SADDLE HORSES. 167 
wiry, uervous creature, always dancing about on her 
small feet, and arching her thin neck, but perfectly 
tractable. Pea Vine, like the other two horses just 
mentioned, goes well in harness. 
We have one more breed, if not of saddle horses, at 
least of saddle ponies, namely, the broncos. The 
bronco, a rat of a horse, with ewe neck, a hammer 
head, a short hip, and an easy, loping gait, is sup- 
posed to have descended chiefly from Spanish horses 
brought to this continent in the seventeenth century. 
Privation and cold have reduced him in size, stripped 
him of all purely ornamental parts and qualities, 
and developed his capacity for endurance. 
“The toughness and strength of the bronco,” writes 
Colonel T. A. Dodge in an interesting paper,’ “can 
scarcely be exaggerated. He will live through a win- 
ter 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 cottonwood boughs, 
which the Indian cuts down for him; and in the 
spring it takes but a few weeks for him to scour out 
into splendid condition.” 
Another writer, Colonel R. I. Dodge, relates that a 
pony carried the mail three hundred miles in three 
consecutive nights, and back over the same road the 
next week, and kept this up for six months without 
loss of condition. 
“The absence of crest in the pony,” Colonel T. A. 
Dodge continues, “suggests the curious query what 
has become of the proud, arching neck of his ancestor, 
the Barb. There are two ways of accounting for this. 
The Indian’s gag-bit, invariably applied with a jerk, 
1 Harper’s Magazine for May, 1891. 
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