a consideration, brought an old cross-tree pack-saddle, and then the lash-ropes,—ropes to bind the load to the saddle. Pat approached the pony with outstretched hands, saying pretty things in Irish brogue; while Mike, to make sure that the horse should not escape, had made it fast to his waist with a rope holding back, while Pat went forward, so that at the precise moment the latter had reached the pony’s nose, he reared up, and, striking forward, gave Pat a blow with his fore-foot, knocking him down. Seeming to anticipate the Irishman’s coming wrath, he whirled so quick that Mike lost his balance and went down, shouting, “Sthop us, sthop us; we are running away!” Pat recovered his feet in time to jump on the prostrate form of Mike, going along horizontally, at a furious gait, close to the pony’s heels. The Cayuse slackened his speed and finally stopped, but not until Mike had lost more or less of clothing, and the “pelt” from his rosy face.
When the two Irishmen were once more on foot, and both holding to the rope, now detached from Mike’s waist at one end, and buried into the wheezing neck of the Cayuse at the other, a scene occurred that Bierstadt should have had for a subject. I don’t believe I can do it justice, and yet I desire my readers to see it, since the renowned painter above-mentioned, was not present to represent it on canvas.
Think of two bloody-nosed Irish lads holding the pony, while he was pulling back until his haunches almost touched the ground, wheezing for breath, occasionally jumping forward to slacken the rope around his neck, and each time letting Pat and Mike fall suddenly to the ground, swearing in good Irish style at
the “spalpeen of a brute” that had no better manners, while Mr. Indian was laughing as he would have done his crying,—away down in his heart. Flip., and others looking on, were doing as near justice to the occasion as possible, by laughing old-fashioned horse-laughs, increasing with each speech from Pat or Mike.
Occasionally, when the Cayuse would suddenly turn his heels, and fight in pony style, Pat would roar out Irish, while the horse would compel them to follow him, each with body and limbs at an angle of forty-five degrees, until his horseship would turn again, and then they were on a horizontal awhile. Securing him to a post, Pat said, “Now, be jabers, we’ve got him.” After slipping a shirt partly over his head, to “blind” him, they proceed to sinche—fasten—the pack-saddle on him, and then the two packs. When all was lashed fast, and a hak-i-more—rope halter—was on his nose, they untied him from the post, and proposed to travel, but Cayuse did not budge. Mike pulled and tugged at the halter, while Pat called him pretty names, and, with outspread hands, as though he was herding geese, stamping his foot, coaxed pony to start. No use. Flip. suggested a sharp stick. Pat went for his cane, like a man who had been suddenly endowed with a bright idea. After whittling the end to a point, he applied it to the pony.
The next speech that Irishman made was while in half-bent position. With one hand on the side of his head, he anxiously addressed Tip. “Meester Injun, is me ear gone—Meester Injun, what time of night is it now? I say, Meester Injun, where now is the spalpeen of a pony?”
Mike had let go of the rope soon after Pat applied the sharp stick, and was following the retreating blankets and bottles, ejaculating, “The beautiful whiskey! The beautiful whiskey!”
When Pat’s eyes were clear enough, Meester Injun, without a smile, pointed to the valley below, where frying pans and miners tools were performing a small circus, much to the amusement of a band of Cayuse horses, who were following Pat’s pony with considerable interest.
I don’t think the goods, or the whiskey either, were ever recovered by Pat and Mike, but I have an idea that “Tip-tip-a-noor” had a big dance, and slept warm under the blankets, and possibly a big drunk.
Of course, reader, you do not blame Irishmen for their opposition to “The Humane Policy of the Government.”