pages 240-241

Pages 240-241

                By now the night air was heavily settled over the valley and filled the air with a moist coolness, and drove us in by the fire while the darkness engulfed everything even our home like a protective shadow from the outside surroundings, hugging the ground like an invisible something from above.

                We retired early that night.  Jim wanted to handle the horse a bit more and get harness lined out for him.  Then too he had bought more hay down on the creek and wanted to get it hauled for our feed was getting low.

                When the first rays of light hit the valley Jim was up.  I fixed the fires and prepared the breakfast.  Later Jim harnessed Nig and another quiet horse about his size.  Then he hitched the two to a wagon and had me hold the reins while he fastened the neck yoke and tugs, chaining Nig to the opposite horse by looping his halter chain though the line ring on the hames and back to Nigs halter chain, then a rope from the halter ring through his bridle bit and back to the wagon on the outside of the horse.  In that way you could pull more on him instead of both if he took a notion to run as they usually do if given a chance when breaking them.

                I got in the wagon, held on to the lines while Jim got in quietly from the tail gate of the wagon.  Jim hadn’t more than gotten in when he took off and what a ride!  We were breaking a real bronco, (a bronco is a horse raised wild on the range and not broken to ride or work).  Sometimes they are put in a corral and whip broke for easy catching.  Jim grabbed the breaking rope on the outside of Nig and pulled just enough to keep them circling in our valley instead of out in the sagebrush where they might hit a rock throwing the wagon over and hurting us.  I shouldn’t have been in that wagon anyway, but boy what a ride!  Nig kicked the single tree at every jump.  He tried to buck, he lunged and plunged, he fought the bit, the foam from his mouth came back in our faces and his hair, now wet with sweat looked like a piece of black silk from the rays of the sun.  I was just beginning to enjoy it to the fullest when he began to quiet down losing some of that wild horse spirt.

                Then we drove him slowly around for awhile longer.  Jim held onto the reins and halter rope while I opened the gate.  Jim grabbed my hand,, helping me in.  With Nig thinking he was off for his old home.  If you thought that bronco’s spirit was dead, you should have been in that wagon for that sagebrush trail wasn’t a road.  It was more like a smooth highway or one would have thought it the way that horse sailed over it.  It’s hard telling how fast he would have gone if it hadn’t been for his mate,  a quiet well broken plow horse, who seemed to jerk him back with every jump.  I felt sorry for the other horse. 

                 The ride was so bumpy Jim began to worry for me, holding the reins with one hand and his arm around under my arms.  Trying to take my weight a bit from the floor of the wagon, keeping me from taking too much of the jolt, but that was the most fun I had had for some time.

                We got just about to the little country school house before Jim got them slowed down enough to turn them around starting back home.  Nig slowed down then, finally stopped and bracing his four feet stood thus in the middle of the road. Jim coaxed the other horse, but to no avail.   He didn’t have the strength to budge Nigs’ braced feet out of the dirt.  And here he stood with head down, sulking like a whipped child.  “Well,” Jim says, “I’ve a few more tricks up my sleeve.  One is to blow in his ears, but if I did that he would take off before I could get back in the wagon.  Another is to chew on his ears with your teeth, results the same.  The third is to tie his ears so tight together that it will make them numb.  None of them are any good because he’d take off before I could get back in the wagon and you wouldn’t be able to hold them and would get hurt.”  Then finally he says, I’ve got it.  If he’ll only be quiet until I can get hold of his long black tail” which was a ticklish subject, fooling with a wild broncos tail, taking a small rope, made a loop to slip over the tail.  Cautiously Jim leaned over from the wagon and gingerly took a hold of the long black hair.  I was so afraid he’d get kicked.  Nig moved a bit, as though to start going, with me handing him the rope, he got the first loop around and again the horse twisted and looked around, doubling the long hair of the tail back he got the second loop on and then another until he had it firmly tied.  Now the worst part of it was yet to come, fastening it to the double tree.  I was so afraid the horse would kick him , then getting out of the wagon , and holding onto the rope, saying “Ho, ho” while fastening it to the single tree, just long enough so the horse would have to do his share of pulling the wagon by his tail.

                Jim hadn’t more than gotten in when the horse discovered his plight, thinking someone was pulling him back by his tail, took off and how!  Soon in the yard he began circling the valley again until Jim had them worn clear down,  especially the poor work horse.

                When Jim decided to stop and unhitch, that was a very subdued and much conquered bit of horse flesh.  But it was the most fun I’d had in many a day.  Later when I told the lady who would take care of me, She opened her mouth and about fainted and I thought she was going to pass out, but she revived herself enough to say, “All I’ve got to say for you, you were one lucky person.”  “I guess I am,”  I said.

                Nig never gave us any more trouble except he still would rear occasionally and strike with his front feet when Jim would halter him.