OCR Text |
Show relay station on the stage coach line to the Pioche mines. The strange burros were not averse to our leaving them at Hot Springs, even though the water had a chemical flavor. Our burrows jogged happily on the road home, looking forward to a flake of hay as their reward. That was our "date"-getting rid of the strays, Once when the little burro team was browsing across the railroad they startled making love. There was nothing playful about it. They were in dead earnest as though they knew they were engaged in an act as serious as life and death. And it was a matter of life: after the right number of months Jenny gave birth to a colt. That colt was a droll, almost pathetic sight when he first staggered to his feet to look for his first meal at his mother's breast. He was very thin, mostly great floppy ears and long knobby legs. He looked better when his soft downy fur dried and later grew longer, and his body filled out a bit. In another year Jenny gave me another colt. Now I had a second burro team. We named them John and Jimmie. I was eager to harness them to some kind of a rig. So with my parents I cobbled up a sketchy set of harness. Father contributed some old straps and belts and Mother helped with design and sewing the scraps together. I found two light wheels from a junked trike or something, and Father contrived a little cart. Naturally my imagination pictured "breaking" the colts with the excitement I'd seen in old-fashioned one-reel movies about the Wild West and bronchos. But those colts were as fun-loving as they were sweet-natured. There was no breaking needed. They lent themselves to being dressed in the little harnesses and hitched to the cart. They ambled along happily-at about two miles an hour. Why I let them come to an early and tragic end I even now don't know. But it came about in this way: |