42 BRONCO ENDURANCE 



which outdoes polo. One form of racing is to place two 

 long parallel strips of buffalo-hide on the ground at an 

 interval of but a few feet, and, starting from a distance, 

 to ride up to these strips, cross the first, turn between the 

 two, and gallop back to the starting-point. A fraction 

 of a second lost on a turn loses the race. Until one thinks 

 of what it means, a twentieth part of a second is no great 

 loss. But take two horses of equal speed in a hurdle race 

 with twenty obstacles. One pauses at each hurdle just 

 one-twentieth of a second ; the other flies his hurdles with- 

 out a pause. This lost second means that he will be forty- 

 five feet behind at the winning-post four good lengths. 

 Another Indian sport is to ride up to a log hung horizon- 

 tally and just high enough to allow the pony but not the 

 rider to get under, touch it, and return. If the pony is 

 stopped too soon, the Indian loses time in touching the 

 log ; if too late, he gets scraped off. The sudden jerking 

 of the pony on its haunches is sure eventually both to start 

 curbs or spavin, and to break his knees. Still the pony 

 retains wonderfully good legs considering. 



The toughness and strength of the plains pony can 

 scarcely be exaggerated. He will live through a winter 

 that will kill the hardiest cattle. He worries through the 

 long months when the snow has covered up the bunch- 

 grass on a diet of cotton-wood boughs, which the Indian 

 cuts down for him ; and though he emerges from this 

 ordeal a pretty sorry specimen of a horse, it takes but a 

 few weeks in the spring for him to get himself into splen- 

 did condition and fit for the trials of the war-path. His 

 fast has done him good, as some say sea-sickness Avill do 

 him good who goes down to the sea in ships. He can go 

 unheard-of distances. Colonel Dodge records an instance 

 coming under his observation where a pony carried the 

 mail three hundred miles in three consecutive nights, and 



