G. A. Henty

“ Broncho Harry asked Hugh when he threw himself down by the fire.
"I feel broken up altogether, Harry. My back and loins feel as if I had been beaten to a pulp. I believe I have strained every muscle of my arms, and my hands and wrists are so stiff that I can't close my fingers."
"Yes; calf-chucking is pretty hard work until you get accustomed to it," the cow-boy said. "It is knack more than strength, though it needs a lot of strength too when you have got a rampagious ten-months calf in your hands." ”

“ You know that if the cattle break, you have got to ride and head them off somehow; and I tell you, when you cannot see your horse's ears, and are going at a wild gallop, and know that if he puts his foot in a hole there is no saying how far you may be chucked, and you have got the herd thundering along beside you, you begin to feel that a cow-boy's life is not all meat and molasses. There is one comfort, when you do have to ride like that, you have no time to funk. Your blood [139] just boils up with excitement, and the one thing that you think of is to head the herd. ”

“ That is what we have said a hundred times, Lightning. He has been shot all over, but never mortally. One thing, his looks are enough to scare a man. Somehow he don't look altogether arthly with that white hair of his—and it has been the same colour ever since I have known him—floating back from his face. He goes in general bareheaded when he sets out to shoot, and the hair somehow seems to stand out; not a bit like it does other times. I heard a chap who had been a doctor afore he took to gold-digging say his hair looked as if it had been electrified. ”

“ As the storm approached, and it became evident by the brightness and rapidity of the flashes that it was going to be an unusually severe one, one by one the men would leave their fire or rise from their couches and go out to their horses, pull up and coil their ropes, leap into the saddle, wrap a blanket round them, and gallop off to the herd, beginning always to sing as they approached it, as otherwise their arrival might stampede the animals. ”

“ I am not saying you do any real harm, Broncho, only you see the people in the towns don't know how well you shoot. If you knock a pipe out of my mouth, as you have done once or twice, I only laugh, because I know there was no chance in the world of your hitting me; but you see they don't all know that. And so when a man finds there are two holes in his hat an inch above his head, he thinks he has had a marvellous escape of being murdered. ”

“ I have got a set of the worst-tempered devils in the country, Master Hugh. Except them two ponies that I drives your aunt out with, there isn't a horse in the stables fit for a Christian to ride. They are all good horses, first-rate horses, putting aside their tempers; but your uncle seems to delight in buying creatures that no one else will ride. Of course he gets them cheap. He doesn't care how wicked they are, and he seems to enjoy it when they begin their pranks with him. I thought at first he would get his brains dashed out to a certainty, but I never saw a man keep his seat as he does. ”

“ The Mexicans know that their hosts will be off in the morning, and that they shall probably never see them again, and they therefore put up philosophically with the temporary inconstancy of the damsels of their village.
To the Mexican girls, indeed, these cow-boys are veritable heroes. They have heard endless tales of their courage. They know that the Indians, who hold their countrymen in absolute contempt, fear to meet these terrible herdsmen. ”

“ Astonished at this treatment, the animal gave a bound forward and started at full gallop.
There was no occasion for the other man to use his whip; his horse knew what was expected of it, and with its hind legs gathered under it, had been expecting the signal, and was even more quickly away than Prince. It did not, however, gain more than a length. For the first three hundred yards the horses maintained their relative position, but Prince was tugging at his bridle; and his rider, though shouting and yelling as if to urge him to his fullest speed, was yet holding him in. ”

“ In some respects the ride in such a storm as this was less dangerous than upon a dark, still night, for the lightning flashes showed not only the exact position of the herd, but greatly diminished the chance of serious falls by lighting up the whole configuration of the country, and showing any obstacles in the way. Even a fall, heavy though it might be, would be a trifle in comparison to one occurring while endeavouring to head the herd, for in that case it would entail certain death, as life would be trampled out in an instant by the onward torrent of cattle. ”

“ Long Tom said to Hugh. "They have been riding a good deal faster than we have, and I don't think they will gain on us now—not anything to speak of. We shall be at the buttes long before they catch us, though you see when one party is chasing another they have got a great advantage."
"How do you mean, Tom? I don't see what advantage they have."
"They have this advantage, Lightning. All horses ain't the same. Some can go a lot faster than others. Some can keep on ever so much longer than others. There are some good and some bad." ”

“ A cow-boy belonging to a neutral ranche was to act as starter. The two riders had divested themselves of their heavy boots.
"You must shake him up to begin with, Broncho," Hugh had said to him before he mounted. "He will do his best afterwards. He hates being passed, and when he sees the other ahead of him he will go all he knows."
"Now," the starter said, when the two horses stood side by side in a line with him, "I shall walk on twenty or thirty yards ahead so that you can both see me, then I shall hold up my six-shooter and fire. Don't either of you start till I do. ”

“ A good many of us are good shots, perhaps most of us, but it is with the pistol and rifle. Shot-guns are not of much use when you have a party of Red-skins yelling and shooting round you, and it is not a handy weapon to go and fetch when a man draws a revolver on you. As to shooting little birds, it may be done by men who live on their farms and like an occasional change from the bacon and tinned meat that they live on from year's end to year's end. ”

“ Standing on the edge of the cliff, Hugh saw the flashes bursting out rapidly among the rocks and trees at the foot of the slope, and soon perceived that they were mounting upwards. A crowd of Indians must have thrown themselves suddenly forward and established themselves in cover, and they were now fighting their way up. The defenders had fallen back, for the answering flashes were half-way up the slope. The rattle of musketry was incessant, but far above it rose the yells of the Indians. The whites fought silently. ”

“ Don't tell us if you don't like; it is no business of ours. Here in the diggings there are few men who talk of old times. Their eyes are all on the future, and what they will do with their wealth when they gain it; but no one asks another as to his past history. The answer might sometimes be a pistol-shot. Here we three have been living together for more than two years and not one of us has wanted to know what the others were before we met. It is quite an accident that I know your name. You gave it when you gave evidence as to the murder of that old German that we hung Red Hugh for. ”

“ A RACE. "I DON'T think, Broncho," Hugh said one evening, "that I should do anything more about that race, if I were you, or if you do, don't lay out any money on it. There is just as much interest in a race if it is for a dollar or two as if all the boys in the outfit piled their money upon it. That horse beat yours pretty easily, quite as easy, I should say, as Prince could beat him for that distance, and I really don't think that Prince would have any pull of him in races of the length you have on here. ”

“ He was a dead shot, and handled his pistol with a lightning speed, that in nine cases out of ten enabled him to fire first; and while he would contemptuously spare a man who was simply maddened by ruin and drink, the notorious bully, the terror of a camp, a man who deliberately forced a quarrel upon him, relying upon his strength or skill, would be shot down without hesitation. ”

“ If you pay a hundred dollars for a horse you have paid a long price in this country, but that pair of mules wouldn't be dear at eight hundred for the two of them. There is no trouble with mules: they won't stray far when you turn them out; they won't stampede—not if they are properly trained. Why, there is as much sense in a mule as there is in a score of horses, and the horses know it themselves. If there is a mule turned out among a troop of horses he takes the lead natural, and they will follow him wherever he goes, knowing right well that he has got more sense than they have. ”

“ Cow-boys know how to behave when they like, and a woman might go through the ranches from end to end in Texas without being insulted."
"I know that, Royce. The point is, if they can go without using what you call swear words when a woman is among them, why can't they always do so?"
"It is all very fine to talk, Hugh; but when you get on a bucking broncho that sends you flying about ten yards through the air, and you come down kerplump, I never seed a man yet as would pick himself up and speak as if he wur in a church. No, sir; it's not in human nature." ”

“ It is high time for you to come back to the old place that you ought never to have left. I shall not see you again, for I have long been suffering from heart-disease, and the doctors tell me the end may come any day. I have had the opinion of some of the best authorities, and they all say that, thanks to some peculiar wording in the will, which I don't understand in the slightest, the prohibition to divide with you is only binding during my lifetime, and that nothing is said that restricts my right to leave it as I please. ”

“ They will shoot the hats off a score of men; that is one of their favourite amusements. In the first place it shows their skill with the pistol, and in the next it scares people pretty nigh to death, and I have seen the cow-boys laugh until they have nearly tumbled off their horses to see a fellow jump and make a straight line into a house. Nobody minds the cow-boys; they are a good sort. They are reckless enough when they are on a spree, but they don't really mean to do harm. ”

“ I have seen a cow that I knew had a white calf run up to a black calf and smell it, then to a brown one, and then to a spotted one, while her own white calf stood bawling fit to kill herself a dozen yards away. It is wonderful how they do find each other at all, and the job often takes them two or three hours. Some of the cows concludes at last that their calves have been left behind, and then off they set, and would go all the way back to the place they had started from in the morning if you didn't stop them. Sometimes they don't find them at all that night. ”

“ The tender-foot, as a new-comer is called, is always the subject of endless pranks and annoyances if he evinces the least timidity or nervousness; but if, on the other hand, he shows that he has pluck, determination to succeed, and good temper, he is treated with kindness and cordiality. Hugh's exhibition, therefore, of courage and horsemanship on the occasion of his first attempt at once won their liking and admiration, and all were ready to lend him a hand when necessary, and to give him hints and advice, and he was free from any of the annoyances to which new hands are often exposed. ”

“ It is not that we are feared of the skunks; if we could not throw them off our trail, we could fight them anyway, but one don't want to have them on one's mind; we have got plenty of things to think about without them."
"O yes! I think it much better to stay here for a bit, doctor. There is no hurry about a start on our expedition, and I should certainly like to take a share in routing out these bandits, especially as, from what you say, it seems that the men at their head are the fellows who murdered Don Ramon Perales' son, and sold me his horse. ”

“ Hugh said. "If we throw in our lot with you we shall share it to the end, whatever it is."
"Waal, that is all right, lad; but there are times when stopping to fight is just throwing away your life without doing no good. The doctor here and me ain't men to desart mates; but when a time comes where it ain't no sort of good in the world to fight, and when those mates must get rubbed out whether you stick by them or not, then it is downright onreasonable for anyone as can get clear off to throw away his life foolish." ”

“ There ain't nowhere in the world where there is so little quarrelling as out here on the plains. You see, if we didn't all carry six-shooters, and were ready to use them, the bad-tempered men, and the hard men, would have it their own way. Big fellows like you would be able to bully little fellows like me. We should get all the bad men from the towns whenever they found the settlements too hot for them. We should have murderers, and gamblers, and horse-thieves coming and mixing themselves up with us. I tell you, Hugh, that without the revolver there would be no living out here. ”