Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1891 — The Bed Man's Bronco. [ARTICLE]

The Bed Man's Bronco.

The toughness and strength of the pony can scarcely be exaggerated. He will live through a winter that will kill the hardiest cattle. He worries through the long months when the snow has covered up the bunch grass on a diet of cottonwood boughs, which the Indian cuts for 'him; and in the spring it takes but a few weeks for him to scour out into splendid condition. He can go unheard of distances.

Colonel R. I. Dodge records an instance coming under his observation where a pony carried the mails 300 miles in three consecutive nights, and back over the same road the next week, and kept this up for six months without loss of condition. He can carry any weight. Mr. Barkman speaks of a chief known as Le Coohon, on account of his 300 pounds avoirdupois, who nevertheless rode his ponies as bravely as a man of half his bulk. The pony has often carried two people as one. There is simply no end to thii wonderful product of the prairies. He works many years. So long as he will fatten up in the spring his age is immaterial.

The absence of crest in the pony suggests the curious query of what has become of the proud arching neck of his ancestors, the barb. There are two ways of accounting for this. The Indian’s gag bit, invariably applied with a jerk, throws up the pony’s head instead of bringing it down, as the slow and light application of the school curb will do, and this tends to develop the ewe neck. Or a more sufficient reason may be found in the fact that the starvation which the pony undergoes in the winter months tends to deplete him of every superfluous ounce of flesh. —Baltimore American.