"Cutting the poor animal's tail off, I suppose," suggested Miss Page.
"Not at all," said Hawkshaw, curtly.
"Then what is it, pray?" asked Ethel.
"Technically, it is catching him by the tail when at full speed, and slewing him round like a ship in stays; that is what we call 'tailing' in Texas."
"But to lasso?" began one of the ladies, to whom the captain's explanation was not very lucid.
"That is to catch Master Bull by casting a looped rope round his horns."
"Have you ever achieved this?" asked Morley.
"I should think so—rather, and a great deal more," replied the captain, almost contemptuously. "I once caught one in midstream, when swimming the Arroya del Colorado, a salt arm of the sea, more than eighty yards broad, while a wild pampero (that is, a gale of wind, ladies) was rolling the waves in mountains up the bight; and with the same lasso, not long after, I caught a rascally picaroon, just about your size, Mr. Ashton, by the neck, and well-nigh garotted him, when I was riding past at full gallop."
"And the result?" said Morley, disdaining to notice something offensive in Hawkshaw's tone, when addressing him.
"Well, the result was mighty unpleasant for the poor devil of a picaroon," replied Hawkshaw, as the whole party rested themselves on the soft velvet grass of the lawn, when he began to amuse himself by tossing a clasp-knife of very ugly aspect among the buttercups, and skilfully decapitating one at every toss.