Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/30

 *ciently interested in the matter to follow me to the end. It was, as I have already said, recognized from the tide-waters of the Hudson to those of the Columbia as the most thoroughly Godforsaken post of all those supposed to be included in the annual Congressional appropriations. Beauty of situation or of construction it had none; its site was the supposed junction of the sand-bed of the Aravaypa with the sand-bed of the San Pedro, which complacently figured on the topographical charts of the time as creek and river respectively, but generally were dry as a lime-burner's hat excepting during the "rainy season." Let the reader figure to himself a rectangle whose four sides were the row of officers' "quarters," the adjutant's office, post bakery, and guard house, the commissary and quartermaster's storehouses, and the men's quarters and sutler's store, and the "plan," if there was any "plan," can be at once understood. Back of the quartermaster's and commissary storehouses, some little distance, were the blacksmith's forge, the butcher's "corral," and the cavalry stables, while in the rear of the men's quarters, on the banks of the San Pedro, and not far from the traces of the ruins of a prehistoric village or pueblo of stone, was the loose, sandy spot upon which the bucking "bronco" horses were broken to the saddle. Such squealing and struggling and biting and kicking, and rolling in the dust and getting up again, only to introduce some entirely original combination of a hop, skip, and jump, and a double back somersault, never could be seen outside of a herd of California "broncos." The animal was first thrown, blind-*folded, and then the bridle and saddle were put on, the latter girthed so tightly that the horse's eyes would start from their sockets. Then, armed with a pair of spurs of the diameter of a soup-plate and a mesquite club big enough to fell an ox, the Mexican "vaquero" would get into the saddle, the blinds would be cast off, and the circus begin. There would be one moment of sweet doubt as to what the "bronco" was going to do, and now and then there would be aroused expectancy that a really mild-mannered steed had been sent to the post by some mistake of the quartermaster's department. But this doubt never lasted very long; the genuine "bronco" can always be known from the spurious one by the fact that when he makes up his mind to "buck" he sets out upon his work without delay, and with a vim that means business. If there were many horses arriving in