But then the young of science have assured us that the clergy talk a deal of nonsense, and that the Holy Scriptures are so much folk lore. Our modern teachers, unused to sleeping outdoors, have never seen the great heavens thrown open every night. They believe in nothing they have not seen, and those I meet have not seen very much. To them the lower animal is hardly a personal friend, but rather an automaton steered by instincts, built on much the same principles as a dirigible torpedo. The "instincts" have to account for deeds which in a man would be attributed to love or valour.
I often meet young people who gently wave aside my life experience while they crush me with some religious or scientific tenet to which they attach importance. Sometimes this bias has caused total blindness, more often they lack sympathy; but any horse can teach fellows who have eyes to see with, and hearts to understand. Then they will realise in him a personality like that of a human child.
I do believe that there are men and horses in whom the spirit burns with so mighty and secure a strength that it cannot be quenched by death; and that there are others in whom the flame burns low or has been blown out.
The horse psychic
Everybody has acquaintances who possess a certain sense, not yet quite understood, which enables them to read unspoken thoughts; to see events in the past, the distance, or the future as happening to their friends; or to be conscious of certain states of the atmosphere produced by strong human emotions; or to see or hear phenomena which some folk attribute to discarnate spirits. Such people are called psychic, and, if they use their powers as a means of earning money, they are defined as frauds. As a blind man does not deny the existence of eyesight, so, if I am not psychic myself, I have no call to decry the honest people who possess this gift. I have heard stories told in all good faith of dogs and horses showing uneasiness and alarm at apparitions which men failed to see, of so-called "ghosts," for example, in places which had been the scene of a violent death. Without careful investigation one can scarcely treat such tales as evidence; but it is quite possible that some horses, like some women, are strongly psychic.
Sense of humour
That horses have a crude sense of humour is known to every horseman. To rip the cap off a groom's head and drop it in the water is the sort of joke which appeals to a horse or a little boy. Once I was standing beside a friend who sat in a dog-trap, and each of us enjoyed a glass of beer while we passed the time of day. Just for fun the pony drank half my beer, but when I brought him a bowl of the same, pretended to be an abstainer. That pony would visit his master's dining-room of a morning to remove the covers and inspect the dishes for breakfast.
Another friend of mine once had a horse named Kruger, black roan with a white star on each flank. It had been his life's ambition to be a skewbald, and disappointment had lopped both ears over a glass eye, so that he looked like the very Devil. A greyhound body, long legs and a mincing gait completed his unusual list of beauties. Some fourteen years after my friend had sold out and left that country, accident brought me to Fire Valley, British Columbia, and dire need of a new pack animal constrained me to buy the horse. Perhaps for political reasons, or to evade the police, by this time old Kruger had changed his name to Spot. Frightened of him at first, my partner and I discovered his great talents as a pack-horse. Besides that, he was brave, loyal, and gentle, and above all things humorous. A rough passage of mountains brought us to settlement, where men would laugh at Spot, but horses never dared. One had only to say "Sick 'em!" as to a dog, and Spot would round up all the horses in sight and chase them. His face was that of a fiend save for a glint of fun in the one eye he had for business. For about fourteen hundred miles he spread terror before him, stampeding bunches of loose horses but always coming back with a grin, as though he said, "Now, ain't I the very Devil?"
The horse comrade
In the North-west Mounted Police, a detachment of us used to ride down bareback with led horses to water at the ford of Battle River. Close by was a wire cable for the ferry. On one occasion, my horse as he left the water turned under the cable to scrape me off his back. Failing in that, he returned higher up the bank, and this time I was scraped off into a pool of dust. Out of that brown explosion of dust, I looked up in time to see his malicious pleasure in a successful joke.