Weekly journal-miner., 1912-07-24
SIR GILbERT'S STORY
 IS A GRAPHIC PICTURE

you get the broncho- buster. like John Hardy. of Hardy's ranch, and George. the shy one. who reads kipling in his leisure hours and does things that Kipling's men would do and Ramon. the delft one with the lariat, and Chico, the smoothes, Mexican that ever gcntlcd mus tang. you have got hunt that will get its quarry and take its brush for dead certainty That is an undcfeatable combination. for the horses that are ridden by Hardy and George and Chico know their work-the work of riding down and busting bronchos--as we'll as their masters With the automatic pre- cision of machine, to which is added the shrewd ingenuity of a cat. they take their share in the capture of their old wild comrades with the chuckling knowledge of a young married woman who draws her old school-mate into the tolls where she has become willing slave. I am certain that George s big broncho had real joy when the lariat caught the mouse colored mustang around the neck and shoulders; for then. with the pre- cision of an automaton, George 
 broncho laid back gently on his launches and pulled with the stead mess of an elephant. A little for ward. little back, easing here, or hugely pulling there, he played his part with wise, intelligent certainty; and it was no trifling job either busting that mouse-color- ed mustang. for. as the Scotch say, "She was fair de'il."
 The lariat soon caught her. but that was only the beginning. She fought, she struck, she bit. she plunged in fury, only to find Georges broncho immovable and masterful. Flap. flap. flap, went the saddle blanket. or mat, swung by Chico against her side. to get her used to the touch of the saddle and the mouse -colored mustang went mad. Up in the air with her back bent like a cat. out with her heels like catapult. forward with the hoof like moose facing her pur- suer. But down at last. and fierce bit between the jaws; not. however, until her teeth had done their work on Georges arm. Now the saddle, and the gate of the corral are open 'd; and Chico's big job begins Cs;co to ride the mouse colored mustang for the first time.
 They say ~there arc people who can ride better than Chico. His compadres were little sceptical. of his riding, though they all agree that if any horse could stand a man near him that man was Chico However that might be. the mouse colored mustang. whose heart was full of war and hatred, could have given the best broncho-buster in the country cheerful and checkered half-hour Once she nearly had Chico off. but those windmill Vrms. the 1.-the body that swayed to left. to right, backwards and forwards. loose in the saddle but never leaving it, the eye that never failed, the determination that never waveted. achieved the mastery of the mouse colored mustang.
 l do not know if even yet the mouse-colored mustang is tanned, or will ever be other than a bucking broncho to the end of her days. The morning after she was busted" she had to be ridden from the corral of the home ranch, and she was as great devil as, when, the day before. they drew the cinch tight around her body. which had never before known the touch of human hand. As Hardy looked at her. cunning and malevolcnt and low, with soul of revolt, the beasts soul at its worst, he said, God, how she hates herself" and then after pause: "She hates her self to death. I've seen 'em like that Look at her dragging on that rope. strangling her own life out. Loosen the lariat. Chico. H--l. how she hates hcrselfl"
 It was all SO human, the low-ciass beast like the low-class human being, hating itself like the rattlesnake which, angered by the stabbing circle of cholla heads which the road runners, the long-legged birds of Nla.