The victorious athlete was awaiting with a smile of triumph on his lips for the colt to stop and recover his failing wind, when the frantic animal made a last maddened rear, trembling on the balance of falling backwards till the spectators held their breath; then dashing his head violently to the earth as he inverted his position, he stood with arched back and forelegs stretched out before him, as if he had been petrified in that position.
As he did so the saddle slid over his lowered shoulder, depressed, as in a horse jumping down a precipice, and the girths passing the ’elbows’ or projecting joints of the upper leg underneath, moved, loosened and flapping downward towards the hoofs. Mr. Banks, of course, strictly associated with his saddle, could do nothing to arrest its earthward progress. As saddle and bridle approached the animal’s ears, he threw up his head with tremendous force, catching the legs of Mr. Banks and casting him violently on to his back, with the saddle spread out above him. That young gentleman, however, held on to the bridle-rein with such tenacity that the throat-lash giving way, it was jerked over the horse’s head, leaving the reins in the rider’s hands, while Ben Bolt, with a wild snorting neigh, trotted off, free from all encumbrance, or, as Jack Windsor expressed it, ‘as naked as he was born.’
Every one looked extremely grave and sympathetic as the heroic Charley sat up with the saddle in his lap, until he, in the mild monotone of his ordinary speech, said—
‘That’s the fruits of being too lazy to put on a crupper and surcingle, as any man that calls himself a horsebreaker ought to do. Suppose I’d hurt myself, it would have been all your fault, Windsor!’
Then he arose deliberately and shook himself, whereupon they all burst into a great fit of laughter at his rueful and injured air, as if being shot over a vicious colt’s head, after ten minutes’ buck-jumping, was a trifling annoyance, that the least care might have prevented.
Mr. Neuchamp walked over to the saddle, which he carefully examined.
‘Why, the girths are still buckled on each side!’ he exclaimed with astonishment. ‘How the deuce could the brute have got the saddle over his head as he did—as he certainly did?’
‘Bedad he did! eh, Charley, me boy? and that’s a trick of rapid horsemanship I never saw performed before with my own two eyes,’ said Mr. Barrington. ‘There’s many a man, now, in my country, if I were to tell this story, wouldn’t believe me on my oath. They’d say it was unreasonable. You might stick them, and they’d never give in.’
‘I wish one of them was on that brute’s back,’ said Mr. Banks, rubbing a portion of his frame. ‘I thought I was as right as ninepence, and then to be slewed that way, and all for the want of a strap or two. I hate carelessness.’
‘Never mind, Banks, you sat him magnificently,’ said Ernest cheeringly. ‘I never saw such a bit of riding in my life. It will be many a day before any of us can exhibit in the same way. I consider you fairly won your bet. But still I remain unsatisfied about the saddle coming off without breaking the girths. How did it?’