"Time and again they jerk the poor creatures up, causing them to turn complete somersaults, and sometimes breaking their necks, of course. Then, by the roughest of main force, they saddle and mount them. True to his nature and common instinct for self-preservation, the animal bucks, doing his best to unseat his rider. This he rarely succeeds in accomplishing, and at the end of an hour or two he is submissive through sheer fatigue and pain. Three of these lessons are deemed sufficient. Horses broken by more mild, humane means—even ranchmen allow—make quieter, better servants. Then there is the branding of the ponies, without which the owners could not tell their own property. In accomplishing this, the animal is blindfolded and led up to a roaring fire, where a man with a red-hot branding iron awaits him. Quick as a flash, there is a sickening odor of burning hair and flesh, and the frantic animal goes forth with his owner's initials, mark or whatever it may be, indelibly branded on him.
"These horses can climb like a mountain goat, and in winter they subsist on the bark of the cottonwood tree, or on the dead grass that they paw down through the snowdrifts to reach. Ofttimes their hoofs are worn to the quick, and blood marks their trail. Spring finds them mere shadows, and so weak they can hardly walk. They endure hardships better than the cattle do, though. These last lead woeful lives in the winter season.
"I did not get there for the fall 'round-up,' as they call the gathering together of the herds; but when I did see them they were sleek and contented looking. Soon after, Charley and his men moved theirs into the broken lands, where there is some chance for shelter and a bare chance for their subsisting on the natural hay that abounds there.
"The past winter has not been a severe one, yet more than half of his cattle perished. Some grew so weak and stupid that they ceased to paw up the frozen grass; some, very many, in fact, perished in ice-storms. Their coats become as cakes of ice, and they die by inches. Some die for want of water, some mired in the spring in their frantic rush for it, and so on. Wherever one goes after the snow melts, the sight that meets their eyes is dead carcases.
"The hardened beholder thinks only of the loss to the owner, but to the uninitiated, each gaunt form, with his sunken eyeballs and worn hoofs, tells a pathetic tale, and reminds them of the lingering tragedies that have been enacted there.
"Pitiful enough look the forms of brute mothers, lying in a way to show that they defended and sheltered their helpless young to the last. But, looking along the lines of dead, I almost decided that their fate was preferable to that of the survivors who must yet face the living death of the cattle car, and finally be inhumanly butchered. At best the lives of these creatures are full of pain and misery.
"Another harrowing scene is the branding of the calves and young cattle at the May 'round-up.' I witnessed it for an hour and then turned away, but I could not shut the terrible din out.
"The ordinary method is to corral a large number of cattle, and then rope the calves and unbranded animals, drag them to the fire and proceed as in case of the horse.
"Dust, smoke, blood everywhere, and the air full of the smell of burning flesh.