"Well, I can't expect you to tell me how to do things that you say you cannot do yourself, but I would like to understand how to catch an animal by the feet."
Jack laughed.
"Why, that's like most other things in the world: awful simple when you know how to do it, or even how it is done. You just throw your rope so that the animal steps into it either with his hind feet or with his fore feet, as the case may be, but you've got to pull your rope just at the right time. That is to say, if the beast puts his fore feet into the noose lying on the ground, and you leave the noose lying there, why the critter won't get caught. You've got to give a lift and pull on your rope just at the right moment."
"That seems simple enough," declared Donald; "or at least it seems as if it would be simple enough to a man who knows how to rope."
"Yes," said Jack, "but it takes some judgment. You've got to put your rope in the right place, and then, as I said, you've got to pull on it at the right time. You may see boys catching animals by any foot before we get through this round-up, and it is constantly done on the prairie with horses that are mean. If you want to learn how to rope, and to see roping well done, you'd better watch Vicente, or Tulare Joe, who was raised in California with the Mexicans there. He handles a rope better than anybody else in the camp, except Vicente and Juan who are Mexicans. As for Charley Powell and Jack Mason and myself, we are just plain ordinary ropers that can catch horses and cows most of the time but can't do any fancy tricks with a rope the way those Mexicans can. I've seen one or two Mexicans do things with a rope that made my eyes stick out about a foot; but some Americans are pretty good. They tell of a man down on the plains—in Nebraska, I believe—who once when roping calves in a corral, caught and took to the fire a hundred and ten calves in a hundred and ten throws. He didn't miss a single throw."
"I should like to see something of that kind; but for the present I guess plain roping will occupy my attention. There is another thing I want to ask you. Are the Indians good ropers?"
BRANDING IN THE CORRAL.—[Page 170]
Photo by Mrs. A. C. Stokes, Lame Deer, Mont.