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Updated: June 10, 2025
Whilst the pages are at their banqueting, I keep their mules, and to someone I cut the stirrup-leather of the mounting side till it hang but by a thin strap or thread, that when the great puffguts of the counsellor or some other hath taken his swing to get up, he may fall flat on his side like a pork, and so furnish the spectators with more than a hundred francs' worth of laughter.
Up to this time he had been under the impression that they had got together, and something had detained them perhaps the breaking of a stirrup-leather or a girth, he knew not what and he was just beginning to grow uneasy when Basil made his appearance.
By his way of it, he had been a camp-follower or servant to a horse-soldier in the Low Countries, which was maybe true, for I will not be denying these wandering folk have the way of horse, and he made a play of himself to be showing how he was beaten often with the stirrup-leather.
Your horse being firmly stayed, you next take your Stirrup-leather in your Right-hand, about four inches from the stirrup-iron, and fix one third of your foot in the stirrup, standing square with your horse's side; next take a firm hold with your right hand on the Cantlet or back part of the saddle, rather on the off side of it, and with your left knee prest firm against the horse's side, spring yourself up perpendicularly, bending the small of your back and looking chearfully up rather than down.
Let him be sure that the fit of a saddle is of more moment than the fit of a pair of breeches; that in riding the length, strength, and nature of the bit will avail more, should at least avail more, than the depth, form, and general arrangement of the flask; that the question of boots, great as it certainly is, should be postponed to the question of shoes; that a man's seat should be guarded by his girths rather than by his spurs; that no run has ever been secured by the brilliancy of the cravat, though many a run has been lost by the insufficiency of a stirrup-leather.
Later in the day, however, news was brought that his horse had been found loose in the streets, in the neighbourhood of the Cardinal of Parma's palace, with only one stirrup-leather, the other having clearly been cut from the saddle, and, at the same time, it was related that the servant who had accompanied him after he had separated from the rest had been found at dawn in the Piazza della Giudecca mortally wounded and beyond speech, expiring soon after his removal to a neighbouring house.
He glanced at the man I named, and shivered, and for a moment was silent. But one of the grooms approaching with the stirrup-leather, he found his voice. "Forty crowns," he muttered. "Fonvelle?" "The same." I made him confess also the sums which he had received from Lescaut and Philippon, and then the names of seven others who had been in the habit of bribing him.
If there is a stirrup-leather or sword-scabbard in the garrison, I promise you as sound a beating as you ever yet received." The Navarrese, who had returned to his mules and was busied reloading his gun, snapped his fingers scornfully at this menace. Don Luis walked up to him. "Listen, Paco," said he, in a low voice, "take my advice, and avoid this neighbourhood for a while.
There was a rifle slung under his stirrup-leather, and a six-shooter in its holster on his hip was a conspicuous feature of his costume. He sat for a moment, looking, then dropped the bridle reins as he dismounted and sauntered up to the camp-fire. Wallie was sure that it was "Boise Bill," from a description Pinkey had given him, and his voice was slightly tremulous as he said: "Good evening."
All night they led their horses, stumbling and groping through wild defiles and rugged valleys, following the guidance of a frightened peasant who was strapped by the wrist to Black Simon's stirrup-leather. With the early dawn they found themselves in a black ravine, with others sloping away from it on either side, and the bare brown crags rising in long bleak terraces all round them.
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