Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other StoriesBarnes, Will C. (Will Croft)
General
Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other Stories
Barnes, Will C. (Will Croft)
Horses -- Fiction; Western stories
The tremendous force of the pull, when the rope drew up on the tree,
uprooted it. This prevented the rope from breaking, but there was
sufficient jerk upon it to bring both horse and steer to the ground in a
struggling heap.
The man who was "riding for a fall," with both feet out of the stirrups,
in anticipation of just such a wreck, flew off into space, landing in a
pile of rocks twenty-five feet away by actual measurement. The horse
fell with his head under him in such a way that his neck was instantly
broken.
When the other men who were following reached the scene, they found the
man just regaining his senses, badly cut about the head, but otherwise
unhurt. The blue, in falling, had landed flat on his back, his hind feet
down the steep hill, both his long horns buried to the very skull in the
ground. Thus he was absolutely helpless and unable to regain his feet,
no matter how hard he struggled. To "hog-tie" him in this position, was
the work of but a moment, and at last the blue-roan outlaw was a
captive.
It was no trouble to roll him down the steep hillside to the level
ground below, and inside of half an hour the rest of the men arrived on
the scene with the bunch of cattle they had been driving.
In the bunch was a large steer which they roped and dragged up to where
the outlaw lay, and, in cowboy parlance "dumped" him on top of the
outlaw. They then proceeded to "neck" the two steers together with a
short rope they cut for the purpose. Having done this to their
satisfaction they untied the hogging ropes and allowed the steers to
gain their feet. As this was done the bunch of cattle they had driven up
was carefully crowded around the two animals. After a few minutes of
pulling and fighting the outlaw sulkily allowed himself to be dragged
along by his unwilling mate, with the rest of the cattle, and was
eventually landed safely in the main herd.
Great was the rejoicing in camp that night over the capture, and the
guards about the herd were cautioned not to let the two escape under any
circumstances.
At the end of the week the herd had been worked down to the river for
shipping. As the country was open and the herd easily handled the
"twins," as the boys called them, came apart when the old rope wore out
and were not necked up again.
That night one of the men, who had a family in town, hired a town kid to
take his place on herd, while he went up and spent the night at home. As
the boy rode his guard around the edge of the herd which lay quietly in
the cool night air, he found a big blue steer standing at the very edge
of the bunch looking off toward the mountains in a dreamy, meditative
mood. Kidlike, he could not withstand the temptation to play the
"smarty," so, instead of passing him by or gently turning him into the
herd, the boy took off his hat and swung it into the steer's face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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