Deerfoot on the Prairies

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

“Leave us alone!”

Who can imagine the rage of the stallion when he found that a man was on his back? It took him a few seconds to understand the mortal insult, and then his fury burst forth like the fires of a volcano. In his wild delirium he emitted a shrieking cry, such as his species sometimes utter when in the extremity of terror, and began rearing and plunging in the very desperation of frenzy. “Bucking,” as displayed by the bronchos of the West in these times, was an unknown science to him, but he seemed one moment to be standing on his fore feet with his flying heels kicking vertically upward, and then, reversing in a flash, became upright like a man. Next he spun around as if he were a top, first to the right and then to the left, up-ended again, alternating with an abruptness that would have made an ordinary spectator dizzy.

Deerfoot held his seat as if he were a part of the brute himself. The luxuriant mane gave him a firm support. Sometimes he lay flat on the back of the steed, when he appeared to be trying to stand on his head, and the next moment was extended on his face and gripping the forelock. Then he was over the shoulders, and, in the same moment, astride of his haunches, but never once did he yield his seat.

While this battle royal was raging the other wild horses did a cowardly thing. Frightened by the struggle, whose nature they could not understand, they broke into a panic and dashed headlong to the southward. Had they possessed a tithe of the courage of their leader and gone forward to his aid, Deerfoot would have been doomed, but they basely deserted him in his extremity. What matter if they lost their despot? There were plenty of rivals to take his place. “The king is dead—long live the king!”

Again the stallion’s head went up in air. The right hand of Deerfoot gripped the forelock, and he seemed to hang suspended, so nearly perpendicular was the position of the two. In the delicate poise the slightest impulse was enough to throw the center of gravity outside the base. The Shawanoe gave that impulse by swinging his feet and body backward while supported by the forelock.

Over went the stallion squarely on his back with a thump that shook the ground. The shock was a severe one and by no means pleasant, nor was it what the brute had figured upon. He pawed the air, kicked and quickly struggled to his feet. The moment he came up Deerfoot, who had easily eluded the danger, sprang upon his back again.

Although he could not have forgotten his overthrow, the stallion reared once more, taking care not to rise as high as before. Standing thus nearly erect, his fore hoofs beating the air, the rider holding himself in place by twisting the fingers of his right hand in the forelock, Deerfoot leaned forward alongside the neck of the brute, and, reaching down with his left hand, seized the ankle of the stallion just below the fetlock, where he could almost span the limb.

The grip was like that of Damascus steel, and when the Shawanoe drew upward and held the hoof against the body of the horse, almost touching the upper part of the leg, because of the abruptness of the bend at the knee, it was as if the foot was imprisoned in a vise. The stallion, in his blind struggles, went forward on one shoulder and rolled over. Deerfoot was off again, and, letting the scared brute clamber to his feet, vaulted upon his back as before.

By this time the stallion was panic-smitten. Sweat was beginning to show, and his satin coat gleamed with new luster. Finding himself once more on his feet, he uttered another wild whinny and burst away over the prairie like a thunderbolt. It is not likely that he recalled the drove of which he was leader. If he did, he must have been angered by their base desertion of him, for he headed straight westward, and, when last seen by our friends, was running at his highest bent toward the snow-clad mountain, with the Shawanoe firmly seated on his back. George Shelton kept the glass to his eye till the two became a flickering speck in the distance and then vanished.

Deerfoot was well satisfied with the way things had gone and were still going. He had “cut out” the stallion from his herd, had mastered him in the furious fight, and, to complete the conquest, it was necessary still further to subdue him; that could be done only by allowing or compelling the brute to exhaust himself. The fight recalled his conquest years before of Thunderbolt, also a black stallion, on the other side of the Mississippi.