Turning the corner, they came upon Uncle Sam talking to Joe Barnaby and holding the bridle of a stolid, heavily built plow horse, not over young, but healthy and tough looking and apparently good for many more years of useful labor.
"What's went with the purty mare?" asked Jerry, trying with poor success to make his voice sound natural.
"She's changed hands, bless her shapely carcass," laughed Uncle Sam. "This here is one time when the old man was trimmed good, Jerry. After I left here, I took her over to John Hornby, the blacksmith, to git her shod, an' he ses to me:
"'Sam,' ses he, 'you're jes about the eleventh sucker that's brought me that there mare to hev her shod through this past winter an' spring. I'd jes as leave steal stovewood out'n a widder's back yard, Sam, as charge yuh money to put shoes on the feet o' that there animal.'
"'What's wrong with her?' I asks, anxious like.
"'What's wrong with her is she hain't no good fer nothin' whatever. She's track horse stock, but I wouldn't back her agin a mud turtle. She's part paralyzed in them there front legs. Everybody buys her thinks she's footsore; but after they've kep her a spell they find she's got a footsoreness that don't wear off. She's a purty animal an' it's a pity she's that way. But that's the way she is.'
"'Thanks, John,' I ses. 'I allus knowed you wuz a friend o' mine.' An' I leads the mare away.
"Twa'n't twenty minutes after I'd left the blacksmith's shop afore I had her traded fer this feller. He hain't no beauty, an' he hain't no fancy saddle hoss; but he's a hoss I kin use on my place. An' when I hain't got use fer him, I kin allus trade him easy. He's a good, solid, dependable beast, hain't you, Dobbin?"
He patted the horse's gray neck affectionately.
The sun was beginning to slant low in the sky, and a cool late afternoon breeze had sprung up. Carts and buggies and spring wagons rattled through the streets on their way toward the open country; and horsemen cantered past them, going in the same direction. Uncle Sam mounted his plow horse and with a farewell wave of the hand trotted ponderously away with the rest of the procession.
Jerry and Judith followed in the cart. As they passed through Main Street they were greeted by pervasive scents of stale beer and whiskey. The ground was littered with lunch wrappings, egg and peanut shells, and banana skins. The crowd had thinned out. Most of the family parties had already started for home; and of the unattached males who remained some were reeling and lurching about the sidewalk noisy with drunken laughter and ribaldry, others stood propped up against a hydrant or a telegraph pole, portentously solemn and self-important, arguing in declamatory fashion with companions as ridiculously drunk as themselves. Here and there a little knot had formed about men who were quarreling over some fancied grievance, their angry voices rising harsh and ominous as the whiskey seethed in their fuddled brains and they strode threateningly nearer each other and gripped the handles of the revolvers in their pockets.