Chapter VII

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.