For three days the inspection went on, each day more interesting than the last, until all the horses had been examined and out of the number the necessary one hundred and fifty accepted and branded U. S.
As the bunch of horses headed for Denver was being driven off the ranch, Fred looked after them reflectively—
“If them sodjers can ride, it’ll be all right,” he remarked, “but if they go to puttin’ tenderfeet on them bronchs, they’ll land in Kingdom-come before they ever hit the saddle.”
VI—A VARIETY OF RUNAWAYS
Life in any primitive, sparsely settled country is fraught with adventure. It is the element which gives zest to everyday affairs and which lifts existence above the commonplace, but since everything has its price, the price of untrammelled living must often be paid in discomfort and inconvenience.
To us, and to many others, abounding health and freedom were ample compensations for a few annoying circumstances but with our guests it was a more serious consideration. After a few experiences we began to discourage the visits of those unfitted by nature and temperament for “roughing it”.
We could not control the elements nor untoward events. Fate had such an invariable custom of upsetting and rearranging all of our most carefully laid plans that when friends, especially “tenderfeet”, arrived, we had a premonition that before they departed something would happen. It never failed.
In the house our guests were exempt from anxiety and discomfort, but no one cared to stay indoors when a dazzling world of blue, green and gold lay just outside, and the unexpected was no regarder of persons. A cloud-burst was just as apt to descend upon the unsuspecting head of a delicate, carefully nurtured old lady as was an indiscriminating rattlesnake to frighten some timid soul into hysterics.
Everyone who came to the ranch wanted to ride, those knowing least about horses being the most insistent, and not wishing to take any chances, at first we gave them Billy, gentle, trustworthy Billy, who, when running loose, could be caught by a man on foot and ridden into the corral with a handkerchief around his neck instead of a bridle. We would start out, the tenderfoot joyously “off for a horseback ride,” and the next thing we knew he would be off the horse doubled up under a fence or lying flat on the prairie, while Billy peacefully nibbled grass. No one could explain it unless the uninitiated had lost a stirrup and had unwittingly given the horse a dig in the ribs which was immediately resented—so even Billy was disqualified.
The truth was, none of our horses was sufficiently well broken for the inexperienced horseman to ride or drive. They behaved very decently until something occurred, which was out of the ordinary, and then the reaction was most sudden and disastrous.