“Very well,” she said. (And there’s faith for you! ) “They shall be four saddle horses, and we’ll strap our saddles on behind the rig.”

It was my turn to object.  “Our saddle horses are not broken to harness.”

“Then break them.”

And what I knew about horses, much less about breaking them, was just about as much as any sailor knows.  Having been kicked, bucked off, fallen over backward upon, and thrown out and run over, on very numerous occasions, I had a mighty vigorous respect for horses; but a wife’s faith must be lived up to, and I went at it.

King was a polo pony from St. Louis, and Prince a many-gaited love-horse from Pasadena.  The hardest thing was to get them to dig in and pull.  They rollicked along on the levels and galloped down the hills, but when they struck an up-grade and felt the weight of the breaking-cart, they stopped and turned around and looked at me.  But I passed them, and my troubles began.  Milda was fourteen years old, an unadulterated broncho, and in temperament was a combination of mule and jack-rabbit blended equally.  If you pressed your hand on her flank and told her to get over, she lay down on you.  If you got her by the head and told her to back, she walked forward over you.  And if you got behind her and shoved and told her to “Giddap!” she sat down on you.  Also, she wouldn’t walk.  For endless weary miles I strove with her, but never could I get her to walk a step.  Finally, she was a manger-glutton.  No matter how near or far from the stable, when six o’clock came around she bolted for home and never missed the directest cross-road.  Many times I rejected her.

The fourth and most rejected horse of all was the Outlaw.  From the age of three to seven she had defied all horse-breakers and broken a number of them.  Then a long, lanky cowboy, with a fifty-pound saddle and a Mexican bit had got her proud goat.  I was the next owner.  She was my favourite riding horse.  Charmian said I’d have to put her in as a wheeler where I would have more control over her.  Now Charmian had a favourite riding mare called Maid.  I suggested Maid as a substitute.  Charmian pointed out that my mare was a branded range horse, while hers was a near-thoroughbred, and that the legs of her mare would be ruined forever if she were driven for three months.  I acknowledged her mare’s thoroughbredness, and at the same time defied her to find any thoroughbred with as small and delicately-viciously pointed ears as my Outlaw.  She indicated Maid’s exquisitely thin shinbone.  I measured the Outlaw’s.  It was equally thin, although, I insinuated, possibly more durable.  This stabbed Charmian’s pride.  Of course her near-thoroughbred Maid, carrying the blood of “old” Lexington, Morella, and a streak of the super-enduring Morgan, could run, walk, and work my unregistered Outlaw into the ground; and that was the very precise reason why such a paragon of a saddle animal should not be degraded by harness.