Tom Turnbull begins handling the foals as soon as they are born. By the time they are weaned, he has accustomed them thoroughly to the halter; and although he never backs them till three years old, they have been bridled and saddled long before that period, and are so accustomed to the human form and face, and so confident no evil is intended them, that you may do almost anything you please with such willing and good-tempered pupils.
Consequently, there is none of that rearing, and plunging, and buck-jumping, which usually make the mounting of an unbroken colt such an affair of discomfort, not to say danger, to the two parties immediately concerned. By the time Tom Turnbull has hoisted his fourteen stone of manhood on to his colt’s back, the pupil is quite satisfied of the bonâ fide nature of the whole performance, and walks away with him as quietly as any elderly gentleman’s cob who comes round to the door regularly every afternoon, for the sober and digestive exercise which elderly gentlemen are apt to affect.
Tom Turnbull, though he puts a strong bridle in his mouth, then takes his young friend lightly by the head, and proceeds to ride him leisurely about, as he overlooks his farm. There are, of course, many gates to open, and the horse in learning this very essential accomplishment, receives at the same time a valuable lesson in the moral virtues of patience and obedience. If he see anything to alarm him, a scarecrow, an old man pulling turnips, or a sheep-trough on its beam ends (the latter, like all inverted objects, being much dreaded by the animal), he is not whipped, and spurred, and hurried by it in a matter that agitates his nerves for the rest of the day, but is coaxed and reassured, and persuaded gently and by degrees to examine it for himself, and so discover its innocuous nature. The next time he observes the same bugbear, he probably shies for fun, but that is a very different thing from shying for fear; and the same practice repeated will make him pass it the third or fourth time with no more notice than he would take of his own currycomb. He is by this time getting accustomed to his rider’s hand, has learned to put his head down, and toss the bit about his mouth, and is beginning to feel some confidence in his own activity, and a certain pleasure in doing what he is bid.
There are short cuts on Apple-tree Farm, like every other, which lead from field to field without going round by the gate. These entail the necessity of crossing certain gaps, which are periodically made up, and gradually destroyed again as the year goes round. Here the colt takes his first lesson in fencing. He is permitted to do the job exactly in his own way, without interference from his rider, except so far as a continual pressure of his legs warns the young one that it must be done somehow. Generally, after poking his nose all over it, and smelling every twig of the adjoining hedge, he walks solemnly into the very bottom of the ditch, and emerges somewhat precipitately on the farther side; then his rider pats and makes much of him, as if he had done his work in the most scientific form possible. Thus encouraged, he tried next time to improve for himself, and soon jumps it standing, without an effort. Ere he has been ridden half-a-dozen times he will trot up to any ditch about the farm, and, breaking into a canter the last stride, bound over it like a deer, perhaps giving his head a shake and his hind-quarters a hoist on landing, in sheer exuberance of spirits at the fun. In this manner he soon learns to do the fences equally well; Tom Trumbull’s plan being, in his own words, as follows:—“First, little places at a walk, then at a trot, then at a canter, and then bustling of them off their legs to make them quick. After that, fair hunting fences the same way. To my mind, a hunter ought to jump upright places, such as walls and timber, at a slow trot; but he ought to be able to do them if required, at speed, not that I, for one, would ask him for that, except as a lesson. All fair fences he should do with a loose rein, at an easy canter.”
But he is no theorist, my friend Mr. Turnbull. It is a treat to see him get away with the Castle-Cropper hounds on a good scenting day and in a stiff country, say for instance the Soakington Lordship. Though there is hard upon fifteen stone on his back, his horse seems to make no extra exertion, and though the rider keeps very close to the hounds, and follows no man, not even the Earl himself, he never appears to be out of a canter. How well he brings his horse (probably a five-year-old, who has done very little hunting, but has had plenty of practice, “shepherding,” and consequently jumping over the farm) up to his leaps! How he screws him through the thick place under the tree, and hands him in and out of the blind double, as you would hand a lady into an outside car! When you come to the rails in the corner, which he trotted up to so quietly, and seemed to rise at with such deliberate ease, you are surprised to find a dip in front of them, a bad take-off, a ditch beyond, and a general uncompromising appearance about the timber, that makes you wish that you were halfway across the next field, and “all were well.”
If you mean to see the run to your own satisfaction, and belong to that numerous and respectable class of sportsmen who are unable to ride for themselves, you cannot do better than follow Tom Turnbull; and should you cross the Sludge, which in that district you will probably do more than once, you will acknowledge that it is a treat to see him get triumphantly over that obstacle where its sluggish waters are deepest, and its banks most treacherous and rotten.
But it is not for a man with a broken collar-bone and his arm in a sling, to call up such dreams of enjoyment as a quick thing across the Vale with the Castle-Cropper hounds; so I took my chamber-candlestick once more, and wishing Miss Lushington a courteous “good-night,” which she returned with a gracious politeness, that would drive sleep for many an hour from the pillow of a younger and more inflammable swain, I shook Mr. Turnbull by the hand, and paused on my way to my dormitory to see him get into the saddle for his homeward ride.
“It’s a very dark night,” I remarked, as I watched him stuffing a well-filled note-case, the produce of his sale at to-day’s market, into his breast-pocket. “I wonder you like to travel these bye-roads with all that money about you, and such a lot of ‘roughs’ hereabouts, always on the tramp.”
Turnbull grinned, and taking me by the sound arm, pointed to the mare’s head—“They’ve tried that on, once before, sir,” said he; “and within half-a-mile of the Haycock. Look ye here, sir! that’s the way I done ’em that time: that’s the way I’ll do ’em again.”
Following the direction of his glance, I saw that he had run his bridle (a single snaffle) through his throat-lash, so that no part of it when he mounted would hang below the mare’s neck.