In front of the crowded grandstand is where his fame as a fighting, man-hating, bucking outlaw begin to spread, and from State to State, town and range folks alike was on hand and whenever he was to be rode and handled; for watching that horse perform was alone worth more than the price that was asked for the ticket at the gate of the rodeo grounds.
It wasn’t long when the folks thru the whole of the southwestern states begin to talk of The Cougar as they did of their favorite movie actor, actress, or the Prince of Wales. Tourists from Europe and from all parts of the U.S. came and went, and carried stories with ’em about the wonders of the wickedness of that horse. Then rodeo committees begin to perk up their ears, and at the same time started bidding for him. The Cougar’s presence got to be valuable, and came a time when five hundred dollars was offered by a rival who also made a business of furnishing rodeos with strings of bucking stock. The offer wasn’t considered, none at all, and the riders around had their doubts if even a thousand would change the ownership of that horse.
Every summer thru, the mouse colored outlaw was shipped along with the others more or less of his kind and unloaded at some different rodeo grounds; every few weeks and for three or four days he was rode at. Twice or three times a day during the doings, some strange rider would climb him, the chute gate would fly open, and out would come a tearing, bellering hunk of steel coils to land out a ways, and like a ton of lava from up above, jar the earth even up to the grandstand.
The judges, pickup men, and others around would find themselves short about ten pairs of eyes as all tried to catch every crooked move that pony put into his work. All breaths seemed to be held up during that time; but never no time was them breaths held up for very long, cause, very soon, there’d be a scattering of a tall cowboy who, from the chute, had started on top, took a lot of wicked jars while setting there and so high; and good rider as he’d have to be, soon come to conclude that it sure was no disgrace to be separated from his saddle and flung out a ways—not on that horse.
Very seldom would the rider have to walk back very far, and sometimes only a few feet was between the rider who was picking himself up and the chute where he’d rode out from so fast and furious.
As an all around outlaw and bucking horse The Cougar had no rival; there wasn’t a horse in the State or any State neighboring that could compete with him in either fighting or bucking, and folks seeing or studying the horse often wondered; for anybody who knowed horses could see that that horse hadn’t been born a natural outlaw like most of the rodeo’s bucking horses generally are. That pony had brains, a big supply of ’em and which showed in the way he’d go about throwing his man. He wasn’t like the average bucking horse, who’d often buck back under the man that was already loosened; and instead, when The Cougar felt a man lose an inch, that inch was never got back. The saddle kept a getting away from him from then on.
But there was more and which was all proof as to the amount of brains that pony carried. There was his hate for the man, and which showed the same as the hate one human would have for another, only it was more dangerous. And then again, and as the cowboy who took care of him often remarked:—
“The way that horse packs a grudge, somebody sure must of dealt him a dirty deal sometime or other. I know there’s sure something on his mind besides that too, and like he’s pining for something that’s gone and hopeless; at them times he acts like he wants my company the same as though he was craving for somebody; but them spells don’t last long, and soon he seems to come back to earth and realizing things. Then’s when I’m not within reaching distance no more—but by golly, I sure wish sometimes that horse would like me as well as he hates.”
The first two years he put in as The Cougar and bad horse was the most ferocious two years any horse went thru. It was wicked times, not only for the horse, but for all who handled and tried to ride him. There was so much poison in that pony’s heart that the only way he could live was by hating and being hated; he fed on it, and the bars or poles that was between him and whoever he wanted to get at in his fits of wickedness showed signs a plenty of his hankering to murder—the destroying ability of that pony’s teeth and hoofs sure was visible, and convincing.
He wasn’t at all the same horse that’d faced a cowboy some eight years or so past. He hadn’t wanted to fight then, he’d just wanted to get away and be left alone, and he’d only fought the rope that held him; and even though his suspicions and hate of the human had been natural he hadn’t seen anything about that cowboy he wanted to disfigure.
He’d done a mighty neat job of bucking in the Rocking R corrals and made Clint pay attention to his riding pretty well; but his bucking then, even though it was hard, didn’t compare much with the bucking of The Cougar. He’d just been bucking thru instinct. It was the natural thing for a brainy horse to do, and when he bucked it wasn’t for meanness but just to see if he couldn’t get out from under that rig and man.
