In cutting out a steer
from a herd, in breaking a vicious wild horse, in sitting a bucking
bronco, in stopping a night stampede of many hundred maddened animals,
or in the performance of a hundred other feats of reckless and daring
horsemanship, the cowboy is absolutely unequalled; and when he has his
own horse gear he sits his animal with the ease of a centaur. Yet he is
quite helpless the first time he gets astride one of the small eastern
saddles. One summer, while purchasing cattle in Iowa, one of my ranch
foremen had to get on an ordinary saddle to ride out of town and see
a bunch of steers. He is perhaps the best rider on the ranch, and will
without hesitation mount and master beasts that I doubt if the boldest
rider in one of our eastern hunts would care to tackle; yet his
uneasiness on the new saddle was fairly comical. At first he did not
dare to trot and the least plunge of the horse bid fair to unseat him,
nor did he begin to get accustomed to the situation until the very end
of the journey.
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