The hoss trader was sharp enough to see it, and his animal instinct told him that vanity was Pod's weak point; so he opened up with a little blarney.
"Now, Mr. Pod, I'm fair t' say I've sort o' takin' a likin' to ye, and I want to help ye along. I'll sell both my donkeys for ten dollars, er one for five and trade the other for one of your'n. Jest let your partner here run across the field and drive 'em over. I want ye to see 'em."
Coonskin went, and K---- continued: "They're two as fine-lookin' jennies as ye'll run across in many a day, both healthy and strong--not too young--not too old--often plow with 'em--kind and gentle--boy rides 'em everywhere--fast, too, but no danger runnin' away. Why, they're twice the size o' your'n, and 'll carry double the load."
"I'm more than satisfied with my donkeys" (very flattering to Cheese and myself), Pod affirmed, "and only require one more. If I am suited with one of your donkeys, I am willing to pay five dollars for it, but I will not trade one of mine, nor will I purchase both of yours."
By this time the animals arrived. They were certainly big enough, and as for the danger of their running away, they didn't act as if they could run ten feet if charged with a thousand volts of electricity. The farmer said he was bound to make a satisfactory deal with Pod somehow, and that if he wasn't convinced by the time we reached his house that both animals weren't superior to either of his (an absurdity on the face of it), then he would consider some other proposition.
When we reached the house, Cheese and I were generously fed, and Pod and Coonskin invited into dinner. Then K---- chased his donks around the yard, and felt them all over, and finally hoodwinked my master to buy one, and trade the other for Cheese. I could have kicked the daylight out of that man.
When K---- was on his way to town with his five dollars, Pod came to the stable. My new companions were crabbed old spinsters, and raised some objections to going with me.
"San Francisco," said I, "but I don't know where that is any more than do you. Guess it's land's end." Then I told them how far I had come, and that Pod said only a few days before that the journey had only begun; also, that he expected we donks would fall off some before long, from which I inferred the fall would be gradual and the horrors of death prolonged.