A Frontier Doctor Page: 67

THE DOCTOR TURNS COWBOY

quickly wind my end of the riata around my saddle horn,
and secure the horse just as I used to do in Texas.
But I had another think coming! As I spurred my
mount through the milling circle, it flashed through my
mind that I was on a Whitman saddle with no more horn
than a muley cow and my entire plan of campaign was
changed in an instant. Instead of a thrill I had a decided
chill.
Dismounting, I directed the man to hold my horse and
reached for the rope. The moment I touched it I had
chill number two, and I hardly know to this day just
what kept me from throwing up the sponge. I had not
touched a riata since I left Texas in 1878, and all my ex-
perience there had been with a rawhide, while this rope
was hemp. At that instant a typhoon or an earthquake
would have been welcome to me, but none came.
The rope felt so different from a rawhide that I knew I
should fail and what little courage I had was fast oozing.
But there I was, a rope in my hands and the horses still
milling to the right round and round. I coiled the hemp
in my left hand and with my right began opening up the
loop, and to my great surprise it responded, so in a mo-
ment my confidence returned.
I stepped about, throwing the loop around my head
and backward and forward on the ground a moment, and
then began to walk toward the herd. The horse, a fine-
looking animal, had kept well in the center in an almost
uncanny way all the time, but during the last round he
had in some way been forced to the inside and came from
my left in full gallop, and as he flew past I gave the twist
of the wrist that turned it up and under him in such a
way that it caught both hind legs. The next instant I had
my hemp around the snubbing post and the chase was
over. It was one of the easiest and simplest things I ever
did, but it was all due to my streak of luck in his coming

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