Such a variety of horses as one meets when boarding at a livery stable,
and what stories they can tell!
A tough-looking pair of mustangs gave a little of their experience one
night. They said they were once wild, roaming over the western prairies
at will; but that some Indians caught them with a lasso, and then sold
them to a cowboy. The latter named them "Daredevil" and "Wildcat," and
began to break them.
"Regularly, as he took us in hand," said Daredevil, "he knocked us each
down from ten to fifty times. Why, I used to be just crazy from fright
and pain, but he called me vicious, and said he would pound it out of
me. Sometimes he would strike me on the head and stun me so that he
would think me dead, but he never seemed to care. Had he used us kindly
I do not think we would have been hard to manage at all, after the
strangeness and fright wore off a little, but such treatment as he gave
us brought out all that was bad and wild; I guess it would have made a
daredevil and wildcat out of any creature. He did not mind at all if the
bit tore our mouths till the blood poured out, or the whip laid open our
shoulders and flanks till he could lay his three fingers in; a mustang
can stand anything. How frantic we were for release from such torture,
and how hard we tried to kill ourselves."
"And then," put in Wildcat, "when he considered us broken, he used to
ride us almost to death. Many and many a mile have I run without
stopping for breath, with those dreadful spurs pressed deep into my
bleeding sides."
"Indeed," said Daredevil, "the wound never healed in mine; it was just
tearing a little deeper each day."
Then it seems they were stolen by a half-breed Indian and sold to
another white man, who treated them no better. His business was to
assist emigrants across the mountains, and he used to overload them and
goad them with a sharp pointed staff until they were obliged to move on,
some way. They lived this sort of life for three years; then being
almost worthless, he sold them to an Eastern man who was buying up
mustangs. They were shipped to Chicago in a close, wretched car, being
forty-eight hours at a time without food or water.
"I can give you no idea of the horrors of those days," said Wildcat. "It
was just like what burning alive must be, and we all got so ugly that we
kicked and bit furiously. Two or three of the weaker ones were trampled
to death, but when once the agony was over, they were objects of envy.
We all wanted to die. A few became delirious and had to be shot when we
were taken out.
"Daredevil and I match so perfectly that we were at once sold together
again to a little fellow from Wisconsin. He seemed to think that being
mustangs we would require a good deal of abuse and hard work and not
much to eat. Anyway he only paid a few dollars apiece for us. I have
noticed that the more an animal costs, usually, the better care it
receives. This fellow used to pound us till the neighbor women would
come out, wringing their hands and crying, and beg him to stop. He would
tell them that it was the only way to manage a mustang.
"Desperate at last, Daredevil watched her chance, and planted both her
hind feet in the small of his back, one day, and doubled him up. It did
me good to see the folks venture gingerly up, expecting us to scalp
them, I suppose, and bear him off. He'd knocked us down a good many
times, and then without pity kicked us till we got up.
"We were immediately sold to an easy-going individual who worked us very
hard, but was decent in his treatment. This was the best place we had
had, and we tried to please him. His easy-goingness got him into debt,
though, and we had to go for that to the man who now owns us. He is a
notion peddler, and well enough when sober, but he is usually drunk. He
may start in the morning and drive us till after dark without a drop of
water or bite of food."
"There is one thing," said Daredevil, as her mate paused, "if only men
knew half as much as they think they do, they would never pound and
abuse a mustang pony. There is lots of work and endurance in us, if well
treated; and we can appreciate kindness as well as a thoroughbred, if
they will give us time enough to realize it. We have no sort of chance
to be good, and the way they treat us would spoil any creature."
There was a little silence after the mustangs had ceased speaking, and
then "Jennie," a livery horse, spoke.
"Well, you certainly have had a hard life and probably always will, but
if there is any fate to be prayed to be delivered from, it is the fate
of a livery horse. We are always on the road. Why, this is the first
night I've been in this week, and every sound I hear I think they are
coming for me. I have grown so nervous that I can't sleep, and my whole
body aches.
"A drummer hired us last week on Wednesday, to drive out to S----,
nineteen miles. Said he would be there all day and possibly all night.
Do you know he only stopped there about half an hour, gave us--Nellie
and I--some water and then drove fifteen miles to L----; there he had us
fed and watered, and in an hour was off fourteen miles to K----. It was
late when we got there, and by daylight he was on his way here, a good
forty miles by the nearest route. We had barely been rubbed and fed,
when a young man wanted a team to take his girl to a party ten miles
out. The boss, supposing we had been in the barn at S---- all the time
since the morning before, only while going the thirty-eight miles there
and back, sent us out again.
"It did seem to me when they began to harness us that I should scream
right out; how I longed for the power of human speech!
"My, but didn't that fellow drive!
"We acted pretty tired, I suppose, for presently the girl said: 'John,
don't drive so fast, the poor horses seem tired.'
"'Nonsense, they are livery horses, and that is one of their tricks.'
"He tied us, dripping with sweat, in an open shed and left us until near
morning. Actually we were so stiff we could not seem to get along at
all, but he was not sparing of the whip.
"We were in until afternoon some time, and one of the boys used us to
carry a couple of women to S----. He rested us an hour and then came
home again.
"And so it has been right along, and I am so tired; and then this being
driven by every one is ruinous on mouth and nerves. It is jerk, jerk,
jerk! and no two mean quite the same thing by the way they twitch the
lines, and half of them don't know how to drive anyway."
"Yes," put in Crusoe, another livery horse, "and the worst of it is the
spirit people manifest toward us. Why a clergyman had me the other day
to go up to B----, and he drove faster than any jockey. On the way he
picked up an acquaintance who remarked after a while on his fast
driving.
"'Well,' said the minister, 'I always like to get the worth of my money,
and I've got three dollars invested in this animal to-day.'"
"Oh me, and how they swear at us!" chimed in a small bay mare from
another stall.
"Who, the clergyman?" cried Julie, now for the first time speaking up.
"No, I did not quite mean them, though I carried a bishop, or some sort
of a big gun, once to the train and we were late. I am inclined to think
he swore to himself, though all he said out loud was: 'I could have made
that team cover the ground,' but I meant people in general."
Then somebody from another stall spoke out in a tone quivering with
sadness.
"My friends, if you are not blind don't complain of your lot."
"Amen," came softly, but distinctly, from another corner and we all kept
silent.
Presently the first voice said:
"It seems strange enough to be counted old and only fit to be banged
around without this dreadful sightlessness."
She paused again, and I ventured to ask the cause of her misfortune.
"It is inherited. My mother was blind and not of much use but to raise
colts, they said. Whether they knew that blind mothers are liable to
transmit their misfortune or not I do not know; but the fact remains. I
could see all right until I was four years old; when one day, getting
pretty warm, a mist seemed to come before my eyes. It remained growing
steadily more dense, until at night I was entirely guided by my mate,
and when loosened from him could not even find the familiar watering
trough.
"'What ails Kate?' somebody asked, while some one else added, 'She acts
blind.'
"Presently my master examined my eyes and gave it as his opinion that I
was stone blind, and I was and have been ever since.
"No words can describe what I suffer. No one has a thought of pity for a
blind horse; it is just rush them along! I am so much afraid; everything
startles and terrifies me; I am always stepping on stones or bruising
myself on stumps and things that I cannot see. I stretch my neck out
long to listen, and I am jerked and called an old blind fool!
"It hurts my feelings, too; it is so dreadful to be afflicted and then
be taunted with it and scolded about it. Nearly all my brothers and
sisters went blind in the same way."
We Wallace horses longed for a barn of our own, where we could have our
little family visits once more, and where we should not see and hear so
many harrowing things.
Topsy was growing a fine, little animal, but between Chet and Park she
was bound to be ruined. These two were never friends, and the latter
was, besides, jealous of the young owner. He tried a variety of means to
make her nervous and unmanageable, always picking at and tormenting her.
He had her so that she would both kick and bite.
Remembering his own unhappy experience, it made Prince furious, and then
there would be trouble between him and Park. Of course, the former got
the worst of it, because man is the stronger, in the only sense that
tells, and the latter would tie him short and then whip him or kick him.
Chet had no judgment, and being exceedingly passionate, he whipped the
colt for doing what Park taught her.
Meanwhile Mrs. Wallace's sister, Minnie Winters, had become almost a
member of the family. She was not very old nor ugly, and professed the
most unlimited admiration for "that dear little Dandy," as she gushingly
termed me, though why she called me "little" I can't imagine, and I did
not like it either. I noticed, though, that she did not make as much
fuss over me when my master was not around. She said a great deal about
horseback riding, and hinted strongly that she would like to try my
back.
"Dandy's life is like my own," said Master, "all work and no play."
By this he intended her to understand that I had no time to take her out
for pleasure. One day Master and I were starting for the country, when
some one called him. It just happened that I was tied near an open
window inside of which sat Mrs. Wallace and her sister, and I was
obliged to hear their conversation.
"You ain't half trying, Min," the former said.
"Goodness, Fan, do you expect me to throw myself at the man's head? Dick
Wallace is a different man from Fred; and not to be so easily won.
Indeed, I don't believe he has any notion of marrying."
"Notion of it? Of course he hasn't, but you must put him in the notion.
He has a romantic idea that his heart is buried and all that----"
"Oh, do hush, Fan. Somehow I can't bear to think of his having loved any
woman like that, and I think Dandy was hers! It all seems like a novel."
"Of course, but if I were in your place I'd be Mrs. Dr. Dick, or know
the reason why."
"I know the reason why now," laughed the girl; then growing sober, she
added: "I am not good enough for him if he wanted me; few women are."
"Nonsense! Well, you are evidently badly smitten any----"
"Hush, he's coming," interrupted Min.