Highway Robbery Read Free

markets. Or shining boots like yours, sir. I’m sure that you can understand why I was engaged in such a fierce battle with my conscience.
    Old Toothless turned to observe a cart that was trundling slowly towards us, and Iturned to look at it too. It was loaded with turnips and carrots and guarded by two burly farmers, one in front at the horse’s head and the other sitting behind. Both of them carried cudgels.

    When I turned back, Toothless had disappeared. There hadn’t been time for him to get to the end of the street and I guessed he must have turned into one of the alleyways. My dreams of money had gone with him but I was glad that it was over, and that the dreadful temptation had been removed.

C HAPTER F IVE
    THE FARMERS STOPPED to admire the mare. They were both nearly as broad as they were tall, with bulging forearms and heavy shoulders.
    One of them had a great head of hair like a haystack but none at all on his chin. The other was practically bald on top but had a gingery beard which grew right down on to his chest. It was so thick, a family of wrens might have been nesting in it. I thought that if you turned his head upside down, he would probably look exactly like his friend.

    ‘Ee, but she’s a grand mare,’ he said, and gave her such a hefty slap on the neck I was afraid she’d fall down.
    Haystack gave her a pat on the rump. ‘Who does she belong to, then?’ he said.
    You know, sir, it never occurred to me for an instant to mistrust those two. Maybe it was the slow, solid way they moved, or the hard days of work stored up in their muscles, or maybe it was just their eyes, blue as the summer sky and filled with nothing but wonderment.
    So I told them about the gentleman and his wild ride into town, and I told them about the promise of the golden guinea, and I told them as well about old Toothless and his sneaky attempts to buy the mare.
    ‘He was wasting his time there, wasn’t he?’ said Haystack. ‘Good honest lad like you. He’d get nowhere with that game.’
    That made me feel good, sir. It almost made me believe that I had never even considered old Toothless’s proposition.
    ‘Never trust a bloke like that, anyroad,’ said Wrenbeard. ‘Sure as not he’d have some sharp lad waiting round the next corner ready to rob the money straight back off you.’
    Those farmers might have been slow, but they certainly weren’t as stupid as they looked. I thought I knew every street trick in the book, but I hadn’t thought of that one.
    They had a small barrel lashed to the side of their wagon, and since they had stopped, they took the opportunity to pour a drink of water from it. They gave me a dipper of it as well, which was welcome. The mare grew very excited when she got a scent of it.
    ‘She’s thirsty, God bless her,’ said Haystack. When you think of it, she was bound to be, wasn’t she, sir, after such a long hard gallop. But it hadn’t occurred to me, being as how I’m so ignorant when it comes to horses. There wasn’t enough forher in their little barrel, but they had a bucket for their own horse, and Haystack went off with it in search of a pump. When he came back, the mare plunged her nose in until her nostrils were completely under the water.

    ‘You don’t often see that,’ Wrenbeard said. ‘Most horses keep their nostrils clear.’
    ‘Sign of a great heart,’ said Haystack.
    ‘Is it?’ I said.
    ‘So they say,’ said Haystack.
    ‘So they say,’ said his friend.
    They were completely besotted with her, sir, and very reluctant to move on. Haystack fetched a second bucket of water and Wrenbeard fed her carrots with the tops on and a handful of the oats they had brought for their own mare, though it didn’t please her one bit and they had to give her some too. I wanted to keep those two fellows with me for ever. They were big and strong and gentle, and theycarried their slow, country ways with them wherever they went. Even when another cart came along behind them, they