A Horse's Tale - Softcover

Twain, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809533502 ISBN 13: 9780809533503

Publisher: Wildside Press, 2005

Synopsis

I am Buffalo Bill's horse. I have spent my life under his saddle -- with him in it, too, and he is good for two hundred pounds, without his clothes; and there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over six feet, is young, hasn't an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face, and black hair dangling down on his shoulders, and is beautiful to look at; and nobody is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes, a person that doubts that he is fine to see should see him in his beaded buck-skins, on my back and his rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing a hostile trail, with me going like the wind and his hair streaming out behind from the shelter of his broad slouch. Yes, he is a sight to look at then -- and I'm part of it myself. I am his favorite horse, out of dozens. Big as he is, I have carried him eighty-one miles between nightfall and sunrise on the scout; and I am good for fifty, day in and day out, and all the time. I am not large, but I am built on a business basis. I have carried him thousands and thousands of miles on scout duty for the army, and there's not a gorge, nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a fort, nor a trading post, nor a buffalo-range in the whole sweep of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains that we don't know as well as we know the bugle-calls.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, during a visit by Halley’s Comet in Florida, Missouri. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri which would later be the setting for “Tom Sawyer” and “Huck Finn.” He became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River and a typesetter at his older brother’s newspaper. While working as a reporter in 1865, he wrote “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and became nationally recognized. He served in a Confederate unit in the Civil War for a total of two weeks until the group disbanded, then married Olivia Langdon in 1870. Through his wife, he became friends with Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass and Nikola Tesla. He also knew Thomas Edison and patented three inventions. The pseudonym Mark Twain came from an old riverboat call, “by the mark twain,” meaning “according to the mark, the depth is two fathoms,” or “The water is twelve feet deep and safe to pass.” Previous to that, he had used the names “Josh” and “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass.” Twain made a great deal of money by writing and even started his own publishing house, printing the biography of Ulysses Grant. Eventually, that and poor investments in technology caused him to go bankrupt, but he was able to recover by giving a series of world-wide lectures. In 1909 Twain predicted that, since he had come in with Halley’s Comet, he would leave with it as well. He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet’s approach to Earth. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in his wife’s hometown of Elmira, New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809533502
• ISBN 13: 9780809533503
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108