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The wheels were made of solid sections of trees, and the harness was of greenhide. An Indian boy sat astride one of the mules. On either side rode a vaquero, with his reata fastened to the axle-tree. "This is the best I can do," said Hudson. "There is probably not another American wagon between San Luis and Miramar. Do you think you can stand it?" The girls shrugged their pretty shoulders.
A reata was coiled at his saddle, and two big Colts swung from a beaded Indian belt. No matter how curious the stranger might be, he would have thought twice before asking questions. The horse, in color like snow with the sun on it, was splitting the breeze and yet the stride was easy and tireless. Blizzard, big and immensely strong, was as fast as the winds that swept the Panhandle.
While the horse is in hot pursuit the rider dexterously whirls his reata above his head until, at a favorable moment, it leaves his hand, uncoiling as it flies through the air, and, if the throw is successful, the noose falls over the animal's head. Suddenly the horse comes to a full stop and braces himself for the shock.
He was still whirling as if from absent-minded habit the loop of his reata. "We're here to listen, Jack. That would suit me down to the ground," answered Wrayburn. The loop of the lariat snaked forward, whistled through the air, dropped over the head of Yankie, and tightened around his neck.
The two horses stood, reins down, snorting at the terror before them, whose menace they now could sense. "Take the horse!" called Banion. "I'll get the man!" He was coiling the thin, braided hide reata, soft as a glove and strong as steel, which always hung at the Spanish saddle. He cast, and cast again yet again, the loop at forty feet gone to nothing.
"I'll be with you as soon as I free Buck," and Thure, slipping the noose of his reata off the hind leg of the dead grizzly and coiling it around his arm, hastened to where his gallant little horse still stood; and, after fastening the rope in its place on the pommel of the saddle, he hurried back to where Bud was bending over the grizzly. There was no need of tying their horses.
I am up on all the animal and vegetable life of Southern California, full of interesting information concerning its old customs, can give you Spanish names for all the things that come up in ordinary conversation, and am the only man present who can make a raw-hide reata, said Jack, modestly. 'Go on and tell us how, O great and wise reatero, said Bell.
But after a lightning glance at the chubby fist holding the other end of the reata, the twinkle in his eyes accorded but illy with his subsequent plunging and yelling as he sprawled on all fours and bawled like a choking calf.
Before I had time to recover from my astonishment I was thrown into greater confusion by recognizing the shape as none other than Caroline! Without the least embarrassment or even self-consciousness of her appearance, she tossed the end of the reata to me with the curtest explanation as she passed by. Some prowling bear or catamount had frightened the mule.
She thought afterwards of a hundred things that she could have said to him, but she was crushed for the present, and when he went out she could only betake herself to Reata, and forget all about it as much as she could. When she went upstairs, at the end of the third volume, Martin was on the watch, and would not let her go into the room.
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