Uncle Sam was never so taken up with a trade that he had no time for his friends. He beamed a welcome on his good neighbors and his son-in-law.
"Howdy, Jerry. Howdy, Joe. Waal, Judy, you're a-lookin' like a rose in May. You don't mind a old man like me tellin' yer wife she's handsome, do you, Jerry?... No, stranger, the mare's too light. I hain't got no youst for her no more'n a hen has for teeth."
The horse that Uncle Sam held by the bridle was a heavily built iron gray work horse apparently about twelve years old. He was a bit clumsy looking, but on the whole sound and healthy in appearance.
The stranger's horse was a beautiful cream colored mare with large, intelligent eyes, small ears, a gracefully arched neck and slim yet strong looking legs, the very perfection indeed of shape and proportion. Not even a track horse could be daintier in appearance. Uncle Sam tried to look at the animal with disdainful indifference; but for all his experience in the art of dissimulation, he could not keep out of his eyes a covert gleam that glinted of admiration and coveteousness.
"I'd suttenly never dream o' lettin' her go under a hundred," the young trader was saying. "But I jes can't take her a step fu'ther 'ithout shoes, an' I hain't got the money to git her shoes. I've had hard luck lately, stranger. Gawd, what hard luck I've had! Many a time this past month my three babies hain't had all they cud eat; an' me an' my wife has gone hungry fer days together. The two linin's o' my pocket has got to know each other good these past weeks. Lookit the shoes I got on, willyuh? I can't git shoes fer myse'f, let alone fer the mare."
Uncle Sam looked down at the shoes and saw that they were badly scuffed and that the young man's foot was bulging from a slit in the leather on the side of one of them. A good deal of the stitching on the other one had come loose; and it was laced with a shaggy scrap of binder twine. Whether the soles were through or not Uncle Sam could not see.
"An' lookit my shirt. It's the on'y shirt I got, I swear it is; an' it hain't a-goin' to cover my nakedness much longer."
He turned around with a broad grin and showed a long slit over the shoulder blade, through which his healthy, sun-browned skin shone with a satiny sheen.