|
|
Libraries Home | Mobile | My Account | Renew Items | Sitemap | Help |
|
Select a method to view the page:
|
36
perhaps it did not fall to the lot of many of the boys to have a similar one. I am the chap who caught the blue mustang mare. This was while we were range herding cattle in Kansas on the Smoky River, near the King Hills, about fifteen miles from old Fort Hayes. This blue mustang would come to our saddle horses at night, and also to the river for water. The boys were all anxious to get her, had set snares made of ropes at the watering places, hoping to get her by the feet, but she always managed to avoid this danger. One day the boys found her with the horses and, on seeing them, she stampeded. I was on the range about the foot of the hills, saw her coming and made for her with my rope ready. To get back to her herd she had to go through a gap in the hills. I was riding a good sorrel horse, an E P horse, raised by Ed Persons of Caldwell County. I made for the gap, getting there just in time and as she started to enter, running at breakneck speed, just in the nick of time I threw my rope ; it went true and fell securely around her neck. When the rope tightened, she jerked my horse fully thirty feet, and both animals went down together, not more than ten feet apart. I scrambled to my feet, getting out of the mixup, but I had my mustang. Manuel Jones and Dan Sheppard, two of the cowboys on the range, coming up about this time, helped me to further secure her and we got her safely back to camp. In time she responded to good treatment, made a fine saddle animal, and, with her long black mane and tail, she was a beauty of which I was justly proud. Good saddle horses could be had cheap at that time, but I sold her near Red River for $65.00.