orm his opinion
upon his own experience with the man, and so far it had not only been
pleasant but favorable, and far from justifying the half-jeering,
half-malicious talk that had come to his ears. It had been made manifest
to him, it was true, that David was capable of a sharp bargain in
certain lines, but it seemed to him that it was more for the pleasure of
matching his wits against another's than for any gain involved. Mr.
Harum was an experienced and expert horseman, who delighted above all
things in dealing in and trading horses, and John soon discovered that,
in that community at least, to get the best of a "hoss-trade" by almost
any means was considered a venial sin, if a sin at all, and the
standards of ordinary business probity were not expected to govern those
transactions.

David had said to him once when he suspected that John's ideas might
have sustained something of a shock, "A hoss-trade ain't like anythin'
else. A feller may be straighter 'n a string in ev'rythin' else, an'
never tell the truth--that is, the hull truth--about a hoss. I trade
hosses with hoss-traders. They all think they know as much as I do, an'
I dunno but what they do. They hain't learnt no diff'rent anyway, an'
they've had chances enough. If a feller come to me that didn't think he
knowed anythin' about a hoss, an' wanted to buy on the square, he'd git,
fur's I knew, square treatment. At any rate I'd tell him all 't I knew.
But when one o' them smart Alecks comes along and cal'lates to do up old
Dave, why he's got to take his chances, that's all. An' mind ye,"
asserted David, shaking his forefinger impressively, "it ain't only them
fellers. I've ben wuss stuck two three time by church members in good
standin' than anybody I ever dealed with. Take old Deakin Perkins. He's
a terrible feller fer church bus'nis; c'n pray an' psalm-sing to beat
the Jews, an' in spiritual matters c'n read his title clear the hull
time, but when it comes to hoss-tradin' you got to git up very early in
the mornin' or he'll skin the eyeteeth out of ye. Yes, sir! Scat my
----! I believe the old critter _makes_ hosses! But the deakin," added
David, "he, he, he, he! the deakin hain't hardly spoke to me fer some
consid'able time, the deakin hain't. He, he, he!

"Another thing," he went on, "the' ain't no gamble like a hoss. You may
think you know him through an' through, an' fust thing you know he'll be
cuttin' up a lot o' didos right out o' nothin'. It stands