The Red Track: A Story of Social Life in Mexico

This first success gave me a liking for the sport and the whole time the hunt lasted I was one of the most eager in pursuit. At last, at the expiration of three days, Eagle-head ordered the end of the massacre. Obeying the chief's signal, the hunters forced open a large gap, through which the decimated relics of the unhappy herd dashed, lowing with terror.

Two hundred and seventy buffaloes had been killed in three days, an almost miraculous hunt, which secured the Comanches of the Lakes abundance of provisions during the rainy season. The victims were loaded on horses, and we gaily returned to the village, where the hunters were received on their arrival with marks of the liveliest joy and the extraordinary rejoicings usual on such occasions.

One last remark may be allowed me. Everything is valuable in the buffalo: the meat, the hide, the bones, the horns, and even the hair, which is made into hats comparable in beauty and substance to the best beaver. Why is not the buffalo, then, acclimatised in Europe? The Society of Acclimatisation so recently created, and which has already produced such excellent results, is keeping, we doubt not, a place for the buffalo, which we hope soon to see occupied.

A MUSTANG.
A STUDY OF THE PRAIRIE HORSE

The aborigines of America were not acquainted with the horse prior to the arrival of the Spaniards in their country. The Inca Garcillasso de la Vega, in his "History of the Civil War in India," tells us that the Peruvians, terrified at the sight of the first horseman, supposed that the man and the horse only formed one and the same individual. At a later date they imagined that the horses were formidable and malignant deities, whom they tried to conciliate by placing gold and silver in their mangers, and offering up prayers to them.

The Spanish Conquistadors, most of whom came from Andalusia, were mounted on steeds in whose veins flowed the blood of the Arabs, which the Moors had succeeded in naturalizing in Spain during an occupation of eight centuries.

When the conquerors obtained quiet possession of the New World, and began those internecine contests which cost so much blood, after every battle the wounded horses were usually left behind, while those whose masters were killed, escaped in obedience to that innate instinct in all living creatures, which urges them to try and regain their liberty.

These animals thus left to themselves, wandering haphazard over the great savannahs, gradually entered the desert, interbred, and at length multiplied so greatly that they formed bands or manadas, whose number has so increased that it has now become incalculable.

From these horses, which were originally abandoned and returned to savage life, has issued the remarkable breed known in the New World by the name of mustangs, or prairie horses. Now that racing is fashionable in France, and horse breeding has made immense progress, we do not think we are going out of our way in describing this valuable breed, which is unknown in the Old World, and to which sufficient justice is not done even in America.

At the time when I was at Guaymas, during the expedition of the unhappy Count de Raousset Boulbon I wanted a horse. Copers are as numerous in Mexico as in Europe, and probably cleverer and more cunning than ours in disguising the vices and defects of the animals they wish to get rid of; but unluckily for these clever dealers, and luckily for me, my long stay among the Indians of the Western Prairies had given me an almost infallible perception, and rendered it extremely difficult to deceive me as to the qualities of a horse.

When my wish to purchase a horse was known, there was an extraordinary rush of dealers to the house where I put up. I peremptorily declined all the animals offered me. My friends began to joke me and say that I should not find a horse to suit me, and be compelled to follow on foot the cavalry corps I commanded, when, on the very eve of departure, I was walking accidentally on the beach, and saw a Hiaquis Indian a few yards ahead of me, mounted on a horse whose appearance, in my friends' sight, had nothing very inviting about it, and so they laughingly invited me to deal. I feigned to humour them, although I had at once recognized the animal as a mustang of the Far West, and I took them at their word by making the Indian a sign to come and speak to me.

The horse was not handsome, I must allow; he was rather tall, had a big head, and a round forehead; his mane, which was thick and ill-kempt, hung down to his chest; his tail, which was not thick enough to wave, almost swept the ground; but his chest was wide and his legs were firm, while his eyes and nostrils announced fire, vigour, and bottom. Although the animal had never been shod, and its master, like all the Indians, had ill-treated it during the long journey it had made to reach Guaymas, still its thick hoofs were not at all worn or even damaged. It was black as night, with a white star about the size of a piastre, perfectly designed, and situated in the exact centre of the forehead.

At my summons the Indian started the horse at a gallop, and came up to me. I asked him bluntly if he wanted to sell his horse.

"Why not, excellency?" he answered with the wink peculiar to the Hiaquis. "Negro is a good beast; I lassoed him myself in the heart of the prairies of the Sierra de San Saba, hardly a month agone, and he has constantly gone fifteen to sixteen leagues a day."

"Yes, yes," I answered in Indian, "I know all that; but I know too that you Hiaquis are clever horse dealers, and are perfectly up to the trick of dressing a horse for sale."

On hearing me speak his language, the Redskin, who was, moreover, deceived by my hunting garb, took me for a wood ranger, and immediately treated me with great respect.

"Your excellency will try Negro, if it be really your pleasure to buy," he said, at once reassuming the language of his tribe, instead of the Spanish he had hitherto employed.

"But," I continued, "supposing that Negro, as that is his name, suits me, I must know the price you want for him."

"Wah!" he said, with a cunning smile; "I will not let your excellency have Negro under two ounces, and anyone else would pay much more."

Two ounces are about six guineas of our money, so if I had judged the horse aright, it was plain that I should make a good bargain. I made an appointment with the Hiaquis for the next morning, and withdrew under the ironical congratulations of my friends upon my excellent acquisition.

The Indian was punctual. At daybreak I saw him at my door, mounted on another horse and holding Negro by the bridle. I immediately got into the saddle, and left Guaymas, accompanied by my Redskin, and started at a smart trot for the forest.

I soon perceived that Negro was a very easy goer, and that he did not tire, though he was very eager – excellent qualities in a charger. Moreover, I saw that, like all prairie horses, whose mouth is generally hard, he was very sensitive to the spur.

The expedition of which I had the honour to be a member was about to proceed into half savage countries, where roads have never existed, and we should have to go across sandy deserts, and through almost impassable virgin forests; hence I wished to know at once what help I had to expect from my horse, and what confidence I could place in him. I therefore resolved to make him leap a stream several feet in width. For this purpose I gave him his head, and pressed his flanks with my knees without spurring; the intelligent animal seemed to understand that it was on trial, and leapt over the obstacle with the agility of an antelope. I turned round, and tried the leap over and over again, always with the same result. Certain of his agility, I wished to try his strength, consequently I took him to a muddy and very difficult morass. Negro, however, entered it, smelling the water as if to judge its depth, a proof of sagacity and prudence with which I was greatly pleased, and I found him prompt and decided in the wheels and counter wheels I made him take.

I had still an experiment to make with Negro – could he swim?

During the course of my travels, I have seen excellent horses, which could not swim at all; they lay down on their side as if to float with the current, so that their rider was obliged to swim himself and take them to bank, unless he preferred to leave them to their fate, which is a very serious difficulty when travelling. As a rather wide and very rapid stream ran not far from us, I rode my horse right into it; he at once took the current obliquely, with head well raised above the surface, and dilated nostrils, though without making that painful snort peculiar to horses under such circumstances; for, on the contrary, he breathed regularly and without fatigue. He went up and down the stream, and when I at last guided him to land, he stopped of his own accord and shook the water off.

Convinced, after all these experiments, that I could without risk undertake the campaign with such a steed, I started back for Guaymas at a gallop. On the road I brought down a duck, which Negro went up to as if trained for shooting, and which I picked up without dismounting.

I immediately gave the two ounces to the Hiaquis, and leaving my friends to continue their jokes about my acquisition, I rubbed Negro down with the greatest care.

On the same day the expedition left Guaymas for Hermosillo, and in spite of his savage ways and rather seedy appearance, the qualities of my mustang were soon appreciated, as they deserved to be, by my companions, whose domestic horses were far from coming up to him.

I went through the whole campaign mounted on Negro, allowing him no other food beyond the prairie grass, green alfalfa, and climbing peas, or a few hen's eggs, when I could procure them, or a gourd; still, every morning, two hours before mounting, I was careful to rub him down and press his back with my hand, to assure myself that he was not grazed by the saddle, after which I threw over him a zarapé folded double. At night, before going to sleep, I washed him, threw a bucket of cold water over his back, looked at his feet and cleaned them out with the utmost caution.

At the end of the first week, Negro had grown so attached to me that he recognized my voice and obeyed me with extreme docility; to make him gallop I only required to bend slightly forward.

When the campaign was ended, instead of embarking at Guaymas for California, after the fashion of my comrades, I started for Apacheria, where I spent several months. After that I proceeded to Veracruz, crossing Mexico in its widest part. I thus rode my horse, without allowing him a single day's rest, about nine hundred and fifty leagues calculated at nearly forty-five miles a day, and my mustang was as fresh and healthy on his arrival as when he started.

No European horse would be capable of accomplishing such a feat, which I assert, without fear of contradiction, is only child's play for a mustang of the prairies. Negro is in no way put forward here as a type of his breed, and had no striking quality to recommend him; he was certainly a good horse, but all his companions in the prairies resemble him, and are quite as good as he.

At my last halt, before reaching Veracruz, where I intended to embark for France, I found a Mexican officer, either colonel or general, I forget which, but his name was Don Pedro Aguirre, stopping at the same mesón, and we left it together in the morning en route for Veracruz.

Señor Don Pedro Aguirre was mounted on a magnificent steed, which, he told me, and it was very probable, had cost him four hundred piastres – according to the Mexican fashion his asistente led a second horse by the bridle.

I complimented the colonel on his splendid horse, to which compliment he replied, rather cavalierly, while taking a contemptuous glance at Negro, that he wished I had a similar one, so that he might have enjoyed my society during the ride to Veracruz.

I made no retort, although somewhat vexed at this answer, and confined myself to asking him at what hour he expected to reach the port?

"Sufficiently long before you, señor," he said with a smile, "to have leisure to order supper at the hotel, on condition that you will consent to join me at it."

I bowed my thanks, while laughing in my sleeve at the bombastic confidence of the Mexican officer, and the trick I was going to play him. After a parting bow, Don Pedro made his horse curvet, dug in his spurs, and started. But, alas! it was lost trouble; I arrived five quarters of an hour before him at Veracruz; I ordered dinner; I put my steed in the corral, and stationed myself in the doorway of the hotel, where, when the colonel arrived, quite downcast by his defeat, I told him, with a cunning look, that I was only waiting for him to dine.

Still, I am bound to say, in praise of the colonel, that he took the joke very kindly, and when his first impulse of ill-humour had passed off, frankly complimented me on the excellence of my horse.

A few days later, overcome by the entreaties of Don Pedro, I consented, not without regret, to part with poor Negro, and let the colonel have him, for the comparatively enormous sum of seven hundred and fifty piastres; but, alas! I was going to embark for France the next week, and my horse had become useless for me.

I am convinced that the introduction of this breed of the Western Prairies into our stud stables would serve greatly to improve our horses, and that the majority of them would become first-rate racers.