I thought I seen that wagon train hellion coming after me. She was kicking and bouncing like the rest, but she was also dead still and tears was running down her pretty cheeks. Her nose was there and it warn’t there. Please help me, sir, she says, and she reached out with her roped hands to scratch my itch. Then she give me a blow that flattened me out and she jumped on me and all the others piled on top as well. The itch was driving me crazy and my eyes was wheeling around on their own, so I can’t say what happened after that, but it tired me most to death. I warn’t able to get up and walk again for three days.
When they took me to ride the horse, I reckoned it was another mean joke, but Eeteh says even if it was, the horse was a gift and I couldn’t not take it without making the whole tribe mad. This animal warn’t no half-pint cow-pony. He was a big dark stallion, fifteen or sixteen hands tall, and so wild they had to fence him apart not to sicken the herd with his contrariness. They kept him in a corral made a poles and brush, and when I stepped into it, he raired up over my head and snorted and punched his hoofs at me like to box my jaws. I ducked back, feeling about six inches tall.
He come with just a cinched pelt on him, no saddle or bridle, he wouldn’t tolerate them. What they wanted was for me to sivilize him by breaking his wild spirit. All I really wanted to do was open the gates and set him free, but that warn’t a choice I had. The tribe liked to say they warn’t crippling the animal when they broke it, but was welcoming him into the tribe as a trained warhorse and a fellow hunter, and I had to think like they thought. Which was the way the folks back in St. Petersburg most thought about me.
The first thing was to lasso him round his neck and choke him out of his wind, throw him to the ground when he stopped fighting back, and get a halter on him. They call it gentling, but there ain’t nothing gentle about it. I thronged my lariat at him a dozen times, but he was ripping around the corral like the very nation, ducking his head under the rope when I flung it and whinnying like he was laughing at me.
There warn’t nobody else laughing. Maybe the tribe was hee-hawing on the inside, I thought, but on the outside they was stiff as wooden totem poles. Then I seen it. The fear. They could a done to this horse what they done to old Jackson, but they was scared to. This stallion warn’t entirely of this world, that’s what they was thinking. Medicine dog. God dog. There might be dreadful consequences far beyond the eating of him. So this warn’t just a joke, then. They was using me for something else. I felt like one a them human sacrifices Eeteh was telling about.
When I finally lassoed him, I did wish I hadn’t. He hauled me right up off my feet. I was flying behind him, trying to get my feet under me whenever I landed, not to bounce on my belly. I must a made a most comical sight, but there still warn’t nobody laughing. Eeteh come to help, grabbing onto the rope, and together we slowed the horse enough for Eeteh to somehow snub him to a post. The horse raired and pulled back with all his might like to bring the whole corral down, but the rope held and tightened round his neck. Both me and Eeteh suffered a power of mighty kicks, but we was finally able to cross-hobble him, roping his forefeet to a back foot. He stopped fighting us then, and just stood there snorting and looking sadful. I felt bad about it and hoped he wouldn’t hold it against me.
Eeteh give me a thin rawhide thong. I’d watched the Lakota warriors on their horses, so I knowed what it was for. I had to loop it like a bridle over the horse’s lower jaw without getting my arm et, or I wouldn’t stand no chance of getting up on him so’s I could be throwed off again. He whipped his head round like he was trying to break my arm with it, but I managed to get the thong in his mouth and pulled tight round his neck.
There warn’t no stirrups to jump into, no saddle horn to grab. That warn’t the tribe’s style. I kicked my moccasins off, grabbed the rawhide thong and a handful of his mane, and swung aboard—and flew right off again, clean out of the corral. When that horse bucked a body, it was like what a cannon done to a cannonball.
I decided I’d just take my licking and admit I was well beat. I was only a clown, I could do that. I stepped back in, knotted his mane round one fist while he was twisting and jumping round, pulled myself up on his back, dug in with my toes and told Eeteh to let the horse free, but before I could even get set, I was flying out of the corral again, scraping my stern on the fence posts as I sailed across them. A circus clown couldn’t a done it better.
I warn’t feeling too brash when I staggered back in. I wanted to go set in front of the lodge again without doing nothing, but I knowed the tribe was all still waiting for me in their stern-faced way. I allowed getting throwed three times would have to be enough fun for everybody. I hoped I could live through it.