pt
these latter organs purely for ornament--apparently looking at things
with her nose, her sensitive ears, and, sometimes, even a slight lifting
of her slim near fore-leg. On our first interview I thought she favored
me with a coy glance, but as it was accompanied by an irrelevant "Look
out!" from her owner, the teamster, I was not certain. I only know that
after some conversation, a good deal of mental reservation, and the
disbursement of considerable coin, I found myself standing in the dust
of the departing emigrant-wagon with one end of a forty-foot riata in my
hand, and Chu Chu at the other.

I pulled invitingly at my own end, and even advanced a step or two
towards her. She then broke into a long disdainful pace, and began to
circle round me at the extreme limit of her tether. I stood admiring
her free action for some moments--not always turning with her, which was
tiring--until I found that she was gradually winding herself up ON ME!
Her frantic astonishment when she suddenly found herself thus brought up
against me was one of the most remarkable things I ever saw, and nearly
took me off my legs. Then when she had pulled against the riata until
her narrow head and prettily arched neck were on a perfectly straight
line with it, she as suddenly slackened the tension and condescended to
follow me, at an angle of her own choosing. Sometimes it was on one
side of me, sometimes on the other. Even then the sense of my dreadful
contiguity apparently would come upon her like a fresh discovery, and
she would become hysterical. But I do not think that she really SAW me.
She looked at the riata and sniffed it disparagingly, she pawed some
pebbles that were near me tentatively with her small hoof; she started
back with a Robinson Crusoe-like horror of my footprints in the wet
gully, but my actual personal presence she ignored. She would sometimes
pause, with her head thoughtfully between her fore-legs, and apparently
say: "There is some extraordinary presence here: animal, vegetable, or
mineral--I can't make out which--but it's not good to eat, and I loathe
and detest it."

When I reached my house in the suburbs, before entering the "fifty vara"
lot inclosure, I deemed it prudent to leave her outside while I informed
the household of my purchase; and with this object I tethered her by the
long riata to a solitary sycamore which stood in the centre of the road,
the crossing of two frequented thoroughfares. It was not long, h