"Say, Mose, you can ride my horse if you want to."
"Much obliged, but I guess I'll hang on to the black mare."
At this point Dannie, not to be outdone, chirped shrilly: "You can break my horse if you want to."
So a few days later Harold, with intent to check the girl in her growing friendliness, as well as to please himself, replied: "I guess I'll break Dan's colt."
He began by caressing the horse at every opportunity, leaning against him, or putting one arm over his back, to let him feel the weight of his body. At last he leaped softly up and hung partly over his back. Naturally the colt shied and reared, but Harold dropped off instantly and renewed his petting and soothing. It was not long before the pony allowed him to mount, and nothing remained but to teach him to endure the saddle and the bridle. This was done by belting him and checking him to a pad strapped upon his back. He struggled fiercely to rid himself of these fetters. He leaped in the air, fell, rolled over, backing and wheeling around and around till Dan grew dizzy watching him.
A bystander once said: "Why don't you climb onto him and stay with him till he gets sick o' pitchin'; that's what a broncho buster would do."
"Because I don't want him 'busted'; I want him taught that I'm his friend," said Harold.
In the end "Jack," as Harold called the roan, walked up to his master and rubbed his nose against his shoulder. Harold then stripped away the bridle and pad at once, and when he put them on next day Jack winced, but did not plunge, and Harold mounted him. A day or two later the colt worked under the saddle like an old horse. Thereafter it was a matter of making him a horse of finished education. He was taught not to trot, but to go directly from the walk to the "lope." He acquired a swift walk and a sort of running trot—that is, he trotted behind and rose in front with a wolflike action of the fore feet. He was guided by the touch of the rein on the neck or by the pressure of his rider's knee on his shoulder.
He was taught to stand without hitching and to allow his rider to mount on either side. This was a trick which Harold learned of a man who had been with the Indians. "You see," he said, "an Injun can't afford to have a horse that will only let him climb on from the nigh side, he has to get there in a hurry sometimes, and any side at all will do him."
It was well that Jack was trained early, for as they drew out on the open prairie and the feed became better the horses and cattle were less easy to drive. Each day the interest grew. The land became wilder and the sky brighter. The grass came on swiftly, and crocuses and dandelions broke from the sod on the sunny side of smooth hills. The cranes, with their splendid challenging cries, swept in wide circles through the sky. Ducks and geese moved by in myriads, straight on, delaying not. Foxes barked on the hills at sunset, and the splendid chorus of the prairie chickens thickened day by day.