Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume V. Nature. 1904. | | | | VI. Animate Nature | | Chiquita | | Bret Harte (1836–1902) |
| | | BEAUTIFUL! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn’t her match in the county,— | |
| Is thar, old gal? Chiquita, my darling, my beauty! | |
| Feel of that neck, sir,—thar ’s velvet! Whoa! Steady—ah, will you? you vixen! | |
| Whoa! I say. Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces. | |
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| Morgan!—She ain’t nothin’ else, and I ’ve got the papers to prove it. | 5 |
| Sired by Chippewa Chief, and twelve hundred dollars won’t buy her. | |
| Briggs of Tuolumne owned her. Did you know Briggs of Tuolumne?— | |
| Busted hisself in White Pine, and blew out his brains down in ’Frisco. | |
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| Hedn’t no savey,—hed Briggs. Thar, Jack! that ’ll do,—quit that foolin’! | |
| Nothin’ to what she kin do when she ’s got her work cut out before her. | 10 |
| Hosses is bosses, you know, and likewise, too, jockeys is jockeys; | |
| And ’tain’t every man as can ride as knows what a hoss has got in him. | |
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| Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flanigan’s leaders? | |
| Nasty in daylight, you bet, and a mighty rough ford in low water! | |
| Well, it ain’t six weeks ago that me and the Jedge, and his nevey, | 15 |
| Struck for that ford in the night, in the rain, and the water all round us; | |
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| Up to our flanks in the gulch, and Rattlesnake Creek just a bilin’. | |
| Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the river. | |
| I had the gray, and the Jedge had his roan, and his nevey, Chiquita; | |
| And after us trundled the rocks jest loosed from the top of the cañon. | 20 |
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| Lickity, lickity, switch, we came to the ford, and Chiquita | |
| Buckled right down to her work, and afore I could yell to her rider, | |
| Took water jest at the ford, and there was the Jedge and me standing, | |
| And twelve hundred dollars of hoss-flesh afloat, and a driftin’ to thunder! | |
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| Would ye b’lieve it, that night, that hoss,—that ar’ filly,—Chiquita,— | 25 |
| Walked herself into her stall, and stood there all quiet and dripping! | |
| Clean as a beaver or rat, with nary a buckle of harness, | |
| Just as she swam the Fork,—that hoss, that ar’ filly, Chiquita. | |
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| That ’s what I call a hoss! and—what did you say? O, the nevey? | |
| Drownded, I reckon,—leastways, he never kem back to deny it. | 30 |
| Ye see the derned fool had no seat,—ye could n’t have made him a rider; | |
| And then, ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses—well, hosses is hosses! | | | | |
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