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Updated: May 19, 2025
A committee of 'em ran some trace-chains through the armholes of my vest, and escorted me through their gardens and orchards. "Their fruit trees hadn't lived up to their labels. Most of 'em had turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of blackjacks and poplars.
A simple enough thing to look at, but so is the business end of a mule. This thing is goin' to make the Old Man a thousand times over or it's goin' to break him in two like a rotten stick." The workmen were coming up, driving their teams with dragging trace-chains to be hitched to the scrapers and big plows standing where they had quit work the night before.
I yelled at him not to come in, but he struck out toward me with his clothes on, swimming like a dog. He got to me and helped me out in the water on a high place, and made me stand there while he worked and tugged at the trace-chains for twenty minutes till he finally unhitched Bob and pulled him out of the mire. Then he helped me out and dragged the wagon ashore."
Well, as I have already said, Deacon Gramps sat on his plow-handles. Just as he turned to unfasten the trace-chains from the plow to drive his horses to the barn, he saw two men climbing over the whitewashed fence that led from the barn toward the Church on the hill. Seeing these men were coming towards him, he resumed his position on the plow-handles and waited for them.
During the war it became customary to cut the drawing-chains, or, as some call them, the trace-chains. The object of this was, to bring the mule close up to his work. The theory was taken from the strings of horses used in drawing railroad cars through cities.
The trace-chains tightened, and the clattering, bumping, jingling procession began again, its rear brought up by the six-horse ammunition-wagon. They rode speechless for the best part of an hour, each man's eyes on the distant conflagration that had begun now to light up the whole of the sky ahead of them. They still rode in darkness, but they seemed to be approaching the red rim of the Pit.
"Halt!" roared Bellairs. The advance-guard kicked up a little shower of sparks, trace-chains slacked with a jingle and the jolting ceased. Bellairs rode up to the advance-guard. "Now, Sergeant," he ordered, "it looks as though that were the Doonha barracks burning over yonder. There's no knowing, though, what it is.
Dozens of huge wagons were spread over the show-grounds; a multitude of men and horses swarmed in and about them; curious crowds of early risers stood afar off and gazed. The rhythmic pounding of iron stakes, driven down by four precise sledge-men came to his ears from all sides; the jangling of trace-chains; the creaking of wagons and the whine of pulleys.
He was just disappearing from sight when Dockery, unable to longer stand up, tottered and fell by the side of the trail, writhing in his agony. And while he lay thus the faithful horse increased his speed to a gallop and went along thus for miles, his trace-chains rattling an accompaniment to his hoof-falls as he followed the trail to Last Chance.
Saddles and spinning-wheels, an ox-yoke and trace-chains, reels and wash-tubs, were incongruously pushed together in the corners. Only one of the three men in the room made any effort to reduce the confusion to order.
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