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This was just before that section of the country was taken over by the Forest Service. As soon as notice was given that the district in question was to be placed under government regulations, a deputation to the tie-cutters loped down on their cow-ponies to convey the cheerful news.
"My notion is to get a fair start, drift out into Shoshone, whar we'll leave no trail, an' then hit for over the line. Sam Watts is sheriff of Coconino, an' he'd give us a square deal." "On foot?" "Hell, no! I ain't no such walker as all that. Come over yere; keep yer head down; now look out between these two rocks. Do yer see them cow-ponies hitched ter the rack alongside o' the Red Dog?
The mares were gentle, and would have been easily driven homeward but for a new and unexpected thing. The Black Stallion became greatly aroused. He seemed to inspire them too with his wildness, and flying this way and that way drove the whole band at full gallop where he would. Away they went, and the little cow-ponies that carried the men were easily left behind.
But an American frontiersman has done it, with American cowboys, cow-ponies, and hunting-dogs, and with wonderful moving pictures to prove it. It is a fine evidence of the sporting qualities of both parties to the undertaking that Colonel C. J. Jones, a Western plainsman, could so completely interest Mr. Charles S. Bird, an Eastern manufacturer, in the fantastic plan as to command his backing.
He, however, still lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and despising him as she had done, they left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could sit in their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They had never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held them.
He found rare days, purposeless and wonderful as the voyages of ancient Norse Ericsens; days of learning Spanish and sitting quietly balancing a .32-20 Marlin, waiting for bandits to attack; the joy of repairing machinery and helping to erect a new crusher, nursing peons with broken legs, and riding cow-ponies down black mountain trails at night under an exhilarating splendor of stars.
It was absolutely essential that they should be Western cow-ponies, fast, well trained, and reliable in every way. The Colonel, who best of all could foresee the nature of the work they would have to do, selected them himself, ten in all, from the ranches of New Mexico, and shipped them to New York. The American dogs to be used for trailing were likewise chosen by the Colonel.
He took some New Mexican cow-ponies out with him, and he and his men succeeded in all they undertook to do, capturing not only the less dangerous animals, such as antelope, buck and giraffe, but also a lioness and a rhinoceros, surely a very notable feat. Amarillo in the Panhandle was then purely a cattleman's town.
Three doors below, in front of Biggs's, a bunch of saddled cow-ponies gave notice of a fresh accession to the bar-room crowd which was now overflowing upon the steps and the plank sidewalk. Lidgerwood's thoughts shuttled swiftly.
He believed it would pay to handle a better class of cattle and horses on the range, and one of his ventures was ten half-blooded mares, tall, clean-limbed, deer-eyed creatures that made the scrub cow-ponies look like pitiful starvelings of some degenerate and quite different species.
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