Among the celebrities to be met there might be Buffalo Jones, a typical plainsman of the type of Buffalo Bill (Cody). Jones some years ago went far north to secure some young musk oxen. None had ever before been captured. He and his men endured great hardships and privations, but finally, by roping, secured about a dozen yearlings. The Indians swore that he should not take them out of their territory. On returning he had got as far as the very edge of the Indian country and was a very proud and well-pleased man. But that last fatal morning he woke up to find all the animals with their throats cut. Only last year Jones, with two New Mexican cowboys and a skilled photographer, formed the daring and apparently mad plan of going to Africa and roping and so capturing any wild animal they might come across, barring, of course, the elephant. His object was to secure for show purposes cinematograph pictures. He took some New Mexican cow-ponies out with him, and he and his men succeeded in all they undertook to do, capturing not only the less dangerous animals, such as antelope, buck and giraffe, but also a lioness and a rhinoceros, surely a very notable feat.
Amarillo in the Panhandle was then purely a cattleman's town. It was a great shipping point—at one time the greatest in the world—and was becoming a railroad centre. I was there a good deal, and for amusement during the slack season went to work to fix up a polo ground. No one in the town had ever even seen the game played, so the work and expense all fell on myself. I was lucky to find a capital piece of ground close to the town, absolutely level and well grassed. After measuring and laying off, with a plough I ran furrows for boundary lines, stuck in the goalposts, filled up the dog-holes, etc., and there we were. At first only three or four men came forward, out of mere curiosity perhaps. After expounding the game and the rules, etc., as well as possible we started in to play. The game soon "caught on," and in a little while a number more joined, nearly all cattlemen and cowpunchers. They became keen and enthusiastic, too keen sometimes, for in their excitement they disregarded the rules. The horses, being cow-ponies, were of course as keen and as green as the players, and the game became a most dangerous one to take part in. Still we kept on, no one was very badly hurt, and we had lots of glorious gallops—fast games in fact.
The word "polo" is derived from Tibetan pulu, meaning a knot of willow wood. In Cachar, and also at Amarillo, we used bamboo-root balls. The game originated in Persia, passed to Tibet, and thence to the Munipoories, and from the Munipoories the English learnt it. The first polo club ever organized was the Cachar Kangjai Club, founded in 1863. It may be remarked here that, hard as the riding is in polo, in my opinion it does not demand nearly such good riding as does the "cutting" of young steers. In polo your own eye is on the ball, and when another player or yourself hits it you know where to look for it, and rule your horse accordingly. In "cutting," on the other hand, your horse, if a good one, does nearly all the work; just show it the animal you want to take out and he will keep his eye on it and get it out of the herd without much guidance. But there is this great difference: you never can tell what a steer is going to do! You may be racing or "jumping" him out of the herd when he will suddenly flash round before you have time to think and break back again. Herein your horse is quicker than yourself, knowing apparently instinctively the intention of the rollicky youngster, so that both steer and your mount have wheeled before you are prepared for it. You must therefore try to be always prepared, sit very tight, and profit by past experiences. It is very hard work and, as said before, needs better horsemanship than polo. To watch, or better still to ride, a first-class cutting horse is a treat indeed.
During these last few years of ranch life my leisure gave me time to make odd excursions here and there. Good shooting was to be had near Amarillo—any amount of bobwhite quail, quantities of prairie-chickens, plovers, etc. And, by-the-bye, at Fort Sumner I had all to myself the finest kind of sport. There was a broad avenue of large cotton-wood trees some miles in length. In the evening the doves, excellent eating, and, perhaps for that reason, tremendously fast fliers, would flash by in twos or threes up or down this avenue, going at railroad speed. But my pleasure was marred by having no companion to share the sport.
Then I made many trips to the Rocky Mountains to fish for rainbow trout in such noble streams as the Rio Grande del Norte, the Gunnison, the Platte and others. In the early days these rivers were almost virgin streams, hotching with trout of all sizes up to twelve and even fifteen pounds. The monsters could seldom be tempted except with spoon or live bait, but trout up to six or seven pounds were common prizes. Out of a small, a ridiculously small, tributary of the Gunnison River I one day took more fish than I could carry home, each two to three pounds in weight. But that was murdering—mere massacre and not sport.
During a cattle convention held at El Paso I first attended a bull-fight in Juarez and I have since seen others in the city of Mexico and elsewhere. The killing of the poor blindfolded horses is a loathsome, disgusting sight, and so affected me that I almost prayed that the gallant, handsome matadors would be killed. Indeed, at Mexico City, I afterwards saw Bombita, a celebrated Spanish matador, tossed and gored to death. The true ring-bull of fighting breed is a splendid animal; when enraged he does not seem to suffer much from the insertion of banderillas, etc., and his death stab is generally instantaneously fatal. Certainly the enthusiasm of the ring, the presence of Mexican belles and their cavalleros, the picturesqueness and novelty of the whole show are worth experiencing.
It should be remembered that the red cloth waved in front of him is the main cause of Toro's irritation. Why it should so irritate him we don't know. When a picador and his horse are down they are absolutely at the mercy of the bull; and the onlooker naturally thinks that he will proceed to gore man and horse till they are absolutely destroyed. But the cloth being at once flaunted near him he immediately attacks it instead and is thus decoyed to another part of the ring. Thus, too, the apparent danger to the swordsman who delivers the coup de grâce is not really very great if he show the necessary agility and watchfulness. When a bull charges he charges not his real enemy, but that exasperating red cloth; and the man has only to step a little to the side, but still hold the cloth in front of the bull, to escape all danger. Without this protecting cloth no matador would dare to enter the ring. The banderilleros, too, thus escape danger because they do their work while the bull's whole attention is on the red cloth operated by another man in front. The man I saw gored, tossed and killed must have made some little miscalculation, or been careless, and stood not quite out of the bull's way, so that the terrible sharp horns caught him, as one may say, by mistake.
The Mexicans, too, like my coolies in India, were great cock-fighters. It is a national sport and also a cruel one.
Matadors are paid princely sums. The most efficient, the great stars, come from Spain. Many of them are extremely handsome men and their costume a handsome and picturesque one. As a mark of their profession they wear a small pigtail, not artificial but of their own growing hair. I travelled with one once but did not know it till he removed his hat.
Denver and San Francisco were great centres of prize-fighting. In both places I saw many of the great ring men of the day, in fact never missed an opportunity of attending such meetings. It was mostly, however, "goes" between the "coming" men, such as Jim Corbett and other aspirants. A real champion fight between heavyweights I was never lucky enough to witness.