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By Root 4393 0

now unrecognisable mud-colored creatures engaged in a life-and-death struggle with it, the progress—if any—of which had to be computed in dreadful and glacier-like inches. And all the while, the man sat in his tilted chair on the gallery watching us while Ned and I strained for every inch we could get on the rope which by now was too slippery with mud to grip with the hands, and at the rear of the car Boon strove like a demon, titanic, ramming his pole beneath the automobile and lifting and heaving it forward; at one time he dropped, flung away the pole and, stooping, grasped the car with his hands and actually ran it forward for a foot or two as though it were a wheelbarrow. No man could stand it. No man should ever have to. I said so at last. I stopped pulling, I said, panted: "No. We cant do it. We just cant." And Boon, in an expiring voice as faint and gentle as the whisper of love: "Then get out of the way or I'll run it over you."

"No," I said. I stumbled, slipping and plunging, back to him. "No," I said. "You'll kill yourself."

"I aint tired," Boon said in that light dry voice. "I'm just getting started good. But you and Ned can take a rest. While you're getting your breath, suppose you drag up some more of that brush—"

"No," I said, "no! Here he comes! Do you want him to see it?" Because we could see him as well as hear—the suck and plop of the mules' feet as they picked their delicate way along the edge of the mudhole, the almost musical jangle of the looped chains, the man riding one and leading the other, his shoes tied together by the laces looped over one of the hames, the doubletree balanced in front of him as the old buffalo hunters in the pictures carried their guns—a gaunt man, older than we—I anyway —had assumed.

"Morning, boys," he said. "Looks like you're about ready for me now. Howdy, Jefferson," he said to Boon. "Looks like you did get through last summer, after all."

"Looks like it," Boon said. He had changed, instantaneous and complete, like a turned page: the poker player who has just seen the second deuce fall to a hand across the table. "We might a got through this time too if you folks didn't raise such heavy mud up here."

"Dont hold that against us," the man said. "Mud's one of our best crops up thisaway."

"At two dollars a mudhole, it ought to be your best," Ned said. The man blinked at Ned a moment.

"I dont know but what you're right," he said. "Here. You take this doubletree; you look like a boy that knows which end of a mule to hook to."

"Get down and do it yourself," Boon said. "Why else are we paying you two dollars to be the hired expert? You done it last year."

"That was last year," the man said. "Dabbling around in this water hooking log chains to them things undermined my system to where I come down with rheumatism if I so much as spit on myself." So he didn't stir. He just brought the mules up and turned them side by side while Boon and Ned hooked the trace chains to the singletrees and then Boon squatted in the mud to make the log chain fast to the car.

"What do you want me to hook it to?" he said. "I dont care myself," the man said. "Hook up to any part of it you want out of this mudhole. If you want all of it to come out at the same time, I'd say hook to the axle. But first I'd put all them spades and ropes back in the automobile. You wont need them no more, at least here." So Ned and I did that, and Boon hooked up and we all three stood clear and watched. He was an expert of course, but by now the mules were experts too, breaking the automobile free of the mud, keeping the strain balanced on the doubletree as delicately as wire walkers, getting the automobile into motion and keeping it there with no more guidance than a word now and then from the man who rode the near mule, and an occasional touch from the peeled switch he carried; on. to where the ground was more earth than water.

"All right, Ned," Boon said. "Unhook him."

"Not yet," the man said. "There's another hole just this side of the bridge that I'm throwing in free. You aint been acquainted here for a year