Joe, on the right side of his horse, started to put his right foot into the stirrup, and the horse shied away from him, almost spilling him on the ground.
“First lesson,” said the Ranger. “Never get on a horse from the right. Some of ’em don’t mind, but most of ’em do. No use tempting Providence.”
Joe came around to the left side, and grasping the horse by the mane and the saddle horn, swung himself up.
“Now, just stand up as straight-legged as you can, and see how many fingers you can put between your saddle and the crotch of your legs.”
“Two,” said Joe. “Oughtn’t my stirrups to be shorter?”
“If you want to ride like a bally British monkey, or a jockey, yes,” Mills answered. “If you want to ride like a regular human bein’, they’re just right. Let’s see you trot.”
Joe tightened the reins and gave his horse a jab with his heels, and the animal started off with abrupt suddenness, at a sharp trot. Poor Joe began to bob up and down, and bang the base of his spine against the saddle. He tried to rise on his toes with the motion of the horse, but that, he felt, only made him the more awkward. The Ranger came up alongside, and passed him.
“Watch me,” he said. “Just barely stand in your stirrups, comfortable like, bend forward from your hips, and let your body, not your legs, keep the gait.”
He trotted ahead, and Joe saw with admiration that his shoulders hardly bobbed up and down at all. He did his best to imitate him, and after a while felt as if he were getting on to the hang of it. But they couldn’t trot far, because the packhorse was following them, all by himself, and if he trotted it shook up his pack too much. So they pulled down to a walk, and climbed the trail, first the Ranger, then Joe, then the patient packhorse, through woods at first, and across a roaring, racing little green river, which foamed up against the horses’ legs and made Joe hold up his feet under him to keep them dry.
“I’m going over Swift Current Pass,” the Ranger said, “and on up the Mineral Creek Cañon on the other side, and then down into the Little Kootenai River country, to open the trail a bit. You can come with me to the top of the pass, and pick up some party to bring you back.”