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It warnt no trouble to make him promise to keep his mouth shet; he's more afraid of the priest than he is of his father's green-hide lariat, and that's sayin' a heap. When I went back to the Mission I told the priest that I thought as how I'd go on to Ortega's, and see if you got there all right.
At once the rope became slack and the watchful men pulled it tight again, and soon the great beast was jammed up against the fence, using all its strength to try and break the green-hide rope. But the lasso was made out of the hide of a bull and could have held any steer that was ever calved.
He was standing beside HIS mount Farmer, the plough-horse, who was arrayed in winkers with green-hide reins, and an old saddle with only one flap. He was holding an earnest argument with Joe...Still the crowd waited. Still Dad and Joe argued the point...There was a murmur and a movement and much merriment.
Breakfast and "Smoke-o" were got over quickly, and everybody was again at the yards as soon as possible. A fire was lit outside the rails, and a half-dozen T.D.3 brands, and as many number brands, were put in the blaze to get hot. Green-hide ropes were coiled ready and knives sharpened. The cleanskins were attended to first.
A pile of wood was collected and a fire lit and the brands made red-hot. Green-hide ropes were uncoiled to get the kinks out and coiled again ready for instant use, and every horseman saw to the tightness of his saddle-girth.
As the horse reared and plunged, I waited till it was facing away from me, and then sent the lash fair on to its flanks. It brought a lump out of the brute, for the green-hide was as hard as nails, and that horse set off straight for the track where the dead gum lay, and with me after it.
Several parts of the man's body were actually in the fire, but he endured it all and steeled himself to fight back the greater agony which throbbed at his wrists. The fire touched the green-hide and singed the white bull hair, giving off a pungent smell. Eagle sniffed it greedily. It helped him to bear the terrible pain, for it was a proof that the fire was doing its work.
The big cleanskins were driven out of the branding yard into an adjoining one, and admitted back again one by one. As soon as a beast rushed through the gate a green-hide lasso was thrown. The loop fell over its horns or neck. Four or five strong niggers were holding the end of the lasso outside the yard, and they pulled the captured animal up to the rails.
They had to hang on and keep the ropes tight; that was all, but only those who have worked in stock-yards, hour after hour, know how difficult such an apparently simple task really is. The work went on. The hard green-hide ropes blistered the unaccustomed hands of the new-chum white boys, but they set their teeth and held on.
"He had been rounding up some cattle, and had a stock-whip with him. I had one, too, a beauty, with a sixteen-foot green-hide thong. I knew him as soon as I saw him half a mile away. I skulked in the scrub as he came up just behind a clump of wattle. To fool him I rode out and past him; he turned after me, and I wheeled." The bright eyes glittered as they watched Tony's face.
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