The little town hung from the steeply cliff on the rugged walls of the mountain, all inhabitants were excited because this day was the Annual Spring Fair.
People was enjoying the merriment at hand in a place where life was hard and difficult.
From the low terraces behind the peaks, where small farms developed their trades, the owner of one of them came to pickup his new wife, an unknown woman whom he met by mail and decided to ask her to become his companion in life, proposal that was accepted by the female, as was usual in those places and times.
They expended the day in the Fair, near the end of the day it was decided to get back to the farm before sundown. The man attached his mule and donkey to the old wagon, so they started the trip sitting one beside the other.
After a while of marching, the mule sat and refused to keep going. The farmer got down the wagon and cajoled the animal into following the track. He climbed the wagon again, not without warning: "Mule, this is the first".
Some miles ahead, the mule decided to stop again, making the farmer to come down and repeat his work until the mule decided to obey. The farmer told the animal: "Mule, this is the second."
Not many miles ahead, again the mule sat down and refused to follow the farmer goading. Finally, the man unhook the mule from the wagon, went to the back of the vehicle, came back with a big gun and saying: "Mule this is the third" killed the animal with a close shot.
While he climbed back to the driving seat, the woman could not stop her from telling him how terrible it was what he had done, to kill a perfect valuable animal, when he could have tied the mule to the back making it go and so keep the poor animal, since it do not understand what it was doing, maybe it needed only a bit of training to know what was its job, and besides now letting the poor donkey to make all the job to drag the wagon!
When the woman stopped to caught air, the farmer looked her deeply into the eyes and said: "Woman, this is the first!".
The music is a fragment of "Red River Valley" composed by Walter Colborn.
© 2012 Od Liam.
A touchy , emotional and a beautiful story, touched my heart,
ReplyDeleteOd Liam you are a wonderful writer .
Hi, Auntie!!
DeleteLove can have strange facets! :)
Thank you for your warm words, Auntie. Appreciate your kindness!!
The man let impatience get the better part of him. He's so rigid!
ReplyDeleteI enjoy this tale and learn something from it. If I were the woman, I'd run away before he pointed his gun at me!
A very good ending. You let us draw our own conclusion. :)
Impatience is the motor of many other accomplished things! :))
DeleteI suggest you run while the farmer talk the first time to Mule... :))
Yes, that is the idea!
Thank you, BB!!!!
oh my, I never would have thought that the story would go in this direction-I was really shocked when he killed the mule!
ReplyDeletea haunting story!!!!
Billy
In one of my previous lives I embodied a settler in difficult lands to tame. I met a lot of people with no time to work out lateral issues. So they were hard and implacable.
DeleteMaybe Mule deserve its fate, adding problems to those in normal life. One cannot relate the ways of then with present time.
The haunting was the transfer of that behaviour to human relation! There was no time to be polite or romantic! :)
I am kidding, of course! but not much!! :))
hehe, I've got a life at that time too and it's definitely not one of my favourite ones as it wasn't romantic at all and people were soooo implacable, like you wrote. They were more like animals I think. I much prefer this life right now!
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not kidding;-)