Such a variety of horses as one meets when boarding at a livery stable, and what stories they can tell!
A tough-looking pair of mustangs gave a little of their experience one night. They said they were once wild, roaming over the western prairies at will; but that some Indians caught them with a lasso, and then sold them to a cowboy. The latter named them "Daredevil" and "Wildcat," and began to break them.
"Regularly, as he took us in hand," said Daredevil, "he knocked us each down from ten to fifty times. Why, I used to be just crazy from fright and pain, but he called me vicious, and said he would pound it out of me. Sometimes he would strike me on the head and stun me so that he would think me dead, but he never seemed to care. Had he used us kindly I do not think we would have been hard to manage at all, after the strangeness and fright wore off a little, but such treatment as he gave us brought out all that was bad and wild; I guess it would have made a daredevil and wildcat out of any creature. He did not mind at all if the bit tore our mouths till the blood poured out, or the whip laid open our shoulders and flanks till he could lay his three fingers in; a mustang can stand anything. How frantic we were for release from such torture, and how hard we tried to kill ourselves."
"And then," put in Wildcat, "when he considered us broken, he used to ride us almost to death. Many and many a mile have I run without stopping for breath, with those dreadful spurs pressed deep into my bleeding sides."
"Indeed," said Daredevil, "the wound never healed in mine; it was just tearing a little deeper each day."
Then it seems they were stolen by a half-breed Indian and sold to another white man, who treated them no better. His business was to assist emigrants across the mountains, and he used to overload them and goad them with a sharp pointed staff until they were obliged to move on, some way. They lived this sort of life for three years; then being almost worthless, he sold them to an Eastern man who was buying up mustangs. They were shipped to Chicago in a close, wretched car, being forty-eight hours at a time without food or water.
"I can give you no idea of the horrors of those days," said Wildcat. "It was just like what burning alive must be, and we all got so ugly that we kicked and bit furiously. Two or three of the weaker ones were trampled to death, but when once the agony was over, they were objects of envy. We all wanted to die. A few became delirious and had to be shot when we were taken out.
"Daredevil and I match so perfectly that we were at once sold together again to a little fellow from Wisconsin. He seemed to think that being mustangs we would require a good deal of abuse and hard work and not much to eat. Anyway he only paid a few dollars apiece for us. I have noticed that the more an animal costs, usually, the better care it receives. This fellow used to pound us till the neighbor women would come out, wringing their hands and crying, and beg him to stop. He would tell them that it was the only way to manage a mustang.
"Desperate at last, Daredevil watched her chance, and planted both her hind feet in the small of his back, one day, and doubled him up. It did me good to see the folks venture gingerly up, expecting us to scalp them, I suppose, and bear him off. He'd knocked us down a good many times, and then without pity kicked us till we got up.
"We were immediately sold to an easy-going individual who worked us very hard, but was decent in his treatment. This was the best place we had had, and we tried to please him. His easy-goingness got him into debt, though, and we had to go for that to the man who now owns us. He is a notion peddler, and well enough when sober, but he is usually drunk. He may start in the morning and drive us till after dark without a drop of water or bite of food."