The West from a car window

by Richard Harding Davis

GATHERING THE ROPE

He is a fantastic-looking individual, and one suspects he wears the strange garments he affects because he knows they are most becoming. But there is a reason for each of the different parts of his apparel, in spite of rather than on account of their picturesqueness. The sombrero shades his face from the rain and sun, the rattlesnake-skin around it keeps it on his head, the broad kerchief that he wears knotted around his throat protects his neck from the heat, and the leather leggings which cover the front of his legs protect them from the cactus in Texas, and in the North, where the fur and hair are left on the leather, from the sleet and rain as he rides against them. The gauntlets certainly seem too military for such rough service, but any one who has had a sheet rope run through his hands, can imagine how a lasso cuts when a wild horse is pulling on the other end of it. His cartridge-belt and his revolver are on some ranches superfluous, but cattle-men say they have found that on those days when they took this toy away from their boys, they sulked and fretted and went about their work half-heartedly, so that they believe it pays better to humor them, and to allow them to relieve the monotony of the day’s vigil by popping at jack-rabbits and learning to twirl their revolver around their first finger. Of the many compliments I have heard paid by officers and privates and ranch-owners and cowboys to Mr. Frederic Remington, the one which was sure to follow the others was that he never made the mistake of putting the revolver on the left side. But as I went North, his anonymous admirers would make this same comment, but with regret that he should be guilty of such an error. I could not understand this at first until I found that the two sides of the shield lay in the Northern cowboy’s custom of wearing his pistol on the left, and of the Texan’s of carrying it on the right. The Northern man argues on this important matter that the sword has always been worn on the left, that it is easier to reach across and sweep the pistol to either the left or right, and that with this motion it is at once in position. The Texan says this is absurd, and quotes the fact that the pistol-pocket has always been on the right, and that the lasso and reins are in the way of the left hand. It is too grave a question of etiquette for any one who has not at least six notches on his pistol-butt to decide.

Although Mr. Kleberg’s cowboys have been shorn of their pistols, their prowess as ropers still remains with them. They gave us an exhibition of this feature of their calling which was as remarkable a performance in its way as I have ever seen. The audience seated itself on the top of a seven-rail fence, and thrilled with excitement. At least a part of it did. I fancy Mr. Kleberg was slightly bored, but he was too polite to show it. Sixty wild horses were sent into a pen eighty yards across, and surrounded by the seven-rail fence. Into this the cowboys came, mounted on their ponies, and at Mr. Kleberg’s word lassoed whichever horse he designated. They threw their ropes as a man tosses a quoit, drawing it back at the instant it closed over the horse’s head, and not, as the beginner does, allowing the noose to settle loosely, and to tighten through the horse’s effort to move forward. This roping was not so impressive as what followed, as the ropes were short, owing to the thick undergrowth, which prevents long throws, such as are made in the North, and as the pony was trained to suit its gait to that of the animal it was pursuing, and to turn and dodge with it, and to stop with both fore-feet planted firmly when the rope had settled around the other horse’s neck.

REACTION EQUALS ACTION

But when they had shown us how very simple a matter this was, they were told to dismount and to rope the horses by whichever foot Mr. Kleberg choose to select. This was a real combat, and was as intensely interesting a contest between a thoroughly wild and terrified animal and a perfectly cool man as one can see, except, perhaps, at a bull-fight. There is something in a contest of this sort that has appealed to something in all human beings who have blood in their veins from the days when one gladiator followed another with a casting-net and a trident around the arena down to the present, when “Peter” Poe drops on one knee and tries to throw Hefflefinger over his shoulder. In this the odds were in favor of the horse, as a cowboy on the ground is as much out of his element as a sailor on a horse, and looks as strangely. The boys moved and ran and backed away as quickly as their heavy leggings would permit; but the horses moved just twice as quickly, turning and jumping and rearing, and then racing away out of reach again at a gallop. But whenever they came within range of the ropes, they fell. The roping around the neck had seemed simple. The rope then was cast in a loop with a noose at one end as easily as one throws a trout line. But now the rope had to be hurled as quickly and as surely as a man sends a ball to first base when the batsman is running, except that the object at which the cowboy aims is moving at a gallop, and one of a galloping horse’s four feet is a most uncertain bull’s-eye.

It is almost impossible to describe the swiftness with which the rope moved. It seemed to skim across the ground as a skipping-rope does when a child holds one end of it and shakes the rope up and down to make it look like a snake coiling and undulating over the pavement.

One instant the rope would hang coiled from the thrower’s right hand as he ran forward to meet the horse, moving it slowly, with a twist of his wrist, to keep it from snarling, and the next it would spin out along the ground, with the noose rolling like a hoop in the front, and would close with a snap over the horse’s hoof, and the cowboy would throw himself back to take the shock, and the horse would come down on its side as though the ground had slipped from under it.

The roping around the neck was the easy tossing of a quoit; the roping around the leg was the angry snapping of a whip.

There are thousands of other ranches in the United States besides those in Texas, and other cowboys, but the general characteristics are the same in all, and it is only general characteristics that one can attempt to give.