Read The Cadence of Grass for Free Online

Bar, the Pitchfork, the Matador. And sure always rode a
finished
horse, but it had to be tough as whang leather or he just wouldn’t have it around. Horse needed to stand up in that bridle and
look
for work.
    “First off, we had to get crooked old Robert on his horse. He led his sorrel mare out of the pen behind the scales and tied her to a plank of the chute. She was a little sickle-hocked, which I’m sure he preferred, and she had good withers, short pasterns, kind of coon-footed, low-croup cow-horse look to her, ears pricked forward, even whickered at him quick as she seen him.
    “It was just painful to watch him saddle this horse. He threw the Navajo up all right, but when he lifted that old slick-fork saddle, we felt how it hurt him and yet knew we ought not to help. He bridled her up in a little grazer bit and led her around to the front of the chute. He threw one rein around the horn and wrapped the other around the corner post of the loading chute. She stood all right—I mean, he’d dare her not to stand—but that wasn’t no kid’s horse, bad as anything he’d force O. C. onto, nose blowed out and white around her eyes. Cross a horse like that and she drives you into the ground like a picketpin.
    “Then Robert walks around to the holding pen, squeaks the old gate open, goes inside and next time we see him, he’s crawling up the chute, out the end and onto his horse. She snorted and backed away and he hung down around her neck to catch his other rein. When he sat up in the saddle, he had both reins plaited through the fingers of his left hand and just lifted his hand about three-sixteenths of an inch and she sat down on her hocks and backed clear across the ranch yard in a cloud of dust. Then he straightened up, threw her some slack and she stood square to the world, ready for work. Had of been O. C. his ass’d be over the granary. I rode a dun gelding I’d broke and was hopin’ Robert’d tell me what a great job I’d did, but he didn’t say
nothin’
.
    “Up we go single file and I stay to watch Robert. His shoulders were back and he sat ramrod straight in the middle of his saddle, boots plumb home in iron oxbows, reins hangin’ soft over the side of his left hand. In the other hand he’s got a string with a knot for every mare. He turned real slow in his saddle and give my Mexican a good hard look. It wasn’t long before we were on top. When Leo loped out to the west and made a little dust, I could see Robert was gonna quit worryin’ about him. Leo made a big ride around the horses, which had wheeled up to watch him, and only began to disperse and feed as the circle he made came to seem too grand to concern them. By the time I rode back to the far side of the bench, Leo was closin’ in my direction and two miles off, them horses began to drift away. There was sixteen horses, and about ten of them was pretty uniform-looking sorrel horses that looked kin to Robert’s mount. The remainder was nothin’ but dog feed with Roman noses and big hairy feet. They’d hurt your eyes. My old man sent thousands just like them on the train to Owens Brothers in Kansas City. The good ones went to the Boer War and the Frenchmen ate the rest.
    “The first part of our plan to come apart was where we’s gonna ease ’em on out of there because they plumb took off. In two jumps they was smokin’ across the flattop and our horses caught that gust off of them and liked to get out from under us. Leo had to pull his mount in some hard circles to keep him from buckin’ with him, and mine had his head in my lap to where I’d liked to broke something over it, but pretty quick I had the best of him and he’s looking straight through his bridle like a gentleman. Leo was foggin’ it about a mile off, a big cloud of dust driftin’ away like a grass fire.
    “It was pretty clear there was no smart way to turn ’em down the road even if Robert had been prepared to do so, but he was nowhere in sight. So the best we