Kentucky Belle. I

KENTUCKY
BELLE. BY PRESIDENT A. W. IVINS,
COLONIA JUAREZ, MEXICO. I.— THE
JOURNEY WEST, AFTER THE WAR. "Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou
shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son." When the Confederate army surrendered at Appomattox Court House, a great sigh of relief went up from thousands of homes, both in the North and South. Four years of fratricidal war had left the South desolate, while it had cost the North the lives of hundreds of thousands of her bravest sons, and millions of treasure. Silently, those tattered, dust-stained coats of blue and grey turned their backs to each other, and marched to their homes, — those of the North, to receive the applause and patronage of a grateful nation; those of the South, to find desolation and silence where once the earth had flourished under the abundance of its harvest, while the music of the guitar and tambourine, accompany- ing the happy negro melodies, brought pleasure to both master and slave, after the day's labor had been accomplished. Col. Thomas Marshall had enlisted in the Confederate army, at the commencement of the war. He was a Kentuckian by birth, and the struggle between what he regarded as duty to the gov- ernment, and his love for the South, had been a heroic one, but Southern birth, Southern education, and non-concurrence in what he regarded as the unwarranted attitude of the North, on the question of slavery, an institution which the South had inherited since long before the confederation of states had been formed, finally decided him, and he put his life and fortune on the altar, in what he felt from the beginning was a cause which could not win.

KENTUCKY i BELLE. 443 Now that the struggle was over, he returned to his home, near Lexington, to become, if possible, reconciled to the changed conditions which the war had brought. Col. Marshall had served in the army for years, during which time he had been home but once. Prior to the war, he had been a successful lawyer, (as his father before him had been) had served in the state legislature, and was the owner of an estate near Lexing- ton where he took great pride in the breeding of fine cattle and horses. When he went to the war, his wife had been left in charge of the farm and homestead, besides which she had the re- sponsibility and care of their two children, Helen, a girl of eigh- teen, and Thomas, Jr., a boy of sixteen. Col. Marshall had been severely wounded at the battle of Shi- loh, in 1862, and it was at that time he had spent a few months at home. Now, two years later, he returned to find his estate an uncul- tivated wilderness, his cattle killed to furnish food for Union sol- diers, his horses, the most cherished of his possessions, gone to famish mounts for Union cavalry, his few slaves gone whitherso- ever they would, free men and women. His wife and children, thank heaven, were safe, and, while struggling with poverty, still retained the dignity and pride which had been their inheritance from generations of patrician ancestors. The sacrifices of the war were over, and it might have been possible for Thomas Marshall to reestablish his shattered fortunes, and restore his home to something of its former condition, had it not been for the great humiliation which came to the South im- mediately after. In the reconstruction of the South, hordes of carpet-bag poli- ticians were sent from the North to take charge of the civil gov- ernment, men, the majority of whom were without knowledge of Southern life and customs, who had nothing at stake, and no re- sponsibility except their personal reputation, which was not always enviable. It is not strange that their administration became more intolerable to the South than the war had been, and after they had gallantly fought against the military occupation of their coun- try, the humiliation which had now come to them they were obliged to submit to in undisguised indignation and silence.

444 IMPROVEMENT ERA. There was one means of escape: Oregon, California, Mexico, and the territory of Arizona possessed lands, unoccupied and fer- tile, sufficient for a greatly increased population; and, in 1866, large numbers of people left the South seeking new homes on the Pacific slope. Among this number were Thomas Marshall and his family. Disposing of the remnant of property which was left them, they joined a small party of immigrants, and in the spring started for California. A span of mules and a wagon, with supplies for the journey across the plains, a span of horses and an old family carriage, com- pleted their outfit, which was carried from Louisville down the Ohio, and up the Mississippi, on a river steamer, to the great over- land trail, where the weary journey toward the Pacific began. The team which pulled the family carriage, and which Mr. Marshall drove, while Tom drove the wagon, consisted of a horse of uncertain breeding, which had been bought for the journey, and a mare which had been raised at the Marshall homestead, the only remaining animal of the many which had once been the pride and care of the owner. She was old and lame, the result of an acci- dent which had occurred during her turf career, and it was this which had made her retention possible, when all of her companions had been confiscated during the war, in which she would have been useless as a campaigner. A chestnut, with small white star in forehead and snip on nose, her color, the magnificent proportions of her small but sym- metrical body, clearly indicated her royal breeding, notwithstanding the fact that age had greatly modified her appearance, compared with what it was when in her prime. Belle they called her, and the attachment of the family to this mare was almost human. Helen made it her special care to provide for her, as the journey progressed; and of ten around the camp fire, her great achievements on the turf were recounted, when she had carried the Marshall colors to victory on many hotly contested fields. II.— THE EXCHANGE AND PARTING- The Rockies had been passed, and the little company of pil- grims, weary and travel-stained, with teams almost exhausted, were camped on the Humboldt river, in sight of the great Sierra Nevada

KENTUCKY BELLE. 445 range, the last serious barrier between them and the Golden Gate. Above the camp on the stream was a rather pretentious ranch- house, and many cattle and horses grazed on the river-bottom and adjacent hill-sides. The place was known as Ryan's Ranch. Tim Ryan had left Ireland ten years before, to be free from what he regarded as the unjustifiable oppression of the English landlord. He had engaged successfully in mining, in Montana, and was now in the cattle business on the Humboldt river, in the western part of Nevada. Around the Marshall camp fire that night there was serious discussion. "It is useless," said Mr. Marshall, "to try to take her farther, her age, and the increased lameness from the old hurt caused by the long journey, have so reduced her strength that it was with great difficulty we kept up with the train today; we can- not get along without an animal to take her place, so I see noth- ing for us to do but to exchange her with this rancher for a Inrse of some kind that will pull us through to our destination." "But, Papa," pled Helen, "just think, she is the only thing we have to remind us of the good old days before the war, think of the day she won the Oaks, and how proud we all were of her, and then how she defeated Kentucky Maid and Magnolia, in the Derby. 0, Papa, I cannot think of leaving her here in this desert, among these strange people." Tom was irreconcilable. "If Belle stays here, I'm going to stay," he declared. "There is nothing that equals her in breeding, in California, I know. And besides, think how we have counted on the colt she will have next spring. Why I expect to make it the foundation for the racing stable we are to have when we reach the coast." Mrs. Marshall said nothing, but tears stole silently down her cheeks as she thought of those happy days when Southern chivalry was at its best, when she had been so happy in her Southern home, and how Kentucky Belle, the finest mare they had ever bred, had con- tributed to make her happiness more complete. And while the discussion went on, the subject of it stood quietly resting in the camp-fire glare, too tired and worn to crop the green grass which grew on the river-bottom. Early the following morning, Mr. Marshall walked up to the

446 IMPROVEMENT ERA. ranch house, and soon returned with a short, sandy man, whose brogue clearly indicated his Irish extraction, but whose dress and manner showed that he had become, through contact and affilia- tion, a typical Western American. "I regret very much," Mr. Marshall was saying, as they ap- proached the camp, "that it is necessary for me to part with her, but it is evident that she will not go through; in fact, I doubt if she could pull the carriage another day's journey. I am short of money, and therefore can do nothing but exchange her for some- thing which will pull me through to my destination. I am certain she will prove very valuable to you, her breeding is very fine, she is by— " "0, never mind what she is," interrupted Ryan, "we don't care nothing about breeding out here, all we want is something that can head a cow, I'm not caring for royalty, neither among horses or people." It was finally agreed that Ryan should give a buckskin pony, of very little value, but strong and in good condition, for the mare. "Shall I send my son up to the house with her?" asked Mr. Marshall. "0, no," replied her new owner, "let her stay here and rustle with the rest of them." III.— THE NEW AND THE OLD— BIRTH AND DEATH. When the train moved out that morning, there were sad hearts among the Marshall contingent. Helen went to where the mare still stood, rubbed her forehead, patted her neck, sobbed, and, turning away, got into the carriage which was waiting; and her father, speaking to the buckskin pony which readily responded, followed Tom up the valley. As the train moved on, the mare whinnied, walked down to the river and drank, and then, going slowly up the hill-side near by, cropped the bunch-grass which grew upon its slope. Thus days and weeks passed. Each day she went to the river for water, and climbed back upon the hill-sides for grass. Some- times she sought the company of other horses, there being many on the range, but they did not seem to like her; and besides, their habits were so different to those of the Kentucky horses, with

KENTUCKY BELLE. 447 which she had been raised, that she felt ill at ease among them, so ranged entirely alone. She often thought of the change which had taken place in her life. The country was devoid of vegetation, with the exception of the sage brush which grew on the hills, and a few cottonwoods which were on the river bank in the valley. The rocks hurt her feet so, and the river water was often so muddy that she could hardly drink it. In vain she wandered over the hills hunting for just one little bunch of blue-grass. She thought of the cool springs and shady groves, in the pastures of her dear old home, and con- trasted them with present surroundings; and once, she almost determined to try and find her way back to Kentucky, but when she remembered the heart-breaking journey across the plains, the Indians, the possibility of being captured by them, and perhaps eaten, for she had heard that they sometimes ate horses, she abandoned the thought, and tried to become reconciled to her sur- roundings. Winter approached, cold and cheerless, but the bunch grass remained green, and proved much more nutritious than she had supposed it would be; and so, when spring came, with its warm days, she was still alive, but wondered why she felt so much weaker than ever before at that season of the year. She had seen nothing of her new owner since the day he traded for her. Occasionally, a cow-boy would pass near where she was, but none ever asked concerning her, or seemed at all interested in her condition. "Mr. Ryan," said a cow-boy, one day in June, "there is a dead mare down on the river-bottom, just below the Cottonwood Bend, and a colt, only a few days old standing by her, I think it is the old mare you got in the trade with immigrants, last fall." "If the colt is no older than that, I think you may as well shoot it when you go back that way," said Ryan; "it would not pick its living, although the grass is unusually good this spring; it would not be worth the trouble and expense of raising by hand, to it may as well be killed." Little Nora Ryan had been listening to this conversation, and now took part in it. "0, Papa, don't kill the little colt," she said. "Give it to me. Let me raise it, and have it for my own. I know it is a pretty colt, because I heard the young lady say that the

448 IMPR0VEMEN2 ERA. mother was once very pretty, and she said something about thoroughbreds, and races; don't you remember. Papa? It was when she was talking to Mama, while the wagons stopped to buy some butter and eggs, the morning the train left our ranch. 0, Papa, give the little colt to me!" Mr. Ryan expostulated. Horses were too cheap for him to be bothered raising colts around the house; it would be a nuisance, and worth nothing when it was grown. But the child was obdur- ate, and when she began to sob, the kind-hearted man yielded. Turning to the cow-boy, he said: — "Well, Sandy, go down and bring the thing up, and we will see what it looks like, anyhow." Sandy galloped away, and in a few hours returned with an ex- ceedingly sorrowful-looking colt. The mother had evidently been dead for some time, as the colt was very gaunt and thin. It was a sorrel, with small star in forehead, and snip on nose, and hind pasterns white, the image, so far as color was concerned, of its dead mother. Nora was in ecstasies; her father was annoyed to think he must be bothered with an orphan colt around the place. IV.— NAMING OF BELLE— LIFE IN NEVADA. Nora took great pleasure in teaching it to drink milk; and as there were plenty of cows on the ranch, the colt never went hungry. It soon learned to recognize its new mistress, and there was an attachment between the two which made them friends from the beginning. So the summer passed, and winter came, very cold, as it al- ways is on the Humboldt river. There was plenty of hay on the ranch, and the colt had now developed till it could eat. Nora begged a little oats from the cow-boys, when they fed the saddle horses, and Sandy, who was a rough but kind-hearted boy, gave it a warm corner in the stable, so that the winter was passed in com- parative comfort. Nora put a strap around the colt's neck, with a small bell at- tached which tinkled as she ran, greatly to the enjoyment of both. One day she asked her father where the people came from who traded the mother to him, and was informed that they were from Kentucky. "Then I'm going to call my colt Kentucky Belle," she said, "because she has a bell on, and her mother came from Ken-

KENTUCKY BELLE. 449 tucky;" and so, unconsciously to the people at the ranch, the colt came to bear the name of the mother. The second year of her life was uneventful. She was turned into the pasture with other colts, by Sandy, at the request of Nora who had taught her to lead, and she sometimes rode her out with the boys, when they went to bring in the cows. Winter came again, and Mr. Ryan suggested that Belle be turned out on the range to pick her living with the other horses; it was too expensive, he said, to keep her up and feed her, she had already eaten her head off, and must shift for herself. But Nora pled the cause of the colt with such eloquence and persistency that her father, as usual, yielded. Thus it happened that the second winter of her life was passed under favorable circumstances, and, thanks to Sandy, she was so well cared for that her growth and development were not retarded. Spring came again, and with it new experiences. The colt had grown large and symmetrical, during the winter, and when she was turned into the pasture, in the spring, there was a great con- trast between her appearance and that of the horses which had wintered out. Now a new problem, one that she could in no manner understand, was presented. She was old enough to desire company, but try as she would, it seemed impossible to make friends of the other horses. When- ever an opportunity offered, they viciously bit and kicked at her, and seemed greatly annoyed, and not a little surprised, at the ease with which she would gallop away from them when they made their attacks. The most humiliating thing was the uncomplimentary remarks she often heard made by the other horses. "What business has a colt, whose mother was only worth as much as Buckskin, and who is not a native of Nevada, in our class?" they would say. "We all know that Nevada has the best horses in the world." "My mother belonged to Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perces/' said a pinto, which had developed bitter enmity toward the sor- rel colt. "She was the fastest mare in the tribe, and I have often heard her tell how she beat the fastest horses which the Shoshones and Blackfeet had, and the great number of guns, robes and ponies she won for her owner."

450 IMPROVEMENT ERA. "And my grandmother was brought to California by the Span- iards who founded the Mission of San Jose," said a rangy, rather fine-looking mare, but with very long, narrow head, and small eyes; "we have a tradition that our ancestors accomplished wonderful feats, at the time of the conquest of Mexico." "I don't know anything about my breeding," said a chunky, powerfully-built sorrel, "but you all know that I beat the best horses in Humboldt County, at Carson City, last 4th of July, and that is honor enough for any horse. I think it a piece of impu- dence that this colt, whose ancestry no one knows anything about, and who has never done a thing to distinguish herself, should be put in the same pasture with us. She has a nice color, it is true, but look at her long neck, and her small head, with eyes that look as if they would burst from their sockets; and then her body is too long, and her legs too small, why her fetlocks are so small and slender that they almost bend to the ground when she walks; besides, she hasn't a bit of courage: why, when we bite and kick her, she just moves out of the way without any retaliation, and goes off and feeds alone." "She's stuck up, and thinks she is better than the rest of us, just because she has been raised by Nora, and petted and pam- pered all her life," said a spiteful-looking grey. Belle listened to all of this, and while it cost her many heart- aches, for she was very lonesome in her isolation, she did not com- plain. She remembered that her mother, before her death, had told her something of the green fields and cool springs, in a country far away in the home of her ancestors. Her mother had warned her that she would have to submit to the conditions surrounding her, and become as the other horses were, "because," she said, "these horses have seen nothing of the world, they know nothing of other horses or pastures. They are of the class that do not care to learn, and, consequently, believe themselves to be the finest and best-bred in the world; so, they would not be able to understand you, if you attempted to tell them of your ancestry, and recount the beauties of the old home." (to be concluded.)