"All I need to try and ride is a horse," I says. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "I won't quarrel with that spirit," he says. He spoke to a native in Spanish. The feller looked at me and spread both hands. I scarcely knew there was such a thing as a Spanish language, but I knew that those hands said, "This is the impossible you have shoved down my chimney." Jim translated. "He says he can't think of but one brute, and he can't imagine you and that one making any kind of combination." "If you're keeping me here to see my sand run out, you'll make it, all right," I says--"otherwise, get that horse." Jim spoke to the native and the native looked at me again, shaking his head sorrowful. At last he discarded all responsibility and ambled off. Here come my gallant steed. His neck had a haughty in-curve; he was bow-legged forrud, and knock-kneed aft. His hips stuck out so far the hair couldn't get the nourishment it needed, and fell out. He had a nose like Julius Cæsar, an under lip that hung down three inches, and the eye of a dying codfish. I lost all fear of him at once. Ignorance is the papa of courage. According to instructions, I put my left foot in the stirrup and made ready to board. At that instant my trusty steed whipped his head around like a rattlesnake, gathered a strip of flesh about six inches long, shut his eyes, and made his teeth to approach each other. I've been hurt several times in my life, but for straight agony give me a horse-bite. With a yell that brought out every revolutionist in Aspinwall,--which means the town was there,--I grabbed that cussed brute by the windpipe and stopped his draft. Jim and the native made some motions. "Keep out of this!" I hollered. "This is my fight!" So then me and my faithful horse began to see who could stand it the longest. There was nothing soul-stirring and uplifting about the contest. He pinched my leg, and I pinched his throat. He kicked me, and I kicked him. We wrastled all over the place, playing plain stick-to-him-Pete. The worst of having a hand-to-hand with an animal is that he don't tire. You get weaker and weaker; they get stronger and stronger. Besides, the pain in my leg almost seemed to stop my heart. Murder! how it hurt! At the same time, a horse doesn't do as well without an occasional breath of fresh air, and I had this feller's supply cut off short. Pretty soon he got frantic, and the way he tore and r'ared around there was a treat. It didn't occur to either one of us to let go. Finally, when I'd ceased to think entirely, there came a staggering sort of fall; hands took hold of me and dragged me away. Jim lifted my head and gave me a drink of water. He swore at himself ferocious, and by all that was great and powerful, lie was going to shoot that horse.