Such Is Life (61 page)

And yet, to be an ideal rider, man wants but little here below, nor is it at all likely he will want that little long. He wants—or rather, needs—a skull of best spring steel; a spinal column of standard Lowmoor; limbs of gutta-percha; a hide of vulcanised india-rubber; and the less brains he has, the better. Figuratively speaking, he should have no brains at all; his thinking faculties should be so placed as to be in direct touch with the only thing that concerns him, namely, the saddle. Yet his heart must not be there; he must by no means be what the schoolboys call a ‘frightened beggar.'

Perfect horsemanship is usually the special accomplishment of the man who is not otherwise worth his salt, by reason of being too lazy for manual labour, and too slenderly upholstered on the mental side for anything else. Sir Francis Head, one of the five exceptions to this rule—Gordon being the second, ‘Banjo' the third, ‘Glenrowan' the fourth, and the demurring reader the fifth—says the greatest art in riding is knowing how to fall. And here we touch the very root of the matter. It is the moral effect of that generally-fulfilled apprehension which makes one salient difference between the cultivated, or spurious rider, and the ignorant, or true rider. In this case, Ignorance is not only bliss, but usurps the place of Knowledge, as power.

Edward M. Curr knew as much of the Australian horse and his rider as any writer ever did; and this is what he says of the back-country natives:—

‘They are taciturn, shy, ignorant, and incurious; undemonstrative, but orderly; hospitable, courageous, cool, and sensible. These men ride like centaurs,' etc., etc.

Yes, yes—but why? Looking back along that string of well-selected adjectives, doesn't your own inductive faculty at once
place its finger on Ignorance as the key to the enigma? Notice, too, how Curr, being a bit of a sticker himself, is thereby disqualified from knowing that the centaurs were better constructed for firing other people over their heads than for straddling their own backs.

Your true rider must audibly and sanguineously challenge every unfamiliar scientific fact stated in conversation, and be prepared to stake his rudimentary soul on the truth of anything read aloud from a book. He must believe, with the ecclesiastics of yesterday, that the earth is flat and square; like them, he must be a violent supporter of the geocentric theory; unlike them, his aeschatological hypothesis must be that the fire we wot of is only a man's own conscience—the wish, in his case, being father to the thought. Above all, he must have no idea how fearfully and wonderfully he is made. He must think upon himself as a good strong framework of bones, cushioned and buffered with meat, and partly tubular for the reception and retention of food; he must further regard it as a rather grave oversight in his own architectural design that the calf of his leg is not in front. Just consider what advantages such a man enjoys in cultivating the art of knowing how to fall. Why, a spill that perils neck or limb, a simple buster is to him, and it is nothing more.

But it is a great deal more to one who has been nourishing a youth sublime with the curious facts of Science and the thousand-and-one items of general information necessary to any person who, like the fantastical duke of dark corners, above all other strifes contends especially to know himself; and that physically, as well as morally. To him it is a nasty scrunch of the two hundred and twenty-six bones forming his own admirably designed osseous structure; a dull, sickening wallop of his exquisitely composed cellular, muscular, and nervous tissues; a general squash of his beautifully mapped vascular system; a pitiless stoush of membranes, ligaments, cartilages, and what not; a beastly squelch of gastric and pancreatic juices and secretions of all imaginable descriptions—biliary, glandular, and so forth. And all for what? Why, for the sake of emulating the Jack Frosts of real life in their own line!

My contention simply is, that the Hamlet-man is only too well seized of the important fact that his bones cost too much in the breeding to play at heels-over-tip with them. And I further maintain that, for reasons above specified, the man of large discourse, looking before and after (ah! that is where the mischief lies!) never, in spite of his severest self-scrutiny, knows what a frightened
beggar he is till he finds himself placing his foot in the stirrup, preparatory to mounting a recognised performer.

Just take yourself as an example. You remember the time you were passing the old cattle-yards in the flat, and saw four fellows of your acquaintance putting the bridle on a black colt in the crush? You remember how the chaps inspected your saddle, and, the concurrence of opinion being that it was the best on the ground, how they asked the loan of it for an hour? You lent it with pleasure, you will remember, and assisted them to girth it on. You liked to be at the second backing of a colt—not as the central figure, of course, but in the capacity of critic and adviser. There was the probability of some decent riding; also the probability of a catastrophe. You may, perhaps, further remember that whilst the ceremony of saddling was in progress, you casually related one of your most ornate and unassailable anecdotes—how, with that very saddle, you had once backed a roan filly that on the preceding day had broken a circus man's collar-bone? For reasons of your own, you located the performance a hundred miles away; and for proof, you pointed to the saddle itself. Yes; I see you remember it all like yesterday.

The colt, with a handkerchief across his eyes, was led out of the yard to some nice level ground; then a dead-lock supervened. The chap who had backed him on the previous evening for a couple of hours, and was to have ridden him again, didn't like the set of your saddle, now that he saw it girthed-on. The owner of the colt, speaking for himself, frankly admitted that he never pretended to be a sticker. The third fellow, whilst modestly glancing at his own unrivalled record, regretted he was sworn with a book-oath against backing colts for the current year. The fourth was also out of it. Owing to a boil, which kept him standing in the stirrups even on his own old crock, he was compelled to forgo the one transcendant joy of his life. But you—

Well, to begin with, there was your own saddle on the colt; secondly, your conversation had not been that of a man who didn't pretend to be a sticker; thirdly, the book-oath expedient was simply out of the question; and fourthly, it was too late in the day to allege a boil. What was the use of your remarking that the first backing of a colt is nothing—that, in this case, it is the second step that costs? The four fellows knew as well as you did—everyone except the tenderfoot novelist knows—that in nearly every instance, a freshly backed colt is like a fish out of water; stupid, puzzled, half-sulky, half-docile. It is at the second backing that he is ready
to contest the question of fitness for survival; he has had time to think the matter over, and to note the one-sidedness of the alliance. Again, there is a large difference between riding a colt upon a warm evening, and doing the same thing on a cold, dry, gusty morning, when his hair inclines to stand on end. But there was your own reminiscence of the roan filly staring you in the face.

One of the fellows holds the blindfolded colt, whilst another rubs the saddle all over with a wet handkerchief. The colt stands still and composed, with one ear warily cocked, the other indifferently slouched; with his back slightly arched, and—ah! the saints preserve us!—with his tail jammed hard down. Carelessly humming a little tune, you hang your coat on the fence; and in the saying of two credos (note the appositeness of Cervantes's expression here), you are in the saddle—the same saddle, by the way, with which you took the flashness out of the roan filly that had broken the circus man's collar-bone. What! have I pinch'd you, signior Gremio?

The chap should have let the colt go at once, for, in situations like yours, a person keeps breaking-up as the moments pass. But no—

“Ready, Tom?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure you're ready?”

“Yes.”

“I think he'll buck middlin' hard.”

Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, that looks into the bottom of your woe? We'll see presently. Meantime, console yourself with the recollection of the roan filly that had broken the circus man's collar-bone.

“You've got the off stirrup all right, Tom?”

“Yes.”

“I'm goin' to let the beggar rip.”

“Go ahead.”

“Look out now.”

“Right.” But your voice is not what it ought to be, and the soles of your boots are rattling on the flat part of the stirrup-irons.

The chap draws the handkerchief from the colt's eyes, and walks backward. The colt catches sight of your left foot, and skips three yards to the right. In doing so, he catches sight of the other foot, and skips to the left. Then everything disappears from in front of the saddle—the wicked ears, now laid level backward—the black, tangled mane—the shining neck, with the sweeping curve of a circular saw—the clean, oblique shoulders—they have all disappeared,
and there is nothing in front of the saddle but a precipice. There is something underneath it, though.

How distinctly you note the grunting of the colt, the thumping of his feet on the ground, and the gratuitous counsel addressed to you in four calmly critical voices:—

“Lean back a bit more, Tom, and give with him.”

“Don't ride so loose if you can help it, Tom.”

“Hold yourself well down with the reins, and stick to him, Tom.”

“Stick to him, Tom, whatever you do.”

Ay! stick to him! Stick to the lever of a steam hammer, when the ram kicks the safety-trigger! Stick to the two-man tug-of-war rope, when an Irish quarryman, named Barney, has hold of the other end! Stick to him, quotha! Easier said than done—is it not? And yet you've been riding all manner of horses, on and off (mark the significance of that expression) since you were a mere kiddie. However, you have stuck to him for a good solid sixty seconds; now, one of your knees has slipped over the pad, and your stirrup is swinging loose. Good night, sweet prince.

And away circles the colt, slapping at the bit with his front feet, whilst your historic saddle shines in the sun, and the stirrup-irons occasionally meet high in the air. And away in chase go two of the chaps on their bits of stuff. Meanwhile, you explain to the other two that the spill serves you right for riding so carelessly; and that, though your soul lusts to have it out with the colt, a stringent appointment in the township will force you to clear as soon as you can get your saddle. Such is life.

Satan approached, carrying his negatively gifted rider, at a free, flying canter; his gregarious instinct prompting him to join my horses. His tawny skin was streaked with foam, and his off flank slightly stained from the repeated puncture of Jack's spur. Ten yards from where I had pulled-up, he suddenly sulked, and stood.

“Good morning, Jack.”

“Well, I be dash! Didn't know you from a crow! Reckoned some member o' Parliament, or bishop, or somebody, had bin swappin' horses with you. You are comin' out! Oh, I say! Nosey give me the letter, with the three notes in it; but I couldn't make head or tail of it about the saddle. No more couldn't Moriarty.”

“I'll explain all that to you some time. How are you getting on with Satan?”

“Bad,” replied Jack humbly. “You can easy enough steady him down, but then, the swine, he wants a spell; an' when he gits a spell, you jist got to steady him down agen. Always got some new
idear in his head. There!”—hastily rooting the horse's side with his spur—“he's goin' to lay-down, an' make chips o' the saddle. Up! you swine”—and, lying backward, he reached down to grip the sensitive membrane connecting the swine's hind-leg with his body. The maddened beast shot past me like a yellow streak for another ten yards; then, with a flaring bound and a snort that was between a whistle and a shriek, spun half-round in the air, and alighted rigidly on his front feet, his ears between his knees, and his neck and back describing a vertical semicircle, with the saddle and Jack on the centre of its forward curve.

“Jist his style,” continued Jack dejectedly. “Never be worth a dash for general”—I lost the next word or two, for the young fellow's face was buried in the mass of silver mane, as the horse reared rampant to the balancing point; and the next word, again, was dislocated by a blow from the crupper buckle, just below the speaker's shoulder-blade. “An' Magomery wants a person to make a lady's hack out o' sich an outlawr as him!” he continued, in hopeless protest, whilst the ‘outlawr' exerted his iron muscles to the utmost, and the saddle creaked like a basket. “Nummin' good horse, too; on'y spoiled with—Jist look at that!” Satan had suddenly gathered his lithe, powerful limbs, and was tearing across toward the adjacent pine-ridge, spinning round, every thirty yards, in two or three terrific bucks. “I don't want to sawr his mouth,” shouted Jack over his shoulder, in polite apology—“I'll see you agen by-'n'-by”—

“Away on the evergreen shore, probably,” I soliloquised, resuming my journey. But, turning in the saddle, and pushing up my glasses out of the way, I watched the receding contest. I saw Jack wrench the horse aside from the timber; whereupon the animal reared rather too rashly, and just saved himself from falling backward by dropping on his quarters and flapping down on one side. When his broadside touched ground, Jack was standing beside him; and when he leaped to his feet, Jack was in the saddle.
Exeunt
fighting.

Toby, with his bare feet and brown, good-humoured face, was the only person visible on the station premises as I rode up.

“Gosh, I didn't know you till I seen you side-on, when you was shuttin' the Red Gate,” he remarked. (The Red Gate was about a mile and a half distant.) “I thought you was somebody comin' to buy the station. Magomery, he's buzznackin' roun' the run as usual,” he continued, helping me to unsaddle. “Butler, he's laid up with the bung blight in both eyes. All the other fellers is out.