HORSE-FIGHTING. 201 



lived on the frontier serving as guide to the troops, and it was 

 said that he could smell an Indian at a distance of several 

 miles, but we had no opportunity of proving this. There was 

 no guide to be had here, so we determined to go on without 

 one, trusting to a very bad map and our compasses ; so we left 

 Fort Mason on the third day, the country gradually changing 

 to open prairie, with clumps of trees and brush here and 

 there capital ground for hunting had the season not been 

 over. 



At one of our midday halts we had a good deal of fun 



matching H 's horse called the " Rig " to fight the stallion 



of a small band of semi-wild horses, which were branded, but 

 were still so wild that they had to be lassoed when required. 

 We discovered them feeding about half a mile from our camp, 

 and the "Rig" noticing them also, galloped to the end of 

 his rope and pulled up the picket-pin, when he joined the band 

 and began making friends. The stallion, resenting the intrusion 

 of a stranger, attacked him at once, and at it they went, 

 rearing up and seizing one another with their teeth, and then 

 whirling round and kicking at one another, and this went on 

 for fully twenty minutes, and they were so earnestly engaged 

 that we walked up close to them without the stallions taking 



any notice of us. By the end of this time, H 's horse, 



finding that he was getting the worst of it, as the other was 

 a much more powerful animal, returned to camp looking very 

 crestfallen, but not otherwise much the worse for the fight, his 

 antagonist having no shoes on. 



Not wishing to kill game we lived now almost entirely on 

 stray cattle, which had escaped from the large herds which were 

 driven every spring over our present route to California. 



