One evening when the pell-mell Wild West show was at its wildest, it made father so extravagantly mad that he ordered me to “Shoot Jack!” I went to the house and brought the gun, suffering most horrible mental anguish, such as I suppose unhappy Abraham felt when commanded to slay Isaac.  Jack’s life was spared, however, though I can’t tell what finally became of him.  I wish I could.  After father bought a span of work horses he was sold to a man who said he was going to ride him across the plains to California.  We had him, I think, some five or six years.  He was the stoutest, gentlest, bravest little horse I ever saw.  He never seemed tired, could canter all day with a man about as heavy as himself on his back, and feared nothing.  Once fifty or sixty pounds of beef that was tied on his back slid over his shoulders along his neck and weighed down his head to the ground, fairly anchoring him; but he stood patient and still for half an hour or so without making the slightest struggle to free himself, while I was away getting help to untie the pack-rope and set the load back in its place.

As I was the eldest boy I had the care of our first span of work horses.  Their names were Nob and Nell.  Nob was very intelligent, and even affectionate, and could learn almost anything.  Nell was entirely different; balky and stubborn, though we managed to teach her a good many circus tricks; but she never seemed to like to play with us in anything like an affectionate way as Nob did.  We turned them out one day into the pasture, and an Indian, hiding in the brush that had sprung up after the grass fires had been kept out, managed to catch Nob, tied a rope to her jaw for a bridle, rode her to Green Lake, about thirty or forty miles away, and tried to sell her for fifteen dollars.  All our hearts were sore, as if one of the family had been lost.  We hunted everywhere and could not at first imagine what had become of her.  We discovered her track where the fence was broken down, and, following it for a few miles, made sure the track was Nob’s; and a neighbor told us he had seen an Indian riding fast through the woods on a horse that looked like Nob.  But we could find no farther trace of her until a month or two after she was lost, and we had given up hope of ever seeing her again.  Then we learned that she had been taken from an Indian by a farmer at Green Lake because he saw that she had been shod and had worked in harness.  So when the Indian tried to sell her the farmer said:  “You are a thief.  That is a white man’s horse.  You stole her.”

“No,” said the Indian, “I brought her from Prairie du Chien and she has always been mine.”