POLO PONIES.
In advertising for polo ponies one usually sends out a circular stating the necessary requisites: the size—fourteen hands one inch—and the temper and disposition; and it takes a trained eye to pick out the most promising from all those brought for inspection.
A good cutting pony is always safe, and the prices range according to their value in cutting and penning cattle. They can be bought from thirty-five to a hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars, and even up to such fancy prices as five hundred. Some first-class cutting ponies cannot be purchased at any price, for love or money, a cow-puncher or ranch-owner being just as willing to part with his wife and children, his house and land, as with his prize cow pony.
This cutting cattle is a wonderful thing, and a fruitful theme for the tall stories with which the cowboy enlivens the tedium of the many idle hours of his varied and precarious life. "Stuffing the tenderfoot" with Munchausen tales of the marvellous performances of these remarkably clever little animals, or swapping yarns with other gifted companions whose imaginations have never been broken in by the strong hand of truth. But even the stories which are strictly and literally true sound almost incredible to the uninitiated, for the cutting pony shows not only the sagacity and resources of the Scotch collie, but the quickness and agility of the cat, in separating or cutting out the particular cow or steer from the herd which his master indicates, sometimes by riding the pony at her, or by following for a few yards.
The cattle may stampede, the steer or cow may run, double, stick like a burr to the herd, but the clever little pony, cool and keen, heads her off, turns her round, cuts her out, and finally drives her triumphantly into the open, where she can be roped, or into a pen. He separates a cow from her calf, cuts out a steer without even disturbing the others, and uses as much judgment as an experienced man. The cow-puncher gives him his head after the steer has once been selected, and only holds his lasso in readiness to rope him when he has been successfully cut out from the bunch.
A Texas cow-puncher offered once to bet a hundred dollars that his cow pony could, without a bridle, cut any steer from the herd of cattle after he had once understood which one he was to separate. The bet was taken by a tenderfoot, who had sporting spirit enough not even to grudge the money when he saw how cleverly it was done, the little pony going to work, on his own account, with the same skill and judgment the keenest cow-puncher in the country might have shown.
They get to be so fast and sharp, to turn and stop, and head off so quickly, that it is almost bewildering to ride them in a difficult case. Another Texas ranchman, a famous cow-puncher in his day, sold his celebrated cutting pony because it was too fast for him; he was growing too old for the pace.
This cutting-out work shows a pony to better advantage even than the polo game. In heading off he acts more quickly than a man can think, playing the game himself, which in polo is a very undesirable thing.
It is most amusing to watch the businesslike air with which a cutting pony starts in to put a calf, one who is particularly fresh and obstreperous, through a fence or into a pen, or to simply corner him. There is nothing so exasperating as a calf, except, perhaps, a sheep. Was it not John Randolph of Roanoke who maintained that he would walk twenty miles to kick a sheep? Just so cowboys feel about a "fool calf."
A pony, however, when he chooses, can be equally aggravating. As in polo he is sometimes too knowing, so in cutting cattle the very best ones use their superior knowledge to be most exasperating.