Would she
have done this if I had been driving oxen, or still worse, those animals
which few thought worth anything as draught animals--cows? And then I
thought of Flora's lameness the day before yesterday. Was it honest to
let Dunlap and Thatcher drive off to liberate the nation with a horse
that might go lame?

"Let me have a horse," said I to Preston. "I want to catch them and tell
them something."

I rode up behind the Abolitionists' wagon, waving my hat and shouting.
They pulled up and waited.

"What's up?" asked Dunlap. "Going with us after all? I hope so, my boy."

"No," said I, "I just wanted to say that that nigh mare was lame day
before yesterday, and I--I--I didn't want you to start off with her
without knowing it."

Dunlap asked about her lameness, and got out to look her over. He felt
of her muscles, and carefully scrutinized her for swelling or swinney or
splint or spavin or thoroughpin. Then he lifted one foot after another,
and cleaned out about the frog, tapping the hoof all over for soreness.
Down deep beside the frog of the foot which she had favored he found a
little pebble.

"That's what it was," said he, holding the pebble up. "She'll be all
right now. Thank you for telling me. It was the square thing to do."

"If you don't feel safe to go on with the team," said I, "I'll trade
back."

"No," said he, "we're needed in Kansas; and," turning up an oil-cloth
and showing me a dozen or so of the Sharp's rifles, "so are these. And
let me tell you, boy, if I'm any judge of men, the time will come when
you won't feel so bad to lose half a dozen horses, as you feel now to be
traded out of Flora and Fanny, and make a hundred dollars by the trade.
Get up, Flora; go long, Fanny; good-by, Jake!" And they drove off to the
Border Wars. I had made my first sacrifice to the cause of the
productiveness of the Vandemark Farm.

That night a wagon went away from the Preston farm with the passengers
going to Canada by the U.G. Railway The next morning I began the task of
fitting yokes to my two span of heifers, and that afternoon, I gave
Lily and Cherry their first lesson. I had had some experience in driving
cattle on Mrs. Fogg's farm in Herkimer County, but I should have made a
botch job of it if it had not been for Mr. Preston, who knew all there
was to know about cattle, and while protesting that cows could not be
driven, helped me drive them. In less than a week my cows were driving
as prettily as any ox