ld keep in their places, and the near
wheeler was so ugly that Pete, the man who had been driving the team,
said, 'the Devil couldn't hold a candle to him for pure meanness.' He
told me he used to swear at them all day and then lie awake nights
cursing himself for being such a fool as to drive them. He said, one
morning he took the team out to work, and after he had been working them
about an hour, the off mule began to cut up, backing, bucking, and
refusing to pull with the near one. At last Pete lost his temper and
began laying the whip on him, saying he would 'whale the stuffing out of
him'; then the mule got mad, broke the harness and the whole team became
unmanageable and got away from him. He let them go and started toward
the house, pouring out a steady stream of oaths as he went. Just at the
gate he met the boss and greeted him with, 'I'll see that team in Hell
before I'll ever draw another line over their backs.' Funson asked him
what was the trouble, and Pete said, 'that off mule has been raising
hell, and the Devil has got into 'em all, breaking the harness and
running away.' The boss told Pete not to make a fool of himself, but to
go back to the field and get his team together. Pete said, 'I'll see you
in Hell before I'll ever touch that team again. You haven't a well broke
team on the ranch for a man to handle. You buy a lot of half-broken,
bucking, balky teams because you can get 'em cheap. You don't care how
much hell it gives a man to drive 'em.' Funson told him to go and hunt
up some cattle, and sent another man to drive the mules. It's an actual
fact, father, that if a man had told the boss in polite and correct
language what had happened to the team, he would have stared in utter
astonishment and surprise."

"Quite true, my son, quite true," said the old gentleman.

"The man that took Pete's place," continued Charles, "drove the team two
days and that let him out. Then I came along and got the job. Didn't
Pete laugh when he came through the field with a bunch of cattle and saw
me trying to take the contrariness out of the leaders. He called out,
'Give 'em hell, give 'em hell!'

"When I came up to the barn at night, Pete was there putting up his
broncho, and he greeted me with, 'Well, Charles, how do you like your
job?'

"I said I wasn't stuck on it.

"'It's hell, ain't it?' said he; then added, 'the only way you can ever
get that team to pull steady is to get right in and cuss 'em good; they
are