Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/320

288 without her showing any symptom of resentment.

I got out instruments, sewed the wound up, and sewed bandages tight about the leg, made a capital 288 dressing and we started, leading Manda. She soon began to bear weight upon the wounded limb, and had no difficulty in keeping up with the train. When the bandages would get misplaced, one could get down in the road with no one to assist, and adjust them. We took Manda all the way, and no handsomer animal ever journeyed across the plains. She was never known to kick afterward.

People call it "instinct in animals," but the more men know and study dumb life, the more they are impressed with their reasoning intelligence. Dr. Whitman's mule, finding camp in the blinding snow storm on the mountains, when the shrewd guide was hopelessly lost; my old horse leading me and my friend in safety through the Mississippi River back water in the great forest of Arkansas, as well as this, which I have told without an embellishment, all teach impressively the duty of kindness that we owe to our dumb friends.

In Mrs. Whitman's diary we frequently find allusion to her faithful pony, and her sympathy with him when the grass is scarce and the work hard, is but an evidence of true nobility in the woman. In a long journey like the one made