384 The Wilderness Hunter. 



when he has his own horse gear he sits his animal with 

 the ease of a centaur. Yet he is quite helpless the first 

 time he gets astride one of the small eastern saddles. 

 One summer, while purchasing cattle in Iowa, one of my 

 ranch foremen had to get on an ordinary saddle to ride 

 out of town and see a bunch of steers. He is perhaps the 

 best rider on the ranch, and will without hesitation mount 

 and master beasts that I doubt if the boldest rider in one 

 of our eastern hunts would care to tackle ; yet his 

 uneasiness on the new saddle was fairly comical. At first 

 he did not dare to trot, and the least plunge of the horse 

 bid fair to unseat him, nor did he begin to get accustomed 

 to the situation until the very end of the journey. In fact, the 

 two kinds of riding are so very different that a man only 

 accustomed to one, feels almost as ill at ease when he 

 first tries the other as if he had never sat on a horse's back 

 before. It is rather funny to see a man who only knows 

 one kind, and is conceited enough to think that that is 

 really the only kind worth knowing, when first he is 

 brought into contact with the other. Two or three times 

 I have known men try to follow hounds on stock-saddles, 

 which are about as ill-suited for the purpose as they well 

 can be ; while it is even more laughable to see some young 

 fellow from the East or from England who thinks he 

 knows entirely too much about horses to be taught by 

 barbarians, attempt in his turn to do cow-work with his 

 ordinary riding or hunting rig. It must be said, however, 

 that in all probability cowboys would learn to ride well 

 across country much sooner than the average cross-coun- 

 try rider would master the dashing and peculiar style of 



