i resolved to have a horse to ride. i had never seen such wild, free, magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-clad mexicans, californians and mexicanized americans displayed in carson streets every day. how they rode! leaning just gently forward out of the perpendicular, easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blown square up in front, and long riata swinging above the head, they swept through the town like the wind! the next minute they were only a sailing puff of dust on the far desert. if they trotted, they sat up gallantly and gracefully, and seemed part of the horse; did not go jiggering up and down after the silly miss-nancy fashion of the riding-schools. i had quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was full of anxiety to learn more. i was resolved to buy a horse.

while the thought was rankling in my mind, the auctioneer came skurrying through the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners on him as a dromedary, and was necessarily uncomely; but he was “going, going, at twenty-two!—horse, saddle and bridle at twenty-two dollars, gentlemen!” and i could hardly resist.

a man whom i did not know (he turned out to be the auctioneer’s brother) noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a very remarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the saddle alone was worth the money. it was a spanish saddle, with ponderous ‘tapidaros’, and furnished with the ungainly sole-leather covering with the unspellable name. i said i had half a notion to bid. then this keen-eyed person appeared to me to be “taking my measure”; but i dismissed the suspicion when he spoke, for his manner was full of guileless candor and truthfulness. said he:

“i know that horse—know him well. you are a stranger, i take it, and so you might think he was an american horse, maybe, but i assure you he is not. he is nothing of the kind; but—excuse my speaking in a low voice, other people being near—he is, without the shadow of a doubt, a genuine mexican plug!”

i did not know what a genuine mexican plug was, but there was something about this man’s way of saying it, that made me swear inwardly that i would own a genuine mexican plug, or die.

“has he any other—er—advantages?” i inquired, suppressing what eagerness i could.

he hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one side, and breathed in my ear impressively these words:

“he can out-buck anything in america!”

“going, going, going—at twent—ty—four dollars and a half, gen—”

“twenty-seven!” i shouted, in a frenzy.

“and sold!” said the auctioneer, and passed over the genuine mexican plug to me.

i could scarcely contain my exultation. i paid the money, and put the animal in a neighboring livery-stable to dine and rest himself.

in the afternoon i brought the creature into the plaza, and certain citizens held him by the head, and others by the tail, while i mounted him. as soon as they let go, he placed all his feet in a bunch together, lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot me straight into the air a matter of three or four feet! i came as straight down again, lit in the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almost on the high pommel, shot up again, and came down on the horse’s neck—all in the space of three or four seconds. then he rose and stood almost straight up on his hind feet, and i, clasping his lean neck desperately, slid back into the saddle and held on. he came down, and immediately hoisted his heels into the air, delivering a vicious kick at the sky, and stood on his forefeet. and then down he came once more, and began the original exercise of shooting me straight up again. the third time i went up i heard a stranger say:

“oh, don’t he buck, though!”

while i was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with a leathern strap, and when i arrived again the genuine mexican plug was not there. a california youth chased him up and caught him, and asked if he might have a ride. i granted him that luxury. he mounted the genuine, got lifted into the air once, but sent his spurs home as he descended, and the horse darted away like a telegram. he soared over three fences like a bird, and disappeared down the road toward the washoe valley.

i sat down on a stone, with a sigh, and by a natural impulse one of my hands sought my forehead, and the other the base of my stomach. i believe i never appreciated, till then, the poverty of the human machinery—for i still needed a hand or two to place elsewhere. pen cannot describe how i was jolted up. imagination cannot conceive how disjointed i was—how internally, externally and universally i was unsettled, mixed up and ruptured. there was a sympathetic crowd around me, though.

one elderly-looking comforter said:

“stranger, you’ve been taken in. everybody in this camp knows that horse. any child, any injun, could have told you that he’d buck; he is the very worst devil to buck on the continent of america. you hear me. i’m curry. old curry. old abe curry. and moreover, he is a simon-pure, out-and-out, genuine d—d mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at that, too. why, you turnip, if you had laid low and kept dark, there’s chances to buy an american horse for mighty little more than you paid for that bloody old foreign relic.”

i gave no sign; but i made up my mind that if the auctioneer’s brother’s funeral took place while i was in the territory i would postpone all other recreations and attend it.

after a gallop of sixteen miles the californian youth and the genuine mexican plug came tearing into town again, shedding foam-flakes like the spume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over a wheelbarrow and a chinaman, cast anchor in front of the “ranch.”

such panting and blowing! such spreading and contracting of the red equine nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye! but was the imperial beast subjugated? indeed he was not.

his lordship the speaker of the house thought he was, and mounted him to go down to the capitol; but the first dash the creature made was over a pile of telegraph poles half as high as a church; and his time to the capitol—one mile and three quarters—remains unbeaten to this day. but then he took an advantage—he left out the mile, and only did the three quarters. that is to say, he made a straight cut across lots, preferring fences and ditches to a crooked road; and when the speaker got to the capitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt as if he had made the trip on a comet.

in the evening the speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got the genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. the next day i loaned the animal to the clerk of the house to go down to the dana silver mine, six miles, and he walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed. everybody i loaned him to always walked back; they never could get enough exercise any other way.

still, i continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him, my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower’s hands, or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. but somehow nothing ever happened to him. he took chances that no other horse ever took and survived, but he always came out safe. it was his daily habit to try experiments that had always before been considered impossible, but he always got through. sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get his rider through intact, but he always got through himself. of course i had tried to sell him; but that was a stretch of simplicity which met with little sympathy. the auctioneer stormed up and down the streets on him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and destroying children, and never got a bid—at least never any but the eighteen-dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make. the people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy, if they had any. then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and i withdrew the horse from the market. we tried to trade him off at private vendue next, offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron, temperance tracts—any kind of property. but holders were stiff, and we retired from the market again. i never tried to ride the horse any more. walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing the matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things. finally i tried to give him away. but it was a failure. parties said earthquakes were handy enough on the pacific coast—they did not wish to own one. as a last resort i offered him to the governor for the use of the “brigade.” his face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again, and he said the thing would be too palpable.

just then the livery stable man brought in his bill for six weeks’ keeping—stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars; hay for the horse, two hundred and fifty! the genuine mexican plug had eaten a ton of the article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had let him.

i will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay during that year and a part of the next was really two hundred and fifty dollars a ton. during a part of the previous year it had sold at five hundred a ton, in gold, and during the winter before that there was such scarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities had brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin! the consequence might be guessed without my telling it: peopled turned their stock loose to starve, and before the spring arrived carson and eagle valleys were almost literally carpeted with their carcases! any old settler there will verify these statements.

i managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day i gave the genuine mexican plug to a passing arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into my hand. if this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the donation.

now whoever has had the luck to ride a real mexican plug will recognize the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him exaggerated—but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his portrait as a fancy sketch, perhaps.