" HORSE MAGIC."
STREASTREAMING with perspiration, half blinded by dust, and MING with numbed but tenacious fingers to the end of a hard twist rope, we were dragged round the corral for
the second time. " Let go l" gasped my partner, " we shall
have to snub him to the fence." "And break his neck ?" I suggested ; " not much ! Stay with it I " And again we
made a protesting, ignominious circle, the ugly red roan at the other end of the rope still untired, and still apparently revelling in the ease with which be could drag mere man in the dust. " Why," he was probably asking himself, " why did my brethren capitulate to such feeble antagonists ? " But the "feeble antagonists" were fortified by the anger of humiliation, and for a brief moment held their victim captive with legs spread wide, nostrils distended, and head held obstinately low. We breathed again, and my partner com- menced to work his way gingerly up the rope towards the horse's head in approved fashion. In a flash it went up, and still up, and the fore-feet with it striking frenziedly at the air and descending with a thud of obstinate defiance. Then, as though some fresh caprice had seized on its equine imagina- tion, the horse turned, pirouetting on its hind-legs like a ballet-dancer, and dashed madly up the centre of the corral, leaving us seated in the dust. "He's a corker I" said my partner. " He'a the deuce !" said I.
It was at this unfortunate moment that I became aware of our audience. He sat perched on the topmost rail of the corral, in a blue shirt and tattered angora chaparejos, smoking a cigarette, and not even smiling. I nodded ; so did he. "Bad dinner ? " I queried. He had not. "Put your horse in," said I; and we adjourned to our fifteen-by-twenty house. In Europe our home would have been called a hut, a hovel, or a shanty. In the United States a shack, a cabin, or a lean-to. In the Canadian West it was—as I have said— a house.
Our guest spoke twice during the meal—a fair average of table conversation for the Westerner—then we returned to the corral. The roan was amusing himself by trailing the hard twist rope at a gentle trot until it touched his heels, and then stopping to kick it viciously. " Say," said the visitor in a weary drawl, " you want this plug broke, don't you ? We admitted that such had been our intention, though he might not have thought it from our efforts. " Waal, I'll fix him," he said slowly, and without the least assumption ; "you go and sit down some place." And we did. He stooped leisurely and picked up the rope's end, carrying it round to the small of his back with his right hand, and grasping it firmly in front of him with the left. Then be braced his short, fur- clad legs, and waited to be jerked into the dust. But there was a vital error somewhere in our calculations. The jerk came, but the man stood firm, and the horse swung involun- tarily round to face his adversary. He too seemed to doubt the evidence of his eyes,—the thing was so obviously im- possible. But again and again it was repeated, the frightened rush to right or left always ending in a sudden check and turn, so that man faced horse. Presently, hand over hand, without haste or hesitation, the man felt his way up the rope towards the horse's bead, and with secret satisfaction we watched the roan answer these tactics as he had our own,—rearing, striking with his fore-feet, and descending with legs as unresisting as granite pillars. But the man had given no rope, and now he was half-way to the horse's head, clear by perhaps a yard of the beating'..ho of s and crooning some horse language in a low, persuasive under- tone. The animal stood stock still, seemingly to listen, with ears pricked and legs set wide, while the man's band crept out and touched its nose, stroking it gently with a finger, two fingers, the palm of the hand, finally working up the side of the head to the tight-drawn noose about the neck, for all the world as one would tickle a trout. Very gingerly this was loosened, the slack rope formed into a loop, passed through it and over the animal's nose. And so, for the first time in his life, Mr. Roan felt the unwelcome pressure of a head halter. He did his best to show his disapproval, but it was an easy matter to hold him now, and to pull him first this way, then that, protesting every fcot of lost ground, but always forced to concede it at last. The patience of the man was inexhaustible. At the end of a fall half-hour's apparently fruitless "pulling," with slow /movement and unruffled brow he would again feel his way along the rope to soothe the frenzied animal with murmured encouragement and gentle strokings.
The end came suddenly, as it often does. In answer to a more than usually severe pull, the horse advanced two steps, stopped, and took three more of its own accord. It had discovered that by this means it could not only slacken the pressure of the rope on its nose, but apparently satisfy the detestable little man with the furry legs, for he promptly turned a nonchalant back and strode round and round the corral, with the horse following like a dog. " Get my saddle and bridle," he said as he passed us. But the roan found it necessary to draw the line somewhere. The halter, though undesirable, had been bearable; but for an ungainly structure of leather to be strapped to one's back, converting one's grace of line intosthe humped ugliness of a dromedary, was sheer insult. He reared and struck, snorted and kicked. Very well. The detestable little man seemed equally content. He snubbed the rope to a corral post, felt his way along it, and after rubbing the bridle over the animal's face, slipped the bit between its teeth. Then he unbuckled the rawhide lariat from his saddle. A turn of the wrist and the horse's fore-feet were in the noose. A quick jerk and they were drawn together, so that he stood swaying perilously. In a twinkling the rawhide was snubbed to the fence, the saddle cinched into position, and the roan stood tasting for the first time the vile discomfort of a tightly buckled girth. He shook his mane defiantly, beat the air with his trussed fore- legs, and finally resorted to the " buck,"—ducking his head, hunching his back, and leaping into the air. Twice this was repeated, and then, oh ignominy! the detestable little man's puny weight was thrown on the rawhide rope and the roan landed sprawling in the dust. By the time he had scrambled to his feet the halter-rope was slipped from about his neck and the man was in the saddle. For a full minute the horse stood, sulkily digesting this surprising condition of affairs. The weight of him was a mere nothing, neither did his furry legs press unduly ; what more simple than to throw him from the leather hump and trample him in the dust ? But at the first " buck " something pricked the horse's ribs ; at the second the process was repeated; and at the third a black felt hat descended and "dusted" him from ear to tail. Round and round the corral they sped : the horse "bucking," twisting, and squealing with rage ; the man shaken and jolted like a rag doll, yet whooping triumphantly.
When the horse had " bucked " himself out and settled into a steady, obedient gallop the man drew rein, slid off over his flank, and came towards us with the rolling, bandy-legged gait of the born rider. " Got any bad horses ? " he inquired.
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