Tunemah was always trying to wander off the trail, trying fool routes of his own invention.If he were sent ahead to set the pace, he lagged and loitered and constantly looked back, worried lest he get too far in advance and so lose the bunch.If put at the rear, he fretted against the bit, trying to push on at a senseless speed.In spite of his extreme anxiety to stay with the train, he would once in a blue moon get a strange idea of wandering off solitary through the mountains, passing good feed, good water, good shelter.We would find him, after a greater or less period of difficult tracking, perched in a silly fashion on some elevation.
Heaven knows what his idea was: it certainly was neither search for feed, escape, return whence he came, nor desire for exercise.When we came up with him, he would gaze mildly at us from a foolish vacant eye and follow us peaceably back to camp.
Like most weak and silly people, he had occasional stubborn fits when you could beat him to a pulp without persuading him.He was one of the type already mentioned that knows but two or three kinds of feed.As time went on he became thinner and thinner.The other horses prospered, but Tunemah failed.He actually did not know enough to take care of himself; and could not learn.Finally, when about two months out, we traded him at a cow-camp for a little buckskin called Monache.
So much for the saddle-horses.The pack-animals were four.
A study of Dinkey's character and an experience of her characteristics always left me with mingled feelings.At times I was inclined to think her perfection: at other times thirty cents would have been esteemed by me as a liberal offer for her.To enumerate her good points: she was an excellent weight-carrier; took good care of her pack that it never scraped nor bumped; knew all about trails, the possibilities of short cuts, the best way of easing herself downhill; kept fat and healthy in districts where grew next to no feed at all; was past-mistress in the picking of routes through a trailless country.Her endurance was marvelous; her intelligence equally so.In fact too great intelligence perhaps accounted for most of her defects.She thought too much for herself; she made up opinions about people; she speculated on just how far each member of the party, man or beast, would stand imposition, and tried conclusions with each to test the accuracy of her speculations; she obstinately insisted on her own way in going up and down hill,--a way well enough for Dinkey, perhaps, but hazardous to the other less skillful animals who naturally would follow her lead.If she did condescend to do things according to your ideas, it was with a mental reservation.You caught her sardonic eye fixed on you contemptuously.You felt at once that she knew another method, a much better method, with which yours compared most unfavorably."I'd like to kick you in the stomach,"Wes used to say; "you know too much for a horse!"If one of the horses bucked under the pack, Dinkey deliberately tried to stampede the others--and generally succeeded.She invariably led them off whenever she could escape her picket-rope.In case of trouble of any sort, instead of standing still sensibly, she pretended to be subject to wild-eyed panics.It was all pretense, for when you DID yield to temptation and light into her with the toe of your boot, she subsided into common sense.The spirit of malevolent mischief was hers.
Her performances when she was being packed were ridiculously histrionic.As soon as the saddle was cinched, she spread her legs apart, bracing them firmly as though about to receive the weight of an iron safe.Then as each article of the pack was thrown across her back, she flinched and uttered the most heart-rending groans.We used sometimes to amuse ourselves by adding merely an empty sack, or other article quite without weight.The groans and tremblings of the braced legs were quite as pitiful as though we had piled on a sack of flour.Dinkey, I had forgotten to state, was a white horse, and belonged to Wes.
Jenny also was white and belonged to Wes.Her chief characteristic was her devotion to Dinkey.She worshiped Dinkey, and seconded her enthusiastically.
Without near the originality of Dinkey, she was yet a very good and sure pack-horse.The deceiving part about Jenny was her eye.It was baleful with the spirit of evil,--snaky and black, and with green sideways gleams in it.Catching the flash of it, you would forever after avoid getting in range of her heels or teeth.But it was all a delusion.Jenny's disposition was mild and harmless.
