ucked off on a stone. The time I hurt the point of my
shoulder I was riding a big, sulky horse named Ben Butler, which went
over backwards with me. When we got up it still refused to go anywhere;
so, while I sat it, Sylvane Ferris and George Meyer got their ropes on
its neck and dragged it a few hundred yards, choking but stubborn, all
four feet firmly planted and plowing the ground. When they released
the ropes it lay down and wouldn't get up. The round-up had started; so
Sylvane gave me his horse, Baldy, which sometimes bucked but never
went over backwards, and he got on the now rearisen Ben Butler. To my
discomfiture Ben started quietly beside us, while Sylvane remarked,
"Why, there's nothing the matter with this horse; he's a plumb gentle
horse." Then Ben fell slightly behind and I heard Sylvane again, "That's
all right! Come along! Here, you! Go on, you! Hi, hi, fellows, help me
out! he's lying on me!" Sure enough, he was; and when we dragged Sylvane
from under him the first thing the rescued Sylvane did was to execute
a war-dance, spurs and all, on the iniquitous Ben. We could do nothing
with him that day; subsequently we got him so that we could ride him;
but he never became a nice saddle-horse.

As with all other forms of work, so on the round-up, a man of ordinary
power, who nevertheless does not shirk things merely because they are
disagreeable or irksome, soon earns his place. There were crack riders
and ropers who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their
own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Continually on the
circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick patch of bulberry bush
and refuse to come out; or when it was getting late we would pass some
bad lands that would probably not contain cattle, but might; or a steer
would turn fighting mad, or a calf grow tired and want to lie down.
If in such a case the man steadily persists in doing the unattractive
thing, and after two hours of exasperation and harassment does finally
get the cow out, and keep her out, of the bulberry bushes, and drives
her to the wagon, or finds some animals that have been passed by in the
fourth or fifth patch of bad lands he hunts through, or gets the calf
up on his saddle and takes it in anyhow, the foreman soon grows to treat
him as having his uses and as being an asset of worth in the round-up,
even though neither a fancy roper nor a fancy rider.

When at the Progressive Convention last August, I met G