CORRAL DUST 



"If he'd had horns I shore'd've 'ad him," smiled 

 Dell as he hauled back his rope. 



"Good 'a boy!" called Winnamucca Jack, the Indian 

 wrangler, when after ten minutes in the choking, blind- 

 ing dust, Dell made a pretty throw and the calico 

 "scrubtail" was roped. 



Few phases of range work or of the Round-Up are 

 more risky or afford a greater variety of inducement 

 for a man to harness up to a life insurance policy than 

 the gentle art of wrangling wild horses. The men who 

 have charge of rounding up, driving in, assisting in the 

 cutting out, roping, saddling and turning the animals 

 back to range are known as wranglers. Their business 

 is to know the location or drift of the horses, their 

 habits and ways. 



On a cattle ranch, the horses to be used in the day's 

 work by the cowboys are brought from range or pad- 

 dock (and a paddock may be several miles square) 

 into the corral in the early morning, by the wranglers. 

 When breakfast is finished, there is no time lost in 

 "cutting out" the horses to use in the day's work and 

 getting at it; then the "stuff" not needed is at once 

 turned back into the range. There has been many an 

 unadvertised bucking contest between man and beast 

 pulled off within a corral during morning saddling up. 



When it is time for the round-up of cattle and horses 

 for branding, marking, "cutting out" in the spring, or 

 for the fall cutting out and drive, the foreman and his 

 outfit of cowboys go out as far as he thinks cattle 

 would go for water, say eight or ten miles, throws out 

 two men together every half mile — strung over a dis- 

 tance of perhaps four or five miles. Everything is then 

 driven toward a common objective, generally, but not 

 always, towards water. This is a round-up. 



91 



