choring him;
but he stood patient and still for half an hour or so without making
the slightest struggle to free himself, while I was away getting help
to untie the pack-rope and set the load back in its place.

As I was the eldest boy I had the care of our first span of work
horses. Their names were Nob and Nell. Nob was very intelligent, and
even affectionate, and could learn almost anything. Nell was entirely
different; balky and stubborn, though we managed to teach her a good
many circus tricks; but she never seemed to like to play with us in
anything like an affectionate way as Nob did. We turned them out one
day into the pasture, and an Indian, hiding in the brush that had
sprung up after the grass fires had been kept out, managed to catch
Nob, tied a rope to her jaw for a bridle, rode her to Green Lake,
about thirty or forty miles away, and tried to sell her for fifteen
dollars. All our hearts were sore, as if one of the family had been
lost. We hunted everywhere and could not at first imagine what had
become of her. We discovered her track where the fence was broken
down, and, following it for a few miles, made sure the track was
Nob's; and a neighbor told us he had seen an Indian riding fast
through the woods on a horse that looked like Nob. But we could find
no farther trace of her until a month or two after she was lost, and
we had given up hope of ever seeing her again. Then we learned that
she had been taken from an Indian by a farmer at Green Lake because he
saw that she had been shod and had worked in harness. So when the
Indian tried to sell her the farmer said: "You are a thief. That is a
white man's horse. You stole her."

"No," said the Indian, "I brought her from Prairie du Chien and she
has always been mine."

The man, pointing to her feet and the marks of the harness, said: "You
are lying. I will take that horse away from you and put her in my
pasture, and if you come near it I will set the dogs on you." Then he
advertised her. One of our neighbors happened to see the advertisement
and brought us the glad news, and great was our rejoicing when father
brought her home. That Indian must have treated her with terrible
cruelty, for when I was riding her through the pasture several years
afterward, looking for another horse that we wanted to catch, as we
approached the place where she had been captured she stood stock still
gazing through the bushes, fearing the Indian might still be hiding
there re