nail. Then he lifted the horse's
foot, rested it on his knee, and began to examine the shoe as an expert
might examine some intricate device.

Ump held that bad shoeing was the root of all evil. "Along comes a
flat-nose," he would say, "with a barefooted colt, an' a gabbin',
chuckle-headed blacksmith nails shoes on its feet, an' the flat-nose
jumps on an' away he goes, hipety click, an' the colt interferes, an'
the flat-nose begins a kickin' an' a cursin', an' then--" Here the
hunchback's fingers began to twitch. "Somebody ought to come along an'
grab the fool by the scruff of his neck an' kick him till he couldn't
set in a saddle, an' then go back an' boot the sole-leather off the
blacksmith."

I have seen the hunchback stop a stranger in the road and point out with
indignation that the shoe on his horse was too short, or binding the
hoof, or too heavy or too light, and then berate the stranger like a
thief because he would not turn instantly and ride back to a smith-shop.
And I have seen him sit over a blacksmith with his narrow face thrust up
under the horse's belly, and put his finger on the place where every
nail was to go in and the place where it was to come out, and growl and
curse and wrangle, until, if I had been that smith, I should have killed
him with a hammer.

But the hunchback knew what he was about. Ward said of Ump that, in his
field, the land of the horse's foot, he was as much an expert as any
professor behind his spectacles. His knowledge came from the observation
of a lifetime, gathered by tireless study of every detail. Even now,
when I see a great chemist who knows all about some drug; a great
surgeon who knows all about the body of a man; or a great oculist who
knows all about the human eye, I must class the hunchback with them.

Ump explored El Mahdi's shoes, pulled at the calks, picked at the nails,
and prodded into the frog of the foot to see if there was any tendency
to gravel. He found a left hind shoe that did not suit him, and put down
the foot and wiped his hands on his breeches.

"Who shod this horse, Quiller?" he said.

"Dunk Hodge," I answered.

The hunchback made a gesture as of one offered information that is
patent. "I know Dunk made the shoes," he said, "by the round corks. But
they've been reset. Who reset 'em?"

"Dunk," said I.

"Not by a jugful!" responded Ump. "Old Dunk never reset 'em."

"I sent the horse to him," I said.

"I don't care a fiddler's damn where yo