He fell to musing, then, running his hand over the broad forehead, combing out the silk of the forelock, caressing a fine ear. Then, as to himself—
“Till he gets a wife of his own!”
He spoke to my sister.
“Come here, Miss Aggie.”
Agnes went to him and, at his command, laid her fingers on Baron’s nose. The animal arched his great neck—oh, an indescribable gesture!—and mouthed the back of her hand. I thought of Agnes at that moment as the bravest girl in all the world. Agnes was a stranger to me that night.
After a little time my mother got up, saying that I ought to have been in my bed long ago. My father came in with us, so that we left only the white horse and my sister and Jem Hodges, standing in a black group against the glow of the fires.
Sources
Chapters 23, 33, and 34 from Memoirs of Conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, 1569 (translated by John I. Lockhart, 1844).
“The Dun Horse,” from Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, by George Bird Grinnell, 1890.
“The Woman Who Became a Horse,” from Traditions of the Skidi Pawnee: Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, vol. 8, by George A. Dorsey, 1904.
“The Comanches’ Manner of Capturing Wild Horses,” from The Delahoydes: Boy Life on the Old Santa Fe Trail, by Henry Inman, 1899.
“The Camp of the Wild Horse,” from A Tour on the Prairies, by Washington Irving, 1832.
“Chu Chu,” from The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s and Other Stories, by Bret Harte, 1894.
“A Chestnut Pony,” from Out of Drowning Valley, by S. Carleton Jones, 1910.
Chapter 7 from Wildfire, by Zane Grey, 1916.
“His Love for his Old Gray Horse,” from Ladies’ Home Journal, by Laura Spencer Portor and Charles Marshall Graves, January 1908.
“How Miss Lake’s Circus Horses Were Restored,” from Horse Stories and Stories of Other Animals, by Thomas Wallace Knox, 1890.
“A Ride with a Mad Horse in a Freight-Car,” from Atlantic Monthly, by W. H. H. Murray, April 1869.
“How Comanche Came Into Camp,” from The Master of the Strong Hearts: A Story of Custer’s Last Rally, by Elbridge Streeter Brooks, 1898.
“Soldier Boy—Privately to Himself,” “Soldier Boy and the Mexican Plug,” “Soldier Boy and Shekels,” “Soldier Boy and Shekels Again,” “Mongrel and the Other Horse,” “Soldier Boy—To Himself,” from A Horse’s Tale, by Mark Twain, 1907.
“The American Cavalry Horse,” from Munsey’s Magazine, by Wilmot E. Ellis, April 1905.
“Anecdotes of American Horses,” from The Family Magazine or Monthly Abstract of General Knowledge, unknown author, 1841.
“The Cumbersome Horse,” from More Short Sixes, by H. C. Bunner, 1894.
“A Drummer’s Horse,” from Our Dumb Animals, by R. M. Lockhart, 1912.
Chapter 11 from White Dandy: Master and I—A Horse’s Story, by Velma Caldwell Melville, 1898.
“The Great Match Race between Eclipse and Sir Henry,” from the American Sporting Magazine, by “An Old Turfman” (Calwallader R. Colden), July 3, 1830.
“The Story of a Jockey,” from Stories for Boys, by Richard Harding Davis, 1916.
“World Record Is Set by Man o’ War,” from the New York Times, June 13, 1920.
“How I Bought and Trained Captain,” by W. A. Sigsbee, from The Story of Captain: The Horse with a Human Brain, by George Wharton James, 1917.
“In Which True Becomes Justin Morgan,” from Justin Morgan, Founder of his Race: The Romantic History of a Horse, by Eleanor Waring Burnham, 1911.
“White Horse Winter,” from Atlantic Monthly, by Wilbur Daniel Steele, April 1912.
Great American Horse Stories Page 26
