"Yes," said Jack, "but it takes some judgment. You've got to put your rope in the right place, and then, as I said, you've got to pull on it at the right time. You may see boys catching animals by any foot before we get through this round-up, and it is constantly done on the prairie with horses that are mean. If you want to learn how to rope, and to see roping well done, you'd better watch Vicente, or Tulare Joe, who was raised in California with the Mexicans there. He handles a rope better than anybody else in the camp, except Vicente and Juan who are Mexicans. As for Charley Powell and Jack Mason and myself, we are just plain ordinary ropers that can catch horses and cows most of the time but can't do any fancy tricks with a rope the way those Mexicans can. I've seen one or two Mexicans do things with a rope that made my eyes stick out about a foot; but some Americans are pretty good. They tell of a man down on the plains--in Nebraska, I believe--who once when roping calves in a corral, caught and took to the fire a hundred and ten calves in a hundred and ten throws. He didn't miss a single throw." "I should like to see something of that kind; but for the present I guess plain roping will occupy my attention. There is another thing I want to ask you. Are the Indians good ropers?" "Fair," answered Jack, "but nothing to brag of--nothing great. They do as well as any of us ordinary cowboys. There is an interesting thing about that--something that Hugh once told me--that a good many years ago, when Hugh first came into the country--that was in 1849--the Indians could hardly rope at all. All the same they used to catch lots of wild horses by just running them down. The country then was full of wild horses. In the spring when the wild horses were poor and weak, the Indians used to take their best horses and start out and find a bunch of the wild horses and chase them as hard as they could, and finally catch them. But they did not know how to rope them. They used to make big hoops of willows and tie the noose of the rope to such a hoop with small strings; then when they had run down an animal, so that they could ride up alongside of it, they would pass the hoop over its head and pull back on the rope; the strings which tied it to the hoop would break, the noose would run up, and the animal could be choked down. [Illustration: BRANDING IN THE CORRAL.--_Page 170_ _Photo by Mrs. A. C. Stokes, Lame Deer, Mont._] "Of course, they could never catch good horses; those that they got were mostly colts or mares heavy with foal, and animals that were particularly weak from lack of food and the winter's cold.