RIDING A BUCKJUMPER.

Colonist, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8062, 5 October 1894, Page 3

RIDING A BUCKJUMPER.

(Bi V. A. Daly, in " Qoebnsmhd.") They blindfolded the colt and got me on Bomehow— l don't remember anything distinctly, as events were reeled off too quiokly, by that animal for me to grasp all (he details. I remember they threw the gate. open, pulled the bandage from bfs eye?, and he made ona dirt like a fish at a fly for the big yard \fhere, (topping Bc'ddenly, lie wheeled short I cun<J, whipped his bead between hie legs, teaiirg all the flesh off my knuckles against the pommel of the saddle ; then sprang into the air as tbcagh shot from the muzzle of a mortar, and landed ou tbe hard gronnd with a shook tba» the gullet plate of my saddle creaked, atd the tree craoked, and my teeth t napped like an alligator's, while I folly expected to tee the o^ It's shoulder blade? come shooting through his skin. ; As for myself I felt as if my back were broken and a!) my bones jumped ou6 of joiut, and woniered, in a dreamjr tort of way, wno wss laughing, cnl waat tbiy were Ur ghing a*. Then tip ml down 'went the hQtit ftglinl m» hat flew .off, and I f woiea my bead wm

to follow, for if thia Wndl of thing | cot tinned moon longer, my neok must inevitable snap like a oerrct, In leBS than no time I had been round the tig yard, and in every torner of it, and had baen bumpid against aevetsl p-^ta, and was itatting for another round— and there waa 'no go sb you please' about it either. So I b:gan to wish (or something to happen— anything to break the awful sameness of this notable up and down motion with a jerk that jinked you* baok when you rose, and a shook that made you bite your tongue when you landed. As if my prayer had been heard my band slipped from the pommel, which I bad grasfeJ, the horse felt me bobbing about and redoubled his efforts; I fell forward till 1 oculd see the ground in a ttraight line down from the point of his withers, for he seemed to have neither neok nor head, then backwards into the saddle again. ; After that I oaa't Bay for certain )where I was, whether I was in the saddle or only half in it, or dean behind it ; all I know was from the awful bumpß I was getting, and the way the ground reeled ont beneath me, that I waa still on board the brute somewhere, till suddenly I waa sent flying through Bpaoe, the ground seemed to jump up to meet me and arreßted my progress with fearful force, and the colt bucked fairly on top of me, and I lay there quivering with pain, and thinking to myself, ' Well, if this is Australian buck jump riding better leave it to the natives ; they like it, I don't. Besides they are born and bred to it and can stick to a saddle, like a porous plaster to a patient's back.' So 1 determined to leave rough riding alone, and gave buck-jumpers a wide berth. But the worst of it is you cannot always tell whether you are on a buck- jumper or not ; but if ever you see a horse suddenly whip his head between his legs, and feel him bounding under you like steel springß, with a hump on his back like a boomerang, and then all in a moment you find yourself shot against a tree, or lying helplessly on the ground with your body full of pains and your mouth full of blood and dust-then you can reckon you were on a "real live Australian buck-jumper. If no one sees you fall you can tell your friends tbat the girth was loose and the saddle shifted; only for that, nothing in creation, &c, &o.