LIVE STOCK ON THE RANGE 



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very good blood, and there is nothing to show that the 

 animals Cortez, Coronado and the rest of the early ex- 

 plorers brought over with them were anything but the 

 small common-bred horses such as the Spanish then gen- 

 erally used. 



"Mustanging" was like trout fishing. It is always 

 the big ones that get away. When you did get a bunch 

 of them into a corral you found they did not look half 

 so large and handsome as when they were first sighted 

 on the prairie. The "coal-black stallion with arching 

 neck, and tail and mane dragging the ground," which 

 led the band, was the "Flying Dutchman" of the plains. 

 True, there was in later days an occasional large, well- 

 built, well-bred horse seen among the mustangs, but 

 when captured it always turned out to be an "escape" 

 lost from some stockman's herd or traveler's team, gen- 

 erally well-branded and saddle and harness-marked. The 

 wild horses of the present day are not mustangs at all 

 but merely well-bred horses that have been allowed to 

 get away from their owners through poor range handling 

 or lost from pastures or wagon trains. In some respects 

 these later wild horses are far harder to capture than 

 the old mustangs, because of their greater intelligence 

 and speed. 



Wrong Use of Names. In speaking of the different 

 types or breeds of horses and cattle, there are several 

 words that are constantly misused. It is not correct to 

 speak of a Thoroughbred cow. Cattle can only be pure- 

 bred, grades or scrubs. One should not call a running 

 horse standard-bred. The running strain of horses are 

 Thoroughbreds only, if they have the requisite breed- 

 ing. This is the name applied to the English running 

 breed. All American trotting horses that come up to 



