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Show /ol see her. There weren't many Shetlands around and he'd been doing without the consolations of his kind. She gave him a merry time, the little whore. It was probably the next spring when Dad bought a jackass stud. Mules are stronger and tougher than horses, he said, live longer and bring higher prices. He could have added that there are no sexual complications, and no doubt he was going to make plenty of money out of our mares, but I was certainly sorry to *see that beast. A stallion is a beautiful animal, masculine as they come, even those big heavy broad-rumped work-horse ones like a Dutchman had on a place*' two miles from us. A Percheron. I used to saddle a»» j&be and lead one of our mares in heat up to him. He would be out in the field like any other working slob, one of a team pulling a hay mower, and the Dutchman would unhook and unharness him and lead him in to the corral. As soon as he smelled that mare in heat his head came up and he began to pranfie like he could win a Derby. But he was a huge, heavy horse, a glossy bay with bulging muscles, and our mare was big too, and I thought maybe they would kill each other. But the mark's kicking was half-hearted, nothing to put off a real Utr <M H\t. hfcrX ci^d IAJ% Llizy-i stud, and his biting*was part of the game. That prick as big as a man s arm was not going to kill her and she let him rear up on her, hooves thudding and with powerful squeals, the coupling something to see, a crash of contained violence, the stallion frantic and beautiful with desire, and me a boy in awe, with strange stirrings. Afterwards though, the stallion would drop off and turn away as indifferent as if he was Zeus in disguise. The mare couldn't care less either, and I led her home. The Dutchman's wife and daughters were big and broad-rumped too and after the European custom often worked in the fields, shokking their Americanized neighbors. I would lead the mare down the lane *^(et»^*K3aav«d4«iniiigv. field./hey would be pitching hay and they would pause and look at me and the ^ Prose J , mare aad smile as if^the world was still turning right on its axis. But that jackass was an ugly scrubby beast with a bray that made our dog |