The man, pointing to her feet and the marks of the harness, said:  “You are lying.  I will take that horse away from you and put her in my pasture, and if you come near it I will set the dogs on you.”  Then he advertised her.  One of our neighbors happened to see the advertisement and brought us the glad news, and great was our rejoicing when father brought her home.  That Indian must have treated her with terrible cruelty, for when I was riding her through the pasture several years afterward, looking for another horse that we wanted to catch, as we approached the place where she had been captured she stood stock still gazing through the bushes, fearing the Indian might still be hiding there ready to spring; and she was so excited that she trembled, and her heartbeats were so loud that I could hear them distinctly as I sat on her back, boomp, boomp, boomp, like the drumming of a partridge.  So vividly had she remembered her terrible experiences.

She was a great pet and favorite with the whole family, quickly learned playful tricks, came running when we called, seemed to know everything we said to her, and had the utmost confidence in our friendly kindness.

We used to cut and shock and husk the Indian corn in the fall, until a keen Yankee stopped overnight at our house and among other labor-saving notions convinced father that it was better to let it stand, and husk it at his leisure during the winter, then turn in the cattle to eat the leaves and trample down the stalks, so that they could be ploughed under in the spring.  In this winter method each of us took two rows and husked into baskets, and emptied the corn on the ground in piles of fifteen to twenty basketfuls, then loaded it into the wagon to be hauled to the crib.  This was cold, painful work, the temperature being oftentimes far below zero and the ground covered with dry, frosty snow, giving rise to miserable crops of chilblains and frosted fingers,—­a sad change from the merry Indian-summer husking, when the big yellow pumpkins covered the cleared fields;—­golden corn, golden pumpkins, gathered in the hazy golden weather.  Sad change, indeed, but we occasionally got some fun out of the nipping, shivery work from hungry prairie chickens, and squirrels and mice that came about us.

The piles of corn were often left in the field several days, and while loading them into the wagon we usually found field mice in them,—­big, blunt-nosed, strong-scented fellows that we were taught to kill just because they nibbled a few grains of corn.  I used to hold one while it was still warm, up to Nob’s nose for the fun of seeing her make faces and snort at the smell of it; and I would say:  “Here, Nob,” as if offering her a lump of sugar.  One day I offered her an extra fine, fat, plump specimen, something like a little woodchuck, or muskrat, and to my astonishment, after smelling it curiously and doubtfully, as if wondering what the gift might be, and rubbing it back and forth in the palm of my hand with her upper lip, she deliberately took it into her mouth, crunched and munched and chewed it fine and swallowed it, bones, teeth, head, tail, everything.  Not a single hair of that mouse was wasted.  When she was chewing it she nodded and grunted, as though critically tasting and relishing it.