In one of them were forty
or more young horses who up to now had been running wild on the range.
They had never known the touch of a whip or a spur, nor felt the weight
of a rider. The nearest approach to constraint they had ever experienced
was that furnished by the encircling fence of the corral into which they
had been driven yesterday. That this was irksome and even terrifying was
evident by their dilated nostrils, their wild expression, and the way
they pawed at the bars and at times measured the height of the fence, as
though contemplating a leap over it into the wide spaces beyond. But
their instinct told them that they could not make it, and they ran around
restlessly or pawed the ground uneasily, waiting their turn to be roped
and broken.
When the boys reached the outer fence, one of them had just been caught
by a whirling lariat and dragged, stubbornly protesting, into the
adjoining corral. Once there he made a wild dash to escape and lashed out
fiercely with his heels at the men who held him. But with a skill born of
long experience they eluded him, and one of them, watching his chance,
suddenly leaped on his back.
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