Izy asks for favorite story in 10 lines

Whoa! Izy has asked for the Cliff's Notes or (in Canada) Cole's Notes version of a favorite story. Cole's Notes and Cliff's Notes were student study guides half a century before the internet, by the way.
Izy isn't just restricting us to one page of prose, however—we have to tell the whole story in a mere ten lines of poetry!
Sigh.
This story, for reasons I won't reveal here, had an enormous impact on my life. I memorized the entire thing and have kept it, more or less complete, in my head ever since. And it was already a poem!

A real toad

I wish I could tell the story in ten lines of the perfect rhyme and rhythm I loved in the original, but I just can't. Not in one day, and this is Day 25 of our April poem-a-day challenge at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, so it's submit now or perish.


Here, then is one of my all-time favorite stories, distilled into ten lines of very bad verse, but still, I hope, recognizable for what it is.

For those who know nothing of Kipling (egad, do such bounders exist?) this is a short summary of his long poem "Ballad of East and West".

Uh-oh, my horse is stolen! I’ll get it back for you, Dad!

officer’s son rides big old horse to chase his father’s mare

rocky terrain makes overnight ride difficult

big horse, tired and thirsty, falls beside a stream

thief comes back, knocks gun out of son’s hand

much talk about pistols, horses, sons and rocky terrain

son says, “You’re OK, man. Take my other gun.”

thief says, “One for one, you can take my son.”

thief’s son is like buck in spring: no women to see or swoon!

both sons, east and west now equal, return to army

THE END, by Kay Davies, April 25, 2013