METAPHYSICS OF BEAR HUNTING. 853 
attention to the guide’s reiterated “No! no! por Dios!” 
when he suddenly threw out his heels in such devilish earnest 
that they clattered together just above my forehead, and 
reminded me that “prudence was the better part,” &c., so 
far as he was concerned, yet awhile. I turned off with a 
feeling of high indignation at this ungrateful reception of 
my kindly intentions, and consigned him over to the tender 
mercies of the Mexican, with the petulant and unnecessary 
injunction, to “kill him, or ride that devil out of him!” I 
have some times since thought that the horse must have 
understood this cruel speech, and to have bided his time to 
avenge himself right royally—and he did it, too, as you will 
presently see ! 
Our westward march was now resumed. We soon recovered 
that careless buoyancy which had somewhat been checked by 
the unpromising “first night.” The scenery was glorious, 
the air deliciously fresh and bracing, the Doctor and his 
pony irresistibly comic; and the grouse was soon startled, 
whirring up from its grassy couch by the joyous bursts of 
tameless merriment. That same Doctor, and his better part, 
on four legs, were enough to have kept an army in a roar. I 
say better part, for the pony was as self-opinionated as he 
was cross-grained, and scarcely an hour passed that he and 
his rider had not some misunderstanding to settle, in the 
final adjustment of which “bobtail” generally managed to 
get the best of it. On the slightest matter of offence being 
given, the irrascible little wretch would stop and bite at the 
Doctor’s short legs; when he, of course, jerking them back. 
suddenly to avoid snaps, his armed heels would prick the 
pony’s flank, who would spring forward with several quick 
successive leaps, which would sadly discommode his rider’s 
equilibrium, and, not unfrequently, would keep them up with 
such rapidity, that the tight, round personalities of the 
Doctor, after a flying ascension over his head, would plump 
into the grass; but as that happened to be very thick, and 
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