Range weapons
WEAPONS. There are three weapons used only by range horsemen. The lasso, known on the range as The Rope, consists of a noose which is spun by a delicate play of the thumb, thrown to its length, and the strain taken by saddle and horse as it catches a running beast. We share this practice with the ancient Peruvians, Sarmatians, Sagartians, and Scythians, and the modern Tartars of the Asiatic steppe.
The bolas are three egg-shaped weights connected by as many plaited strings with a rawhide rope, and thrown like the riata to catch wild animals. This instrument belongs to Patagonia and the Argentine pampas.
The stock-whip
The stock whip. This is an Australian development of the switch. It consists of an 18-inch wooden tapering handle, a keeper of kangaroo hide, a 10-foot thong of kangaroo hide in a tapering 12 or 16 plait, an 18-inch tail of green hide, and a plaited cracker of sewing cotton. At a range of twenty feet one flick knocked a revolver out of my hand and lashed my wrist to the thigh, making me a disarmed prisoner, yet causing no more pain than the brush of a fly's wing. It convinced me as to the usefulness of this weapon.
III. THE WAYS OF RANGE HORSEMEN.
On one occasion it was my privilege to assemble seventy horsemen whose united experience of the stock-range covered the grass lands of Asia from Mongolia to Hungary, Eastern and Southern Africa, all states of Australasia, Patagonia, the Argentine, the Llano, and every state and province of the open pasture in Mexico, the United States and Canada. Among us we compiled a brief text defining our ideas of range as distinguished from civilised horsemanship. The text was printed as a chapter on "The Horse" in "The Frontiersman's Pocket Book" (John Murray), which I compiled and edited on behalf of the Legion of Frontiersmen. The present volume is merely an application of these range principles to the study of horses and horsemanship.
The pretension of range horsemen as a class is to earn a living by the use of cheap working horses, riding with a weight-distributing equipment and pack transport, while we base our mobility upon a herd of remounts.
Pleasure horsemanship