Now I am out by the saddle rack under the poplars, where two horses are tied.  Ma Pettengill’s long-barrelled roan is saddled.  My own flea-bitten gray, Dandy Jim, is clad only in the rope by which he was led up from the caviata.  I approach him with the respectful attention his reputed character merits and try to ascertain his mood of the moment.  He is a middle-aged horse, apparently of sterling character, and in my presence has always conducted himself as a horse should.  But the shadow of scandal has been flung athwart him.  I have been assured that he has a hideous genius for cinch binding.  Listening at first without proper alarm, it has been disclosed to me that a cinch binder ain’t any joke, by a darned sight!  A cinch binder will stand up straight and lean over backward on me.  If I’m there when he hits the ground I’ll wish I wasn’t—­if I am able to wish anything at all and don’t simply have to be shipped off to wherever my family wants it to take place.

I am further enlightened:  Dandy Jim ain’t so likely to start acting if not saddled when too cold.  If I saddle him then he will be expecting to have more fun out of it than I have any right to.  But if the sun is well up, why, sometimes a baby could handle him.  So for three weeks I have saddled Dandy Jim with the utmost circumspection and with the sun well up.  Now the sun is not well up.  Shall I still survive?  I pause to wish that the range of high hills on the east may be instantly levelled.  The land will then be worth something and the sun will be farther up.  But nothing of a topographical nature ensues.  The hills remain to obscure the sun.  And the brute has to be saddled.  The mood of that grim breakfast, voiceless, tense, high with portent, is still upon me.

I approach and speak harshly to the potential cinch binder, telling him to get over there!  He does not; so I let it pass.  After all, he is only a horse.  Why should I terrorize him?  I bridle him with a manner far from harsh.  He doesn’t like the taste of the bit—­not seasoned right, or something.  But at last he takes it without biting my fingers off; which shows that the horse has no mind to speak of.

I look him calmly in the eye for a moment; then pull his head about, so that I can look him calmly in the other eye for a moment.  This is to show the animal that he has met his master and had better not try any of that cinch-binding stuff if he knows when he’s well off.  Still, I treat him fairly.  I smooth his back of little vegetable bits that cling there, shake out the saddle blanket and tenderly adjust it.  Whistling carelessly I swing up the saddle.  Dandy Jim flinches pitifully when it rests upon him and reaches swiftly round to bite my arm off.  I think this is quite perfunctory on his part.  He must have learned long since that he will never really bite any one’s arm off.  His neck is not enough like a swan’s.