ON A BUCK JUMPER.

Waikato Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 3492, 10 November 1894, Page 11

ON A BUCK JUMPER.

They blindfolded the colt and got me onsomehow~l don't remember everything 1 distinctly, as events were reeled off too quickly by that animil for rae to grasp, all the details. I remember they threw the gate open, pulled the bandage from his eyes, and he,made one dart, like a fish at a fly, for the big yard, where, stopping--Muddenly, he wheeled short round, whipped his head between his leg's, tearing all theflesh off my knuckles against the pommel of the saddle; then sprang into the air as though shot from the muzzle of a mortar, and landed on the hard ground with such a shock that the gullet plate of mv saddlecreaked, aud the. trees cracked, and myteeth snapped like an alligator's, while I fully expected to see the colt's shoulder' blades come shooting through his skin. As for myself, I felt as if my back werebroken and all my tones jumped out of joint, and wondered, iu a dreamy sort of way, who was laughing, and what they were laughing at. Then up and down went the horse again, my hatnVwoff, and I fancied my head was about tofollow, for if this kind of think continued much longer, my neck must inevitably snap like a carrot. In less than no timeI had been once around the big yard, and in every corner of it, and had been bumped agaiust several posts, and was starting for another rounl-and there was no 'go as you please' about it either. So I began to wish for something to happen —anything to break the awful sameness of this horrible up and down motion with a jerk that jinked your back when you rose, and a shock that made you bite your tongue when you landed. As if my prayer had been heard my hand slipped from the pommel, which I had grasped,, the horse felt me bobbing about and redoubled his efforts, I, fell forward till I could see the ground in a straight line down from the point of his withers, for' he seemed to have neither neck nor head, then backwards into the saddle again.. After that I can't say for certain where I was, whether I was in the saddle or only half in it, or clean behind it; all I knew was, from the awful bumps I was getting,. and the way the ground reeled out beneath me, that I was still on boaid thebrute somewhere, till suddenly I was sent flying through space, the ground seemed, to jump up to meet me and arrested my progress with fearful force, and the colt bucked fairly on top of me, and I lay there quivering with pain, and thinking of myself, 'Well, if this is Australian buck jumpriding, better leave it to the natives; they like it, I don't.'