A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



terior there is a heart of gold ; a tenderness and re- 

 sponse to every human touch. The cowboy is indeed 

 a child of nature, and all its great emotions are in his 

 soul. I had this all come to me in the saddest experi- 

 ence of my life when one of our boys was killed 

 while we were sorting cattle in the feed-pens at Stam- 

 ford. He was riding his night horse Curlew. A 

 night horse is always the gentlest in a man's mount, 

 but any ranch-bred Texas horse will go out of his 

 head when anything goes wrong, often some very 

 little thing. 



I remember riding this same horse on an all-day 

 50-mile jaunt over the Tongue River Ranch with 

 Henry Bonner of Indiana. The day was very warm. 

 I took my handkerchief out to put round my neck, 

 and gave it a flip. Curlew went into the air, and for 

 a minute jolted me pretty hard, and made me pull 

 leather. I said to the foreman, "What's wrong with 

 this horse?" He replied, "I guess he never saw a 

 white handkerchief before." 



"Johnnie" was sitting on Curlew, and several other 

 boys were on their horses, waiting for instructions. 

 I think that Curlew must have fallen asleep. The 

 foreman rode up and said, "Come on, boys." Johnnie 

 was one of our best riders; he was always "cow- 

 boying." Reaching over he gave Curlew a slap on 

 the neck. The horse must have jumped in the op- 

 posite direction. Johnnie was unbalanced and fell, 

 his foot catching in the stirrup. The horse then 



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