I rode Cricket from Silverton to Ouray, and on the way we became intimately acquainted. I talked to her, asked questions, scratched the back of her head, examined her feet, and occasionally found something for her to eat. I walked up the steeper stretches, and before evening she followed me like a dog, even when I traveled out of the trail.
CRICKET AT THE SUMMIT OF THE PASS
For the night she was placed in a livery-barn in Ouray. Before going to bed I went out and patted and talked to her for several minutes. She turned to watch me go, and gave a pleasant little whinny as the barn-door closed.
Telluride and Ouray are separated by a mountain that rises four thousand feet above their altitude. By trail they are twelve miles apart; by railroad, forty miles. Many people go by trail from one to the other, usually riding to the summit, one half the distance, where the horse is set free, and walking the rest of the way.
When Cricket and I set out from Ouray, we followed the road to the Camp Bird Mine. We met horses returning with empty saddles, each having that morning carried a rider from Ouray to the mine. Three of these horses were abreast, trotting merrily, sociably along, now and then giving a pleasant nip at one another.
We stopped at the Camp Bird Mine, and while in the office I overheard a telephone inquiry concerning a return horse, Hesperus, who had been sent with a rider to the summit and was more than an hour overdue. Half a mile above the mine we met Hesperus coming deliberately down. He was not loafing, but was hampered by a loose shoe. When he reached the Camp Bird barn he stopped, evidently to have the shoe removed. As soon as this was done, he set off on a swinging trot down the trail.
As Cricket and I went forward, I occasionally gave her attention, such as taking off her saddle and rubbing her back. These attentions she enjoyed. I walked up the steep places, an act that was plainly to her satisfaction. Sometimes I talked to her as if she were a child, always speaking in a quiet, conversational manner, and in a merry make-believe way, pretending that she understood me. And doubtless she did, for tone is a universal language.
At the summit Cricket met some old friends. One pony had been ridden by a careless man who had neglected to fasten the bridle-reins around the saddle-horn,—as every rider is expected to do when he starts the pony homeward. This failure resulted in the pony's entangling a foot in the bridle-rein. When I tried to relieve him there was some lively dodging before he would stand still enough for me to right matters. Another pony was eating grass by walking in the bottom of a narrow gully and feeding off the banks. Commonly these horses are back on time. If they fail to return, or are late, there is usually a good reason for it.
The trail crossed the pass at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet. From this point magnificent scenes spread away on every hand. Here we lingered to enjoy the view and to watch the antics of the return ponies. Two of them, just released, were rolling vigorously, despite their saddles. This rolling enabled me to understand the importance of every liveryman's caution to strangers, "Be sure to tighten the saddle-cinches before you let the pony go." A loose cinch has more than once caught the shoe of a rolling horse and resulted in the death of the animal. A number of riderless ponies who were returning to Telluride accompanied Cricket and me down the winding, scene-commanding road into this picturesque mining town.