Each was good in his own style, but the horses were not
what I should call really good buckers, such as you might get on a back
station, and so there was nothing in the show that could unseat the
cowboys. It is only back in the bush that you can get a really good
bucker. I have often seen one of them put both man and saddle off."
This last is a feat I have myself seen performed in the West. I suppose
the amount of it is that both the American and the Australian rough
riders are, for their own work, just as good as men possibly can be.
One spring I had to leave the East in the midst of the hunting season,
to join a roundup in the cattle country of western Dakota, and it was
curious to compare the totally different styles of riding of the cowboys
and the cross-country men. A stock-saddle weighs thirty or forty pounds
instead of ten or fifteen and needs an utterly different seat from that
adopted in the East. A cowboy rides with very long stirrups, sitting
forked well down between his high pommel and cantle, and depends upon
balance as well as on the grip of his thighs.
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