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to Mexico. Dad took him seriously and carried a pistol the rest of his life when he was out on the range.
One could write a book about this horse but there were others who did some interesting things also. One was Chub. Now Chub was a clown. He was owned by Miss Ola and Miss Betty Young whose cattle were managed by Dad. The cowboys hated Chub because he was a pest around camp and because he was so difficult to ride due to his short steps. He probably weighed 1300 pounds but had extremely short legs and so took two steps to the other horse's one. I loved Chub because he was so intelligent and when I went out to the pasture to bring in the horses all the others ran away as soon as they saw me but Chub wouldn't move. He stayed right where I found him and would let me walk right up to him and climb on Then the show began. He would back his ears, lower his head and begin to buck being very careful not to throw me off. When we had finished his "act" we would go round up the other horses and drive them to the house. Chub had other tricks too. While driving a herd of cattle he would bite the slow ones in the rump to make them move faster. I took advantage of this by getting him to bite the ones I pointed at as we went along. This back fired though when Dad rode up to Mr. Bushman at Dry Lake and leaned over to shake hands with him. Naturally Chub thought Dad was pointing and he was supposed to bite. Mr. Bushman had a sore shoulder for some time.
I want to mention Snip who was mostly unremarkable. He simply did his job in a quiet way and could have been easy to overlook in any group of horses. He was slightly larger than most saddle horses but not as large as his partner, Maude, who died some years before Snip. We had loaned the team to Jack McKenzie for a week and Maude became sick and died. So Snip was all alone and was used with Red and other horses for various tasks. One evening Snip came to the ranch house and stood with his head over the yard gate. When Dad was getting ready to go to bed he saw Snip at the gate so he went out and did a rare thing, he petted him for awhile and Snip turned and walked away. The next morning we found Snip dead out in the pasture. Obviously he had just dropped in to say his last good bye.
Hoggie was a special case. His name came from the shape of his back. Most horses have a sway in their back where the saddle fits. Hoggie had a hump like that of a hog, thus the name "Hoggie." There was another thing that set this horse apart, at various times and places Hoggie would simply go in reverse. That is, he would just start going backward without any obvious reason. We thought he probably had eaten too much loco weed at sometime or other because any animal who ate loco might do many unexpected stunts.
Four of us were riding on a trail one winter and Otto Reasoner was riding Hoggie. The trail led around the edge of a high bank and at one place a large pine tree had fallen across it. We found it necessary to ride very close to a fifty foot drop off in order to get around the fallen tree. Just as Otto on Hoggie cleared the narrow place Hoggie had one of his "reverse" fits and ran backwards right off the bank. Down they went rolling and sliding all the way to the bottom. Luckily Otto did not get trapped under the horse but
