I was repping with a wagon that worked that part of the country this time that I write about and we knew the day that we would camp and ride the locality that he was ranging in and several of the boys knew this steer, as he had gotten away from them at different times before. They were joking me about him several days before we got to this place and called him “Con’s steer,” and made me a small bet I wouldn’t get him. We camped the chuck and bed wagon on a nice level spot of about 200 acres, just on the edge of the Badlands, and rode from there to the river, which was about 20 miles. Coming back we found him in a long canyon that led out to the camp and the rodeo ground. We put riders on both sides of the canyon on top of the ridges and some stayed behind. We had about 200 head of cattle, so we just drifted the band along slow. I told everyone to keep as far away from this old steer as possible so he wouldn’t break or get on the fight. When we got out to the roundup ground, some of the other boys had gotten in off their ride and had found quite a lot of cattle. We had about a thousand head in all. We bunched all the cattle together as easy as we could so as not to give this old fellow any excuse to break. Now we had to cut out the cows and calves (to brand the calves) and also cut out the beef steers to ship, and turn the rest loose, and we knew as soon as anyone went to riding among those cattle this steer would break for the Badlands and we would lose him. He was going through the bunch ringing his tail and hooking everything that came in his way, as he was getting suspicious that everything wasn’t just right. So we left about ten men to hold the cattle. The rest of us went to camp to catch fresh horses to work the cattle and cut out what we wanted. I had a little Spanish horse in my string, didn’t weigh over 900 pounds, built kind of squatty and close to the ground, about 15 years old, but he knew more about working cattle than lots of men. I caught him. We went back to the roundup and started to work. I stayed on the outside of the bunch with my eye on this old bird. The boys had gotten out about 50 head when someone got too close to this old steer, and here he comes as fast as he could run, headed for the Badlands! I had a big grass rope about 40 feet long and had one end tied hard and fast to the saddle horn and when he came out of the bunch my little horse was watching him and went right along with him. I run him about 50 yards. He was going down a hill. I dropped my loop over his pretty horns and let him jump over the slack with his front feet, and turned my horse the other way as fast as he could run. When that rope tightened that steer went about 10 feet high and hit the ground with his head doubled under his body. One of his pretty horns was broken off right close to his head and he was bleeding badly, and he was bawling like a calf—where otherwise he would only snort when you got in his way.