THE RANCHE HAND AS HORSEMASTER. While a pony sold at ten dollars he was not considered worth educating. A professional broncho buster took him in hand for five {149} dollars, and smashed him. The pony was a wild animal, timid but ferocious. The broncho buster was not at all timid, but he was ferocious to an extent which horrified the animal, and intelligent to a degree which reduced the victim to abject obedience. So the horse surrendered and came into the care of a cowpuncher. They started out together on the range, and if they felt fresh of a morning there would be a bucking match which both of them rather enjoyed. There was no ill feeling, for after all a horse is as good a sportsman as any man. Then came the work of handling cattle, and the horse enjoyed that sport which taxed all he had of courage and skill and endurance. It made a partnership between two persons who loved sport, and dealt with cattle as mere lower animals. There was hearty good fellowship between horse and man, which sometimes ripened into a love stronger than death. Of horsemastership as understood in civilized life there never was a symptom. When the puncher, after long months of abstinent living, happened to ride into a town, he stepped off his horse, threw the rein to the ground and left the animal standing in the street while he got drunk. Afterwards the pony would carry {150} him homeward unless he became dead drunk and fell off. The pony went to camp anyway, to get himself unsaddled and join the herd. Sometimes the puncher didn't even get drunk, being broke, or in love, but that made no difference to his meticulous neglect of the whole practice of horsemastership as explained in books. And the ponies prospered, usually fat as butter because they lived a perfectly natural life. [Sidenote: The cowboy] THE RANCHE HAND AS HORSEMAN. Nobody taught the budding cowboy any art of riding. It was merely a habit. When the saddle taught him to sit well down and ride straight leg he ceased to tumble off. When he left off interfering with the rein the horse steered clear of holes, and there were neither stumbles nor falls.