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Updated: June 28, 2025
In the exodus to some other favoured spot, two dozen or more of these individual herds travelled close to each other but never mixed, each drove devotedly following its bell-mare, as in a pack-train. This useful animal is generally the most worthless and wicked beast in the entire outfit.
There is a night-herder, called the savanero, whose duty it is to keep the animals from straying too far away, as they are all turned loose to shift for themselves, depending upon the grass alone for their subsistence. Each herd has a mulera, or bell-mare, which wears a bell hanging to a strap around her neck, and is kept in view of the other animals, who will never leave her.
Next to the hunters would come the old bell-mare, her bell tinkling through the lonely silences. Far in the rear came the squaws and trappers. Going south, the aim was to reach the traverse of the deserts during winter, so that snow would be available for water. Going east, the aim was to cross the mountain passes before snow-fall.
The watered mules had to do just so much kicking, so much braying at the young moon; had to be assured just so often, through their queer communications, that the bell-mare was still in the land of picket-line before nose-bags were fastened.
If they can but muzzle the flanks of the bell-mare once in twenty-four hours, often stopping a jolt from the heels of this temperamental monster the mules appear morally refreshed for any fate. Miraculous toilers, sexless hybrids successful ventures into Nature's arcanum of cross-fertilization steady, humorous, wise, enduring, and homely unto pain! The bond of their whole organization is the bell.
We had a farm and logging-claim on the outskirts of town which afforded a good farewell bite of grass, and at night I would turn loose twenty to forty mules and their beloved bell-mare to feed and fight mosquitoes. Early the next morning I would saddle my charger and go and bring them to the packing corral. Never shall I forget a surprise given me one morning.
It was just a soaked carabao rising from his deep wallow in the stream, but that she-devil, the gray bell-mare, tried to climb the cliffs about it. The mules felt her panic, as if an electrode ran from her to the quick of every hide of them. When the fragments of the Train were finally gathered together in Indang, they formed an undone, hysterical mess.
In herding mules it is customary among prairie travelers to have a bell-mare, to which the mules soon become so attached that they will follow her wherever she goes. By keeping her in charge of one of the herdsmen, the herds are easily controlled; and during a stampede, if the herdsman mounts her, and rushes ahead toward camp, they will generally follow.
Thirty mountain-mules, under packs one-third their own weight, and through the pressure of a Luzon day; dry, empty, caked with sweat-salt yet there were not a few of those gritty beasts that went into the air squealing, and launched a hind-foot at the nearest rib or the nearest star, or pressed close to muzzle the bell-mare after the restoring roll.
The party now drew near, and very striking was their appearance the variously coloured mules, following the bell-mare which went in advance as a leader, winding slowly down the crooked path, and the peons in their picturesque costumes shouting, laughing, or singing wild snatches of song as they were moved by fury, fun, or fancy.
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