The horse he pronounced "a dreadful nice horse to go;
but if he could shirk off the work upon the others, he would,"--which
unfairness Platt corrected by timely strokes of the whip whenever the
horse's traces were not tightened. One of the mares wished to go faster,
hearing another horse tramp behind her; "and nothing made her so mad,"
quoth Platt, "as to be held in when she wanted to go." The near leader
started. "O the little devil," said he, "how skittish she is!" Another
stumbled, and Platt bantered her thereupon. Then he told of foundering
through snow-drifts in winter, and carrying the mail on his back--four
miles from Bennington. And thus we jogged on, and got to "mine inn" just
as the dinner-bell was ringing.
Pig-drover, with two hundred pigs. They are much more easily driven on
rainy days than on fair ones. One of his pigs, a large one, particularly
troublesome as to running off the road towards every object, and leading
the drove. Thirteen miles about a day's journey, in the course of which
the drover has to travel about thirty.
They have a dog, who runs to and fro indefatigably, barking at those who
straggle on the flanks of the line of march, then scampering to the other
side and barking there, and sometimes having quite an affair of barking
and surly grunting with some refractory pig, who has found something to
munch, and refuses to quit it.
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