Gilead - Marilynne Robinson [26]
Now, these were sensible and well-meaning people. But they became so absorbed in making this tunnel that they lost sight of certain practical considerations. They put so much zeal into it that it became a sort of subterranean civic monument. One of the old men said the only thing missing was a chandelier. Very simply, they made it too large, and too near the surface of the ground, and they couldn't brace it, either, since wood was so scarce on the prairie in those days that the lumber for such buildings as they had was carted in from Minnesota. Even thoughtful people have lapses of judgment from time to time.
"When they had just about finished their digging, a stranger on a big black horse came through town. He paused in exactly the wrong spot to ask the name of the place, and he and his horse sank right through the road into that tunnel. When the dust settled, the horse was standing more or less shoulder deep in a hole. The man climbed off him and walked around and around him in a kind of wonderment, not drawing any conclusions at all, try as he might. And when the people came out to ponder this calamity, and took note of his bewilderment, they thought it best to be bewildered, too. So they just stood there with their arms folded, saying, "If that's not the dangedest thing," or words to that effect, and they discussed among themselves the risks that went with owning such a large horse. The poor thing began to struggle, of course, so somebody got a bucket of oats and poured a couple of bottles of whiskey over them, and the horse ate them and pretty soon it nodded off. Then the mood of the stranger became desolate, because the horse was not only standing in a hole but was also unconscious. This latter might not have seemed to crown his afflictions the way it did if he had not himself been a teetotaler. As it was, that snoring horse with its head lying there in the road was a spectacle of gloom for which he truly struggled to find words. Now, settlements of that kind were the work of people of high religious principle, and they would have taken no pleasure at all in watching this unoffending stranger tear his beard and throw his hat at the ground. Well, of course they took a little pleasure in it. But it did seem best to them to get the fellow out of town as quickly as possible so they could deal with that horse, since any Bushwhacker coming up from Missouri or any slave hunter passing through would be liable to interpret the spectacle by the light of his own grudges and suspicions. So one of them offered to trade his horse for the one in the hole. You might think the fellow would have considered this trade advantageous, but in fact he sat on the stoop of the dry-goods store and weighed it for some time. The horse he was offered was a mare, smallish, which the stranger did allow was an advantage. He tried to look at her teeth and got nipped and cursed the luck that had brought him to that town, and asked to borrow a shovel so he could dig up his horse. So the preacher told him, solemnly, that they had lost all their shovels in a terrible fire. "We've got the blades all right, and you're welcome to the use of them," he said. "It's really just the handles we're missing." That was a lie, of course, but it was compelled by the urgency of the situation.
Finally the stranger agreed to accept the mare and her saddle and bridle and some odds and ends, twine and bootblack, which were meant to restore some part of his faith in cosmic justice, and which he accepted as poor recompense for his trouble, reasonably enough.
Once rid of him, the people of the settlement could begin to consider the problem of that horse. Some of the men went through the tunnel from either end to check the state of its legs, since if one was broken they would have to shoot the creature. Then they could have dismembered it as needed and pulled it underground and filled in the hole in the road so as to conceal it. But the legs were sound.
Excavating around the horse would only open more tunnel,