He's as good as a man any day.

I've done little else but train him for two years gone by, and he can do most anything but shoot--he can't handle the rifle nohow." "Ha! then, I tink perhaps hims could if he wos try," said Henri, plunging on to his horse with a laugh, and arranging the carcass of the antelope across the pommel of his saddle.
Thus they hunted and galloped, and trotted and ambled on through wood and plain all day, until the sun began to descend below the tree-tops of the bluffs on the west.

Then Joe Blunt looked about him for a place on which to camp, and finally fixed on a spot under the shadow of a noble birch by the margin of a little stream.

The carpet of grass on its banks was soft like green velvet, and the rippling waters of the brook were clear as crystal--very different from the muddy Missouri into which it flowed.
While Dick Varley felled and cut up firewood, Henri unpacked the horses and turned them loose to graze, and Joe kindled the fire and prepared venison steaks and hot tea for supper.
In excursions of this kind it is customary to "hobble" the horses--that is, to tie their fore-legs together, so that they cannot run either fast or far, but are free enough to amble about with a clumsy sort of hop in search of food.

This is deemed a sufficient check on their tendency to roam, although some of the knowing horses sometimes learn to hop so fast with their hobbles as to give their owners much trouble to recapture them.