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Updated: June 21, 2025
As we drove along the narrow hill-road a piebald pack-pony with a china-blue eye came round a bend, followed by two women, black-haired, bare-headed, wearing beadwork squaw-jackets, and riding straddle. A string of pack-ponies trotted through the pines behind them. 'Indians on the move? said I. 'How characteristic!
When he had been curried and brushed he would be a little beauty. I was trying to coax him to me when Buell returned with a man. "Thet your pick?" he asked, as I pointed. "Well, now, you're not so much of a tenderfoot. Thet's the best mustang in the lot. Cless, how much for him, an' a pack-pony an' pack-saddle?" "I reckon twenty dollars'll make it square," replied the owner.
"You see, it's a smart lick of a ride to Penetier, and I want to get there before dark," he explained, kindly. I could have shouted for very glee when I saw the black mustang saddled and bridled. "He's well broke," said Cless. "Keep his bridle down when you ain't in the saddle. An' find a patch of grass fer him at night. The pony'll stick to him." Cless fell to packing a lean pack-pony.
This nearly made me drop with amazement. I had only about seventy-five dollars left, and I had been very much afraid that I could not buy the mustang, let alone the pack-pony and saddle. "Cless, send round to Smith for the lad's outfit, an' saddle up for him at once." Then he turned to me. "Now some grub, an' a pan or two." Having camped before, I knew how to buy supplies.
It was clear that something more must be done. I called the pack-pony leader on one side. He was a fine, broad-framed giant, a man who had in his time gone through many fights and adventures. "You and I understand one another," I said to him. "These others with their moanings and cries are but as children. Now let us make a compact. The others need know nothing. This is between men."
Bill Shea quotes a friend of his as contending that the way to keep a pack-pony cinched is to put his pack on him, throw the diamond hitch, cinch him as tight as possible, and then take him to a drinking-place and fill him up with water. However, we did not resort to this. We had washed at dawn in the cold lake.
Charming Billy yanked his pack-pony awake and into a shuffling trot over the trail, resettled his hat on his head, sagged his shoulders again and went back to crooning his ditty. "Can she make a punkin pie, Billy boy, Billy boy, Can she make a punkin pie, charming Billy? She can make a punkin pie Quick's a cat can wink her eye "
I did not want to make any mistakes. So I tied Hal and the pack-pony to a bush fringing the trail, and set off through the forest. It dawned upon me presently that the campfire was much farther away than it appeared. Often it went out of sight behind trees. By degrees it grew larger and larger. Then I slowed down and approached more cautiously.
His course was laid straight for the men in front, two of the attendants on ponies. The Malay, the remaining attendant, and the pack-pony were behind the pad-elephant.
"On the road beyond here many bad men are to be found," they told me at Won-ju. "These bad men shoot every one who passes. We will not go to be shot." My own boys were showing some uneasiness. Fortunately, I had in my personal servant Min-gun, and in the leader of the pack-pony two of the staunchest Koreans I have ever known.
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