SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE VOL. LXXXI. MAY, 1927 All in the Day's Riding "WOUND UP" BY WILL JAMES Author of "Smoky, the Cowhorse," etc. ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR IN the cowboy's work and of the many things that causes him to act mighty quick at times, there's nothing that can compete with the rope, nothing, unless it's a bronc's four feet. That long, far-reaching string of whale line with a loop at the end can find more ways of coming back at the man that throws it than anything I know of. It can sail out as pretty as you please, settle over a critter's horns, and upset 'er to lay in a good tying position. Ninetynine times out of a hundred it does that for the man that can manipulate it well, but even with the good roper there comes times when that plain and harmless looking hard-twist-manila turns like a snake and quicker than lightning, circles around the cowboy's body and near cuts the life out of him before he can even see it come. Folks might wonder what could make a innocent little rope be so wicked as to act that way, and the explaining is not easy, but First, it's the horse you're roping off of, he don't always behave, and then again he might be just a raw bronc unedicated to the ways of the rope. Second, is the steer the loop has slipped up onto, he's got lots of wild weight and he don't know that a rope has an end, so, when he hits that end while going full speed ahead is when something always does bust. NO. 5 If all's well the steer will be the one to "lay," but sometimes the horse and rider does the laying stunt instead, and that's what leads to things happening, happening too fast for the eye to follow There's where the little rope comes in, then's when she does her winding, and when all's over and the dust settles again there's neat rope burns which for a long time afterward keeps reminding. . . . But that ain't all a rope can do, she has many other tricks which keeps the cowboy's eye and hand on the slack. Like one day for instance, me and Hippy Darrell was on "circle" and as usual, combing the range for whatever stock we'd see. We'd rounded up quite a little bunch and was headed for camp with 'em when from our left comes a sudden streak of dust. What made it was headed straight for us and pretty soon we could make out the shape of a steer. He kept a coming, and as we watched we could see by his actions that he was on a rampage. Something had sure stirred him up, and as he joined the cattle we was driving in he never seemed to notice us none at all. His head was high and he was seeing red, and somehow with that pair of long well-curved horns he was packing he was sure good to look at. Hippy edged up to within speaking distance, and grinning, he remarked, "Somebody's turned him once too often." "Yep," I agrees. "It, don't take much to make 'em want to fight sometimes, Copyrighted in 1927 in United States, Canada, and Great Britain by Charles Scribner's Sons. There was a mixture of steer, horse, horns, winding ropes, and a man.-Page 454. wind, and from then on he begin to find fault, the bunch was going too slow, and besides they wasn't going the right direction for him. He begin going back and forth through the bunch. Once in a while he'd go out of it only to come back again and kept that up till, instead of cooling down to behaving, his fighting spirit stayed up to the boiling point and edged him on to do everything but what seemed right and natural. We left him alone. If he went out of the herd we'd let him come back by himself and tried not to let on that we was driving him along, but no matter what he done we was going to take that big boy in to the "cutting grounds" where all nobody around to turn him he'd then turn of his own accord and come back to the herd. We looked for him to quiet down, but it seemed like he had no such intentions, and he'd got us to the point where we wanted to stretch our ropes on him and roll him over a few times, just to sort of give him all the trouble he was looking for and a little edication to boot. He went out once more, and the way he held his head, curved his backbone, and kinked his tail all a challenging, we knowed he wasn't figgering on coming back no more. Hippy looked at me and grinned, and I grinned back. Two shakes and our ropes split the air into loops, our spur rowels tickled our ponies' flanks and in a short while we was within roping distance of our bunch-quitting steer. The horse I was riding wasn't even what you'd call half broke, I couldn't get him to line out straight ahead like Hippy could his. Hippy was riding a well-broke horse and even though he was ornery at times he sure savvied the cow, so that's how come that the first rope that sailed over the big steer's horns was Hippy's, and all was done so quick and neat that the steer didn't know there was a cowboy near him till he felt hisself lifted off the earth and jerked down to lay. His head was at the place his tail had been and it didn't take half a second to make the change. All would of been well, and Mr. Steer's senses would of been jarred back to behaving normal again, but just at the wrong time Hippy's horse started to fighting his head which caused the rope to slack up. In another second the steer was up, and bleary-eyed looks us over. Hippy was just about to take another fall out of the steer when that horse of his bogged his head and went to bucking. It was then that I tried to get the steer to put his attention on me, but he seemed more interested in Hippy and the bucking horse, and knowing what the slack of a rope would do in the mix up of a bucking horse and a mad steer I done my best to keep the steer away and the rope tight. But that daggone wall-eyed critter had other intentions, and after making a pass at my horse with his long horns he let out a beller and headed straight on for Hippy and the bucking horse he was trying to make behave. I let my rope sail as he went by and a neater throw never was made, the loop made a perfect circle as it was about to settle over the steer's horns, and being so sure that I had him is what spoiled my catch. I pulled up my slack a shade too soon and instead of catching two dangerous horns I caught a lot of air. From then on things happened too fast for me to build another loop and make another throw. There was a mixture of steer, horse, horns, winding ropes, and a man. Natural like I thought of my sixshooter, but I never drawed it on account that Hippy was so much everywheres and seeming like all at once. I wondered what made him hang on when he should of quit, and right about then I noticed something that made me lose my tan. .. ... Two wraps of the rope was around Hippy's waist, he was tied to the saddle, and what scared me still more was how I seen the saddle was slipping and getting on the horse's side. I'd often told Hippy to start a smudge with that damned centre-fire rig and get hisself a real saddle, and right then I wished I'd done it for him, but it was too late to worry about that at that time. I sat on my horse feeling like a daggone fool cause I didn't do anything, but there was nothing I could do, not a thing. I could only watch for a chance, and that much I was sure doing. The steer was going around and around and trying to get a solid dig with his horns. I could of shot him easy enough, but it'd made things a lot worse on account that his dead weight on the rope against the live weight of the horse would of sure made a heavy drag on the rope, and being that rope was around Hippy's waist he'd sure been cut in two. Finally a break came, which right then seemed to me for even worse. The steer while circling around the horse and trying to get his horns to working had connected with that pony's hoofs and his nose had been pounded on till there come a time when he figgered it'd be best to leave that horse and man have it out by themselves. He made another jab with his horns and missing went right on for the open country. He went on for about thirty feet, the length of rope that was left, and when he hit the end that was still around his horns he hit it so hard that it took his head and feet away from him and he was stretched on his side. That sudden jerk daggone near took the horse off his feet but as luck would have it the rope had tightened just when he was close to the ground instead of being up in the air. The jerk of the rope never interrupted him none at all and instead he seemed to buck all the harder. I got a glimpse of the saddle being jerked from the side of the horse till it went under his belly, and still fastened to it by two wraps of the rope which near |