“Hey, you ain’t quitting?” he inquired. “Wipe her up, li’l’ feller. Fly at it.”
After that it was imperative I should do my best--Sloan could never have kept his seat when I let myself loose to his challenge. Every trick his brutality had taught me I employed, and only once did Chappo waver. He was riding on his spurs now, yet he had to grab desperately for the horn; but he righted himself with a laugh and renewed his yelling. At last I was compelled to stop.
“You’re shore a dandy, Neutria,” he panted. “Let’s call it an even break.”
That suited me admirably. It would have been a shame to injure the boy.
I never pitched with Chappo again. He was always kind to me, save once only. That was when he placed the Box C on my left hip with a red-hot iron. It pained horribly, but I realized that all horses had to go through this ordeal and that Chappo did not mean to be brutal.
What times we had that summer and autumn! It was a year of frequent rains, and horses and cattle were sleek and fat and rollicking. Chappo and I would go out from camp twice each week and prowl the mountains the livelong day. Perhaps a long-eared calf would be roused up--he is one that has escaped branding--and my master would settle himself and take down his rope even as I flashed in pursuit, over rocks and brush, down cañons’ sides, up cliffs, shooting through defiles. It is something to be a mountain horse, though it is I who say it; no other horse in the world could have carried Chappo at full speed where I carried him after mavericks. And he never faltered.
“Wherever you put your doggone feet is good enough for me, Neutria,” he said once, at the bottom of a perilous descent.
Chappo was an excellent cowhand, more skilled than Sloan. He would seldom miss a throw in the wildest country, and when he had the calf roped, down he would jump and hogtie it before one could count thirty. Then I would fall to grazing while he built a fire, heated his running-iron and put the company brand on the captive. There were days when we caught four or five in this manner. It was glorious sport.
And then, of course, there was the fall roundup, when all our riders--twenty-two in number--swept the range in daily drives. We collected more than nineteen thousand head of cattle; some of the long-horned steers Chappo and I brought in had not set eyes on a man since they were suckling calves. It was good to chase these outlaws, they being stout and hearty on the rope, and it nerved me to see Chappo’s fearlessness and confidence. He would tie to one of the big brutes without hesitation, whatever the nature of the ground, trusting implicitly to me to throw it. If a steer had dragged me down, it would have meant maiming for Chappo and me, so I was ever on my guard. I always contrived to throw them, even though some weighed two hundred pounds heavier than I.
I was Chappo’s top horse--that is to say, his best saddler. Consequently it was me he rode to town on the rare occasions he could get there. I took the best of care of him.