The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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purpose, relentless of hand and limb. All this time he is riding without a bridle bit, depending only on the hackamore, which allows the horse much more freedom to show his repertory of feats than does the savage Spanish bit. The pony in time grows weary, and determines to vary its campaign by a Fabian policy. Again he stops still, "sulling," his ears back, but his legs braced stiffly. Jim is talking soothingly to him now, for Jim is no cruel Greaser horse breaker, after all, and has no vindictiveness for his mount, whose breaking is purely an impersonal business matter to him. The pony at length slowly turns his head around and bites with all his force straight into the leg that grips him. The heavy "chaps" protect the leg, and the spur strikes him upon the other side. He turns his head to that side also and bites that leg, but the same process occurs again. With a sullen fear eating at his heart, the pony tries yet another trick. Deliberately he drops to his knees and lies down quietly upon his side, perhaps holding the rider a willing prisoner fast by the leg which lies under his body. The rider need not be so caught unless he likes, but it is a superstition with Jim that the pony should never unseat the rider nor loosen the grip of the legs on his sides. Jim thinks that should he do this the matter of breaking would be longer and less effective, so he takes chances and holds his grip. Were the pony a big "States" horse, his manoeuvre would be effective, and the rider would be in a sad predicament; but this horse weighs scarcely more than six hundred pounds, and the big stirrup, perhaps tied to its fellow on the opposite side, is under him, protecting the foot of the rider, who is now stretched out at full length upon the ground beside the horse. Moreover, the grass is up a few inches in height perhaps, and all in all the leg is able to stand the weight of the horse without being crushed, there being no stone or stub to offer injury, and so long as that is true the cowpuncher does not worry about it. He lies and talks to the pony kindly, and asks it how long it intends to stay there in that way, suggests that it is about time for him to go home for dinner, and that he has other work to do before the day is over. If the pony be very stubborn, he may lie so for several minutes, and Jim may take off his hat and put it under his own head to make the ground feel more comfortable. Both these wild creatures are watchful and determined. It is a battle of waiting. The pony is first to tire of it, for he does not clearly know how much damage he is doing the cowpuncher's leg, and would himself prefer to act rather than to wait. With a snort and a swift bound he is up on his feet and off, his spring jerking the rider's foot clear of the stirrup. At last he has won! He has unseated this clinging monster! He is free!
But almost as swift as the leap of the pony was that of the rider. He has tight in his hand the long stake rope, and with a flirt of the hand this unrolls. With a quick spring Jim gets to one side of the horse, for he knows that an "end pull" on the rope along the line of the horse's back will be hard to stop, whereas the matter is simpler if the rope makes an angle with the horse's course. His gloved hand grasps the rope and holds the end of it close against his right hip. His left hand runs out along the rope. His left leg is extended and braced firmly on the ground, and with all his weight he leans back on the rope until it is nearly taut. Then, just at the instant when the rope is about to tighten, he gives a swift rolling motion to it with his whole strength, sending a coiling wave along it as a boy does sometimes to a rope tied fast to a tree. This indescribable and effective motion is magical. The roll of the rope runs to the head of the pony just as the cowpuncher settles back firmly on his heels. The head of the horse comes down as though drawn by a band of iron. His heels go into the air, and over he comes, a very much surprised and chagrined cow pony. He awakes and arises to find the iron hand again at his head, the legs of steel again sitting him firmly. The pony has not known that, by this skilled handling of the stake rope at a time when a tenderfoot would be jerked clean from his feet, the cowpuncher can "bust wide open," as he calls it, the strongest pony on the range, the twist giving five times the power of a straight pull.
The heart of the pony fails at the shock of this sudden fall. His head droops. His ears relax from the side of his head where they have been tight tucked. Through his red, bloodshot eyes the landscape swims dully. He looks with a sob of regret at the wide sweep of the prairie lying out beyond, at the shade of the timber mottes on the horizon, at the companions of his kind, who look toward him now with heads uplifted. At last he begins to realize that he is a captive, that freedom is for him no more, that he has met his master in a creature stronger in will and in resource than himself. The cowpuncher urges him gently with his knee, talking to him softly. "Come, bronch'," he says. "It's 'bout dinner time. Let's go back to the ranch." And the broncho, turning his head clear around at the pull on the hackamore — for he is not yet bridlewise — turns and goes back to the ranch, his head hanging down.
The next day the pony has regained something of his old wildness and self-confidence, but is not so bad as he was at first, and the result is the same. Meantime he has been learning yet more about the lesson of not "running against rope," and has cut his heels so much that he is beginning to be more careful how he plunges at the stake. The cowpuncher rides him at times in this way for four days or so on the hackamore, and then puts on a light bridle bit, riding him then a couple of days longer, gradually teaching the use of the bit and bridle. Then the hackamore is taken off, and the pony begins to learn that the best thing he can do is to turn at the touch of the rein on the neck and to stop at the instant the reins come up sharply. In two weeks the pony is quite a saddle horse, though it is well to watch him all the time, for he has a lightning estimation of the man about to ride him, will know if the latter is afraid, and will take advantage of his trepidation. All his life the pony will remember how to pitch a bit at times, perhaps just for fun, because he "feels good," perhaps for ugliness. All his life he will hate a hind cinch, but all his life he will remember the lesson about "going against rope," and will stop still when the rope touches him. Even if very late in life he resumes a bit of friskiness and evades the rope a little in the corral, the sight of another horse jerked end over end is apt to bring him to a sudden sense of what may happen, and he sobers down very quickly. The writer recalls a big black Spanish pony which was very bad on the stake, and had learned some way of getting up his picket pin and running off, contriving to loosen the pin by side pulls first on one side and then the other. One day he ran off in this way with rope and pin dangling, and started at full speed through a bit of timber. The jumping picket pin, whipped about at the end of the rope, caught about a tree with a sudden twist, and the horse got one of the worst falls it was ever the fortune of cow pony to experience, going into the air clear and coming down on his back with all four feet up. He was a dazed and repentant horse, and from that time on, in the words of the cowpunchers, he was "plum tender about rope."
In the breaking season on a horse ranch the education of several ponies would be going at once, and thus a half dozen breakers would in the course of the summer break in a good number of horses. Sometimes a few additional "busters" would be hired, these sometimes paid by the head — say five dollars or so a head, according to the time and locality. The close of the season would see the horse ranch ready to sell off quite a band of broken horses. These might go into the "cavvieyard" (caballada; sometimes corrupted also into "covayer" or "cav-a-yah") of some outfit bound up the trail, or they might go to some other part of the cow range. Some of the breakers would be apt to go up the trail — a great ambition among cowpunchers in the early days. Thus Jim was something of a traveller. He saw many parts of the range, and became as ready to settle in Wyoming as in New Mexico, in Montana as the "Nations." But wherever Jim went, no matter upon what part of the range, his mount was some one of these sturdy little wild horses of the range, horse would stick with the herd when the day herder came out to drive in the bunch for the day's work, would pause in its bound and throw itself back on its haunches when the rope tightened on the leg of a steer. It would stand still as though tied if the cowpuncher threw the reins down over its head and left them hanging It would stay in a flimsy rope corral made by stretching a single rope from a wagon wheel to the pommel of a saddle. It would comport itself with some effort at common sense in a storm, though sometimes breaking out into the wildest and most uncontrollable of panics. A stampede of the horse herd was far worse and harder to handle than a stampede o: cattle, and the very worst of all stampedes was that of a band of old saddle horses. But gradually the pony learned its trade, and forgot its former complete freedom in the half freedom of the ranch work. It learned to follow the herds of cattle with a vast touch of superiority in its tone. It would plunge into the mill of a round-up and follow like a bird each turn of a running steer, cheerfully biting its thick hide at every lump, and enjoying the fun as much as the rider. It would travel