A thousand deaths by Jack London

I threw my chest out and my shoulders back. “What man has done, I

can do,” I proclaimed grandly. “And please don’t forget that when

we sailed on the Snark I knew nothing of navigation, and that I

taught myself as I sailed.”

“Very well,” she said. (And there’s faith for you! ) “They shall

be four saddle horses, and we’ll strap our saddles on behind the

rig.”

It was my turn to object. “Our saddle horses are not broken to

harness.”

“Then break them.”

And what I knew about horses, much less about breaking them, was

just about as much as any sailor knows. Having been kicked,

bucked off, fallen over backward upon, and thrown out and run

over, on very numerous occasions, I had a mighty vigorous respect

for horses; but a wife’s faith must be lived up to, and I went at

it.

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24

King was a polo pony from St. Louis, and Prince a many-gaited

love-horse from Pasadena. The hardest thing was to get them to

dig in and pull. They rollicked along on the levels and galloped

down the hills, but when they struck an up-grade and felt the

weight of the breaking-cart, they stopped and turned around and

looked at me. But I passed them, and my troubles began. Milda

was fourteen years old, an unadulterated broncho, and in

temperament was a combination of mule and jack-rabbit blended

equally. If you pressed your hand on her flank and told her to

get over, she lay down on you. If you got her by the head and

told her to back, she walked forward over you. And if you got

behind her and shoved and told her to “Giddap!” she sat down on

you. Also, she wouldn’t walk. For endless weary miles I strove

with her, but never could I get her to walk a step. Finally, she

was a manger-glutton. No matter how near or far from the stable,

when six o’clock came around she bolted for home and never missed

the directest cross-road. Many times I rejected her.

The fourth and most rejected horse of all was the Outlaw. From

the age of three to seven she had defied all horse-breakers and

broken a number of them. Then a long, lanky cowboy, with a fifty-

pound saddle and a Mexican bit had got her proud goat. I was the

next owner. She was my favourite riding horse. Charmian said I’d

have to put her in as a wheeler where I would have more control

over her. Now Charmian had a favourite riding mare called Maid.

I suggested Maid as a substitute. Charmian pointed out that my

mare was a branded range horse, while hers was a near-

thoroughbred, and that the legs of her mare would be ruined

forever if she were driven for three months. I acknowledged her

mare’s thoroughbredness, and at the same time defied her to find

any thoroughbred with as small and delicately-viciously pointed

ears as my Outlaw. She indicated Maid’s exquisitely thin

shinbone. I measured the Outlaw’s. It was equally thin,

although, I insinuated, possibly more durable. This stabbed

Charmian’s pride. Of course her near-thoroughbred Maid, carrying

the blood of “old” Lexington, Morella, and a streak of the super-

enduring Morgan, could run, walk, and work my unregistered Outlaw

into the ground; and that was the very precise reason why such a

paragon of a saddle animal should not be degraded by harness.

So it was that Charmian remained obdurate, until, one day, I got

her behind the Outlaw for a forty-mile drive. For every inch of

those forty miles the Outlaw kicked and jumped, in between the

kicks and jumps finding time and space in which to seize its team-

mate by the back of the neck and attempt to drag it to the ground.

Another trick the Outlaw developed during that drive was suddenly

to turn at right angles in the traces and endeavour to butt its

team-mate over the grade. Reluctantly and nobly did Charmian give

in and consent to the use of Maid. The Outlaw’s shoes were pulled

off, and she was turned out on range.

Finally, the four horses were hooked to the rig–a light

Studebaker trap. With two hours and a half of practice, in which

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25

the excitement was not abated by several jack-poles and numerous

kicking matches, I announced myself as ready for the start. Came

the morning, and Prince, who was to have been a wheeler with Maid,

showed up with a badly kicked shoulder. He did not exactly show

up; we had to find him, for he was unable to walk. His leg

swelled and continually swelled during the several days we waited

for him. Remained only the Outlaw. In from pasture she came,

shoes were nailed on, and she was harnessed into the wheel.

Friends and relatives strove to press accident policies on me, but

Charmian climbed up alongside, and Nakata got into the rear seat

with the typewriter–Nakata, who sailed cabin-boy on the Snark for

two years and who had shown himself afraid of nothing, not even of

me and my amateur jamborees in experimenting with new modes of

locomotion. And we did very nicely, thank you, especially after

the first hour or so, during which time the Outlaw had kicked

about fifty various times, chiefly to the damage of her own legs

and the paintwork, and after she had bitten a couple of hundred

times, to the damage of Maid’s neck and Charmian’s temper. It was

hard enough to have her favourite mare in the harness without also

enduring the spectacle of its being eaten alive.

Our leaders were joys. King being a polo pony and Milda a rabbit,

they rounded curves beautifully and darted ahead like coyotes out

of the way of the wheelers. Milda’s besetting weakness was a

frantic desire not to have the lead-bar strike her hocks. When

this happened, one of three things occurred: either she sat down

on the lead-bar, kicked it up in the air until she got her back

under it, or exploded in a straight-ahead, harness-disrupting

jump. Not until she carried the lead-bar clean away and danced a

break-down on it and the traces, did she behave decently. Nakata

and I made the repairs with good old-fashioned bale-rope, which is

stronger than wrought-iron any time, and we went on our way.

In the meantime I was learning–I shall not say to tool a four-in-

hand–but just simply to drive four horses. Now it is all right

enough to begin with four work-horses pulling a load of several

tons. But to begin with four light horses, all running, and a

light rig that seems to outrun them–well, when things happen they

happen quickly. My weakness was total ignorance. In particular,

my fingers lacked training, and I made the mistake of depending on

my eyes to handle the reins. This brought me up against a

disastrous optical illusion. The bight of the off head-line,

being longer and heavier than that of the off wheel-line, hung

lower. In a moment requiring quick action, I invariably mistook

the two lines. Pulling on what I thought was the wheel-line, in

order to straighten the team, I would see the leaders swing

abruptly around into a jack-pole. Now for sensations of sheer

impotence, nothing can compare with a jack-pole, when the

horrified driver beholds his leaders prancing gaily up the road

and his wheelers jogging steadily down the road, all at the same

time and all harnessed together and to the same rig.

I no longer jack-pole, and I don’t mind admitting how I got out of

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26

the habit. It was my eyes that enslaved my fingers into ill

practices. So I shut my eyes and let the fingers go it alone.

To-day my fingers are independent of my eyes and work

automatically. I do not see what my fingers do. They just do it.

All I see is the satisfactory result.

Still we managed to get over the ground that first day–down sunny

Sonoma Valley to the old town of Sonoma, founded by General

Vallejo as the remotest outpost on the northern frontier for the

purpose of holding back the Gentiles, as the wild Indians of those

days were called. Here history was made. Here the last Spanish

mission was reared; here the Bear flag was raised; and here Kit

Carson, and Fremont, and all our early adventurers came and rested

in the days before the days of gold.

We swung on over the low, rolling hills, through miles of dairy

farms and chicken ranches where every blessed hen is white, and

down the slopes to Petaluma Valley. Here, in 1776, Captain Quiros

came up Petaluma Creek from San Pablo Bay in quest of an outlet to

Bodega Bay on the coast. And here, later, the Russians, with

Alaskan hunters, carried skin boats across from Fort Ross to poach

for sea-otters on the Spanish preserve of San Francisco Bay.