Shrieks of laughter from behind the barn, following strange, rapid thumps upon the bare ground, led the three big brothers in that direction one May morning, and, on turning the corner, they found the little girl leaning convulsively against the old straw stack for support, while in front of her, blinded by a big, red handkerchief, and with a long bolster full of hay across her dappled withers, was the blue mare, making stiff, wild plunges into the air, with arched back and head held low. For the little girl was breaking her to ride!
It was the little girl who broke the horses on the farm to ride. She played with them as colts, and, with her light weight, mounted them long before they were old enough to carry any one heavier, and yet were too old to be sway-backed. She tried them first as they stood tied in their stalls, crawling carefully upon them from the manger. Later, she rode them at a walk up and down the reservation road.
She had learned the First Reader of the saddle on the St. Bernard's wide, slipping back. The pinto had been the Second, and she had then passed rapidly to the graduation class of frisky calves and lean, darting shoats. Now, for two years, all the horses sold at the reservation by the big brothers had been of her training, and the troopers vowed that no gentler, better mounts had ever been in the service. Her mother viewed the colt-breaking tremblingly, and the big brothers declared that the little girl would be buried some day with a broken neck. But the little girl said nothing, and continued her riding fearlessly, knowing that love, even with horses, makes all things easy,—except the breaking of the blue mare.
Thirteen hands stood the blue mare, sound, clean-limbed, and beautiful, and the markings of her sharp front teeth showed that she was but four. From velvet muzzle to sweeping tail, from mottled croup to fetlocks, she shone in the sunlight like corn-silk. Her mane was black and waved to her wide chest, and her heavy forelock hid an inwardly curving nose that proved an Arab strain. And when, after many spirited bouts with the hay bolster, the little girl finally won her over to a soft blanket and a stirruped girth, she showed the endurance and strength of a mustang, the speed of a racer, and the gait of a rocking-chair.
She was so tall that she could not be climbed upon, like a pony, from the upper side of sloping ground or from the stone pile on the carnelian bluff, and too skittish to allow a bare foot to be thrust behind her sleek elbows as a step to her back, so the little girl invented a new method of mounting. Her nose was coaxed to the ground by the offer of a choice wisp of grass, and, as her neck was lowered, the little girl carefully put one leg over her glossy crest and gave her a slap to start her,—when the blue mare raised her head and the little girl hedged along to her back, facing rearward. Then she slowly turned about!
Herding on the blue mare's back became a pleasure, not a despised duty, and long jaunts to the station, ten miles away, for mail or groceries, were welcomed. The eldest brother, too, had ceased to scold the little girl for the trade with Black Cloud or for the loss of the horse that was stolen. For the blue mare was worth two of the other.
The subject hardly ever came up in the farm-house any more; when it did, it only served to remind the little girl of a dread prophecy of the Swede, that, in good time, the swarthy brave would pass that way again!
The little girl always grew white at the bare thought. And often the dream of the leering face and the clutching hand would follow her by day. If she entered the barn, cruel eyes watched her from out dim corners; if she rode through the corn-field, now waist high, the leaves rustled a mysterious warning to her. "Run—run!" they whispered, and the little girl obeyed and sought the safety of the open prairie.
But there were hours of proud security, when, with the Swede boy as an audience, or, better still, with the colonel's son, she put the blue mare through her wonderful trick. This trick had been discovered accidentally by the little girl. One morning, when she was breaking the horse, she put one hand back playfully and pinched her on the croup to see if she would buck,—and, instead, she promptly lay down! Afterward, the same pinch brought her again to the ground, and the little girl found that it needed barely a touch to make the mare perform. But however delighted she was over her discovery, the little girl never mounted the prostrate horse, for she was afraid that she might roll upon her.
The days had passed, and it was now haying-time. But the mowers stood idle beneath their sheds, and the work-horses grazed contentedly with their heads to the south, for a rain was passing over the prairie. Inside the farm-house, the little girl, standing against the blurred panes, rebelled against the showers, and fretted for the blue mare and a gallop; the biggest brother, buried deep in a book, thanked Providence; while the eldest, remembering the uncovered cocks in the timothy meadow, cursed the storm.