When we had guests we used, what my husband was pleased to call, a gentle team, one that started off decorously with all their feet on the ground instead of in the air, but one day when we were expecting some friends from Wyoming he could not resist driving a new pair of beautiful bay horses when we went to meet them. I remained behind.
The dinner hour passed and no Owen; additional hours went by and late at night he came in dusty, dirty and scratched.
In response to a perfect volley of questions he explained that he was all right, but the Lawtons had telegraphed they had been detained, and then he added, as quite an unimportant detail, that “the horses had run away.” He had the expression of a fond and indulgent parent, and as he did not rise to the defense of his pet team when I called them “miserable brutes” I knew his pride, at least, had suffered.
“You see,” he resumed, “your new sewing machine and some other freight was at the station, so when I found the Lawtons were not coming I thought I’d bring it over. I had the crystal clock, too.” Owen looked so sheepish I had to laugh, although the clock had been a wedding present which we had sent up to the jeweler to be regulated.
“Is it smashed?”
“Oh, no,” he reassured me, “but I don’t know how well it will run. I got out to close the gate beyond the railroad when a confounded freight engine whistled and the horses started. I was holding the reins in my hand, of course, and tried to climb in the back of the wagon, but couldn’t make it on account of the load. I ran along the side until the horses went so fast I fell down and when they began to drag me I let go of the reins. They ran all over that inclosure, the wagon upset and canned tomatoes, sewing machine and crystal clock were strewn everywhere. I caught the horses finally, but the wagon was smashed so I had to walk back to Becker’s, get his wagon and pick up all the freight—that’s what delayed me. I’m dreadfully sorry about the sewing machine and the clock, but I don’t believe they are much hurt.”
He was very contrite, was my husband, but it didn’t last long, that sense of duty was too insistent. A very short time after, he was alone, driving another team, with a horse he had just bought, tied to the tug. The new horse, frightened at a dead animal in the lane, jumped, broke the tug, plunged forward, pulled the neck yoke off, the buggy tongue stuck into the ground as the horses ran, the buggy heaved up in the air and pitched Owen out. It landed so close to a fence post his head was scratched, but he might have been killed. As long as he had escaped, this runaway had its amusing side, too. He was bringing home a quantity of china nest-eggs which followed when he was thrown out, and he said for a minute it fairly snowed nest-eggs; the ground was white with them.
Owen and his horses! I never could decide whether it was more nerve-racking to go with him or stay behind, so I usually took the chance and went. The experiences we had! I wonder we ever survived that horse-breaking period, but only once did we face a fate from which there seemed only one chance in a thousand of escaping with our lives.
We were driving a buckskin horse Owen had just bought and a newly broken mare, a handsome, high spirited creature called Beauty. She danced and she pranced and forged ahead of the new horse which became nervous and excited in trying to keep up with her.
We were going up a long hill. Beauty was pulling and tugging on the bit when suddenly she gave a toss to her head and to our horror we saw the bridle fall back around her neck. The bit had broken. Like a flash she was off, the other horse running with her. Owen spoke to them. He wound the reins about his arms and pulled on them with all his strength.