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Updated: June 3, 2025
I can see them now, square-shouldered, with hair tied in a knot beneath their quaint hats, their hips absurdly swollen by the huge pockets of their coats, their boots hanging over their knees. They wore big brass spurs with tremendous rowels, and the cantles of their saddles were high and brass-bound. "Alan lay motionless. I could neither speak nor move.
I could hear the tinkling of the small bells upon the rowels of his spurs, as he slowly warped himself through the gay crowd, and disappeared into the night. The vacated seat was soon occupied by a dusky manola, whose bright nagua, embroidered chemisette, brown ankles, and small blue slippers, drew my attention.
We were seated taking coffee the evening before we were to start, with the magnificent scene I have described before us, when a stranger was ushered into the room. He wore over his shoulders a gay-coloured poncho, and held a broad-brimmed hat in his hand. His breeches were of dark cloth, open at the knee, and he had on embroidered gaiters, and huge spurs, with rowels the size of a crown-piece.
Very hard it had been to put life into the beast at starting; deep the rowels of the great spur had been dug. Ben Blair lightly touched the neck of his buckskin and gave the word to go. "They were only thirty miles ahead last night, Buck, old chap," he said, "and very tired. We'll gain on them fast to-day." But though they gained the record of the tracks told that they did not gain fast.
He rode at the bank as though it had been the first fence of the day, striking his poor beast with his spurs, as though muscle, strength, and new power could be imparted by their rowels. The animal rose at the bank and in some way got upon it, scrambling as he struck it with his chest, and then fell headlong into the ditch at the other side, a confused mass of head, limbs, and body.
Deeper into his pony's flank sank the rowels, and up the hill on Doc he charged, pistol in hand. At thirty yards Doc pulled the trigger, when wonder of wonders the faithful old Springfield missed fire. Before Doc could throw in another shell or draw his pistol, Billy was over him and had him covered. If my memory rightly serves, the Sidney jail held Doc almost a fortnight.
To tell the truth, I hate to see a cavalry man walk, and I hold that just as he is the most gallant thing upon earth when he has his saddle-flaps between his knees, so he is the most clumsy when he has to loop up his sabre and his sabre-tasche in one hand and turn in his toes for fear of catching the rowels of his spurs.
A moment more and, in all probability, Kit Carson would have been breathing his last. Fremont saw the danger his friend was in, although Kit had tried to avoid the arrow by throwing himself on one side of his horse. With much forethought, as well as personal exposure, he plunged the rowels of his spurs deep into his riding animal.
He was a dark-brown gelding, about 15.3, with strong, square hind-quarters, and a fair slope of shoulder without much knee-action but springy enough in his slow paces: his turn of speed was not remarkable, but he could last forever, and, if the ground were not too heavy, would gallop on easily for miles with a long, steady stride; like most Maryland-bred horses, he had wonderfully clean, flat legs: after the hardest day's work, I never saw a puff on them; he was not sulky or savage, but had a temper and will of his own; both of these, however, yielded, after a sharp wrangle or two, to the combined influence of coaxing and a pair of sharp English rowels: in the latter days of our acquaintance we never had a difference of opinion.
As he gave his ecstasy utterance it grew; he brandished the weapon like a Bedouin, dug the rowels into his overspent beast and curbed him back to his haunches, fisted him about the ears, gnashed with the pain of his own blows, and howled, and stood up in the stirrups and cursed again.
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