CORRAL DUST 



is a comfortable naturalness in the way they lounge 

 about the arena or watch with keen interest as they 

 see the chances on their "stakes" rise or fall as un- 

 known riders or new buckers battle for supremacy. 



There, a bit in the shadow, some of the most ex- 

 pert fancy ropers living — Chester Byers, Cuba Crutch- 

 field, Bee Ho Gray, Sammy Garrett, Jane Bernoudy, 

 Tex McLeod and Bertha Blancett — play with their 

 ropes as though those serpentine coils are living things. 



Lassoing, rope throwing or just "rophV " has its 

 many styles, such as horse roping, steer roping, calf 

 roping, done on the open range from horseback or in 

 corrals, from the saddle or on foot, each an art in it- 

 self. It by no means follows that a good steer roper 

 is a good calf roper, and few good straight ropers do 

 fancy roping. Trick and fancy rope work, according 

 to Will Rogers, one of the best in the game, was 

 first brought into the United States about twenty- 

 seven years ago by Vincenti Orespo, a Mexican. 



Rogers says that Orespo was the first fancy roper 

 that any of the present day fancy ropers ever saw. No 

 other man had such accuracy and style as he did. 

 Though he had a less extensive routine of tricks his 

 catches were long and clean and what was particularly 

 to his credit was his standing as a great roper. In 

 catching horses he was a wonder, always throwing a 

 small loop and catching them right around the throat 

 latch, not by the middle, a hind leg or the saddle horn. 



Fancy roping, such as spinning and making tricky 

 catches, may have originated through the play in tak- 

 ing the tangle out of ropes. Unlike straight roping, 

 fancy is advancing all the time, while due straight rop- 

 ing like the range and the cowboy is dying out. It was 

 a wonderful aggregation that each day opened the 



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