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Updated: May 2, 2025
"What would you do, Emil, if you was out on the prairie by yourself and seen him coming?" Emil stared. "Maybe I could hide in a badger-hole," he suggested doubtfully. "But suppose there wasn't any badger-hole," Lou persisted. "Would you run?" "No, I'd be too scared to run," Emil admitted mournfully, twisting his fingers. "I guess I'd sit right down on the ground and say my prayers."
At that moment Dick's horse put its foot into a badger-hole and turned completely over, sending its rider through the air in a curve that an East Indian acrobat would have envied. For a few seconds Dick lay flat on his back, then he jumped up and laughed, while his comrades hurried up anxiously to his assistance. "No bones broke?" inquired Joe. Dick gave a hysterical gasp. "I I think not."
"Steady! steady!" hissed Yorke, checking his mount as they drew near the fallen animal and its rider, "pull Fox a bit, Red! Mustn't scare the horse!" Slackening into a walk, they flung out of saddle, dropped their lines, crouched, and crept warily forward. The horse, a big, splendid seal-brown animal, had fallen on its right side, with its off fore-leg plunged deep in a snow-filled badger-hole.
Vaulting into the saddle, he again stretched out, and now skirted along the margin of a wood which seemed to mark the position of a river of considerable size. At this moment his horse put his foot into a badger-hole, and both of them came heavily to the ground. In an instant Dick rose, picked up his gun, and leaped unhurt into the saddle.
Neither of us would speak at such times. Harry had a turn for emotional sentiment, I knew, but I too could feel that it was good to lie there motionless and silent, and try to grasp its meaning. Then the strained sense of expectancy would fade at the sight of the approaching homestead, or a bronco blundering into a badger-hole would call us back to a work-a-day world.
Inside five minutes scarcely a horse remained in the stables, and the men were flying at a gallop across the dusky prairie laughing at the risk of a stumble in a deadly badger-hole. Yet, in the haste of saddling, they found time to arrange a twenty-dollar sweepstake and the allowance for weight.
And from that time on the four of us were like so many open-headed casks of powder sitting by a fire; sooner or later a spark would bring the explosion. We had them at a disadvantage trotting across the level upland, Gregory in the lead and Hicks sandwiched between Mac and myself until MacRae's horse planted his foreleg to the knee in an old badger-hole hidden under a rank accumulation of grass.
If he didn't have a horse and ride away out of the country ahead of all of us, then he's down a badger-hole and intends to stay there till we quit looking. I'll wager he'll know better'n to show himself around Track's End again, anyhow." Toward night the train came in pushing Pike's box-car ahead of it.
A little further on they saw Peter Davidson's horse put his foot in a badger-hole, the result of which was that the horse rolled over in one direction, while the expert Peter, tumbling cleverly to one side, rolled away in another direction like a Catherine-wheel. Both horse and man arose unhurt, and, like Bourassin, continued the chase.
Here and there a horse, having put his foot into a badger-hole, was seen to continue his career for a short space like a wheel or a shot hare, while his rider went ahead independently like a bird, and alighted anyhow! Such accidents, however, seldom resulted in much damage, red skin being probably tougher than white, and savage bones less brittle than civilised.
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