Читать книгу Beyond Rope and Fence онлайн

3 страница из 46

Just as they learn to understand us, we learn to understand them. Every neigh or whinny takes on the meaning of a word, and their scowling or angry shaking of heads, and their protests against certain discomforts we impose upon them appear as clearly as the similar expressions of people. The most amazing fact, however, that slowly dawns upon us, is the fact that these lovely animals live in a conscious world of their own, not half so different from ours as we had allowed ourselves to think.

The rancher is not as intimate with the horses he breeds and rears in virtual wildness on the vast ranges which he leases from the government and about which he builds his barbed wire fences. Naturally so. He has from several hundred to several thousand horses and they are virtually in a wild state until he sells them, when they are broken-in and most of the untamed spirit is crushed out of them by heavy labour.

A rancher can rarely tell you how many horses he has. During the spring when colts are most often born, his stock may double for all he knows. He does not attempt to find out until the fall, when he rounds them up. The young colts are separated from their mothers and branded. The poor young things are tied and thrown and the red hot iron, with the shape of each rancher’s particular brand, is pressed upon the shoulder till the insignia is burned through hair and skin, where the mark remains as long as the creature lives.