Horse thief

“ Two thieves who had stolen a horse fall to quarreling over who shall have the animal. While they are rolling in the dust fighting, a third thief comes along, jumps on the horse, and makes off with it. ”

“ Tip-Top laughed as they walked along. ‘This thief,’ he remarked, ‘is a fool. [Pg 77] It is so easy to steal a horse that he will not buy a saddle. He will try to steal mine. Then we shall catch him. He will get the horse—’
“‘What!’ cried the Mayor; ‘get the horse?’
“‘Certainly; nothing is easier,’ replied Tip-Top. ‘He will get the horse, and then he will want a saddle. He will be passing the wall here. He will see me sleeping with my head on my friend and then he will attempt to steal it, but the surcingle will be buckled around my body, and I will awake and cry blue murder. ”

“ It is not the difficulty, but the risk; for even if a thief gets off with a pony, he is almost sure to be hunted down. It is regarded as a sort of offence against the community, and a man, whether a native or a mean white, would get a very short shrift if he were caught on a stolen horse. ”

“ The prosecution of these men was undertaken with something of the old vigor that characterized the pursuit of horse thieves, with this difference, that, whereas all the world had hated a horse thief as a common enemy, very much of the world found excuse for the so-called rustler, who was known to be doing only what his accusers had done before him. ”

“ A crazy sort, he is. Why, he actooly tried ter git us ter let him off because his wife was sick an’ he wanted ter be with her. Ha! ha! he made me sick! A horse thief is the meanest thief in the world. I wouldn't show one no mercy.”
“Right yer are!” said the young sheriff. “Yet I was hearin’ Buck Jones tell us how, if he could git the horse back, he wouldn’t prosecute the gypsy feller for stealin’ it.” ”

“ I spurred forward my horse, reined him in with dragoon-like precision, and with the butt-end of my riding-whip dealt the would-be thief a blow which tumbled him in a heap at the foot of the stile.
With a terrible malediction, while the blood poured over his face, he staggered up, stooped his head, and thrusting his hat well over his eyes, was rushing on with uplifted cudgel, when I dexterously dealt him cut "one" full on the face, and made my horse rear for the purpose of riding him down. ”

“ So, wounded and bruised, and very sorry that he had thought about the old woman's wine, he left them behind, and disappeared among the thick undergrowth of the neighboring forest. His pursuers returned to the cottage and set loose the robber's horse.
"The wicked thief shall not creep back," they said, "to do us further injury, and then jump on his horse and fly." ”

“ Tip-Top was to sleep on his Talking-Saddle, near the wall and the [Pg 78] Mayor and his brother were to watch from the windows of the vacant house opposite.
“When night came, the watchers who had been set to guard the horse were very anxious. They were ready to arrest any one who might chance to enter. Whenever they heard footsteps approaching they seized their clubs and stood on the defensive. Sometimes a passer-by would pause, look in, and ask what the trouble was. Then the watchers would reply that they were waiting for the great thief who was coming to steal the fine horse. ”

“ Carruthers walked on to the sheep, got a fresh horse, and with our black boy followed the thief until they came to the spot where, in a piece of scrub, he had pulled the mane and tail of the horse to alter its appearance. Darkness coming on, they had to abandon further pursuit. The horse was a very fine chestnut. A new saddle and bridle, a pouch containing cheque book and revolver, were taken with him, so the robber had a good haul. ”

“ For though many Men yearly venture and lose their Lives by stealing Horses, yet there are very few who dare seize a Horse, where the Law allows and encourages it, when by such Seizure he is to acquire the Name of an Informer: So much worse is this Appellation in the Opinion of Vulgar than that of Thief; and so much more prevalent is the Fear of popular Shame than of Death. ”

“ The story of the hero-thief is generally connected with the carrying off of his master's horse; but not unfrequently the hero, like the monster, becomes a robber of cows and oxen.
The thief Ivan [365] is required to steal from his master a black bull or ox tied to the plough; if he succeeds, he is to have a hundred roubles for his reward; but if he does not, he is to receive instead a hundred bastinadoes. ”

“ When I reached London, I was soon informed the thief-takers were after me. The night I came to town, I put my horse up at the White Swan in Whitechapel, but went no more near him, fearful, as I had stolen him, he might be advertised. But I was not long without a horse, for one Saturday night, about eight o’clock, coming from St. James’, where I had been regaling with some friends, I perceived a boy in Rider [Pg 224] street walking a horse about, apparently waiting for somebody. ”

“ On the contrary, in the case of large, heavy articles of wood or stone which the unassisted strength of man is not adequate to remove to any distance, they must not only have been displaced, but actually lifted upon the cart, or upon the animal provided for their removal. In respect to horses, asses, mules and cows, they must have been taken out of the stable, and some evidence must be adduced of exertion on the part of the offender to make himself master of them. Thus, if one horse is stolen and the rest follow, the thief is not responsible for the theft of more than one horse ”

“ It was made of flax, tow, hemp, hair, and wool, and was woven into a complete cloth; it was also tightly sewed through and through with long horse-hairs, some of which when drawn out measured two feet. Here is a picture of this [Pg 209] nest. In the bottom it had bunches of cows' hair, and these were also sewed down with horse-hairs. This bird, boys, is a thief."
"A thief, Uncle Philip! What does it steal?"
"When I say it is a thief, boys, I mean that it takes what does not belong to it: but it is not a thief as man is. ”

“ The purse incident occurs in Brittany, Piedmont, Tuscany, and Tyrol; in Iceland (Arnason, p. 609) occurs the man twice hanged which also occurs in Norway, Ireland, Saxony, Tuscany, and in Germany (Kuhn and Schwartz, 362) ; in Servia (Vuk, 46) the Master Thief steals sheep by [246] throwing two shoes successively in the road, which also occurs in Bengal (Day, xi.) ; the theft of the horse occurs in Brittany, Norway, Ireland, Tuscany, Scotland (Campbell, 40) , Flanders, in Basque and Catalan, Russia and Servia. ”

“ The officer rode off on horseback, with the thief at the end of his lariat carrying the bundle on his back, and walking by the side of the horse, the woman who owned the clothing and those who were wanted for witnesses following him, and the policeman on foot bringing up the rear. That evening the woman returned with the clothing, and brought word that the thief had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to six months in the chain-gang. ”

“ The headless trunk is exposed, and the comrade steals it by intoxicating the guards.—‘Rhampsinitus,’ Sicilian, Breton, Gaelic, old Dutch, Russian. (9) He further cheats them of 400 groats as payment for his horse, which he pretends the dead thief has stolen.—Wanting elsewhere. (10) The king then puts a prohibitive price on all the meat in the city, thinking the thief will betray himself by alone being able to pay it; but the thief steals a joint.—Italian (Pecorone, 1378, ix. 1; and Prof. Crane’s Italian Popular Tales, p. 166) . ”

“ So the Woodrnan and his Wife got the Khichri, the wood, and the coveted pears, but the poor bear got nothing but a very bad stomachache from eating unripe fruit.
THE THIEF AND THE FOX
By Ramaswarni Raju
A man tied his horse to a tree and went into an inn. A Thief hid the horse in a wood, and stood near the tree as if he had not done it. ”

“ It has ever puzzled me on reflection, that where so much pains had been taken to remove all trace of the horse, the glaring evidence of the theft should be left forgotten in open daylight, and I am inclined to think that the horse thieves considered themselves safe from pursuit, and were rather surprised at our appearance. ”

“ When one of the grizzled hunters in the depths of the wilderness fired his gun at some deer, antelope or bear, he hastily reloaded his rifle, listening meanwhile for sounds of the stealthy footprints of his enemy. He knew not when the treacherous shot would be sent from behind the rock or clump of bushes, but he had learned long before, that, when he penetrated the western wilds and followed the calling of trapper, he took his life in his hands and he was ready to "go under," whenever the fate so decreed.
The most flagrant crime on the frontier is horse stealing. ”

“ It was getting quite dark, and as the chappar boy had warned me that there were brigands about the neighbourhood I walked close to my horse, my revolver being slung to the saddle. The place seemed absolutely deserted, and I was just thinking how still and reposeful the evening seemed, the noise of the horses' hoofs being the only disturbing element amid quiescent nature, when suddenly from behind innocent-looking rocks and boulders leapt up, on both sides of the road, about a dozen well-armed robbers, who attempted to seize the horses. ”

“ BABSY. You are. Waitle your own horse is stolen, and youll know better. I had an uncle that died of thirst in the sage brush because a negro stole his horse. But they caught him and burned him; and serve him right, too.
EMMA. I have known that a child was born crooked because its mother had to do a horse's work that was stolen.
BABSY. There! You hear that? I say stealing a horse is ten times worse than killing a man. And if the Vigilance Committee ever gets hold of you, youd better have killed twenty men than as much as stole a saddle or bridle, much less a horse.
[Elder Daniels comes in.] ”

“ In a perfunctory manner, for the sake of doing something, those skilled in trail-reading went back over the ground. Nothing was added to the first experience. At the point of robbery magically had appeared a man and—if the stage driver's solemn assertion that at the time of the hold-up no animal was in sight could be believed—subsequently, when needed, a large horse. ”

“ With the buffalo gone, and their pony herds being constantly decimated by the inroads of horse-thieves, they must soon adopt, in all its varieties, the way of the white man. * * * The usual amount of horse-stealing has prevailed, and the few cases of successful pursuit have only increased the boldness of the thieves and the number of the thefts. ”

“ Far to the northward was another barrier range like the Singing Birds, so distant that its green was like dark crystal, its bare tops like pearl shell, and as far as he could see the fur thief pursuer could not see one sign of human occupation, although here and there were low areas of bare valley in which he would doubtless find cow outfits, nesters in the stream bottoms and perhaps the hidden cabins of fugitives from detectives, sheriffs, marshals and other representatives of justice. ”

“ Here Smith thought we had better stop; and tired, and perhaps homesick, we pitched our tent, and ate our first supper at the mines of Ballarat.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE BULLY OF BALLARAT.—FRED FIGHTS A DUEL.
Horse stealing is not regarded as a very serious crime, I regret to say, in Australia. There is a certain class of people who make no scruple of borrowing an animal without the owner's consent, and if great objection is made to such a proceeding, a resort to firearms quickly settles the matter, generally to the disadvantage of the remonstrant. ”

“ A few miles further on he stole a horse from the stable of a farmer, and, mounting its bare back, rode hard and fast till daylight, when he turned the animal loose in the road, and betaking himself to the protection of the forests that covered the bottom lands of the Alabama River, left no further trace of his course. Here his trail was lost to the detectives, who, after an arduous and vain pursuit of several days, abandoned all further effort in that vicinity. ”

“ Many a precious villain, and merciless marauder, was made by these midnight tales of rapine, murder, and robbery; many a stripling, in whose tender mind the seeds of virtue and honesty had never germinated, burned for an opportunity of loading his pack-horse with the beaver skins of some solitary Blackfoot trapper, who was to be murdered and despoiled of the property he had acquired by weeks, and perhaps months, of toil and danger. ”

“ A favorite policy of the Indian horse thieves is to creep into camp, cut loose one animal and thoroughly frighten him. This animal seldom fails to frighten the remainder, when away they all go with long ropes and picket pins dangling after them. The latter sometimes act like harpoons, being thrown with such impetus as to strike and instantly kill a valuable steed from among the brother runaways. At other times, the limbs of the running horses get entangled in the ropes, when they are suddenly thrown. Such seldom escape without broken legs or severe contusions, which are often incurable. ”

“ The only halt he could expect of the robbers was to save their own horses, and he must do the same. Forcing a tired horse an extra hour has left many an amateur rider afoot. He realized this. Knowing the necessity of being well mounted, the robbers had no doubt splendid horses. This was a reasonable supposition.
Near midnight the marshal and posse set out once more on the trail. He was compelled to take it afoot now, depending on his favorite dog, which was under leash, the posse following with the mounts. The dogs led them several miles southward on this mountain crest. ”