Muley

“ Muley is a pet horse, and he enjoys immensely the gallop after game; but his nerves invariably fail him at the shot. He stood snorting beside me, and finally, as the deer came in sight, away he tore—only to go about 200 yards, however, and stand and watch us with his ears pricked forward until, when I needed him, I went for him. At the moment, however, I paid no heed to Muley, for a cracking in the brush told me the game was close, and in another moment I caught the shadowy outlines of the doe and the fawn as they scudded through the timber. ”

“ What a nephew-in-law!” and then he turns to Muley: “Muley, old-timer, I didn’t think you had it in you, but you never can tell which way a dill pickle will squirt. How does it seem to lose a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Well,” grins Muley, putting one arm around the shrinking bride. “I ain’t lying to you when I says I don’t know how it feels. You see, Telescope, the name of Allender don’t cover no branch of my family-tree, and I never had any Aunt Agnes.”
There’s a painful silence for a minute, and then comes a flutter of feathers, and in waddles Alfred. ”

“ Telescope thinks it over for a while, and then shakes his head, sad-like:
“Maybe you would, Muley. I sure hopes you gets them sheep, ’cause you qualifies for the shepherd class without no fixing. I’ve read about love making a fool out of a man, but—well, it ain’t no funeral of mine.” ”

“ The longer I thinks things over the harder it looks for Muley. Muley ain’t got the reputation of a saint around here, and can’t even lie so folks will believe him. Zeb owns all the visible supply of sheep, and Muley ain’t got no time to spare if he’s going to make good. ”

“ As soon as I gets time I'm going to feel sorry for you, Muley. How in thunder can you invest eighty thousand dollars around here, when everybody knows you ain't got a cent, and everybody hates sheep. You can't get married for five years, and you've got to feed, water and groom Alfred and Amelia all the rest of their natural lives. ”

“ Muley switches the position of that box, and the next second we’re covered by Mighty Jones. I starts to grin, but when I sees that Mighty is in earnest I irons my face out flat again.
“Hands up!” he snaps, and Muley lets that box slip. She hits the ground and rolls over. I glances at Mighty, and he’s got the look on his face of a man who has seen all there is in life, but ain’t ready to go blind.
“My ——!” he gasps, whirls his bronc around and gallops off down the road like a crazy man, holding on to his hat with one hand and fanning his bronc with the other. ”

“ He knows Muley well. We were up in his office and Telescope and Chuck got him to write that letter."
"How many sheep has Muley bought on his nerve?" asks Chuck.
"Come on through, Hen. Did he buy out Zeb's herd? I hope he ain't got mutton for our supper." And then Telescope sings sort of plaintive like:
"I love a little chicken and I love a little fish. ”

“ Has the sheep affected his brain?"
"Such a theory is absurd, Johnny," says I. "It can't be proved, 'cause nobody with brains ever mixes up with sheep. You can't corrupt a coyote."
A little later on me and Muley are setting on the fence, when Telescope climbs up beside us and talks to Muley like a father. ”

“ I kind of look for a dry spell."
"The Weather Bureau at Washington gets out annual reports, which reach us too late, so we thanks you for the information," says Muley.
"I hope I see you both well," opines Zeb.
"Your eyesight don't worry me none to speak about," states Muley. "The last time I meets up with you I made you throw your gun down the well. How's your sentiments concerning me at present?"
"I'm filled with meekness and contrition, as I aforementioned, Le-mule. It aches my heart to know that I provoked you thataway, and I pilgrims over here to make amends. Sabe?" ”

“ You can’t do an artistic job of drownding in a couple of dollars’ worth of hooch. If you was to get in over your depth in liquor, Muley, what brand would you prefer?”
Right then Muley gets sore at me. I finds that you can josh a man about love just so far, and then he turns like a worm and tries to bite me.
For the next few days he writes poetry in the evening, and is absent most all day. He ain’t a pleasant critter to talk to, so I spends most of my time playing solitaire. One day down in Paradise I runs across Susie. ”

“ Muley weighs so much that he has to bandage his bronc's legs with splints to keep it from being bow-legged. The world lost a cracking good poet when Muley essayed to punch cows. He don't look the part, not having soulful eyes nor emaciated ribs, but when it comes to making up poetry he's got 'em all lashed to the snubbing-post.
"Has the committee arrived at a satisfactory conclusion?" he asks, puffing hard on his cigaret, and shaking out a new rope.
"When the facts is made public we'll let yuh know with the rest," squeaks Scenery, who dislikes Muley a heap. ”

“ I may not be a judge of womanly beauty, and the poetry of my soul may have been shook loose by pitching broncos, and buried deep under a coating of alkali dust, but I sure do sabe when a woman is hard to look at.
Seems to me like it’s human nature for a feller with squirrel-teeth, no jaw to speak about and a physique like a corn cultivator to marry a beautiful female, and vice versa—not that “Muley” Bowles qualifies in the beauty division, but at that I reckon he shaded Susie a little. ”

“ Muley is washing up, and when Hank asks for him he yells that he’ll be out in a minute.
“I’m going to make Muley an offer,” says Hank to me, confident-like. “I hears that he’s going to get married, and I needs a foreman what is a married man. Sabe? Single men ain’t got nothing to hold ’em down. I like Muley—dang his fat carcass—and I rides over here to see him.”
“Uh-huh,” says I, ’cause there ain’t nothing else to say, and then Hank yells at Muley:
“Come out here, you half-ton puncher! I want to talk to you about——”
“Sheep dip! Sheep dip! Har, har, har!” ”

“ We puts in that marriage clause just to see if Muley loved her enough to lose the money, Sabe? We knowed danged well that he couldn’t buy no sheep. What did the parrot have to say, Hen?”
“Told Hank Padden he could use sheep dip.”
“Haw, haw, haw!” whoops Chuck. “Did he honest say that? I sat up all one night and day trying to teach that parrot some sheep-talk, but all it ever did was to bite me. Telescope swiped that cat at the depot in Milwaukee.”
Just before we reaches the ranch, three people rides in ahead of us and waits for us to come up. It’s Hank Padden, Johnny Myers and “Scenery” Sims. ”

“ Youth calls to youth, and what is stronger than the call of true love? She ain't never yelped at me, boys, but I'm a heap wise. While Le-mule is only getting forty a month now, I feels that in the due course of time he'll be a shining light of the community, and maybe go to Congress."
"Good sentiments, Zeb," I agrees, "but it will likely be a close race between the voters and the sheriff to decide whether he goes to Helena or Deer Lodge."
"Haw! Haw! Haw!" roars Zeb. "Muley will never go to the penitentiary."
"Not willingly," I agrees. "What are your sheep worth today?" ”

“ Somehow one thinks of Switzerland and mules together, just as one does of bacon and eggs, or nuts and raisins, and yet, I can't recall ever having come across any mules in Lucerne, can you, Monty?"
"No," I admitted, "but there were probably so many that one didn't notice them—like flies, you know."
"Of course, the air of Switzerland is dark with mules and donkeys," said Molly, who always seemed quick to resent any obstacles thrown between me and my mule. "One sees them in picture books. All that Lord Lane will have to say is, 'Let there be mules,' and there will be mules—strings of them. ”

“ At Empire I found my conveyance awaiting me—a light wagon and a pair of playful mules; little fellows with coats of satin and gentle eyes. Some fellow would say they had “sinews of steel,” but these mules were not built that way; they were the natural sort. I dearly love a mule, and were I a poet, would write a sonnet to a mule’s eye. I admire a mule’s eye; always feel interested in that portion of his anatomy, and, as one likes to be in the vicinity of that which is pleasing, so I, when I have any business with a mule, find his head the attractive feature. These mules behaved remarkably well ”

“ I have the greatest respect for a mule. He knows more than the horse; just as the goose or the duck knows more than the chicken. Six days the mules on the ranch laboured; but on the seventh they were turned out into the pastures to rest and roll and stand around gossiping sociably, rubbing their long, ridiculous Roman noses together, or switching the flies off one another with their tasselled tails. Each evening at sunset all the various teams came in from different directions, converging at the lane, and plodding dustily up its length to the sheds and their night's rest. ”

“ Once again the herd came towards me, and I saw that I was not mistaken, but that a mule really was among them, a mule of a delicate light brown color, with dark back-stripe, and which I thought had the biggest head and the longest ears I had ever seen. Mules are more suitable for rough mountain-riding than horses, are surer-footed, and less likely to fall into abysses—a fact worth consideration. To be sure they are obstinate, and I have known a mule be beaten half to death rather than take another step, not because it was overladen or the way was hard, but simply because it would not. ”

“ I have driven mules, single and double, night and day, from two to ten in a team, and have handled them in every way that it is possible to handle them, and have in my charge at this time two hundred of the best mule teams in the world, and there is not a span among them that could be forced over the road in four minutes. It is true of the mule that he will stand more abuse, more beating, more straining and constant dogging at him than any other animal used in a team. ”

“ Now, a white mule is an old mule, and the older the mule, the bigger the fool, and when they peeped over the top of that hill, only to butt into a goggle-eyed demon, they did what mules always do. When I first saw them I was looking at the north end of that funeral procession. The next instant I was looking at the south end. And as the thing turned over once to adjust itself to different direction, a venerable old darky shot out of the rear end of that hearse, followed by a two-dollar coffin, and everything in that two miles of vehicles turned tail at the same time. ”

“ A mule, however, will eat almost any thing rather than starve. Straw, pine boards, the bark of trees, grain sacks, pieces of old leather, do not come amiss with him when he is hungry. There were many instances, during the late war, where a team of mules were found, of a morning, standing over the remains of what had, the evening before, been a Government wagon. When two or more have been kept tied to a wagon, they have been known to eat each other's tail off to the bone, And yet the animal, thus deprived of his caudal appendage, did not evince much pain. ”

“ Why? Simply because a mule is—a mule. No one has yet written a theory of the evolution of mules. We all know a mule is a blend of horse and donkey, and that reproduction of the species is mercifully withheld by the grace of heaven, but further than that we do not go.
When the war began our C.O. was talking about mules. We had not crossed the water [27] then. He said: “I will not have any mules. No civilised man should have to look after a mule. When I was in Pindi once, a mule ... Mr. Jenks”—our worthy Transport Officer—“there will be no mules in this regiment.” ”

“ We met an everlasting procession of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steep and muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you had to pass a tolerably fat mule. I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. I preferred the inside, of course, but I should have had to take it anyhow, because the mule prefers the outside. A mule’s preference—on a precipice—is a thing to be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside. ”

“ A mule is following the path, and I am the adventurous traveller who is astride on the beast's back. The first observation that occurs to me in my new position is, that mules thoroughly deserve their reputation for obstinacy, and that, in regard to the particular animal on which I am riding, the less I interfere with him and the more I conduct myself as if I was a pack-saddle on his back, the better we are sure to get on together. ”

“ At sight of this pedestrian the bay horse, which had been pacing easily and beautifully, uttered a loud whinny of delight, and changed his easy gait for a sudden gallop that took Molly by surprise, and, losing her balance in the saddle, the reins slipped from her hands. Another moment and our luckless heroine went flying over the head of her noble steed and landed ignobly on her face in the dust of the road. ”

“ A wicked mule is a beau-idéal fiend; the way he tucks his head under his body and sends all his legs out at once, like a spider, is wonderful to see; and when all four mules do it, it is like a fancy sketch in Punch. They drive none but wild mules along this road, and after three months they sell them, for they become too tame for their work. ”

“ We never, I confess, became quite reconciled to the habit all mules have of keeping on the side of the path next to the precipice—except when they meet animals coming from the opposite direction, when they instinctively crowd closely to the over-hanging mountain—but we soon learned that the mule had as much care for his safety as we had for our own, and then the danger, we at first so much dreaded, became more apparent than real. ”

“ The bush broke, causing the mule to fall back forcibly against the inner bank, with myself sandwiched between the adamantine wall of the mountain and the well-shod heels of the mule. The animal, being as much scared as myself, started up the trail at a gallop. I had saved my life but lost my mule. I have no taste for overtaking runaway mules on a steep and interminable up-grade. It is a taste which must be acquired. But then, of course, the mule would turn after his first alarm and tear down to the stable. ”