filled out, the head became less ungainly. As if to make up for these
improvements, the colt's markings began to set. They took the shapes of
a saddle-stripe, three white stockings, and an irregular white blaze
covering one side of his face and patching an eye. On chest and belly
the mother sorrel came out rather sharply, but on the rest of him was
that peculiar blending which gives the blue roan shade, a color
unpleasing to the critical eye, and one that lowers the market value.
Lafe, however, found the colt good to look upon. But Lafe himself had no
heritage of beauty. He had not even grown up to his own long, thin legs.
Possibly no boy ever had hair of such a homely red. Certainly few could
have been found with bigger freckles. But it was his eyes which
accented the plainness of his features. You know the color of a ripe
gooseberry, that indefinable faint purplish tint; well, that was it.
If Lafe found no fault with Blue Blazes, the colt found no fault with
Lafe. At first the colt would sniff suspiciously at him from under the
shelter of the old sorrel's neck, but in time he came to regard Lafe
without fear, and to suffer a hand on his flank or the chore boy's arm
over his shoulder. So between them was established a gentle confidence
beautiful to see.
Fortunate it would have been had Lafe been master of horse on the
Perkins farm. But he was not. Firstly, there are no such officials on
Michigan peach-farms; secondly, Lafe would not have filled the position
had such existed. Lafe, you see, did not really belong. He was an
interloper, a waif who had drifted in from nowhere in particular, and
who, because of a willingness to do a man's work for no wages at all,
was allowed a place at table and a bunk over the wagon-shed. Farmer
Perkins, more jealous of his reputation for shrewdness than of his
soul's salvation, would point to Lafe and say, knowingly:
"He's a bad one, that boy is; look at them eyes." And surely, if Lafe's
soul-windows mirrored the color of his mental state, he was indeed in a
bad way.
In like manner Farmer Perkins judged old Kate's unhandsome colt.
"Look at them ears," he said, really looking at the unsightly
nose-blaze. "We'll have a circus when it comes to breakin' that
critter."
Sure enough, it _was_ more or less of a circus. Perhaps the colt was at
fault, perhaps he was not. Olsen, a sullen-faced Swede farm-hand, whose
youth had been spent in a North Sea herring-boat, and whose disposition
had been matured by sundry second mates on tramp steamers, was the
appropriate person selected for introducing Blue Blazes to the uses of a
halter.
Judging all humans by the standard established by the mild-mannered
Lafe, the colt allowed himself to be caught after small effort. But when
the son of old Kate first felt a halter he threw up his head in alarm.
Abruptly and violently his head was jerked down. Blue Blazes was
surprised, hurt, angered. Something was bearing hard on his nose; there
was something about his throat that choked.
Had he, then, been deceived? Here he was, wickedly and maliciously
trapped. He jerked and slatted his head some more. This made matters
worse. He was cuffed and choked. Next he tried rearing. His head was
pulled savagely down, and at this point Olsen began beating him with
the slack of the halter rope.
Ah, now Blue Blazes understood! They got your head and neck into that
arrangement of straps and rope that they might beat you. Wild with fear
he plunged desperately to right and left. Blindly he reared, pawing the
air. Just as one of his hoofs struck Olsen's arm a buckle broke. The
colt felt the nose-strap slide off. He was free.
A marvellous tale of fierce encounter with a devil-possessed colt did
Olsen carry back to the farm-house. In proof he showed a broken halter,
rope-blistered hands, and a bruised arm.
"I knew it!" said Farmer Perkins. "Knew it the minute I see them ears.
He's a vicious brute, that colt, but we'll tame him."
So four of them, variously armed with whips and pitchforks, went down to
the pasture and tried to drive Blue Blazes into a fence corner. But the
colt was not to be cornered. From one end of the pasture to the other he
raced. He had had enough of men for that day.
Next morning Farmer Perkins tried familiar strategy. Under his coat he
hid a stout halter and a heavy bull whip. Then, holding a grain measure
temptingly before him, he climbed the pasture fence.
In the measure were oats which he rattled seductively. Also he called
mildly and persuasively. Blue Blazes was suspicious. Four times he
allowed the farmer to come almost within reaching distance only to turn
and bolt with a snort of alarm just at the crucial moment. At last he
concluded that he must have just one taste of those oats.
"Come coltie, nice coltie," cooed the man in a strained but conciliating
voice.
Blue Blazes planted himself for a sudden whirl, stretched his neck as
far as possible and worked his upper lip inquiringly. The smell of the
oats lured him on. Hardly had he touched his nose to the grain before
the measure was dropped and he found himself roughly grabbed by the
forelock. In a moment he saw the hated straps and ropes. Before he could
break away the halter was around his neck and buckled firmly.
Farmer Perkins changed his tone: "Now, you damned ugly little brute,
I've got you! [Jerk] Blast your wicked hide! [Slash] You will, will you?
[Yank] I'll larn you!" [Slash.]
Man and colt were almost exhausted when the "lesson" was finished. It
left Blue Blazes ridged with welts, trembling, fright sickened. Never
again would he trust himself within reach of those men; no, not if they
offered him a whole bushel of oats.
But it was a notable victory. Vauntingly Farmer Perkins told how he had
haltered the vicious colt. He was unconscious that a pair of ripe
gooseberry eyes turned black with hate, that behind his broad back was
shaken a futile fist.
The harness-breaking of Blue Blazes was conducted on much the same plan
as his halter-taming, except that during the process he learned to use
his heels. One Olsen, who has since walked with a limp, can tell you
that.
Another feature of the harness-breaking came as an interruption to
further bull-whip play by Farmer Perkins. It was a highly melodramatic
episode in which Lafe, gripping the handle of a two-tined pitchfork, his
freckled-face greenish-white and the pupils of his eyes wide with the
fear of his own daring, threatened immediate damage to the person of
Farmer Perkins, unless the said Perkins dropped the whip. This Perkins
did. More than that, he fled with ridiculous haste, and in craven
terror; while Lafe, having given the trembling colt a parting caress,
quitted the farm abruptly and for all time.
As for Blue Blazes, two days later he was sold to a travelling
horse-dealer, and departed without any sorrow of farewells. In the weeks
during which he trailed over the fruit district of southern Michigan in
the wake of the horse-buyer, Blue Blazes learned nothing good and much
that was ill. He finished the trip with raw hocks, a hoof-print on his
flank, and teeth-marks on neck and withers. Horses led in a bunch do not
improve in disposition.
Some of the scores the blue-roan colt paid in kind, some he did not, but
he learned the game of give and take. Men and horses alike, he
concluded, were against him. If he would hold his own he must be ready
with teeth and hoofs. Especially he carried with him always a black,
furious hatred of man in general.
So he went about with ears laid back, the whites of his eyes showing,
and a bite or a kick ready in any emergency. Day by day the hate in him
deepened until it became the master-passion. A quick foot-fall behind him
was enough to send his heels flying as though they had been released by
a hair-trigger. He kicked first and investigated afterward. The mere
sight of a man within reaching distance roused all his ferocity.
He took a full course in vicious tricks. He learned how to crowd a man
against the side of a stall, and how to reach him, when at his head, by
an upward and forward stroke of the forefoot. He could kick straight
behind with lightning quickness, or give the hoof a sweeping
side-movement most comprehensive and unexpected. The knack of lifting
the bits with the tongue and shoving them forward of the bridle-teeth
came in time. It made running away a matter of choice.
When it became necessary to cause diversion he would balk. He no longer
cared for whips. Physically and mentally he had become hardened to
blows. Men he had ceased to fear, for most of them feared him and he
knew it. He only despised and hated them. One exception Blue Blazes
made. This was in favor of men and boys with red hair and freckles. Such
he would not knowingly harm. A long memory had the roan.
Toward his own kind Blue Blazes bore himself defiantly. Double harness
was something he loathed. One was not free to work his will on the
despised driver if hampered by a pole and mate. In such cases he nipped
manes and kicked under the traces until released. He had a special
antipathy for gray horses and fought them on the smallest provocation,
or upon none at all.
As a result Blue Blazes, while knowing no masters, had many owners,
sometimes three in a single week. He began his career by filling a three
months' engagement as a livery horse, but after he had run away a dozen
times, wrecked several carriages, and disabled a hostler, he was sold
for half his purchase price.
Then did he enter upon his wanderings in real earnest. He pulled
street-cars, delivery wagons, drays and ash-carts. He was sold to
unsuspecting farmers, who, when his evil traits cropped out, swapped him
unceremoniously and with ingenious prevarication by the roadside. In the
natural course of events he was much punished.
Up and across the southern peninsula of Michigan he drifted
contentiously, growing more vicious with each encounter, more daring
after each victory. In Muskegon he sent the driver of a grocery wagon to
the hospital with a shoulder-bite requiring cauterization and four
stitches. In Manistee he broke the small bones in the leg of a baker's
large boy. In Cadillac a boarding-stable hostler struck him with an iron
shovel. Blue Blazes kicked the hostler quite accurately and very
suddenly through a window.
Between Cadillac and Kalaska he spent several lively weeks with farmers.
Most of them tried various taming processes. Some escaped with bruises
and some suffered serious injury. At Alpena he found an owner who,
having read something very convincing in a horse-trainer's book,
elaborately strapped the roan's legs according to diagram, and then went
into the stall to wreak vengeance with a riding-whip. Blue Blazes
accepted one cut, after which he crushed the avenger against the plank
partition until three of the man's ribs were broken. The Alpena man was
fished from under the roan's hoofs just in time to save his life.
This incident earned Blue Blazes the name of "man-killer," and it stuck.
He even figured in the newspaper dispatches. "Blue Blazes, the Michigan
Man-Killer," "The Ugliest Horse Alive," "Alpena's Equine Outlaw"; these
were some of the head-lines. The Perkins method had borne fruit.
When purchasers for a four-legged hurricane could no longer be found,
Blue Blazes was sent up the lake to an obscure little port where they
have only a Tuesday and Friday steamer, and where the blue roan's record
was unknown. Horses were in demand there. In fact, Blue Blazes was sold
almost before he had been led down the gang-plank.
"Look out for him," warned the steam-boat man; "he's a wicked brute."
"Oh, I've got a little job that'll soon take the cussedness out of him,"
said the purchaser, with a laugh.
Blue Blazes was taken down into the gloomy fore-hold of a three-masted
lake schooner, harnessed securely between two long capstan bars, and set
to walking in an aimless circle while a creaking cable was wound about a
drum. At the other end of the cable were fastened, from time to time,
squared pine-logs weighing half a ton each. It was the business of Blue
Blazes to draw these timbers into the hold through a trap-door opening
in the stern. There was nothing to kick save the stout bar, and there
was no one to bite. Well out of reach stood a man who cracked a whip
and, when not swearing forcefully, shouted "Ged-a-a-ap!"
For several uneventful days he was forced to endure this exasperating
condition of affairs with but a single break in the monotony. This came
on the first evening, when they tried to unhook him. The experiment
ended with half a blue-flannel shirt in the teeth of Blue Blazes and a
badly scared lumber-shover hiding in the fore-peak. After that they put
grain and water in buckets, which they cautiously shoved within his
reach.
Of course there had to be an end to this. In due time the Ellen B. was
full of square timbers. The Captain notified the owner of Blue Blazes
that he might take his blankety-blanked horse out of the Ellen B.'s
fore-hold. The owner declined, and entrenched himself behind a pure
technicality. The Captain had hired from him the use of a horse; would
the Captain kindly deliver said horse to him, the owner, on the dock? It
was a spirited controversy, in which the horse-owner scored several
points. But the schooner captain by no means admitted defeat.
"The Ellen B. gets under way inside of a half hour," said he. "If you
want your blankety-blanked horse you've got that much time to take him
away."
"I stand on my rights," replied the horse-owner. "You sail off with my
property if you dare. Go ahead! Do it! Next time the Ellen B. puts in
here I'll libel her for damages."
Yet in the face of this threat the Ellen B. cast off her hawsers, spread
her sails, and stood up the lake bound Chicagoward through the Straits
with Blue Blazes still on board. Not a man-jack of the crew would
venture into the fore-hold, where Blue Blazes was still harnessed to the
capstan bars.
When he had been without water or grain for some twelve hours the wrath
in him, which had for days been growing more intense, boiled over.
Having voiced his rage in raucous squeals, he took to chewing the
bridle-strap and to kicking the whiffle-tree. The deck watch gazed down
at him in awe. The watch below, separated from him only by a thin
partition, expressed profane disapproval of shipping such a passenger.
There was no sleep on the Ellen B. that night. About four in the morning
the continued effort of Blue Blazes met with reward. The halter-strap
parted, and the stout oak whiffle-tree was splintered into many pieces.
For some minutes Blue Blazes explored the hold until he found the
gang-plank leading upward.
His appearance on the deck of the Ellen B. caused something like a
panic. The man at the wheel abandoned his post, and as he started for
the cross-trees let loose a yell which brought up all hands. Blue Blazes
charged them with open mouth. Not a man hesitated to jump for the
rigging. The schooner's head came up into the wind, the jib-sheet blocks
rattled idly and the booms swung lazily across the deck, just grazing
the ears of Blue Blazes.
How long the roan might have held the deck had not his thirst been
greater than his hate cannot be told. Water was what he needed most, for
his throat seemed burning, and just overside was an immensity of water.
So he leaped. Probably the crew of the Ellen B. believe to this day that
they escaped by a miracle from a devil-possessed horse who, finding them
beyond his reach, committed suicide.
But Blue Blazes had no thought of self-destruction. After swallowing as
much lake water as was good for him he struck out boldly for the shore,
which was not more than half a mile distant, swimming easily in the
slight swell. Gaining the log-strewn beach, he found himself at the
edge of one of those ghostly, fire-blasted tamarack forests which cover
great sections of the upper end of Michigan's southern peninsula. At
last he had escaped from the hateful bondage of man. Contentedly he fell
to cropping the coarse beach-grass which grew at the forest's edge.
For many long days Blue Blazes revelled in his freedom, sometimes
wandering for miles into the woods, sometimes ranging the beach in
search of better pasturage. Water there was aplenty, but food was
difficult to find. He even browsed bushes and tree-twigs. At first he
expected momentarily to see appear one of his enemies, a man. He heard
imaginary voices in the beat of the waves, the creaking of wind-tossed
tree-tops, the caw of crows, or in the faint whistlings of distant
steamers. He began to look suspiciously behind knolls and stumps. But
for many miles up and down the coast was no port, and the only evidences
he had of man were the sails of passing schooners, or the trailing
smoke-plumes of steam-boats.
Not since he could remember had Blue Blazes been so long without feeling
a whip laid over his back. Still, he was not wholly content. He felt a
strange uneasiness, was conscious of a longing other than a desire for a
good feed of oats. Although he knew it not, Blue Blazes, who hated men
as few horses have ever hated them, was lonesome. He yearned for human
society.
When at last a man did appear on the beach the horse whirled and dashed
into the woods. But he ran only a short distance. Soon he picked his way
back to the lake shore and gazed curiously at the intruder. The man was
making a fire of driftwood. Blue Blazes approached him cautiously. The
man was bending over the fire, fanning it with his hat. In a moment he
looked up.
A half minute, perhaps more, horse and man gazed at each other. Probably
it was a moment of great surprise for them both. Certainly it was for
the man. Suddenly Blue Blazes pricked his ears forward and whinnied. It
was an unmistakable whinny of friendliness if not of glad recognition.
The man on the beach had red hair--hair of the homeliest red you could
imagine. Also he had eyes of the color of ripe gooseberries.
* * * * *
"You see," said Lafe, in explaining the matter afterward, "I was hunting
for burls. I had seen 'em first when I was about sixteen. It was once
when a lot of us went up on the steamer from Saginaw after black bass.
We landed somewhere and went up a river into Mullet Lake. Well, one day
I got after a deer, and he led me off so far I couldn't find my way back
to camp. I walked through the woods for more'n a week before I came out
on the lake shore. It was while I was tramping around that I got into a
hardwood swamp where I saw them burls, not knowing what they were at the
time.
"When I showed up at home my stepfather was tearing mad. He licked me
good and had me sent to the reform school. I ran away from there after a
while and struck the Perkins farm. That's where I got to know Blue
Blazes. After my row with Perkins I drifted about a lot until I got work
in this very furniture factory," whereupon Lafe swept a comprehensive
hand about, indicating the sumptuously appointed office.
"Well, I worked here until I saw them take off the cars a lot of those
knots just like the ones I'd seen on the trees up in that swamp. 'What
are them things?' says I to the foreman.
"'Burls,' says he.
"'Worth anything?' says I.
"'Are they?' says he. 'They're the most expensive pieces of wood you can
find anywhere in this country. Them's what we saw up into veneers.'
"That was enough for me. I had a talk with the president of the company.
'If you can locate that swamp, young man,' says he, 'and it's got in it
what you say it has, I'll help you to make your fortune."
"So I started up the lake to find the swamp. That's how I come to run
across Blue Blazes again. How he came to be there I couldn't guess and
didn't find out for months. He was as glad to see me as I was to see
him. They told me afterward that he was a man-killer. Man-killer
nothing! Why, I rode that horse for over a hundred miles down the
lake-shore with not a sign of a bridle on him.
"Of course, he don't seem to like other men much, and he did lay up one
or two of my hostlers before I understood him. You see"--here Mr. Lafe,
furniture magnate, flushed consciously--"I can't have any but red-headed
men--red-headed like me, you know--about my stable, on account of Blue
Blazes. Course, it's foolish, but I guess the old fellow had a tough
time of it when he was young, same as I did; and now--well, he just
suits me, Blue Blazes does. I'd rather ride or drive him than any
thoroughbred in this country; and, by jinks, I'm bound he gets whatever
he wants, even if I have to lug in a lot of red-headed men from other
States."
CHIEFTAIN
A STORY OF THE HEAVY DRAUGHT SERVICE
He was a three-quarter blood Norman, was Chieftain. You would have known
that by his deep, powerful chest, his chunky neck, his substantial,
shaggy-fetlocked legs. He had a family tree, registered sires, you know,
and, had he wished, could have read you a pedigree reaching back to Sir
Navarre (6893).
Despite all this, Chieftain was guilty of no undue pride. Eight years in
the trucking business takes out of one all such nonsense. True, as a
three-year-old he had given himself some airs. There was small wonder
in that. He had been the boast of Keokuk County for a whole year. "We'll
show 'em what we can do in Indiana," the stockmaster had said as
Chieftain, his silver-white tail carefully done up in red flannel, was
led aboard the cars for shipment East.
They are not unused to ton-weight horses in the neighborhood of the
Bull's Head, where the great sales-stables are. Still, when Chieftain
was brought out, his fine dappled coat shining like frosted steel in the
sunlight, and his splendid tail, which had been done up in straw crimps
over night, rippling and waving behind him, there was a great craning of
necks among the buyers of heavy draughts.
"Gentlemen," the red-faced auctioneer had shouted, "here's a buster; one
of the kind you read about, wide as a wagon, with a leg on each corner.
There's a ton of him, a whole ton. Who'll start him at three hundred?
Why, he's as good as money in the bank."
That had been Chieftain's introduction to the metropolis. But the
triple-hitch is a great leveller. In single harness, even though one
does pull a load, there is chance for individuality. One may toss one's
head; aye, prance a bit on a nipping morning. But get between the poles
of a breast-team, with a horse on either side, and a twelve-ton load at
the trace-ends, and--well, one soon forgets such vanities as pride of
champion sires, and one learns not to prance.
In his eight years as inside horse of breast-team No. 47, Chieftain had
forgotten much about pedigree, but he had learned many other things. He
had come to know the precise moment when, in easing a heavy load down an
incline, it was safe to slacken away on the breeching and trot gently.
He could tell, merely by glancing at a rise in the roadway, whether a
slow, steady pull was needed, or if the time had come to stick in his
toe-calks and throw all of his two thousand pounds on the collar. He had
learned not to fret himself into a lather about strange noises, and not
to be over-particular as to the kind of company in which he found
himself working. Even though hitched up with a vicious Missouri Modoc on
one side and a raw, half collar-broken Kanuck on the other, he would do
his best to steady them down to the work. He had learned to stop at
crossings when a six-foot Broadway-squad officer held up one finger, and
to give way for no one else. He knew by heart all the road rules of the
crowded way, and he stood for his rights.
[Illustration: He would do his best to steady them down to the work.]
So, in stress of storm or quivering summer heat, did Chieftain toil
between the poles, hauling the piled-up truck, year in and year out, up
and down and across the city streets. And in time he had forgotten his
Norman blood, had forgotten that he was the great-grandson of Sir
Navarre.
Some things there were, however, which Chieftain could not wholly
forget. These memories were not exactly clear, but, vague as they were,
they stuck. They had to do with fields of new grass, with the elastic
feel of dew-moistened turf under one's hoofs, with the enticing smell of
sweet clover in one's nostrils, the sound of gently moving leaves in
one's ears, and the sense that before, as well as behind, were long
hours of delicious leisure.