“The ‘Before-Horse,’ I suppose; it’s really almost a true horse.”
“An’ the boxwood layer is the ponies o’ to-day?”
“No, Dick,” said the boy. “The next layer, which the geologists would call Pleistocene, has true horses, with a single hoof, and with the other two toes reduced to small splints of bone that don’t appear outside the skin. These are called horses. There were vast herds of them roaming over the plains.”
“An’ this little bronc,” said Round-up Dick, slapping his pony’s neck, “has come down from them, eh?”
“No,” answered Perry. “All the American horses went out, bang! Why, no one knows.”
“Where did we get the broncs, then?”
“From the Spaniards and early colonists of America.”
The cowboy looked incredulous.
“How about the Indian mustang?”
“Same thing,” asserted Perry.