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Show I got tied up with a mule for the first time in the summer of my eighteenth year when I hired on with a farmer near Split-bottom, Missouri, who raised hogs and corn and went to town each Saturday. One Saturday--with a mule called Emmett up front pulling a load of corn--the farmer asked if I'd like to tag along. That ride was my first education to mules. "Come on, Brig!" the farmer would call as we went down the road. And then: "Giddap, Blue." "Go, Henry." "Hey there, Maid." What was that all about, I asked. "Emmett feels better thinkin' he isn't pulling the whole load by himself," the farmer answered. Now you remember what I said about a man who showed affection for mules! "Has Emmett got any other pecularities?" I asked. "No more'n any other mule, except one." What was that? "He's very obedient to the word, 'whoa,'" said the farmer. "Stops immediately, and won't move 'till the man who said it says otherwise." At that point I took the farmer for the dolt I thought him to be. Which was confirmed to me when he got himself into a handgame behind the groggery in Splitbottom. There were 10 or 12 |