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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The Blue Book Magazine, October 1931, with "Lord of the Wild Asses"
O'SHAUGHNESSY, for so, in the circus from which his owner had bought him, the old mule had been named, gazed across the dry, heat-quivering African plain toward the distant belt of timber, and with his left hind leg battered out the brains of a mosquito which was overeating itself on his left ear.
There was, he decided presently, nothing about that plain or that timber more attractive than any other plain or timber, and so, with a shrug of the withers, he prepared to go to sleep again, when suddenly and without warning came the scent.
And with a galvanic start of astonishment the mule lifted his fiddle head and sniffed. What was this very peculiar and desirable smell? O'Shaughnessy was probably the most blasé mule on earth, but the scent which now tickled his nostrils thrilled him with a sensation he had not experienced since the days of his exuberant youth.
For it was the scent of freedom—electrifying, alluring, irresistible.
O'Shaughnessy, only vaguely conscious of what it meant, stared again across the dry plain. The slight derangement of his digestive machinery caused by the piece of harness he had eaten overnight ceased to trouble him; he was no longer conscious of the close attentions of the mosquitoes, ticks and other humble but industrious members of the insect tribe which populated his somewhat sparsely covered hide; and the drowsiness which had possessed him prior to the corning of the scent passed away.
That scent of freedom was churning up strange dreams and desires in the head and in the heart of the worldly-wise old mule. He was day-dreaming of wonderful things—of vast plains of delightful grass, of shady trees in silent, peaceable places, of basking in warm hollows, of standing knee-deep in cool mud at the edge of lakes, of never again seeing man, and above all, of never doing again a stroke of work of any description whatever.
Some ancestor of the old mule must have known these delights; and the knowledge, inherited from that ancestor, must have lain latent in O'Shaughnessy's blood all his life. Certainly it was not first-or even second-hand knowledge that conjured up the alluring visions now kaleidoscoping on the old tough's mental horizon.
Then, out of the corner of a whity-yellow eye, O'Shaughnessy perceived approaching him the person for whom he worked—one Haydon, a gnarled and slightly intemperate prospector; and for once in his life the mule acted on the immediate impulse of the moment. That is to say, he snapped his rotten tether with a sudden jerk, and went away from there.
Mr. Haydon—"Ugly Bill" to his closer friends—uttered a startled oath and stared.
"Them flies have bored their way through his totally inexpressible hide!" he muttered.
Then, raising his voice, he peremptorily ordered O'Shaughnessy back.
The mule stopped, half turned, and deliberately grinned at his owner—a villainous, leery, sneering grin, the kind of grin which only a mule could produce. Then with a contemptuous fling of his lightning heels O'Shaughnessy ambled away.
Ugly Bill loosed a spate of African language, perceived the futility of words, and drew from its scabbard the gigantic forty-five-caliber revolver without which he rarely cared to be seen in public.
O'Shaughnessy, heading away toward the plains and jungles though he was, perceived the action, and very intelligently got a move on. The manner in which he covered the next fifty yards was a very remarkable example of what a mule can do when he is really extended.
Nevertheless, O'Shaughnessy was never nearer sudden death than at that moment, for Ugly Bill Haydon was a notably efficient performer with a revolver. But even as his horny forefinger crooked round the trigger, he remembered the price of cartridges, and lowered the weapon reluctantly.
"He ain't worth a good cartridge," said Ugly Bill, and turned away. "The lions will get the darned old fool, anyway. And he'll probably choke?em."
But O'Shaughnessy, now a swiftly receding speck, did not hear him. Even if he had, the old mule would not have been at all agitated. He had seen too many lions in his time—had helped haul too many of their cages—to feel alarmed at the prospect of meeting a few on the wrong side of the bars.
O'Shaughnessy had decided to retire from civilization, and that settled it. When even an ordinary mule makes up his mind definitely, one may take it that the last word on the subject has been said. And O'Shaughnessy was far from being an ordinary mule. He was more stubborn and yet more intelligent—which was just as well, for he had embarked upon an enterprise which would require all his brains, ability and experience to bring to a successful conclusion.
IT was not long before he received an indication that,
while he was free of the trammels of work for others, he
was not free of labor on his own behalf. He had, in fact,
become his own employer—and it was a black mamba of
large size and evil temper which provided O'Shaughnessy
with his first contract.
The mule nearly stepped on the great snake which was lying in a patch of short grass, digesting its last meal. Anything but a mule or goat would have stepped on the deadly black brute. But among the gifts of the mule is vision in the feet; their hoofs, it would almost appear, are gifted with eyes.
At any rate, O'Shaughnessy, sure-footed as a chamois, seemed to possess them. His hoof, descending straight onto the back of the snake, just felt, as it were, an unaccustomed softness, and instinctively swung a few inches clear. But the touch brought the evil-tempered reptile up out of the grass, hissing menaces and maledictions, almost as swiftly as if it were a garden rake inadvertently trodden upon.
The old mule snorted with horror and disgust. The mysterious influence of that dim, far-off ancestor of his was very strong in O'Shaughnessy today, for with no experience whatever in the handling of black mambas, deadliest of snakes, yet O'Shaughnessy knew exactly what to do and how to do it. His tattered ears went back, and quick as light he lunged forward, his jaws open. His yellowish teeth snapped together, and he bit the mamba clean in half, like a stalk of celery. He then proceeded to dance on the moieties of mamba on the ground, and did not leave them until he had reduced them to a species of very unpleasant-looking paste. Then he resumed his journey.
Whether the mule quite realized what a narrow escape from an extremely unattractive death he had just experienced is doubtful. It is, indeed, doubtful whether, if the snake had not still been under the influence of its last meal, O'Shaughnessy, quick as he had been, would have been quick enough. Certainly the whole business deeply disgusted a most competent-looking vulture, who had dropped from out of the skies like a plummet at the first sign of trouble.
But O'Shaughnessy was gayly heading onward.
"Big worms they look like, over here" he reflected. "But there's one less than there was!"
He noticed a small lake lying away to the right, and bore toward it at an easy amble. The thickets were denser nearer the water, and O'Shaughnessy thought he was practically alone in the district until, passing one of the thickets, a brindled wildebeeste—more popularly known as a gnu—appeared abruptly out of the shade. And since O'Shaughnessy never knew there were such things as gnus, this gnu was new—that is to say, gnus were new to O'Shaughnessy, and he hardly gnu a knew. (Excuse me one moment, dear reader, while I work this thing out. — Author).The old mule was immensely surprised to see the gnu. Indeed, he hardly knew it was a gnu—gnus being gnu to the old mule; but if O'Shaughnessy hardly knew the new was a gnu, the old mule was gnu to the knew—what I mean to write is that the old mule was as astonished at the sight of the wildebeeste (gnu) as the wildebeeste was at the sight of the old mule.
For a moment the two regarded each other in wonder.
O'Shaughnessy ran his eyes over the horns, head, mane, tail and antelope legs of the gnu, and the gnu—a solitary, sour-tempered old bull—studied the ears and general make-up of O'Shaughnessy.
Then they snorted in each other's faces.
"Say, are you a horse or a cow?" inquired the mule, in the mysterious language by which beasts contrive to convey their thoughts to each other.
The gnu shook his head threateningly to indicate his sharp-pointed horns.
"If it comes, to that," he responded through his dilated nostrils, "I'd like to know are you a jackass or a freak-colored quagga?"
The blood of O'Shaughnessy mounted.
"Say, horse-cow, I ain't the kind of mule that stands for no nicknames," he warned. The gnu stared.
"Well, but are you a quagga?" he asked.
"Nary quag," replied O'Shaughnessy shortly, "and I'll kick the ribs out of any cow-horse that says I be. I'm a mule—and proud of it."
The gnu sniffed the air and started.
"You smell of man," he said.
"Well, what of it? What are you going to do about it?" inquired O'Shaughnessy shortly.
The gnu wheeled abruptly, and went away at full gallop. There are few speedier grass-eaters than a healthy gnu, and this one convinced the mule of this great truth within the next few seconds.
The mule shrugged his withers, and turned to the cool mud at the edge of the water.
"There's no sense to a horse-cow," he told himself. "That feller was hunting trouble. Called me a quagga! What is a quagga, anyway?"
He lowered his head to drink from the lake, and a log of wood floating near his nose suddenly transformed itself into a Large Mouth plentifully bestudded with long teeth, which rushed at him with incredible speed.
O'Shaughnessy shot back in reverse gear with a squeal of amazement. He had never before met the gentle crocodile in its natural haunts.
"Great tether-ropes and picket-pins!" he snorted; and he backed out, staring at the place where the scaly tail of the disappointed crocodile had disappeared. "Lizards, now—about a thousand times bigger than any lizard I ever seen." He shook his head.
"I guess I'm going to earn my freedom," he told himself.
He watched the lake for a time, but no more lizards appeared, and presently he pushed on.
He had not the remotest idea of whither he was heading, or of what he expected to find when he reached his destination. He was being driven by that strange instinct that had suddenly awakened in his heart hours before.
SOMETHING was calling him on—northward, ever
northward. Almost everything he encountered so far was
strange to him. He had only been in Africa six weeks,
and in the wilder parts a week; and yet, as he ambled
on, thinking,—as mules will,—he felt in his
blood that he had been in this place before. Everything
was strange to him, but nothing was new. He had sensed,
somehow, that the black mamba was a deadly and terrible
thing. That was why he had danced on it after its sudden
decease. There was that in him, too, which in a flash had,
as it were, reminded him that the Mouth of Teeth in the
lake was a thing to retreat from swiftly.
But he did not know what these freaks were—he only knew instinctively how to deal with them. And he only knew it in the same manner as a baby knows enough to grip tightly a bough or twig placed in its hands.
So the old mule plunged steadily north, pausing occasionally to snatch a few bites of grass or a drink of water. Occasionally he met some of the denizens of the district—for instance, a wart-hog, of such perfectly horrifying appearance as to cause O'Shaughnessy actually to grind his teeth with amazement.
"An' what the devil are you, anyway?" asked the mule, standing stiff-legged, with ears pricked forward.
But the wart-hog merely grunted and trotted past. O'Shaughnessy had no desire whatever to detain the beast. The lure of the wart-hog was not as the strange lure that was irresistibly drawing him north.
Late in the afternoon he fell in with a troop of zebra. They were feeding in a slight depression of the great park-like plain which O'Shaughnessy was crossing.
Unlike the gnu, they appeared not to notice any scent of man about O'Shaughnessy. But that was because he had now shaken it off. He had been traveling hard in very hot sunshine for a long time, and any odor which he now diffused was of mule, pure mule.
O'Shaughnessy now received another shock! He was familiar with zebras, for in the circus era he had been rather friendly with Stripy, an old zebra that formed one of the alleged attractions of the show. So he went forward to join the troop with much the same feeling as a man who, at the end of a long, lonely day, finds himself suddenly among friends.
But long before he was mingling with them, the leader galloped out to meet him. He was a very much more spirited creature than O'Shaughnessy's old friend Stripy.
This proud, dashing, clean-legged, dazz1ingly striped creature which came racing up to the old mule, with eyes blazing, ears laid back, nostrils blown wide, was to poor old Stripy what a proud parrot is to a molting crow.
"Get out of this, you animated Hide!" snorted the lordly one with utter contempt; then he reared, wheeled on his hind legs dropped, and all with the most amazing speed, lashed out. His unshod hoofs rattled on O'Shaughnessy's ribs like bricks dropped on a cement sidewalk.
The mule gasped, not so much with pain, though the flying hoofs jarred him considerably, as with surprise and anger.
He squealed, and wheeled in turn. Twice he visited the plump sides of the zebra with his heavily shod feet, and then the zebra reluctantly decided that he had had ample.
"Get out, and keep out," he conveyed to the mule, "or you'll regret it."
And so saying, he cantered—rather stiffly—back to his troop.
O'SHAUGHNESSY stood watching him wickedly for a moment,
head down, flat-eared, his lower lip hanging and his eye
very vicious indeed. He hesitated a moment, in doubt
whether he should not follow the haughty, insolent beast
back to the troop and mangle him so that not even his
favorite wife could tell whether he was striped or spotted.
It was tempting, very tempting indeed. With his iron hoofs,
his teeth, weight, strength and practice in taking care of
himself, O'Shaughnessy knew that he could make the zebra
the sorriest thing in Africa within a quarter of an hour.
But he was in a hurry. There was something in the north
calling him, calling him with an insistence that was not to
be denied. He must move on. Perhaps later he could revisit
and destroy that zebra, but now he must not delay.
So he bellowed an insult across to the arrogant one, and moved on upon his journey, reflecting, as he went, upon the joys of freedom.
"It's a big country, and plenty of feeding to it," he mused as he went; "but there's no hospitality."
Almost immediately a long-faced, melancholy-looking creature rather like a heifer out of a nightmare moved out from a bush, and trotted along beside him.
"Going far?" she said.
O'Shaughnessy stared at her.
"Yes. What are you?"
The creature said she was a hartebeeste.
"Hard luck," said O'Shaughnessy sympathetically; for the hartebeeste, scraggy though she was, and woefully plain, was the first living thing he had yet met who had given him a friendly greeting.
"Yes, a hartebeeste. Very lonely. My mate was killed by a lion last month," she said, trotting close to O'Shaughnessy, "and I am seeking another mate."
"Are ye, now?" said the old mule, glancing sideways at her. "Well, ma'am, I hope you find one. This is no place for a lone hartebeeste. Its taken me all me time to bear up, and I'm used to tough times, you bet you,"
"The people of these plains don't like strangers," said the hartebeeste, "not even though they are as handsome as you."
"Handsome as which?" ejaculated O'Shaughnessy.
"As you," replied the hartebeeste. "What are you—a quagga?"
"Me a quagga? No, I'm a mule."
The hartebeeste seemed puzzled.
"You are the first mule I have ever met," she said presently.
O'Shaughnessy almost stopped.
"What! Never met a mule? Say, where was you reared?"
"Why, in this district," replied the gaunt female.
"Was you, now? And ain't there no mules round about here?"
"No."
O'Shaughnessy suddenly felt very lonely. "You sure? Nary mule?"
"Quite sure. What are you hurrying for, mule?" inquired the hartebeeste.
O'Shaughnessy was beginning to wonder, himself.
"I dunno," he said. "I jest feel as though I got to. I'm kind of searching for something."
"Perhaps it's a mate," said the hartebeeste hopefully. "And perhaps you've found her. Perhaps," she added, after a pause, "perhaps it's me you were searching for, and you didn't know it."
"No, it ain't you," said the old mule. "It ain't no mate I'm searching for. It's a place, as near as I can figure it out."
"Oh, is it?" said the hartebeeste, with an air of extreme disappointment, and slackening her pace. "Good-by, then."
"So long, ma'am," said O'Shaughnessy, not without relief.
He looked back when he was a few yards farther on.
The hartebeeste was staring after him. O'Shaughnessy pretended he had not noticed her, and hurried on.
"She may be a widow," he said to himself, "but she's sure got the appearance of a pretty ancient spinster."
Which, though not elegant, was strictly true—as those who have seen a lady hartebeeste will readily admit.
AT the next water-hole the mule stopped to drink,
preparatory to laying up for the night.
But—so curious and potent a thing is instinct—he did not lay up anywhere near the water-hole, which was the drinking-place of many carnivorae—notably lions and leopards. O'Shaughnessy, however, did not know this.
The instinct which was driving him north was protecting him, too. He drank his fill, and quietly lobbed away to a dense wood that loomed up some two miles or so on his right. He forced his way through thickets of thorn that would have ripped the hide of a thinner-skinned animal into festoons, and finally came to rest in a tiny clearing. Here he settled down behind a natural zareba, or thorny fortress, that was calculated to discourage the hungriest beast that ever prowled.
But he did not realize it. He had gone there in blind, unreasoning obedience to that which was in his blood— and he had had too long a day to allow the thought of possible lions to agitate him.
But no prey-hunting prowlers chanced to pass his way that night—or if any did, either they failed to wind him or did not care for the flavor of him. Certainly he was not disturbed. He had fed and drunk, and by dawn was once more on his way.
HIS instinct was very strong in him this
morning—so clamorous and insistent that he halted for
nothing. At least, he did not halt for any length of time.
There were delays, of course. It is a matter of extreme
difficulty, if not impossibility, for a mule to travel
far across the African veldt without delays. Try it, some
of you, one of these days—er—what I mean to
say—um—ah—quite so, you understand.
The rhinoceros, for instance, which O'Shaughnessy met shortly after dawn hindered him slightly. It was a grim old bull with two horns on his face, and he seemed to be suffering from toothache in the back horn. He winded the mule while O'Shaughnessy was looking the other way, and he charged without notice. The mule swung clear of the horns, but the impact of the vast body rolled him over like a rabbit. He was up like a flash.
But the rhinoceros galloped straight on, apparently disdaining to return for a mere mule, and a laughing hyena crawled out of a hole in an adjacent hillock, and seeking to hide its disappointment at O'Shaughnessy's escape, feigned intense mirth. The beast howled with laughter—for so O'Shaughnessy conceived the very unpleasant sounds to be.
Once again the head of the old mule dropped low; back went the tell-tale ears, and white-eyed, walking rather stiffly, O'Shaughnessy approached the unclean ruffian with the exaggerated sense of humor.
"You laughing at me, huh?" he inquired.
The hyena cringed, looking up with eyes of furtive malice. He was near his hole, and that may have rendered this Bolshevist of the brute creation unduly courageous.
"Well, you gotta laugh at something sometimes," he half snarled, backing a little. "An' why not at you, huh? You're worth one good laugh, anyway!"
O'Shaughnessy snorted.
"Well, all right—laugh at this."
The mule wheeled like lightning, and the hyena wheeled as much like lightning as his weak hindquarters would allow him to.
He was late. O'Shaughnessy's hoofs lifted him ten clear yards—and the vultures called upon him exactly one and a half seconds later.
O'SHAUGHNESSY proceeded on his way, chuckling. "I guess
I'm getting wise to this veldt business," he mused.
A few moments later the mule found himself galloping up a slight slope. He was very near his journey's end now. He knew it. He was back where—so said that drop of blood inherited from the far-off, long-dead ancestor—he belonged.
He topped the rise and looked down. A queer thrill ran through him as he looked. Before him lay an immense valley, so vast that it was an enormous grassy plain set between two ranges of hills, miles apart. There were in the great, fertile plain many trees, great clumps of timber; and there were lakes too, gleaming under the sun. Shade and grass and water in abundance. Doubtless there were sand-patches there too, that were fit for a mule to roll in.
O'Shaughnessy sniffed the air of this place. It was good air—very good; but here the slight breeze veered a little, and the mule stiffened, his head high, sniffing with dilated nostrils. There was a taint upon that air—a taint of blood and of lions.
Far away down the slope O'Shaughnessy saw an indistinct gray eddying, a mere indistinguishable blur of movement.
Then, above the salt and bitter reek of newly shed blood, the rank and ominous taint of the lions, the mule caught yet another scent—and this time one that went cleaving home to his big heart with a poignancy that, if he had only known it, was pain. Thus the wanderer smells again some long-forgotten perfume when he revisits the garden of his youth,
O'Shaughnessy knew, though they were yet too far to see, what that distant gray eddy meant. That was the great herd of wild asses, wheeling and plunging, down there—the huge troop from which, perhaps centuries before, the ancestor, of O'Shaughnessy had been captured. Perhaps that one had been the leader of the herd of those days.
AND now the old circus drudge had come wholly under the
strange dominance of the wild strain of blood that, through
a long, long line of domesticated asses, was descended to
him. Dormant, latent these many years, it had awakened
gradually, and now had taken complete possession of him.
That was all—but it was enough. Here, far down the long, beautiful slope, was the herd that O'Shaughnessy had come to lord it over, by virtue of his size, his cunning and his vast experience. Dimly the old mule sensed that here were his people.... And the air that blew up from them was bitter with blood.
O'Shaughnessy galloped forward.
Compared with the swift and graceful beasts of the great herd,—and there is a difference incredibly vast between the wild ass and that willing slave the everyday donkey,—the best gallop that the old mule could produce was but a crawl. But his heart was the heart of the herd-leader, no less. Nothing could put into his big body the grace and speed and beauty of the wild asses; but nothing could drive from his heart the courage that was there. For he had come to be Lord of the Wild Asses, no less.
But there were lions harrying his people.
Very good—he would deal even with lions.
O'Shaughnessy galloped steadily down the long slope. He could see now what had happened.
Between him and the main herd crouched a lion and a lioness—smallish brutes, very dark in color. They were feeding upon a half-grown foal that was freshly killed. They were evidently hungry, for they tore ravenously at the carcass, eying the herd at intervals.
Beyond them, stamping, curvetting, plunging, eddied the main body of the wild asses, staring and snorting furiously. With all their restlessness they maintained a certain vague formation, ever melting and re-forming, the males in the forefront, females behind, and sheltered with these the foals—many of them little, long-legged things, very young, some newly born.
Old O'Shaughnessy came galloping steadily down.
Gone was all his painfully acquired knowledge and experience. He had left now only his strength, his iron-shod heels and his fighting skill—just those things, and the great heart of his ancestor.
The lioness saw him first, and sprang up, red-jawed, with a bestial snarl, as of warning, to her mate. He too rose, but more leisurely, and faced the mule, with a species of mild surprise. He seemed to shake himself loosely together, licking his lips.
And down upon these trained and taloned deaths, that poor brave old maniac O'Shaughnessy the mule hurled himself—for the sake of his people!
He slewed a little as he came up, ready to wheel, for he could do little against those swift-leaping beasts with his forelegs, skilled though he was in the use of them. The lioness sprang first.
The one advantage the old mule possessed was that the lions were wholly unused to anything on hoofs that fought—and O'Shaughnessy marked his sole advantage as an eager card-player may mark the king at écarté.
The lioness misjudged her spring for the oddly slewing body of the mule—misjudged it utterly, so that, kicking with the last ounce of strength in his body, and timing his shot to a fraction, O'Shaughnessy's polished, iron-bound hoofs crashed full in the wrinkled, open-jawed face of the beast.
She dropped with a choked sound, half-roar, half-snarl, one foreleg broken, her jaw smashed, and blinded in one eye—doomed as inevitably as the little dead foal had been.
But O'Shaughnessy was in no better case. So swiftly after the impact that O'Shaughnessy's heels had not touched the ground, the lion sprang in turn. He landed upon the back of the mule, a little to the left side near the shoulder, within easy reach of the neck. How many times, upon how many unfortunate animals, the killer had landed in just that way there is no way of telling. But the number was many, for a fatal and diabolical skill distinguished the leap.
O'Shaughnessy went down with a crash. And the tawny thing upon him hugged closer, busy with fang and talon.
A few yards away the lioness crouched, roaring—short, coughing, resentful roars, terrible sounds.
Beyond her stamped the uneasy herd—the males at the forefront, and the females behind, sheltering the foals.
Then, abruptly, the big brown body of the old mule went limp and still. For a moment the lion stood over him watching, catlike. Then he drew away, with stained jaws, and gazed at his mate.
And one by one the wide-winged watchers dropped from the skies.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
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