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.
A Collection of Stories
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
A Collection of Stories
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
A Collection of Stories
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.