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Updated: May 16, 2025
"Every well-organised mule team that a-way allers carries along a bronco. This little steed, saddled an' bridled, trots throughout the day by the side of the off-wheeler, his bridle-rein caught over the wheeler's hame. The bronco is used to round up the mules in event they strays or declines in the mornin' to come when called. Sech bein' the idee, the cayous is allers kept strictly in camp.
Si gathered up his outfit and started to enter upon his new sphere of usefulness. "Shall I take my gun and bay'net along?" he asked the Orderly. "Guess you'd better; they might come handy!" replied the Orderly, as he thought of the teamster's disastrous encounter with the "off-wheeler." After Shorty had eaten his breakfast he thought he would go back to the tent and see how Si was getting on.
"I like 'em saucy, I own, but this girl's a regular vixen!" Sir Guy was very much put out, and vented his annoyance on his off-wheeler, "double-thonging" that unfortunate animal most unmercifully the whole way to the station. He bade me farewell with a coldness, and almost sulkiness, quite foreign to his usual demeanour, and infinitely pleasanter to my feelings.
"Take care not to tumble into the water, David," said my mother. She was standing by the gate, and from my perch on the back of the off-wheeler, I smiled down on her with boyish self-assurance. The idea of my tumbling into the water! The idea of my drowning even did I meet with so ludicrous a mishap!
Young Phaethon's wheel is locked with a market-gardener's, who is accompanied by two sisters-in-law and the suitors of those nowise disconcerted damsels, all more or less intoxicated. Thriftless has his near leader in the back-seat of a pony-carriage, and Sir Guy's off-wheeler is over the pole.
"Nothing on earth so dangerous; your leader will bolt, or your off-wheeler will turn sulky, or your young one will passage and make the very deuce of a row; they'll never go quiet till the end, however clever your hand is on the ribbons.
After all, I could not help liking Frank very much; and was not my cousin at the back of the coach, to witness all that took place? But Sir Guy would not allow me to be "monopolized," as he called it. "You've lost your roses sadly in London, Miss Coventry," said he, poking his odious face almost under my bonnet, and double-thonging the off-wheeler most unmercifully.
Then the two leaders, made mad with fear by the fury of the storm and the dying struggles of the off-wheeler, plunged and tore at the traces till at last they rent themselves loose and vanished between the darkness overhead and the boiling water beneath.
By six o'clock we got to the Eerste River, having gone forty miles or so in the day. It was a beautiful day, and very pleasant travelling. We had three good little half-Arab bays, and one brute of a grey as off-wheeler, who fell down continually; but a Malay driver works miracles, and no harm came of it.
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