United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I gentled colt after colt all that day till sunset, with a very brief pause for food and rest. Also I kept it up next day until mid-afternoon, when the last colt had been tamed. Then, as we stood breathing, one of the horse-wranglers suggested: "Try him on Selinus." "That would be plain murder," one of the others cried. "I am not so sure," the Villicus ruminated.
There were extensive stables, cattle-sheds and pens, sheep-folds, goat-runs and pig-sties adjoining the house. In the quarters I found a goodly company of hearty, healthy, contented slaves, sty-wards, goatherds, shepherds, cowmen and horse-wranglers. These were friendly from my first arrival among them, seemed to look me over deliberately and appraise me, and appeared to like me.
The next day was made a sort of festival, with all the horse-herders at the villa paddocks. First of all four experienced horse-wranglers roped a filly, threw her, bitted and bridled her while one sat on her head, let her get on her feet, hobbled her, held her so while two more saddled her and then held her while one mounted her.
She had rested for two days in Miles City; had seen the horse-market, with horse-wranglers in chaps; had taken dinner with army people at Fort Keogh, once the bulwark against the Sioux, now nodding over the dry grass on its parade ground. By the Yellowstone River, past the Crow reservation, Claire had driven on through the Real West, along the Great Highway.
A crowd surrounded the hall a dusty, booted, spurred, shirt-sleeved and sombreroed assemblage that did not wear the hall-mark Shefford had come to associate with Mormons. They were riders, cowboys, horse-wranglers, and some of them Shefford had seen in Durango. Navajos and Piutes were present, also, but they loitered in the background.
I am not going to tell her name, but a jest we had between us led me to call her by the pet name of Septima. If she had been a free-woman, she would have been described as a young widow. Her former mate, one of the horse-wranglers, had been killed by Selinus the previous autumn. Their child, not a year old, had died before his father.
He drew Nack-yal's bridle forward, and led him up the moonlit trail. The following afternoon cowboys and horse-wranglers, keen-eyed as Indians for tracks and trails, began to arrive in the quiet valley to which the Mormon women had been returned. Under every cedar clump there were hobbled horses, packs, and rolled bedding in tarpaulins.
"Let him out into the yard or the paddock." Into the paddock he was let out, by means of a door in his stall worked by winches from above. In the afternoon sunlight he pranced and curvetted about, a joy to see. "Let me show Felix what he is like," one of the younger horse-wranglers suggested. "You can," the Villicus agreed. "We all know how agile you are and how quick at vaulting a fence."
"When does your turn come, Ann?" asked somebody. "Believe me," said the ranch girl, with emphasis, "I have got to see somebody besides cowpunchers and horse-wranglers before I make such a fatal move." "You have lost all your imagination," laughed Helen, from across the table. "I don't know.
I remember that on the hill south of the post the three of us, two horse-wranglers and myself, flipped a dollar to see whether we kept to the Assiniboine trail or struck across country. It was a mighty simple transaction, but it produced some startling results for me, that same coin-spinning. The eagle came uppermost, and the eagle meant the open prairie for us.
Word Of The Day