Part 3

“There they are!” Farmer Green exclaimed as the bay began to climb the hill. “I was wrong. That mule can’t be trusted. I was foolish to think he’d ever be any good.”

“Just what I’ve said all the time!” Spot barked sharply.

Johnnie Green heard him. He turned around and looked down the road. Then he stood up in the wagon, waved his hat, and shouted.

And then--just because he was tired of standing there, and just because he liked to do what people didn’t expect--Mistah Mule suddenly started forward. Johnnie Green clutched at the wagon-seat to save himself from a spill.

“Whoa!” he cried. But Mistah Mule paid no heed to that order. Seizing the bit between his teeth, he broke into a smart trot.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Johnnie yelled as he tugged at the reins.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” Mistah Mule chuckled, as he went all the faster.

Meanwhile Farmer Green urged the bay up the hill. Just as they reached the top he brought the bay’s nose even with the rear wheels of Johnnie’s wagon.

“Stop him, Johnnie! Stop him!” he called.

“I--I--I can’t!” Johnnie answered as the wagon jolted over the stones.

Then his father tried to pass Johnnie, hoping to head off Mistah Mule.

But Mistah Mule would have none of that. He stretched his neck out and tore down the hill like a trotter at the county fair. In a few moments he had left the bay and Farmer Green far behind.

“Huh!” he grunted. “Thinks they kin pass me, does they?”

XX

THE LOAD OF HAY

If Mistah Mule hadn’t at last overtaken a load of hay in the road, there’s no telling when he would have slackened his pace. It wasn’t because Johnnie Green tugged on the reins and cried, “Whoa! Whoa!” that Mistah Mule fell into a walk. No! It was because he wanted some of that hay. He followed close behind the load, reaching forward now and then to snatch a mouthful.

Though Mistah Mule was enjoying himself hugely, his driver, Johnnie Green, was anything but happy. He felt almost as if he were stealing hay himself. Of course, the driver ahead of him knew nothing of what was going on behind his back. Perched far forward on his load, he could see neither Mistah Mule nor Johnnie, nor even Farmer Green and the bay, who soon caught up with the odd procession and plodded on at its rear.

So they finally reached the village. When the driver of the hay-wagon drove upon the platform of the hay scales in front of the village store, and stopped, Mistah Mule stopped too.

Farmer Green tied the bay to a post at the edge of the wooden sidewalk. Then he did his errand at the store--the errand that Johnnie Green would have done hours before, if Mistah Mule hadn’t balked on the hill.

When Farmer Green came out of the store he looked sharply at Mistah Mule’s feet.

“He has lost a shoe,” he said. “I’ll drive him to the blacksmith’s shop to have him shod. And I’ll leave you there, Johnnie, to come home alone later, for I can’t wait. I ought to be in the hayfield this very minute.”

When they reached the blacksmith’s shop Mistah Mule behaved beautifully. As he stood with his halter-strap tied to an iron ring on the wall, nobody noticed what he said to old dog Spot.

“They’s goin’ to be fun here,” Mistah Mule remarked.

“You’d better be good,” the old dog growled. “The blacksmith knows how to handle rascals like you.”

Meanwhile Farmer Green was talking with the blacksmith himself.

“I can’t wait while you shoe my mule,” he explained. “If you’re gentle with him I don’t believe he’ll make any trouble. He kicked when I first brought him home. But he’s well-mannered enough now--except that he balks once in a while.”

Farmer Green hadn’t been gone five minutes when Mistah Mule lashed out with his heels and sent a tin pail crashing against a cobweb-covered window.

Dodging the pail, Johnnie Green fell into a tub of water. The blacksmith shouted at Mistah Mule. And old dog Spot barked noisily.

“A bee done ’lighted on me,” Mistah Mule remarked with a grin.

XXI

THE BLACKSMITH WINS

After kicking the pail in the blacksmith’s shop, Mistah Mule hung his head low, closed his eyes, and pretended to fall asleep.

Johnnie Green, dripping from his plunge into the tub of water, when he dodged the flying pail, looked at Mistah Mule with great disgust. And so did old dog Spot. And so did the blacksmith himself.

“I don’t trust that fellow,” said the blacksmith.

“Nor I!” old Spot barked.

Mistah Mule opened one eye.

“They’s all ’fraid of me!” he chuckled. “This blacksmith, he better take off his leather apron ’fore I tangle him up in it.”

“What’s that?” old Spot demanded.

“Just a-talkin’ to my own self!” said Mistah Mule. “You better run long home, ole dog. You’s liable to git hurt if you stays ’round here. You might git kicked right into the fire.”

Old dog Spot edged away a bit and tucked his tail between his legs. But he didn’t intend to leave. He meant to see everything that happened. He only hoped Johnnie Green would be safe.

Suddenly the blacksmith began to whistle a lively tune, quite as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“Bring the ropes!” he called to his helper, who looked just as strong as the blacksmith, even if he wasn’t so tall.

In a jiffy they had wrapped several loops of rope about Mistah Mule’s legs. He plunged and swayed. But the more he struggled, the tighter the blacksmith and his helper pulled the ropes. Finally the blacksmith untied Mistah Mule’s halter-strap. And soon Mistah Mule found himself lying upon the floor of the smithy.

Old dog Spot began to wag his tail and prance about Mistah Mule.

“Now what are you going to do?” he yelped. “You made all those threats. But the blacksmith is too smart for you. He’s got you where you can’t move.”

Mistah Mule lay quite still. His eyes were closed. And something very like a snore came from his soft nose. He made no sign that he had heard what old dog Spot said.

Not until four handsome new shoes were nailed fast to Mistah Mule’s feet did the blacksmith let him get up.

“I wish everybody on our farm had been here to see you shod,” old dog Spot told him.

“An’ so does I!” Mistah Mule cried. “’Tain’t every day it takes two men an’ a boy an’ a ole dog to shoe anybody in this smithy.”

Mistah Mule trotted briskly home with Johnnie Green and old dog Spot together in the wagon. He never balked once. He knew there ought to be a good dinner waiting for him in the barn; and he was hungry.

XXII

TURKEY PROUDFOOT

Mistah Mule was standing at the foot of the lane, near the barn. Near him, Turkey Proudfoot was strutting about, looking for food now and then, in the mud, and gobbling once in a while.

Suddenly Mistah Mule gave his odd laugh, “_Hee-haw!_” And when he heard it, Turkey Proudfoot began to swell up, and dart his head toward Mistah Mule, and raise his feet and then put them down in the same spot. He was angry; he thought Mistah Mule was laughing at him. “What is there about me that amuses you?” he cried.

Mistah Mule turned about with an air of great surprise.

“I didn’t know they was anyone here,” he replied. “I was just laughin’ at my own thoughts.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t noticed me here in this lane?” Turkey Proudfoot demanded hotly. “Why, I was here when Farmer Green turned you out of the barn!”

“I never knowed it,” Mistah Mule declared.

“Do you mean to say you haven’t heard my gobble?” Turkey Proudfoot asked in a loud voice. “Why, I’ve gobbled a hundred times if I have once.”

“I ain’t heard you,” said Mistah Mule with a grin.

Now, Turkey Proudfoot liked all the neighbors to notice him. He wanted all the farmyard folk to admire his walk, his fine feathers, his hideous voice. And when Mistah Mule told him that he hadn’t even known he was anywhere around, Turkey Proudfoot grew angrier than ever. If Mistah Mule had been a person of his own size, Turkey Proudfoot would certainly have rushed at him, and fought him. But Mistah Mule could have kicked him over the fence without half trying. And Turkey Proudfoot knew it. There was nothing he could do except bluster. And he could always do that without half trying.

“You’ve been on this farm quite a while now,” he gobbled loudly. “You ought to know by this time that I’m a person of importance. When I go out for a stroll, all the farmyard folk turn their heads and stare at me.”

“Does they?” said Mistah Mule pleasantly. “What for does they do that?”

“My goodness!” Turkey Proudfoot exclaimed. “What a dull fellow you are! Haven’t you any eyes? Haven’t you any ears?”

Mistah Mule had both eyes and ears--especially ears. But he claimed not to know what Turkey Proudfoot meant.

“Haven’t you learned yet that I’m the ruler of the farmyard?” Turkey Proudfoot asked him scornfully.

And at that, Mistah Mule gave voice to his queer _hee-haw_ once more.

“I was laughin’ at you that time,” he remarked.

XXIII

A PLAN GOES WRONG

Turkey Proudfoot was terribly angry when Mistah Mule laughed at him.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded.

“’Cause you thinks you’s the boss ’round here,” said Mistah Mule. “But you has to do just as Farmer Green tells you.”

“I don’t believe you’ve ever seen me fight,” Turkey Proudfoot retorted. “I can whip all the other gobblers on the farm.”

“Maybe! Maybe!” Mistah Mule replied. “But kin you whip Farmer Green?”

“Can you?” Turkey Proudfoot asked.

“I kin kick him plumb across the barn floor,” Mistah Mule chuckled. “Kin you do that?”

Turkey Proudfoot knew that he couldn’t. But he wouldn’t actually say so.

“I could make Farmer Green _run_,” he remarked, “if only he would fight fairly. But he won’t. He fights with a stick.”

“Sho!” Mistah Mule exclaimed. “Do he?” And then Mistah Mule hung his head in thought. Soon he raised it again, however. And to Turkey Proudfoot he began to say something in a low voice. Whatever it was, Turkey Proudfoot did not seem to think well of it. He kept gobbling protests and crying, “No! No! No!”

But in the end Mistah Mule won him over. For Turkey Proudfoot agreed to do what Mistah Mule suggested.

“Good!” Mistah Mule brayed. “Do just as I tells you and you’ll make him run sure.”

Then Turkey Proudfoot gave a run and a leap and a flap of his wings, all of which carried him to the top of the fence and thence into the farmyard. He began to strut back and forth between the house and the barns, keeping a sharp eye upon the woodshed door.

In a little while Farmer Green appeared in the doorway, carrying a pail, and started to walk to the pigpens.

Turkey Proudfoot gave a loud gobble and rushed at him. There was no stick anywhere in sight which Farmer Green could snatch up. Turkey Proudfoot had made sure of that.

“Go ’way, you old gobbler!” Farmer Green shouted.

But Turkey Proudfoot came on and on.

Farmer Green was carrying something in his pail. It was sour milk for the pigs. And when Turkey Proudfoot was almost upon him, Farmer Green showered the sour milk all over him.

The proud ruler of the farmyard turned tail and ran. He looked like a white ghost as he scuttled, dripping, around a corner of the barn where nobody could see him.

Mistah Mule had watched everything as he stood with his head over the fence. And he again burst into his fiendish laughter.

“I reckon that ole Turkey done brag his last brag to me,” he chuckled.

Later, Turkey Proudfoot warned all the flock to have nothing to do with Mistah Mule.

“He’s a trouble-maker,” declared Turkey Proudfoot.

XXIV

THE UMBRELLA

Johnnie Green wanted to go over the hill to play with a friend--a boy called “Red.”

“You may go,” his mother said, “but you must take an umbrella. We’re going to have rain.”

Now, Johnnie Green didn’t like to carry an umbrella.

“I don’t think it’s going to rain,” he grumbled. “I’ll ask Father if I need to take one.”

“Your father has gone to the village,” Mrs. Green told him. “Maybe you’d rather stay at home, anyhow.”

“Oh, no!” Johnnie exclaimed quickly. And snatching up his umbrella, he slipped out of the door.

“I’m not going to walk ’way over the hill--not if I have to carry this umbrella,” he muttered as soon as he was out of his mother’s hearing.

A few minutes later he was throwing his saddle on Mistah Mule. And then he mounted him.

Mistah Mule cocked his eye at the closed umbrella in Johnnie Green’s hand.

“What for this boy got that club?” he asked himself. “He better not hit me with it.”

Once in the road, Johnnie urged Mistah Mule into a canter. He noticed that dark clouds were fast gathering overhead. And white wisps of cloud were beginning to whisk over the top of Blue Mountain.

“Giddap! Giddap!” he cried to Mistah Mule. “We want to get to Red’s house before the storm breaks.”

They weren’t half way up the long hill when the wind began to whip the tree-tops and a driving rain swept across the valley, pelting them with great drops.

Johnnie Green fumbled with the strap of his umbrella. And then he raised it, spread, over his head.

All at once a cyclone seemed to strike him. Mistah Mule plunged and reared and bucked. Johnnie clung to the umbrella with one hand, to the pommel of the saddle with the other. The umbrella turned wrong side out at the very moment when the saddle-girth broke. And the next thing Johnnie Green knew, he found himself sitting in the middle of the road, in a puddle, holding the wrecked umbrella aloft.

Mistah Mule was standing a little distance away with his back to the storm, hunched up, and with his head drooping.

Johnnie didn’t care to mount him again. With the soft mud sucking at his feet with every step he took, he led Mistah Mule home.

“There was a cyclone for a few moments,” he told the family while he dried himself in the kitchen.

Farmer Green had come home. And when he heard all of Johnnie’s story he quickly guessed the truth of the matter. Mistah Mule liked umbrellas even less than Johnnie Green.

XXV

BRIGHT AND BROAD

Mistah Mule was in the back pasture. The only other farm folk there were Farmer Green’s oxen, Bright and Broad. They were a slow-going pair. They always took plenty of time for anything they did. They walked slowly, they lay down and got up slowly, they ate slowly, they thought slowly, they talked slowly. And when they spoke, usually they both said the same thing at the same time, in a sort of deep-toned chant.

Mistah Mule was not pleased with his companions. He thought that Bright and Broad were dull company. However, he had to talk with somebody, for he dearly loved to wrangle. So he stayed near Bright and Broad a good deal of the time.

Now, Bright and Broad were far from ashamed of being slow. On the contrary, they prided themselves on their slowness.

“‘Slow but sure’ is our motto,” they remarked to Mistah Mule, speaking together and wagging their great heads in exactly the same, slow fashion.

“Huh!” grunted Mistah Mule, who--when he wasn’t ill--was always ready to disagree with anybody, about anything. “You-all ain’t so slow as what I is.”

Bright and Broad looked at each other and shook their heads. Then they burst into a rumbling laugh: “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

“What for you scoffin’ at me?” Mistah Mule demanded.

“We’ve seen you run,” they told him. “You’re fast.”

“Prehaps! Prehaps!” Mistah Mule admitted. “But I kin be so slow, when I _wants_ to be, that I doesn’t move a-tall.”

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” Again the great sides of Bright and Broad heaved with laughter. “We know you’re sometimes balky. But it’s easy to balk. A rock or a tree can do that. The question is, _how slowly can you walk and not come to a halt_?”

“Slower’n what you-all kin!” Mistah Mule retorted.

“Ho! Ho! Ho! Pardon us! But we don’t think so,” Bright and Broad replied. Bright winked very slowly at Broad; and Broad winked very slowly at Bright.

Now, Mistah Mule was all for settling the dispute by talk. But Bright and Broad told him that all the talking in the world couldn’t convince them that they were wrong.

“There’s just one way to end the argument,” they told Mistah Mule. “And that is to have a slow race.”

Although Mistah Mule didn’t know what they meant, he exclaimed that he was ready for anything.

“I doesn’t keer,” he said, “what kind o’ race it is. I knows I kin win it.”

XXVI

A QUEER KIND OF RACE

Bright and Broad, the oxen, were going to race against Mistah Mule in the back pasture.

It was going to be a slow race. And since Mistah Mule hadn’t the slightest idea what a slow race was, Bright and Broad started to explain. As usual, they both began to speak the same words, at the same time.

“The race,” they told Mistah Mule, “will be from the fence here to the big pine tree on the other side of the pasture. We two will keep together, just as we always do. We’ll all three start at once. If you reach the pine tree first, you lose. If we reach it first, we lose.”

“Don’t nobody win this race?” Mistah Mule inquired.

“Yes! Yes! Whoever reaches the pine tree last will win.”

Mistah Mule shook his head.

“It’s one agin two,” he complained. “Don’t ’pear like it’s a fair race. If one o’ you go too fast, the other kin hold him back.”

Bright and Broad swung their heads around and looked at each other again.

“What do you suggest?” Broad inquired of Bright and Bright inquired of Broad.

“Why not let him walk behind us?” each replied to the other.

“’Cause why?” Mistah Mule broke in.

“Don’t you see? It will be more than fair to you,” they explained. “So long as you keep behind us, you’ll know that you aren’t going to reach the pine tree until after we get there. Only, of course, you mustn’t stop walking. If you find you can’t walk slowly enough, just swerve aside and pass us.”

Mistah Mule quickly agreed to this plan. He couldn’t see, now, how he could possibly lose the race.

“I hopes--” he remarked, as he took his place behind the oxen--“I hopes you-all doesn’t kick.”

“Never!” they assured him. And each whispered to the other, “That’s more than he can say about himself.”

“Are you ready?” Bright and Broad then boomed in their deep tones.

“Yes, sah! Yes, sah!” Mistah Mule replied. He answered twice, because he was talking to them both, and he wanted to be polite.

“Go!” they bellowed. And each began very slowly to lift a foot off the ground.

Mistah Mule suddenly forgot that this was to be a _slow_ race. When he heard the word “Go!” he gave a great leap, which carried him between Bright and Broad and thrust those heavy fellows rudely apart.

“Whoa, there!” they both cried. “Get back! If you must pass, go around us.”

XXVII

A GOOD RACE SPOILED

The slow race across the back pasture had to be begun all over again. At the word “Go!” Mistah Mule had forgotten that it wasn’t a _fast_ race. And he had plunged forward before he knew what he was doing.

After the second start he fell in behind the plodding oxen, Bright and Broad. But he soon found that he couldn’t walk as slowly as they could. First his nose nudged Bright. Then his nose nudged Broad.

“Stop that!” they both cried.

“’Scuse me!” said Mistah Mule. “Move a little spryer--can’t you?”

“Ha!” they chuckled. “We knew we could beat you at this game.” They crowded against each other, so that Mistah Mule couldn’t wedge himself between them. And there was nothing he could do except thrust his head and neck alongside one of the pair. He chose Bright’s side.

Mistah Mule hadn’t taken six steps in this position when he gave a loud snort. And then he flashed past Bright and Broad so quickly that they looked as if they were moving backward.

“A bear!” Mistah Mule brayed. “Run! Run!”

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” laughed Bright and Broad. “See him run! This is just a trick. He knows he can’t win the slow race fairly, so he’s trying to get us to run ahead of him.” They nodded wisely as they trudged towards the big pine tree, which marked the end of the race.

And then--all at once they sniffed, and asked each other a question: “Do you notice a queer scent?” And like one ox they both looked around.

“A bear!” they both roared. And breaking into a lumbering gallop, they hurried after Mistah Mule, who was already nearing the fence on the other side of the pasture.

Quite breathless they reached the fence at last. But they were too heavy and clumsy to jump over it, as Mistah Mule had already done. Instead, they crashed their huge bodies against the fence and sent the rails flying. Through the great gap that they had made they dashed side by side. And they never stopped running until they reached the barn at the foot of the lane.

Mistah Mule was waiting for them there.

“Somebody done win a race!” he brayed loudly.

Broad and Bright shot a glance of surprise at each other.

“But you ran much faster than we did!” they cried. “You can’t have won.”

“I isn’t said I winned it,” Mistah Mule retorted.

“Well, _we_ certainly didn’t,” that honest pair insisted. “We didn’t even finish the race. We didn’t go near the pine tree.”

Mistah Mule laughed boisterously.

“Mistah Bear, he done win,” said Mistah Mule. “I looks back just once. An’ there he am, right under the big pine his own self.”

XXVIII

UNEXPECTED HELP

Farmer Green had just had the bad luck to have a loaded wagon sink hub-deep in a boggy place in the meadow, near the barnyard. The pair of bays were harnessed to the wagon. And they couldn’t--or wouldn’t--pull it out of the mire.

Farmer Green walked to the horse-barn, where his son Johnnie and the hired man were working.

“The load is stuck fast in the mud,” he told them. “If Bright and Broad weren’t ’way up in the back pasture they’d pull the wagon out. But it would take a good hour to drive them down here.”

The oxen, Bright and Broad, were a famous pair. They were wonderfully strong--and wonderfully slow, too.

“There’s old Ebenezer. You might hitch him in front of the bays,” the hired man suggested.

Farmer Green shook his head.

“The old horse would pull until he dropped. I’m afraid he might hurt himself,” he replied.

“Why don’t you use the mule?” cried Johnnie Green.

“I could _try_ him, I suppose,” said his father. “But I’m almost certain he wouldn’t pull an ounce.”

“Oh, do try him, Pa!” Johnnie Green begged. When he wasn’t driving Mistah Mule himself, Johnnie liked to see that stubborn fellow balk.