"Of course you're right," said Jack. "I have not done any work just like this for a good while, and it does seem hard and tiresome now, but it's like 'most everything else: we'll get used to it after a while."
"I reckon you didn't see Vicente get chucked to-day, did you?" asked Hugh. "No," he went on, "I'm sure you didn't, because you were over there by the fire when it happened. He tried to throw a cow, and when he stopped his horse the saddle cinch broke and he went a-flyin'. It didn't hurt him none, but he was pretty mad."
"Why, how did it come to break?" asked Jack.
"That was the funny part of it. You know he only came in day before yesterday, and coming down through the mountains the night before he got here, they camped, and along in the night Vicente was waked up by hearing a porcupine walking around camp. Of course, he thought of his saddle at once, and got up out of his blankets. It was bright moonlight and in a minute he saw the porcupine close to his saddle. He grabbed up a stick of firewood—he had got in late and cooked his supper with just a few odds and ends of brush and limbs that he had picked up around camp—and with one of these sticks he went for the porcupine. The stick was no good and broke the first time he hit the animal, and it ran off into the brush.
"Vicente knew it would come back, and he got a stout club so as to kill it if it bothered him. Then he took his saddle to bed with him and tried to stay awake; but he didn't stay awake. Presently he heard the porcupine whimpering about his bed, and he jumped up and mighty soon pounded the life out of the beast. He looked at his saddle the next morning, and it seemed to him to be all right, and he rode down the hill with it and didn't have occasion to use it hard until to-day.
"When he looked at it, after he got chucked, he found that that blasted porcupine had just taken a nip or two at the string that tied the latigo to the ring of the saddle. Maybe there was a little salt in that string from the horse sweat, or maybe it was just an accident. Anyhow, the string was cut enough so that when a pull came the saddle flew, and Vicente with it."
"Well, I am glad that he killed the porcupine," said Jack. "They are pretty useless beasts, according to my way of thinking."
"I don't think much more of them than you do; but up in some parts of the North the Indians think they are about the finest eating there is, and I reckon the Indians' clothing in old times wouldn't have been half as fancy as it used to be if it hadn't been for porcupine quills. You know in old times, before the Indians got glass beads by trading with the white folks, they used to use quills and feathers and hair, and sometimes black roots, to ornament their clothes, and their lodges. Of course, they dyed the quills or feathers, and the roots too, all sorts of colors, and made their moccasins and leggings and shirts and robes real pretty."
"Yes," said Jack; "I have seen buffalo robes that were handsomely worked with quills; and up there in the Piegan country pretty nearly half the shirts, and a good part of the pipe stems, were ornamented with quills."
"That's so," said Hugh. "The Piegans are great fellows to use quills, and so are the Cheyennes."