Duster (9781310020889) Read Free Page A

for all he was worth, and
so was that steer. Both of them were scrambling over the small
brush, through the middling-size stuff and under the tallest
growth— which, of course, had the biggest, strongest, sharpest,
longest thorns. That tall stuff was what the hammerhead was
dragging me underneath. If it was high enough for him to get under,
he just naturally figured I could squeeze under too—and away we
went.
    For the first few jumps, I was too busy
hanging on to think about the rawhide rope in my hand. For the next
few, I was too busy getting my seat back again, having learned a
valuable lesson in brush popping.
    The thing is, I'd been
practicing roping since I was big enough to dangle a string in my
hand, but I'd never done it quite like this before. By the time I
learned that a mesquite will reach out and try to snatch a meal of
braided rawhide reata , I was turned sideways in my saddle with one leg back on
that dun's rump and a right arm that felt like it was near jerked
out of my coat. It was just lucky for me that my big, corral-style
loop slipped off the branch when it did, or I'd have been walking
back to camp on my first morning out.
    Anyway, I caught up with the dun again, and
this time I remembered to build a small loop and leaned down over
the dun's neck to make my pitch low and straight. Rawhide is heavy
enough to carry through a little brush, and the short ropes used
out here aren't long enough to let you throw from a distance that
would hang you up on something—that is, as long as you remember
about holding that loop in small and close.
    My first throw was a good
one, everything considered. I don't know whether you'd call it
a mangana at the
wrong end of the animal or a peal that didn't turn over. Anyway, it caught that
steer's hind feet and drew them up tight together, even if it
didn't have a peal's neat figure-eight shape with a little bitty loop for each
foot.
    The steer's front feet kept running, of
course, and he was stretched out flat on his belly with that crazy
dun horse hauling back on him quicker than it takes to tell. I
could hear the air rush out of him when he hit, and I figured he
was down real good for the next minute or two.
    The dun was walking back a little to keep
some strain on the rope, so I let him do it his way and sat up real
straight, sort of proud of myself and not even minding the chunks
of skin I had lost on the way from there to here chasing that
steer.
    I tipped back my wide-brimmed straw hat and
used the tail end of my bandanna to wipe my face off, sort of
casual like.
    About then, the steer began to try to get
his hind legs under him so he could get up and do it all over
again. And I began to wonder for the first time just what I was
going to do with him now that I had him.
    I mean, it hadn't really occurred to me
before, but here I was in the middle of the brush with a strange
horse tied to one end of my rope and a full-growed longhorn steer
at the other end of it. I had him down on the ground where I could
get to him if I wanted him, but he was already wearing a brand I
could see now—it hadn't really got through to me before, but
there's no such thing as a maverick steer because bulls don't get
to be steers by themselves—and I couldn't see any reason to walk
over and pat him hello. And I sure wasn't going to drag him out by
the hind legs.
    I sat there for a minute
and let the hammerhead do his work a while longer, but the more I
thought about it, the less I knew what I wanted to do with that
animal. The steer was lying sort of half on its side with its legs
stretched out in my direction, and it turned its head once and
rolled its eyes at me like it was asking me, "Well, fella, where do
we go from here?" I just stared back at it like I had sense enough
to know what to do, and it flopped its head back around. I noticed
its left horn pointed straight out to the front instead of sweeping
out and up like the right horn. I guess we were both a pretty sorry
pair right then.