FullReads

“Robert Maguire! Robert Maguire! Robert—-“

“Be the help o’ Moses, I’m here! ” roared the captain, in response to the crier.

And sure enough, he wasn’t anywhere else! There he sat, stiff, and formal as a bronze statue of some renowned military chieftain, on a pot-metal war steed. Some laughed, others stepped out of the way of the mare’s heels, judge and jury “riz,” some of the oldest sinners in law practice looked quite “skeery,” doubtless taking the old captain and his black charger for quite a different individual! It was some time before order and decorum were restored, as it was much easier for the judge to order Captain Maguire to be arrested for his freak, than to do it, “Bonny Doon” not being disposed to let any man approach her head or heels. They shut the captain up, finally, for contempt of court, and fined him twenty dollars, but he escaped the disagreeable attitude of sustaining the suit of an enemy. At another time, the captain, being on a time, dashed into a meeting-house, running in at one door, and slap bang out at the other! This feat of Camanche horsemanship rather alarmed the whole congregation, and cost the captain five twenties! Riding into bar rooms and stores was a common performance of “Bonny Doon” and her master; and he had even gone so far as to run the mare up two entire flights of stairs of the principal hotel, dashing into a room where “a native” was shivering in bed with the fever and ague; but the noise and sudden appearance of a man and horse in such high latitudes effected a permanent and speedy cure; the fright like to have destroyed the sufferer’s crop of hair, but the “a-gy” was skeered clean out of his emaciated body.

After a variety of adventures by flood and field, of hair-breadth ‘scapes, and eccentricities of man and beast, they parted! “Bonny Doon” being about the only living spectator of her master’s end. This tragic denouement came about one cold, stormy and snowy night, when few men, and as few beasts, would willingly or without pressing occasion, expose themselves to the pitiless storm. The old captain had been in town all day, with “Bonny Doon” hitched to the horse block, and being full of “distempering draughts,” as Shakspeare modestly terms it, and malicious bravery in the midst of the great storm, late in the evening he mounted his half-starved and as near frozen mare, to go home.

“Better stay all night, captain,” coaxed some friend.

“Hills are icy, and hollows filled with snow,” suggested the landlord.

“I wouldn’t ride out to your place to-night, captain, for a seat in Congress!” rejoined the first speaker.

“Ye wouldn’t?” replied the captain. “And–and no wonder ye wouldn’t, fer not a divil iv ye’s iver had the horse as could carry ye’s over me road th’ night. Look at that! There’s the baste can do it!–d’ye see that?” and as the old man, reeling in the saddle, jammed the rowels of his heavy spurs into the flanks of the mare, she nearly stood erect, and chafed her bits as fiery and mettled as though just from her oats and warm stable, and fifteen years kicked off.

“Boys,” bawled the captain, “here’s the ould mare that can thravel up a frozen mountain, slide down a greased rainbow, and carry ould Captain Maguire where the very ould divil himsilf couldn’t vinture his dirty ould body. Hoo-o-oo-oop! I’m gone, boys!”

And he was off, gone, too; for the old man never reached the threshold of his domicil.–Next morning Captain Maguire was found in the mill-dam, entirely dead, with poor “Bonny Doon,” nearly frozen, and scarcely able to walk or move, standing near him. But there she stood, upon the narrow icy way over the dam, and from appearances of the snow and planks of the little bridge, the faithful mare had pawed, scraped, and endeavored by various means to rescue her master. The manner of the catastrophe was evident; the old man had become sleepy, and frozen, and while the poor mare was feeling her way over the icy and snow-covered bridge, her master had slipped off into the frozen dam, and no doubt she would have dragged him out, could she have reached him. As it was, she stood a faithful sentinel over her lost master, and did not survive him long,–the cold and her evident sorrow ended the eventful life of “Bonny Doon.”