Great American Horse Stories

by Sharon B. Smith

  After a year and a half of captivity the Delahoyde boys and their friends escape from the Comanche. Years later they find themselves drawn to the places they traveled with the tribe, camping for weeks at a time along the now safe and peaceful Santa Fe Trail.

  III

  Western Horses

  5

  The Camp of the Wild Horse

  by Washington Irving

  White Americans also hunted wild horses. Their techniques were different, as were the uses they had for the animals they captured. The famous New York writer Washington Irving, who had lived abroad for seventeen years, returned to the United States in 1832 with an urge to see his country and prove he hadn’t lost his feeling for his native land. Irving, already renowned for his stories “Rip van Winkle” and the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” immediately embarked on a tour of what is now Oklahoma. He turned the journals he kept on the trip into A Tour on the Prairies, a masterpiece of early western travel literature. In this chapter, he describes the exhilaration of the wild horse hunt.

  We had encamped in a good neighborhood for game, as the reports of rifles in various directions speedily gave notice. One of our hunters soon returned with the meat of a doe tied up in the skin and slung across his shoulders. Another brought a fat buck across his horse. Two other deer were brought in, and a number of turkeys. All the game was thrown down in front of the captain’s fire, to be portioned out among the various messes. The spits and camp kettles were soon in full employ, and throughout the evening there was a scene of hunters’ feasting and profusion.

  We had been disappointed this day in our hopes of meeting with buffalo, but the sight of the wild horse had been a great novelty and gave a turn to the conversation of the camp for the evening. There were several anecdotes told of a famous gray horse that has ranged the prairies of this neighborhood for six or seven years, setting at naught any attempt of the hunters to capture him. They say he can pace and rack (or amble) faster than the fleetest horses can run. Equally marvelous accounts were given of a black horse on the Brazos, who grazed the prairies on that river’s banks in Texas. For years he outstripped all pursuit. His fame spread far and wide; offers were made for him to the amount of a thousand dollars; the boldest and most hard-riding hunters tried incessantly to make prize of him, but in vain. At length he fell a victim to his gallantry; being decoyed under a tree by a tame mare, and a noose dropped over his head by a boy perched among the branches.

  The capture of the wild horse is one of the most favorite achievements of the prairie tribes; and, indeed, it is from this source that the Indian hunters chiefly supply themselves. The wild horses that range those vast grassy plains, extending from the Arkansas to the Spanish settlements, are of various forms and colors, betraying their various descents. Some resemble the common English stock, and are probably descended from horses that have escaped from our border settlements. Others are of a low but strong make, and are supposed to be of the Andalusian breed, brought out by the Spanish discoverers.

  Some fanciful speculatists have seen in them descendants of the Arab stock brought into Spain from Africa, and thence transferred to this country; and have pleased themselves with the idea that their sires may have been of the pure coursers of the desert, that once bore Mahomet and his warlike disciples across the sandy plains of Arabia!

  The habits of the Arab seem to have come with the steed. The introduction of the horse on the boundless plains of the far West changed the whole mode of living of their inhabitants. It gave them that facility of rapid motion, and of sudden and distant change of place, so dear to the roving propensities of man. Instead of lurking in the depths of gloomy forests, and patiently threading the mazes of a tangled wilderness on foot, like his brethren of the north, the Indian of the west is a rover of the plain; he leads a brighter and more sunshiny life, almost always on horseback, on vast flowery prairies and under cloudless skies.

  I was lying by the captain’s fire late in the evening, listening to stories about these coursers of the prairies and weaving speculations of my own, when there was a clamor of voices and a loud cheering at the other end of the camp, and word was passed that Beatte, the half-breed, had brought in a wild horse.

  In an instant every fire was deserted; the whole camp crowded to see the Indian and his prize. It was a colt about two years old, well grown, finely limbed, with bright prominent eyes, and a spirited yet gentle demeanor. He gazed about him with an air of mingled stupefaction and surprise at the men, the horses, and the campfires; while the Indian stood before him with folded arms, having hold of the other end of the cord which noosed his captive, and gazing on him with a most imperturbable aspect. Beatte, as I have before observed, has a greenish olive complexion; with a strongly-marked countenance not unlike the bronze casts of Napoleon; and as he stood before his captive horse, with folded arms and fixed aspect, he looked more like a statue than a man.

  If the horse, however, manifested the least restiveness, Beatte would immediately worry him with the lariat, jerking him first on one side then on the other, so as almost to throw him on the ground; when he had thus rendered him passive, he would resume his statue-like attitude and gaze at him in silence.

  The whole scene was singularly wild: the tall grove partially illumined by the flashing fires of the camp; the horses tethered here and there among the trees; the carcasses of deer hanging around; and in the midst of all the wild huntsman and his wild horse, with an admiring throng of rangers, almost as wild.

  In the eagerness of their excitement, several of the young rangers sought to get the horse by purchase or barter, and even offered extravagant terms; but Beatte declined all their offers. “You give great price now,” said he; “tomorrow you take back, and say, ‘D——d Indian!’”

  The young men importuned him with questions about the mode in which he took the horse, but his answers were dry and laconic; he evidently retained some pique at having been undervalued and sneered at by the young rangers, and at the same time looked down upon them with contempt as greenhorns, little versed in the noble science of woodcraft.

  Afterwards, however, when he was seated by our fire, I readily drew from him an account of his exploit; for, though taciturn among strangers, and little prone to boast of his actions, yet his taciturnity, like that of all Indians, had its times of relaxation.

  He informed me that, on leaving the camp, he had returned to the place where we had lost sight of the wild horse. Soon getting upon its track, he followed it to the banks of the river. Here, the prints being more distinct in the sand, he perceived that one of the hoofs was broken and defective, so he gave up the pursuit.

  As he was returning to the camp, he came upon a gang of six horses, which immediately made for the river. He pursued them across the stream, left his rifle on the river bank, and, putting his horse to full speed, soon came up with the fugitives. He attempted to noose one of them; but the lariat hitched on one of his ears, and he shook it off. The horses dashed up a hill; he followed hard at their heels; when, of a sudden, he saw their tails whisking in the air, indicating that they were plunging down a precipice. It was too late to stop. He shut his eyes, held in his breath, and went over with them—neck or nothing. The descent was between twenty and thirty feet, but they all came down safe upon a sandy bottom.

  He now succeeded in throwing his noose round a fine young horse. As he galloped alongside of him, the two horses passed each side of a sapling, and the end of the lariat was jerked out of his hand. He regained it, but an intervening tree obliged him again to let it go. Having once more caught it, and coming to a more open country, he was enabled to play the young horse with the line until he gradually checked and subdued him, so as to lead him to the place where he had left his rifle.

  He had another formidable difficulty in getting him across the river, where both horses stuck for a time in the mire, and Beatte was nearly unseated from his saddle by the force of the current and the strug
gles of his captive. After much toil and trouble, however, he got across the stream, and brought his prize safe into the camp.

  For the remainder of the evening the camp remained in a high state of excitement: nothing was talked of but the capture of wild horses; every youngster of the troop was for this harum-scarum kind of chase; every one promised himself to return from the campaign in triumph, bestriding one of these wild coursers of the prairies. Beatte had suddenly risen to great importance; he was the prime hunter, the hero of the day; offers were made him by the best mounted rangers to let him ride their horses in the chase, provided he would give them a share of the spoil. Beatte bore his honors in silence, and closed with none of the offers. Our stammering, chattering, gasconading little Frenchman, however, made up for his taciturnity by vaunting as much upon the subject as if it were he that had caught the horse. Indeed, he held forth so learnedly in the matter, and boasted so much of the many horses he had taken, that he began to be considered an oracle, and some of the youngsters were inclined to doubt whether he were not superior even to the taciturn Beatte.

  The excitement kept the camp awake later than usual. The hum of voices, interrupted by occasional peals of laughter, was heard from the groups around the various fires, and the night was considerably advanced before all had sunk to sleep.

  With the morning dawn the excitement revived, and Beatte and his wild horse were again the gaze and talk of the camp. The captive had been tied all night to a tree, among the other horses. He was again led forth by Beatte, by a long halter, or lariat, and, on his manifesting the least restiveness, was, as before, jerked and worried into passive submission. He appeared to be gentle and docile by nature, and had a beautifully mild expression of the eye. In his strange and forlorn situation, the poor animal seemed to seek protection and companionship in the very horse that had aided to capture him.

  Seeing him thus gentle and tractable, Beatte, just as we were about to march, strapped a light pack upon his back, by way of giving him the first lesson in servitude. The native pride and independence of the animal took fire at this indignity. He reared, and plunged, and kicked, and tried in every way to get rid of the degrading burden. The Indian was too potent for him. At every paroxysm he renewed the discipline of the halter, until the poor animal, driven to despair, threw himself prostrate on the ground, and lay motionless, as if acknowledging himself vanquished. A stage hero representing the despair of a captive prince could not have played his part more dramatically. There was absolutely a moral grandeur in it.

  The imperturbable Beatte folded his arms, and stood for a time looking down in silence upon his captive, until, seeing him perfectly subdued, he nodded his head slowly, screwed his mouth into a sardonic smile of triumph, and, with a jerk of the halter, ordered him to rise. He obeyed, and from that time forward offered no resistance. During that day he bore his pack patiently and was led by the halter; but in two days he followed voluntarily at large among the supernumerary horses of the troop.

  I could not but look with compassion upon this fine young animal, whose whole course of existence had been so suddenly reversed. From being a denizen of these vast pastures, ranging at will from plain to plain and mead to mead, cropping of every herb and flower, and drinking of every stream, he was suddenly reduced to perpetual and painful servitude, to pass his life under the harness and the curb, amid, perhaps, the din and dust and drudgery of cities. The transition in his lot was such as sometimes takes place in human affairs, and in the fortunes of towering individuals: one day, a prince of the prairies; the next day, a packhorse!

  6

  Chu Chu

  by Bret Harte

  Bret Harte, born Francis Brett Harte in Albany, New York, in 1836, was one of the most famous writers in North America during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Magazines paid the unheard of sum of $1,000 each for some of his colorful short stories of life in the rowdy mining camps and isolated ranches of California. Harte came by the color honestly, having worked in the gold camps, as a guard on a stagecoach line, and as a reporter and editor for several western newspapers.

  Bret Harte had great affection for both horses and Californios, the descendants of the aristocratic Spanish settlers of the early part of the nineteenth century. Both are featured in “Chu Chu,” the story of a beautiful wild mare who was never quite tamed.

  I do not believe that the most enthusiastic lover of that “useful and noble animal,” the horse, will claim for him the charm of geniality, humor, or expansive confidence. Any creature who will not look you squarely in the eye, whose only oblique glances are inspired by fear, distrust, or a view to attack; who has no way of returning caresses, and whose favorite expression is one of head-lifting disdain, may be “noble” or “useful,” but can be hardly said to add to the gaiety of nations. Indeed, it may be broadly stated that, with the single exception of goldfish, of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless. I deem these general remarks necessary to prove that my unreciprocated affection for Chu Chu was not purely individual or singular. And I may add that to these general characteristics she brought the waywardness of her capricious sex.

  She came to me out of the rolling dust of an emigrant wagon, behind whose tailboard she was gravely trotting. She was a half-broken filly in which character she had at different times unseated everybody in the train and, although covered with dust, she had a beautiful coat and the most lambent gazelle-like eyes I had ever seen. I think she kept these latter organs purely for ornament, apparently looking at things with her nose, her sensitive ears, and, sometimes, even a slight lifting of her slim near foreleg. On our first interview I thought she favored me with a coy glance, but as it was accompanied by an irrelevant “Look out!” from her owner, the teamster, I was not certain.

  I only know that after some conversation, a good deal of mental reservation, and the disbursement of considerable coin, I found myself standing in the dust of the departing emigrant wagon with one end of a forty-foot riata in my hand, and Chu Chu at the other. I pulled invitingly at my own end, and even advanced a step or two towards her. She then broke into a long disdainful pace, and began to circle round me at the extreme limit of her tether. I stood admiring her free action for some moments, not always turning with her, which was tiring until I found that she was gradually winding herself up on me.

  Her frantic astonishment when she suddenly found herself thus brought up against me was one of the most remarkable things I ever saw and nearly took me off my legs. Then, when she had pulled against the riata until her narrow head and prettily arched neck were on a perfectly straight line with it, she as suddenly slackened the tension and condescended to follow me, at an angle of her own choosing. Sometimes it was on one side of me, sometimes on the other.

  Even then the sense of my dreadful contiguity apparently would come upon her like a fresh discovery, and she would become hysterical. But I do not think that she really saw me. She looked at the riata and sniffed it disparagingly; she pawed some pebbles that were near me tentatively with her small hoof; she started back with a Robinson Crusoe–like horror of my footprints in the wet gully, but my actual personal presence she ignored. She would sometimes pause, with her head thoughtfully between her forelegs, and apparently say: “There is some extraordinary presence here: animal, vegetable, or mineral I can’t make out which but it’s not good to eat, and I loathe and detest it.”

  When I reached my house in the suburbs, before entering the “fifty vara” lot enclosure, I deemed it prudent to leave her outside while I informed the household of my purchase, and with this object I tethered her by the long riata to a solitary sycamore which stood in the center of the road, the crossing of two frequented thoroughfares. It was not long, however, before I was interrupted by shouts and screams from that vicinity, and on returning thither I found that Chu Chu, with the assistance of her riata, had securely wound up two of
my neighbors to the tree, where they presented the appearance of early Christian martyrs. When I released them it appeared that they had been attracted by Chu Chu’s graces, and had offered her overtures of affection, to which she had characteristically rotated, with this miserable result.

  I led her, with some difficulty, warily keeping clear of the riata, to the enclosure from whose fence I had previously removed several bars. Although the space was wide enough to have admitted a troop of cavalry she affected not to notice it, and managed to kick away part of another section on entering. She resisted the stable for some time, but after carefully examining it with her hoofs and an affectedly meek outstretching of her nose, she consented to recognize some oats in the feed-box without looking at them and was formally installed. All this while she had resolutely ignored my presence. As I stood watching her she suddenly stopped eating; the same reflective look came over her.

  “Surely I am not mistaken, but that same obnoxious creature is somewhere about here,” she seemed to say, and shivered at the possibility.