he felt that she ought to be dead or at least badly injured,
she had done nothing worse than to crush down a lot of spring flowers.
And there sat Janet.

Her horse, relieved of the pressure on the sharp iron, and brought to a
halt by her final desperate pull on the reins, was standing
stock-still, his saddle askew like a Scotchman's bonnet, and his ears
laid back. But scarcely had she located him when he began to pitch and
kick, and with the surprising result that the saddle slipped entirely
round.

This turn of affairs was hardly calculated to please a Texas horse.
What this one thought about it, Janet very soon discovered; for however
meekly his stubborn spirit had given in to certain things, he had _not_
consented to wear a saddle on his belly; and this time when he pitched
he seldom used earth to stand on. He came down on this hateful globe
of ours only to stamp on it and kick it away from beneath him. Up he
went and hung in space a moment as if he were being hoisted by his
middle and came down with a vengeance that jolted a snort out of him;
and up he went again, turning end for end and kicking the atmosphere
all the way round. He was no sooner down than he went up again,--and
usually with a twist which threw him over to another hateful spot, from
which he flung himself as if it were hot. And all the time the hooded
stirrup flew about like a boot on a boneless leg and kicked him fore
and aft.

Thoroughly insulted, he pitched by a mixture of methods which amazed
Janet; she ran farther back. Now she beheld a fine vaulting movement,
going up with the hoofs together, opening out in midair and coming down
repeatedly in the same place; and here he worked away industriously,
stretching his loins with the regularity of a machine and hitting away
at the one spot in space with his fine punctuating heels; then he
settled down to a short shuttle-like movement, his forelegs out stiff
and his head down. It shook the saddle like a hopper; and the stirrup
danced a jig. In this movement he fairly scribbled himself on the air,
in red and white. Finding that this did not accomplish the purpose, he
went back to mixed methods a while and threw a confusion of side jumps
and twisting leaps; and then, after a particularly fine flight, he came
down with a heavy lunge and paused. He was standing with one of his
own feet in the stirrup.

Janet would now hardly have been surprised to see him throw a
somersault, as, indeed, he s