SADDLE HORSES. 169 
average thoroughbred to beat a good bronco for ten or 
twenty miles. Many years ago, an army officer on 
the plains offered to match his charger, a Kentucky 
thoroughbred, with the swiftest pony owned by a cer- 
tain Comanche tribe. The Comanches, it should be 
added, are the best horsemen of their race, being the 
only Indians who show any fondness, or even mercy, 
for their steeds, or any skill in breeding them. Their 
favorite color is the piebald. The chief accepted the 
offer on one condition, namely, that the race should 
be for a distance of not less than fourteen miles. 
This match never came off, but the terms made by 
the chief are significant of his opinion as to wherein 
lay the superiority of the bronco. 
In another case the trial was actually made. Some 
Kickapoo Indians, who, like almost all red men, are 
desperate gamblers, bought a race horse of a white 
man in Missouri, and took him out on the plains, a 
journey of many hundred miles, for the purpose of 
matching him against a certain Comanche pony. 
They used great care with the horse, carrying with 
them the grain and hay to which he was accustomed, 
and they were perfectly confident of success. In fact, 
they proposed to bet everything that they owned on 
the result. Each man wore his entire wardrobe on his 
back, —an Indian, like Lever’s Irishman, puts on all 
his finery at once, —and they converted the rest of 
their property into a drove of ordinary horses, which 
they took along to wager with the Comanches. But 
the Comanche pony won, and the Kickapoo Indians 
returned on foot, and nearly naked. 
In many parts of the West, broncos are driven as 
well as ridden, and a pair of them harnessed to a light 
