And buck she certainly did. But I was so well wedged in with my pack that I did manage to remain, though I can’t say I liked it, and the upshot of it was I rode back to Denver and traded her (plus $20 more) to Billy Ford for an ancient chestnut “bronc” who had got over all his youthful frivolities. I called him Methusalem, and he turned out an excellent travelling animal for a tenderfoot. On him I rode out to Kiowa Creek to visit an English ranchman I had met in Denver, and I stayed there a few days riding around the prairie and seeing what cattle was like. My friend had a nice American wife and a nice bunch of American cattle, which he milked, while she, like a good ranchwoman, made butter from the milk. Butter was worth, I think, 75 cents a pound. Of course these American dairy cattle, which were just like our ordinary English farm stock, were quite unlike the long-horned, long-legged animals of Spanish breed, of which drovers had just begun to bring up large herds from Texas. The older Colorado stock-men, owners of American stock, rather resented this intrusion, as the wild Texas brutes could be sold for less than half the prices they had been used to getting, and consequently their profits went down; but they had to put up with it. All the disgruntled owner of American stock could do was to chase the others off his range when they invaded it, but this he had no legal right to do, as the range was Government land, and he only did it at the risk of rough handling from the Texan cow-punchers, and I much enjoyed the good gallops on the prairie even though Methusalem was hardly fast enough to head a wild steer. But I did get my first taste of cow-punching and liked it well.