The Captain was as stolid and unconcerned as a Red Indian through every change of weather. He had nicknamed me “Kim” from Kipling’s tale, and after me he had named a large black horse which he always rode. It was an excellent animal with a very rapid walk which proved the bane of my existence. My pony, “Pickpocket,” had no pace that corresponded, and to adapt himself was forced to travel at a most infernal jiggle that was not only exceedingly wearing but shook me round so that the rain permeated in all sorts of crevices which might reasonably have been expected to prove water-tight. With the pride of a boy on his second trip, I could not bring myself to own up to my discomfort. If I had, the Captain would have instantly changed his pace; but it seemed a soft and un-Western admission to make, so I suffered in external silence, while inwardly heaping every insult I could think of upon the Captain’s mount. We were travelling long distances, so the gait was rarely changed unless I made some excuse to loiter behind, and then walked my pony in slow and solitary comfort until the Captain was almost out of sight, and it was time to press into a lope which comfortably and far too rapidly once more put me even with him.
The Captain was a silent companion; he would ride along hour after hour, chewing a long black cigar, in a silence broken only by verses he would hum to himself. There was one that went on interminably, beginning:
“I wonder if ever a cowboy
Will be seen in those days long to come;
I wonder if ever an Indian
Will be seen in that far bye-and-bye.”
Every now and then some butte would suggest a reminiscence of the early days, and a few skilfully directed questions would lure him into a chain of anecdotes of the already vanished border-life. He was continually coming out with a quotation from some author with whose writings I had never thought him acquainted. Fishing in a Black Hills stream, I heard him mutter:
“So you heard the left fork of the Yuba
As you stood on the banks of the Po.”