A Pony Ride on Pit River [pp. 342-351]

4 A PONVY RIDE ON PIT RIVER.
ian theory, will become grallatores; and
in twenty more, web-footed. At night,
Katy was fagged quite out, from her
foolish plunging, but the long-legged
Oregonian could have gone all night,
bringing his legs along with him in his
easy, rolling gait.
Horse-flies are a torment by day, and
mosquitoes by night, and between times
there is a certain kind of fly which is
never satisfied except when crawling in
the horse's ears, worrying the poor brute
dreadfully. The only remedy against it
is to oil the inside of these members.
When the mosquitoes become unendurable, the settlers kindle fires at nightfall, keeping them up until about ten
o'clock, and the pestered animals crowd
into the smoke, eagerly stretching their
necks into it, and stand close and quiet
together, grateful for the refuge, and
apparently forgetting in their common
torments the usual tendency which they
display to fight and harry one another.
One day at noon I stopped in a green
and well-watered valley to eat a luncheon, and allow the mare to graze on the
luxuriant bunch-grass. But the horseflies were so intolerably thick that the
poor animal could scarcely eat a mouthful. I was obliged to stand guard over
her; so, holding my food in one hand,
with the other I industriously beat the
flies off with a saddle - blanket, allowing
her to eat in comparative peace. After
awhile I got tired of it, and went and
threw myself in the shade. Katy missed the fly-brush in a moment, and, with
hundreds of the great, black, greedy
pests swarming about her and sucking
her blood, she came running and stuck
her head under my arm.
That last terrible day's ride around
the head of Goose Lake completely used
up the little mare. She was a full-blooded American, and, as I said, unaccustomed to this soft soil, which she took
to with too much spirit. Meeting an
Oregonian who wanted to swap horses
-this is a common weakness with frontiersmen I dismounted to conduct the
negotiation with him; and, even while
we were talking, Katy fell asleep, and
her head went down, down, down, with
successive little jerks, until the grass
tickled her nose, when she wakened
with a sudden start, looked wildly around
as if lost, saw me, gave a little whinny
of recognition, and rubbed her face affectionately against me. I parted from
the faithful little thing with moistened
eyes, but it was cruelty to keep her
longer on the road.
I got for her a cayuse of a bright
buckskin color; with long, flowing, jetblack mane; small, smooth, delicate
hoofs, as hard as bronze; wicked eyes,
and short, wide ears-beautiful as a Modoc maid.. The buckskin color is accounted the indication of a tough animal, and she was tough! She subsequently carried me 1,400 miles without
rest, and pulled through to the last with
firm flesh and good wind. She could,
in a pinch, have made fifty miles the last
day of the seventy. But the devil was
in her, from first to last. The second
morning I owned her sAe broke the
picket-rope and escaped, and I had to
pay an Indian $2 to hunt her down and
lasso her, which operation occupied him
well-nigh all the forenoon. I sat on top
of a great lava-rock, looking down over
the mighty plain through which courses
the North Fork of Pit River, and watched the sport below. While undergoing
the process of shoeing, this little buckskin mare at various times stood up
perpendicularly on her hind feet, and
struck out freely at my head and the
blacksmith's head. Then, with a great
disregard of propriety, she stood up almost equally erect on her fore feet, and
for the moment the operation of shoeing was entirely suspended. The blacksmith got so angry that he was stickstark-staring mad, and he aimed a frightful blow at her with a heavy iron rod,
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