It Took Us Fully Two Hours To Catch The Two
Horses.
At last they were ours.
Neither was well broken, though both had
been ridden, and the first thing Sinyela did was to blindfold them. The
saddles were removed from our jaded ponies, and placed upon the new ones.
The starts of terror and anger showed what we had ahead of us. Bridles were
adjusted, and then, with our fresh ponies still blindfolded, we sprang into
our saddles. When our feet were firmly placed and all was ready, we lifted
the blinds from the horses' eyes and then braced ourselves. Digging our
heels into the ponies' sides, off we started, at a jerking, bounding,
half-bucking pace. Shouting directions to each other, helter-skelter, over
and around boulders, we dashed along as if we were after the hounds on a
genuine old-fashioned fox-hunt. I suppose we kept it up a full hour, at
topmost speed. The horses didn't want to stop, and Sinyela knew that the
best way to break them was to let them have their own way. But before the
day was over, the ponies were considerably tamed down, and it was a weary
band that stopped for camp that night. The animals were duly hobbled and
turned loose; I lit a camp fire, though we had nothing to cook and no
kettle for boiling water, and dirty, dusty, with every nerve and fibre of
my body weary and aching, I finally stretched out on the solid earth and
wooed "balmy sleep." The ride was resumed next day.
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