Adventures in Many Lands, page 48 by Various Authors
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ddle, and essay a "mounted" throw. Your patient animal remains perfectly still and quiet. He seems to know you are a tenderfoot, and to feel quite sure what is going to happen. You whirl your lasso round your head, and aim it at the horns of a harmless steer in the corral some yards away. But you look in vain to see the rope curl round your particular objective. Instead, it flops over your horse's ears, or smacks you on the side of your own head. Oh, it was so easy on the ground, too, when you left off!
And your horse is patient still. He even seems to be smiling quietly to himself. After many more attempts, and with an arm that acheth much, you succeed in affixing your rope round something, throwing from the saddle. At last you have managed it.
Later on an opportunity occurs for the display of your prowess. You are in the corral with a bunch of moving beasts. You single out one as your particular victim. This time the beast is not standing still, and you throw your lasso, carefully watching the fall as it whirls through the air. Poor animal! Instead of roping it by the horns, you nearly jerk its tail off! There are very many accomplishments that seem easy in the hands of an expert and which prove most difficult to the uninitiated, but I think the throwing of the lasso can claim more mysteries than most others.
When out on an inspection of the ranche, reckoning up the stock, and seeing that all are able to secure sufficient food, it frequently happens that some of the cattle will be missing. They get away into all sorts of places, some almost inaccessible among the hills, and if they are not found and brought back to the pastures within easy reach of the corral, they become wild, and then there is mischief to pay. They sneak down late at night or in the small hours of the morning to the corn and wheat fields, break the fences, and trample the crops in a way that spells disaster to many a settler.
Some of the cattle belonging to my friend's ranche had gone astray in this way, and we wer