[Sidenote: The horse comrade] In the North-west Mounted Police, a detachment of us used to ride down bareback with led horses to water at the ford of Battle River. Close by was a wire cable for the ferry. On one occasion, my horse as he left the water turned under the cable to scrape me {87} off his back. Failing in that, he returned higher up the bank, and this time I was scraped off into a pool of dust. Out of that brown explosion of dust, I looked up in time to see his malicious pleasure in a successful joke. And so one might set forth instances by the score, all to the same monotonous effect, that humans and horses have a sense of humour. [Sidenote: Limitations and tricks] Please imagine a man to have his hands and feet replaced by boxes of horn such as the hoofs of a horse, and that, so disabled, he is tied by the head in a cell. Reduced to the conditions of horse-life in a stable, the man would be as clever as a horse in the use of lips and teeth. He would slip his headstall or break his head-rope, open the door and escape until such time as the need for food and water drove him back to prison. When asked to go to work, he might give a clever impersonation of a lame horse. He might also copy the trick of the beggar horse who gives the love call to every man who enters the stable, fooling each of them with the flattery of special homage, a sure way to gifts of sugar, apples or carrots. Or he might copy the horse who whiles away dull times by keeping a pet cat, or bird, or puppy. It seems odd, too, that the most dangerous human outlaws and man-slaying horses are {88} gentle with small animals and children. So long as we punish unoffending horses with imprisonment in dark cells, we may expect them to show traits of character evolved by the treatment of prisoners in the Middle Ages. Horses, dogs, and men are oddly alike, too, in the way they dream, with twitchings of the limbs to illustrate great exertion, and snortings, murmurs and groans, which take the place of speech. So horses just like humans are dour or cheery, truculent or cheeky, humorous or stolid, some with a lofty sense of dignity, while others behave like clowns. Some horses are like some children, exacting until they are petted, while other children and horses hate to be pawed. Both will sulk or quarrel, play the fool or grumble, make intimate friendships or bitter enemies. I think, though, that the love of sport, and the desire to excel are much more general with horses than with children. [Sidenote: The horse musical]