“Why, do you want to go with them?”
I told him that I had not lost any horses.
“Well, we have,” he said, “and we are going to get them back before snow flies. The War Chief will attend to that.”
I found out afterwards that Washakie meant business. He was no coward.
“I flung the lasso over his head and jerked him from his pony.”
CHAPTER NINE PAPOOSE TROUBLES
After this second Crow scare, things quieted down again. I kept on breaking colts, and whipping kids once in a while. One day while I was riding a wild colt, the boy whom I had kicked before for trying to see my sore legs began to act smart again. He was riding with other papooses along with me to see the fun, and every once in a while he would poke my pony with a stick to see him jump. I warned him once or twice to quit; but this only seemed to make him worse.
I had a long rawhide rope around the colt’s neck, and I made a noose in the loose end. When he punched my horse again, I flung the lasso over his head and jerked him from his pony. This scared my broncho and he broke into a run. Before I could stop him, I had nearly choked the life out of that kid. The blood was coming out of his nose and mouth and I thought that I had surely killed him; but as soon as I loosened the rope, he began to bawl, and when he got up he put out for camp on the dead run, yelling and groaning as if he was being murdered. I started for camp, too, for I knew that things would be popping pretty soon. As he passed our camp, mother asked who had hurt him. “Yagaki!” he cried, running on to his mother.
Before I got home, mother met me and asked, “What have you been doing, Yagaki?”