Them strangers had come to see the rodeo, most of 'em was from other towns around, and mixed in the crowd once in a while could be seen the high-crowned hat of a cowboy who'd come to ride, rope, and bulldog. Then at the Casa Grande Hotel, and registered there, was many cattle buyers from the northern States.
They'd come to bid on the big herds of cattle that was being crowded acrost the border from Mexico, for Pancho Villa and the Yaquis was making it hard for the cattleman of that country. Villa took the cattle to feed his army, while the Yaquis run off whatever Villa overlooked, and the cowman that could, and had any stock left, soon seen where if he wanted to save anything of what he'd worked to accumulate, he'd have to rush whatever that was to the border and get it on American soil mighty quick.
The long horned "Sonora reds" begin to spread all over the range countries of the U. S. plum up to the Canadian line.
That's how come that the stockyards of the border towns was filled with cattle and that the hotels along them same towns was filled with cattle buyers. The Casa Grande Hotel was the most filled on account that along with the business of buying cattle, a little pleasure could be got there afterwards. A rodeo was in that town, and night celebrations, and being that them cattle buyers was still as much cowboys as ever, a good bucking contest and the fun afterwards couldn't be overlooked, not if it could be helped. "Yep, the town was sure lively."
Two of the buyers was setting in the lobby of the hotel one morning and a talking on the first day's event of the rodeo. A telegraph pole which stuck up right before their vision and on the edge of the sidewalk, and nailed to that pole was a poster advertising the rodeo, and with a photograph of a bucking horse in action on it, told all about "the great bucking horse and outlaw The Grey Cougar, the only one that could compare, in wickedness and bucking ability, to The Cougar, that once famous man killing horse."
The two went on to talking about the rodeo, and naturally the talk drifted on about The Grey Cougar, and "how he could buck."
"The boys tell me," says one of the men, "that this Grey Cougar horse couldn't hold a candle to the real Cougar when it come to bucking and fighting. According to that, the other horse must of been some wicked."