I wish
those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh
so. If I had had a horse worth a cent--but no, the minute he saw that
buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in the
air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took him
round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he came
down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stopped
pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle.
"Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded
perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literally
prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him,
and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his head for a quarter of a
minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind--he was, as
sure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Then
the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours and
took a fresh start--and then for the next ten minutes he would actually
throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to get
unsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in--and so he stood there
sneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and bellowing every now and
then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for
breakfast, certain.
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