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"Well, step up on him and let's be going," Morrow ordered surlily. Harris took a short hold on the rope reins of the hackamore with his left hand, cramped the horse's head toward him and gripped the mane, his right hand on the horn, and swung gently to the saddle, easing into it without a jar. "Easy, Blue!" he said, holding up the big roan's head. "Don't you hang your head with me."
There was a hackamore round his nose and a tight noose round his neck. The one round his neck was also round his forelegs. And both lassoes were held taut by the black horse. A torn and soiled rider's scarf hung limp round the red horse's nose, kept from falling off by the hackamore. "A wild horse, a stallion, being broken!" exclaimed Lucy, instantly grasping the situation.
No curb restrained him, not even a bit; the light hackamore could not have held him for an instant, but the voice of the rider kept him in hand. Now, out of Rickett's one street, came the thing for which Barry had waited, and delayed his course a scudding dust cloud.
I had one devil of a time with the Injun, too, to make him disrespectful enough to throw a rope at me. But Surry took to it like a she-bear to honey, and he's got so he can gauge distances to a hair, now, and dodge it every pass. I'm going to ride him to-day with a hackamore; and you watch him perform, old man! I can turn him on a tin plate, just with pressing my knees. That horse will "
"Not breaking," Drew corrected, "training. It is another method altogether. One puts a weanling on a rope halter, accustoms him to the feel of the hackamore, of being with men. Then he grows older knowing no fear or strangeness." The Mexican looked from Drew to Don Cazar, his shock fading to puzzlement. Rennie nodded. "Sí, amigo, so it is done—in Kentucky and Virginia.
"The trick is easy enough," said Nate, arriving with his outlaw, and liking an audience. "You don't want a bridle, but a rope hackamore like this Spanish style. Then let them run as hard as they want, and on a sudden reach down your arm and catch the hackamore short, close up by the mouth, and jerk them round quick and heavy at full speed. They quit their fooling after one or two doses.
To this very obvious statement the other made no reply. He cut the last strand of the rope that bound Jack's ankles so mercilessly, and stood up. "You better take off your boots and rub some feeling into your feet while I make a hackamore for that horse. The sooner we get out of this, the better. What's left of the Committee will probably be pretty anxious to see you."
They could not understand for a time, but presently the saddle came loose, the cinches flipped out, and the whole apparatus crashed to the ground. Nor was this all. The rider leaned forward and his hands worked on the head of his mount until the hackamore also came free and was tossed aside.
Range kids are brought up on them Wind-river bibles, as we call mail order catalogues. I'll bet you I can give offhand the freight on anything you can name, from a hair hackamore to a gang plow." "Fly at it, then," laughed Luck, with his hand on the doorknob. "I am going to be some busy myself. I'll just turn over the transportation problem to you folks. Adios."
When at last hackamore and saddle were in place, and the bay stood trembling and sweating, Phil wiped the perspiration from his own forehead and turned to the stranger. "Your horse is ready, sir." The man's face was perhaps a shade whiter than its usual color, but his eyes were glowing, and there was a grim set look about his smiling lips that made the hearts of those men go out to him.
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