But although range horses like cliffs, they are poor climbers. One may ride them up any place where a man can climb without using his hands, but they will never face a step above knee high. Sometimes I have been obliged to pass my rope round a tree and pull my horse down walls that he dared not jump. Even then he would argue the point.
Horse sense
American railway bridges have no pathway, and when one leads a horse, stepping from tie to tie, he thinks he has five legs. With two legs down, and a train expected or a bear sauntering ahead, he looks so damned patient that one begins to realise an obscure trait in his character which needs explaining. It is easier to take him across bridges than to ride or lead him through a waterfall. He prefers a waterfall to a corduroy-timbered swamp road when it happens to be flooded and afloat. I have tried him with quicksands and moss holes and glare ice on the mountain tops. Because I cannot swim I have stayed in the saddle swimming lakes, rapids, and rivers which run sand. Still worse are beaver swamps under a tangle of deadfall timber, and old avalanches. All these and sundry other kinds of evil ground a horse accepts as fate so long as he trusts his man. It is not his business. It is the man's affair. One begins to think that, like a savage, he lacks continuous purpose of his own and is merely the meek victim of his destiny. And that is exactly where the man is fooled. When a horse really wants grass, water, or to get home, he rivals the white man in sustained purpose, and does his own job with an intelligence and courage which he never gives to that of his employer. In other words, the difficulties of travel between grass and water gave to the ancient ponies the highest possible qualities of endurance, valour and skill. These qualities are latent in every horse.
There is a more important lesson to be learned by practical study of wild range.
The range has two types of herbage, the bunch grass and the thorned or aromatic bushes. The bunch grass is the staple food, the bushes a reserve in time of drought. The use of the reserve food has taught the horse to adapt his stomach to a change of diet.
The trail to water
Compared with farm land the range has very little food to the acre, supports only a small population of grazing beasts, and, in its distances between food and water, has trained the horse to a deal of exercise as well as to endurance of thirst. On the other hand the needs of travelling for water and of grazing have reduced his time for sleep to about three and a half hours per day, which he takes standing, however weary, unless he is quite confident as to safety and kind treatment. In brutally managed stables horses are apt to sleep standing, because they are not off guard.
At first glance, too, the water on level range, however distant from the edge of grass may be safely visited. Yet as one approaches the stream by slopes of the usual coulee, densely bushed with poplar and wild fruit trees; or, coming down open grass, enters a grove of cottonwood along the level bottom, one begins to note that the horses appear to be nervous. A bunch of loose ponies will let the wisest mare scout ahead while they string out in single file to follow all alert, picking their way most delicately, pointing their ears at all sorts of smells and sounds, and glancing backward often as they go. Again one watches tame horses watering at a trough, always alert, on guard. If one of them makes a sudden movement the rest will at once shy backward. Some horse are so nervous that they have to be watered singly. Always a horse drinks while he can hold his breath, lifts his nostrils to breathe deep and fill his lungs, then takes a second drink, perhaps a third, and turns away abruptly. There is no lingering at the waterside. At the bank of lake or river no range horse goes deeper then he need, or offers to take a bath.
Race-memories of peril
Here are race-memories of mortal peril from a daily watering in face of instant danger and of sudden death. I have seen so many horses piteously drowned in moss or mudholes that I understand why they tread cautiously as they approach wet ground. The bush beside the water is apt to be full of snakes who come down as horses do, to drink in the gloaming, and are not easily seen. The bush beside the water is the lurking place of every beast of prey, and everybody knows how horses go stark mad at the smell of bear. What chance had the ponies, strung out on a bush trail, against grey timber wolves? What thoroughbred fighting horse would ever have a chance against the Siberian tiger, or the African lion? Cougar, puma, jaguar, leopard—the cats of all the world with their sudden spring at the withers or throat of a range pony, have taught his descendants their art of self-defence. That we must deal with later.