The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-08-11
A BUcKING MULE.
The Nantucket Mans Adventure in the
Early DAYS of California.

Early DAYS OF CALIFORNIA
Correspondence Hartford Conn. Courant.
In 1850 whaling mate from Nantucket
was fitting out for the mines near our back
door in Sacramento. He was tall, serious
large-featured man, probably the head of a
family at home, and might have had hand
some daughters if he had any. He was par
ticular in his outfit and was long time get
ting ready. He couldn't easily find mule
to suit him because be wanted an extra large
one. Meanwhile he was gathering his traps
and attending horse auctions on X. street.
After about a fortnight he came down
street with a big mule in tow that sold
cheaper, he said, because there was no suf-
hcient mate for him in the country. There
was considerable sloping deck-room on him
and great capacity for pack saddles and
the hanging on of camp and mining furni-
ture. The Nantucket mate had tent, a
gold-washer-the latest improved pattern in
sections-two picks, two shovels, a frying
pan, box of salt meat, a box of bread, a
box of clothes, some sort of a long fire-arn,
and little demijohn of choice liquor that
| remember, and doubt if l recollect half
he had, for he was a great provider and
skilled in slowing ships against the chances
of a long voyage. The mule was a good
looking one No :bystander suggested any
thing against him, and l guess in ordinary
service he was kind. The mate appeared to
have no suspicious of the animal, since his
ing of some pet old farmhouse in Nantucket
that he knew would carry all the boys that
could pile on him. In those early California
days very few people of New England birth
realized the compressed energy in a mule.
As l have limited, the big mule himself might
not have been aware of his latent powers.
But there is no telling. He stood grave and
still as church among the chips near the
wood-pile at our back-door, while the mate,
an expert rigger, with plenty of voluntary
help, was packing. 1 was just then laying
the soup-bone keel of a dinner and cleaning
up the kitchen after breakfast.
There was one pack-saddle and one riding
saddle on the mule, strung along midships, 1
remember. The reader must understand that
a bucking mule or horse can develop per-
feet hinge in his back that is not reckoned
in ordinary equine osteology. have thought
since that this mules back hinge must have
come between the two saddles, for at the
post-mortem examination of this particular
mining expedition it was discovered that the
grths of the saddles found upon the ground
were neither broken unbuckled nor united,
but simply shed or shucked off. OF a score
of observers no one saw exactly how this was
done, the movement was so rapid and such a
dust was flying. The mule was for minute
the invisible center of storm-cloud, from
which radiated, as from an explosion, the
fifty or sixty articles l have enumerated.
But am getting ahead of my story.
A bucking animal you see-and as l write
and reflect and recollect it seems after all,
as if this mule must have been an old hand
at it-can swell himself up by taking in
wind, so as to burst the girths, or he can
shrink and collapse so as to loosen his straps,
and then, by that hinge in his back, he can
drop the seat of a saddle plum perpendicu-
lar and iounce it over his head or tail as the
ease of the cas- may be, to the ground by
tremendous stiff-legged force against the
rbo hrYo at foat
height in mid air, doubles his head and heels
together by that hinge so as to look like a
pair of saddle bags or wet trousers flung over
a lariet. In that position there is absolutely
no seat for rider and most people in such
a predIcament feel a willingness to alight
aside from the attraction of gravitatiOn, and
before the arrested batterng-ram force of the
mules legs against the ground shoots the
rider out of his stiTrups as from catapult - =.
Not much mule was to be seen between
ears, tail and hoofs when the mate had
knotted the last tie OF his hampers, Delayed
the spar line, ship shape, and swung his long
leg like derrick from our big chopping-
block over the animal all ready to make sail.
He had on pair of weighty Spanish spurs,
and some declared afterward that the mate
would have got safely under way if he had
not grazed the mules belly with the fukes
of one of those anchors But this will never,
probably, be known. In one instant the
llldSS Ol udTQ anu WOOuSH ware Will the Days
was in fearful motion and shot up into the
air 1 thought the whole concern would
tumble down through the canvas roof of our
kitchen and spill the dinner of forty people.
But l guess the mule had canvassed the
whole business otherwise. As the dust set
tied and our wits gathered from amazement
and alright, the mule, clean as he was born,
was seen calmly cropping weeds that grew
where we flung Stops; the mate, with surprise
and bruises struggling for the mastery on his
face, was gathering himself out of our wood
pile. A spare boot, parted from its fellow,
first fixed his wandering gaze, and a smell
from the wrecked demijohn helped to restore
his senses to his quarter of an acre of scat
tered property. He said, simply 81 guess
I'll sell that mule" and we heard afterward
that he chartered an OK team for his freight.