Great American Horse Stories Read online

  It was probably this which made me confide my unreciprocated affection to one of my neighbors, a man supposed to be an authority on horses, and particularly of that wild species to which Chu Chu belonged. It was he who, leaning over the edge of the stall where she was complacently and, as usual, obliviously munching, absolutely dared to toy with a pet lock of hair which she wore over the pretty star on her forehead.

  “Ye see, Captain,” he said, with jaunty easiness, “Hosses is like women; ye don’t want ter use any standoffishness or shyness with them; a steady but careless sort o’ familiarity, a kind o’ free but firm handlin’, just like this, to let her see who’s master.”

  We never clearly knew how it happened, but when I picked up my neighbor from the doorway, amid the broken splinters of the stall rail, and a quantity of oats that mysteriously filled his hair and pockets, Chu Chu was found to have faced around the other way, and was contemplating her forelegs, with her hind ones in the other stall.

  My neighbor spoke of damages while he was in the stall, and of physical coercion when he was out of it again. But here Chu Chu, in some marvelous way, righted herself, and my neighbor departed hurriedly with a brimless hat and an unfinished sentence.

  My next intermediary was Enriquez Saltello, a youth of my own age, and the brother of Consuelo Saltello, whom I adored. As a Spanish Californian he was presumed, on account of Chu Chu’s half-Spanish origin, to have superior knowledge of her character, and I even vaguely believed that his language and accent would fall familiarly on her ear. There was the drawback, however, that he always preferred to talk in a marvelous English, combining Castilian precision with what he fondly believed to be California slang.

  “To confer then as to this horse, which is not observe me a Mexican plug! Ah, no! you can your boots bet on that. She is of Castilian stock, believe me, and strike me dead! I will myself at different times overlook and affront her in the stable, examine her as to the assault, and why she should do this thing. When she is of the exercise I will also accost and restrain her. Remain tranquil, my friend! When a few days shall pass much shall be changed, and she will be as another. Trust your uncle to do this thing! Comprehend me? Everything shall be lovely, and the goose hang high!”

  Conformably with this he “overlooked” her the next day, with a cigarette between his yellow-stained finger tips, which made her sneeze in a silent pantomimic way, and certain Spanish blandishments of speech, which she received with more complacency. But I don’t think she ever even looked at him. In vain he protested that she was the “dearest” and “littlest” of his “little loves”; in vain he asserted that she was his patron saint and that it was his soul’s delight to pray to her; she accepted the compliment with her eyes fixed upon the manger. When he had exhausted his whole stock of endearing diminutives, adding a few playful and more audacious sallies, she remained with her head down, as if inclined to meditate upon them. This he declared was at least an improvement on her former performances. It may have been my own jealousy, but I fancied she was only saying to herself, “Gracious! can there be two of them?”

  “Courage and patience, my friend,” he said, as we were slowly quitting the stable. “This horse is young and has not yet the habitude of the person. Tomorrow, at another season, I shall give to her a foundling (‘fondling,’ I have reason to believe, was the word intended by Enriquez) and we shall see. It shall be as easy as to fall away from a log. A little more of this chin music which your friend Enriquez possesses, and some tapping of the head and neck, and you are there. You are ever the right side up. Houpla! But let us not precipitate this thing. The more haste, we do not so much accelerate ourselves.” He appeared to be suiting the action to the word as he lingered in the doorway of the stable.

  “Come on,” I said.

  “Pardon,” he returned, with a bow that was both elaborate and evasive, “but you shall yourself precede me. The stable is yours.”

  “Oh, come along!” I continued, impatiently. To my surprise he seemed to dodge back into the stable again. After an instant he reappeared.

  “Pardon! But I am restrain! Of a truth, in this instant I am grasp by the mouth of this horse in the coattail of my dress! She will that I should remain. It would seem”—he disappeared again—“that”—he was out once more—“the experiment is a success! She reciprocate. She is, of a truth, gone on me. It is love!”

  A stronger pull from Chu Chu here sent him in again but he was out now triumphantly with half his garment torn away. “I shall coquet.”

  Nothing daunted, however, the gallant fellow was back next day with a Mexican saddle and attired in the complete outfit of a vaquero. Overcome though he was by heavy deerskin trousers, open at the side from the knees down, and fringed with bullion buttons, an enormous flat sombrero and a stiff, short, embroidered velvet jacket, I was more concerned at the ponderous saddle and equipments intended for the slim Chu Chu. That these would hide and conceal her beautiful curves and contour, as well as overweight her, seemed certain; that she would resist them all to the last seemed equally clear.

  Nevertheless, to my surprise, when she was led out, and the saddle thrown deftly across her back, she was passive. Was it possible that some drop of her old Spanish blood responded to its clinging embrace? She did not either look at it or smell it. But when Enriquez began to tighten the “cinch” or girth a more singular thing occurred. Chu Chu visibly distended her slender barrel to twice its dimensions; the more he pulled the more she swelled, until I was actually ashamed of her. Not so Enriquez. He smiled at us, and complacently stroked his thin moustache.

  “It is ever so! She is the child of her grandmother! Even when you shall make saddle this old Castilian stock, it will make large. It will become a balloon! It is a trick. It is a little game believe me. For why?”

  I had not listened, as I was at that moment astonished to see the saddle slowly slide under Chu Chu’s belly, and her figure resume, as if by magic, its former slim proportions. Enriquez followed my eyes, lifted his shoulders, shrugged them, and said smilingly, “Ah, you see!”

  When the girths were drawn in again with an extra pull or two from the indefatigable Enriquez, I fancied that Chu Chu nevertheless secretly enjoyed it, as her sex is said to appreciate tight lacing. She drew a deep sigh, possibly of satisfaction, turned her neck, and apparently tried to glance at her own figure—Enriquez promptly withdrawing to enable her to do so easily. Then the dread moment arrived. Enriquez, with his hand on her mane, suddenly paused, and with exaggerated courtesy lifted his hat and made an inviting gesture.

  “You will honor me to precede.”

  I shook my head laughingly.

  “I see,” responded Enriquez, gravely. “You have to attend the obsequies of your aunt, who is dead, at two of the clock. You have to meet your broker, who has bought you fifty share of the Comstock Lode at this moment or you are loss! You are excuse! Attend! Gentlemen, make your bets! The band has arrived to play! Here we are!”

  With a quick movement the alert young fellow had vaulted into the saddle. But, to the astonishment of both of us, the mare remained perfectly still. There was Enriquez, bolt upright in the stirrups, completely overshadowing, by his saddle-flaps, leggings, and gigantic spurs, the fine proportions of Chu Chu, until she might have been a placid Rosinante, bestridden by some youthful Quixote. She closed her eyes; she was going to sleep! We were dreadfully disappointed. This clearly would not do. Enriquez lifted the reins cautiously! Chu Chu moved forward slowly—then stopped, apparently lost in reflection.

  “Affront her on this side.”

  I approached her gently. She shot suddenly into the air, coming down again on perfectly stiff legs with a springless jolt. This she instantly followed by a succession of other rocket-like propulsions, utterly unlike a leap, all over the enclosure. The movements of the unfortunate Enriquez were equally unlike any equitation I ever saw. He appeared occasionally over Chu Chu’s head, astride of
her neck and tail, or in the free air, but never in the saddle. His rigid legs, however, never lost the stirrups but came down regularly, accentuating her springless hops. More than that, the disproportionate excess of rider, saddle, and accoutrements was so great that he had at times the appearance of lifting Chu Chu forcibly from the ground by superior strength, and of actually contributing to her exercise.

  As they came towards me, a wild, tossing, and flying mass of hoofs and spurs, it was not only difficult to distinguish them apart, but to ascertain how much of the jumping was done by Enriquez separately. At last Chu Chu brought matters to a close by making for the low-stretching branches of an oak tree which stood at the corner of the lot. In a few moments she emerged from it—but without Enriquez!

  I found the gallant fellow disengaging himself from the fork of a branch in which he had been firmly wedged, but still smiling and confident, and his cigarette between his teeth. Then for the first time he removed it, and seating himself easily on the branch with his legs dangling down, he blandly waved aside my anxious queries with a gentle reassuring gesture.

  “Remain tranquil, my friend. This does not count! I have conquer—you observe—for why? I have never for once arrive at the ground! Consequent she is disappoint! She will ever that I should! But I have got her when the hair is not long! Your uncle Henry”—with an angelic wink—“is fly! He is ever a bully boy, with the eye of glass! Believe me. Behold! I am here! Big Injun! Whoop!”

  He leaped lightly to the ground. Chu Chu, standing watchfully at a little distance, was evidently astonished at his appearance. She threw out her hind hoofs violently, shot up into the air until the stirrups crossed each other high above the saddle, and made for the stable in a succession of rabbit-like bounds, taking the precaution to remove the saddle on entering by striking it against the lintel of the door.

  “You observe,” said Enriquez, blandly, “she would make that thing of me. Not having the good occasion, she is dissatisfied. Where are you now?”

  Two or three days afterwards he rode her again with the same result—accepted by him with the same heroic complacency. As we did not, for certain reasons, care to use the open road for this exercise, and as it was impossible to remove the tree, we were obliged to submit to the inevitable. On the following day I mounted her—undergoing the same experience as Enriquez, with the individual sensation of falling from a third-story window on top of a counting-house stool, and the variation of being projected over the fence. When I found that Chu Chu had not accompanied me, I saw Enriquez at my side.

  “More than ever it is become necessary that we should do this thing again,” he said, gravely, as he assisted me to my feet. “Courage, my noble General! God and Liberty! Once more on to the breach! Charge, Chestare, charge! Come on, Don Stanley! ’Ere we are!”

  He helped me none too quickly to catch my seat again, for it apparently had the effect of the turned peg on the enchanted horse in the “Arabian Nights,” and Chu Chu instantly rose into the air. But she came down this time before the open window of the kitchen, and I alighted easily on the dresser. The indefatigable Enriquez followed me.

  “Won’t this do?” I asked, meekly.

  “It is better for you arrive not on the ground,” he said, cheerfully, “but you should not once but a thousand times make trial! Ha! Go and win! Never die and say so! There you are!”

  Luckily, this time I managed to lock the rowels of my long spurs under her girth, and she could not unseat me. She seemed to recognize the fact after one or two plunges, when, to my great surprise, she suddenly sank to the ground and quietly rolled over me. The action disengaged my spurs, but, righting herself without getting up, she turned her beautiful head and absolutely looked at me, still in the saddle. I felt myself blushing. But the voice of Enriquez was at my side.

  “Arise, my friend; you have conquer! It is she who has arrive at the ground. You are all right. It is done; believe me, it is finish. No more shall she make this thing. From this instant you shall ride her as the cow as the rail of this fence and remain tranquil. For she is broke! Ta-ta! Regain your hats, gentlemen! Pass in your checks! It is over! How are you now?” He lit a fresh cigarette, put his hands in his pockets, and smiled at me blandly.

  For all that, I ventured to point out that the habit of alighting in the fork of a tree, or the disengaging of oneself from the saddle on the ground, was attended with inconvenience, and even ostentatious display. But Enriquez swept the objections away with a single gesture.

  “It is the principal—the bottom fact—at which you arrive. The next come of himself! Many horse have achieve to mount the rider by the knees, and relinquish after this same fashion. My grandfather had a barb of this kind—but she has gone dead, and so have my grandfather. Which is sad and strange! Otherwise I shall make of them both an instant example!”

  I ought to have said that although these performances were never actually witnessed by Enriquez’s sister—for reasons which he and I thought sufficient—the dear girl displayed the greatest interest in them, and, perhaps aided by our mutually complimentary accounts of the other, looked upon us both as invincible heroes. It is possible also that she over-estimated our success, for she suddenly demanded that I should ride Chu Chu to her house, that she might see her.

  It was not far; by going through a back lane I could avoid the trees which exercised such a fatal fascination for Chu Chu. There was a pleading, child-like entreaty in Consuelo’s voice that I could not resist, with a slight flash from her lustrous dark eyes that I did not care to encourage. So I resolved to try it at all hazards. My equipment for the performance was modeled after Enriquez’s previous costume, with the addition of a few fripperies of silver and stamped leather, out of compliment to Consuelo, and even with a faint hope that it might appease Chu Chu. She certainly looked beautiful in her glittering accoutrements, set off by her jet-black shining coat. With an air of demure abstraction she permitted me to mount her, and even for a hundred yards or so indulged in a mincing maidenly amble that was not without a touch of coquetry. Encouraged by this, I addressed a few terms of endearment to her, and in the exuberance of my youthful enthusiasm I even confided to her my love for Consuelo, and begged her to be “good” and not disgrace herself and me before my Dulcinea. In my foolish trustfulness I was rash enough to add a caress, and to pat her soft neck. She stopped instantly with a hysteric shudder. I knew what was passing through her mind; she had suddenly become aware of my baleful existence.

  The saddle and bridle Chu Chu was becoming accustomed to, but who was this living, breathing object that had actually touched her? Presently her oblique vision was attracted by the fluttering movement of a fallen oak leaf in the road before her. She had probably seen many oak leaves many times before; her ancestors had no doubt been familiar with them on the trackless hills and in field and paddock; but this did not alter her profound conviction that I and the leaf were identical, that our baleful touch was something indissolubly connected. She reared before that innocent leaf, she revolved round it, and then fled from it at the top of her speed.

  The lane passed before the rear wall of Saltello’s garden. Unfortunately, at the angle of the fence stood a beautiful Madroño tree, brilliant with its scarlet berries and endeared to me as Consuelo’s favorite haunt, under whose protecting shade I had more than once avowed my youthful passion. By the irony of fate Chu Chu caught sight of it, and with a succession of spirited bounds instantly made for it. In another moment I was beneath it, and Chu Chu shot like a rocket into the air. I had barely time to withdraw my feet from the stirrups, to throw up one arm to protect my glazed sombrero and grasp an overhanging branch with the other, before Chu Chu darted off. But to my consternation, as I gained a secure perch on the tree, and looked about me, I saw her—instead of running away—quietly trot through the gate into Saltello’s garden.

  Need I say that it was to the beneficent Enriquez that I again owed my salvation? Scarcely a moment elaps
ed before his bland voice rose in a concentrated whisper from the corner of the garden below me. He had divined the dreadful truth!

  “For the love of God, collect to yourself many kinds of this berry! All you can! Your full arms round! Rest tranquil. Leave to your old uncle to make for you a delicate exposure. At the instant!”

  He was gone again. I gathered, wonderingly, a few of the larger clusters of parti-colored fruit and patiently waited. Presently he reappeared, and with him the lovely Consuelo, her dear eyes filled with an adorable anxiety.

  “Yes,” continued Enriquez to his sister, with a confidential lowering of tone but great distinctness of utterance, “it is ever so with the American! He will ever make first the salutation of the flower or the fruit, picked to himself by his own hand, to the lady where he call. It is the custom of the American hidalgo! My God!—what will you! I make it not—it is so! Without doubt he is in this instant doing this thing. That is why he have let go his horse to precede him here; it is always the etiquette to offer this things on the feet. Ah, I behold! It is he!—Don Francisco! Even now he will descend from this tree! Ah! You make the blush, little sister! (archly). I will retire. I am discreet; two is not company for the one. I make tracks. I am gone.”

  How far Consuelo entirely believed and trusted her ingenious brother I do not know, nor even then cared to inquire. For there was a pretty mantling of her olive cheek as I came forward with my offering, and a certain significant shyness in her manner that were enough to throw me into a state of hopeless imbecility. And I was always miserably conscious that Consuelo possessed an exalted sentimentality and a predilection for the highest medieval romance, in which I knew I was lamentably deficient. Even in our most confidential moments I was always aware that I weakly lagged behind this daughter of a gloomily distinguished ancestry in her frequent incursions into a vague but poetic past. There was something of the dignity of the Spanish châtelaine in the sweetly grave little figure that advanced to accept my specious offering. I think I should have fallen on my knees to present it, but for the presence of the all-seeing Enriquez. But why did I even at that moment remember that he had early bestowed upon her the nickname of “Pomposa”? This, as Enriquez himself might have observed, was “sad and strange.”