turesque profanity was left unused
among them.

Quivering with fear and anger, the black, as soon as the ropes were
taken off, dashed madly about the corral looking in vain for a way of
escape from his torturers. Corrals, however, are built to resist just
such dashes. The burn of a branding iron is supposed to heal almost
immediately. Cowboys will tell you that a horse is always more
frightened than hurt during the operation, and that the day after he
feels none the worse.

All this you need not credit. A burn is a burn, whether made purposely
with a branding iron or by accident in any other way. The scorched
flesh puckers and smarts. It hurts every time a leg is moved. It seems
as if a thousand needles were playing a tattoo on the exposed surface.
Neither is this the worst of the business. To a high-strung animal the
roping, throwing, and burning is a tremendous nervous shock. For days
after branding a horse will jump and start, quivering with expectant
agony, at the slightest cause.

It was fully a week before the black thoroughbred was himself again. In
that time he had conceived such a deep and lasting hatred for all men,
cowboys in particular, as only a high-spirited, blue-blooded horse can
acquire. With deep contempt he watched the scrubby little cow ponies as
they doggedly carried about those wild, fierce men who threw their
circling, whistling, hateful ropes, who wore such big, sharp spurs and
who were viciously handy in using their rawhide quirts.

So when a cowboy put a breaking-bit into the black's mouth there was
another lively scene. It was somewhat confused, this scene, but at
intervals one could make out that the man, holding stubbornly to mane
and forelock, was being slatted and slammed and jerked, now with his
feet on the ground, now thrown high in the air and now dangling
perilously and at various angles as the stallion raced away.

In the end, of course, came the whistle of the choking, foot-tangling
ropes, and the black was saddled. For a fierce half hour he took
punishment from bit and spur and quirt. Then, although he gave it up, it
was not that his spirit was broken, but because his wind was gone. Quite
passively he allowed himself to be ridden out on the prairie to where
the herds were grazing.

Undeceived by this apparent docility, the cowboy, when the time came for
him to bunk down under the chuck wagon for a few hours of sleep,
tethered his mount quite securely to a deep-driven stake. B