And that very afternoon I started for the long, pleasant drive I had been dreaming about since early spring.
The horse looked quiet enough, but I concluded to take my German domestic along for extra safety. I remembered his drawling direction, "Doan't pull up the reins unless you want him to go pretty lively," so held the reins rather loosely for a moment only, for this last hope wheeled round the corner as if possessed, and after trotting, then breaking, then darting madly from side to side, started into a full run. I pulled with all my might; Gusta stood up and helped. No avail. On we rushed to sudden death. No one in sight anywhere. With one Herculean effort, bred of the wildest despair, we managed to rein him in at a sharp right angle, and we succeeded in calming his fury, and tied the panting, trembling fiend to a post. Then Gusta mounted guard while I walked home in the heat and dirt, fully half a mile to summon John.
I learned that that horse had never before been driven by a woman. He evidently was not pleased.
Soon the following appeared among the local items of interest in the Gooseville Clarion:
Uriel Snooks, who has been working in the cheese factory at Frogville, is now to preside over chair number four in Baldwin's Tonsorial Establishment on Main Street.
Kate Sanborn is trying another horse.
These bits of information in the papers were a boon to the various reporters, but most annoying to me. The Bungtown Gazetteer announced that "a well-known Boston poetess had purchased the Britton Farm, and was fitting up the old homestead for city boarders!" I couldn't import a few hens, invest in a new dog, or order a lawn mower, but a full account would grace the next issue of all the weeklies. I sympathized with the old woman who exclaimed in desperation:
"Great Jerusalem, ca'nt I stir, Without a-raisin' some feller's fur?"
At last I suspected the itinerant butcher of doing double duty as a reporter, and found that he "was engaged by several editors to pick up bits