206 Hunting the Grisly 



ride, in their own fashion, any horse given 

 them. They were frequently given spoiled 

 animals from the cavalry services in the dif- 

 ferent countries through which they passed, 

 animals with which the trained horse-break- 

 ers of the European armies could do nothing; 

 and yet in almost all cases the cowpunchers 

 and bronco-busters with Buffalo Bill mas- 

 tered these beasts as readily as they did their 

 own Western horses. At their own work of 

 mastering and riding rough horses they could 

 not be matched by their more civilized rivals; 

 but I have great doubts whether they in turn 

 would not have been beaten if they had es- 

 sayed kinds of horsemanship utterly alien to 

 their past experience, such as riding mettled 

 thoroughbreds in a steeple-chase, or the like. 

 Other things being equal (which, however, 

 they generally are not), a bad, big horse fed 

 on oats offers a rather more difficult prob- 

 lem than a bad little horse fed on grass. 

 After Buffalo Bill's men had returned, I oc- 

 casionally heard it said that they had tried 

 cross-country riding in England, and had 

 shown themselves pre-eminently skilful there- 

 at, doing better than the English fox-hunters, 

 but this I take the liberty to disbelieve. I 

 was in England at the time, hunted occasion- 



