Home Ranch by Ralph Moody Page A

silver-tip!”
    I’d seen plenty of Pinch when I’d been trying to catch Clay, and had told myself he’d be the last horse in the remuda I’d ever pick. He looked old and bony and homely and lazy, and was about the meanest gelding I’d ever seen. He kept his ears pinned down tight, and every time another horse got in front of him he’d snake his neck out and bite it on the rump.
    The remuda was running in a merry-go-round, and I took Clay into the corral real slowly, planning to make a flip catch the first time Pinch passed me. But he didn’t go past. He dropped out of the circle and nipped his way into a bunch that was jammed in the far corner. I’d hardy looked toward Pinch, and don’t know how in the world he knew I was after him, but he did—and so did Clay. Both of them knew a lot more about the whole business than I did.
    Pinch turned to face us squarely as I rode toward the corner. One after another, the other horses dashed away, but he didn’t move a muscle, and Clay never once turned his head toward the others. He slowed his gait and, under me, felt the way a cat looks when it’s creeping up on a ground squirrel. I couldn’t very well make a flip catch with Pinch facing right at me, so I began to whirl my loop slowly—and must have glanced up at it. In that split moment Pinch dodged to get away, and quicker than the pop of a whip, Clay dived to stop him. If I hadn’t grabbed for the saddle horn faster than I could think, he’d have spilled me. As it was, I dropped my coil and the loop fell dead. I’d have lost my catch rope altogether if the end of it hadn’t been tied to the saddle horn.
    I was even more ashamed of myself for grabbing the horn than for wasting a throw and dropping my rope. Neither horse moved until I had the rope coiled again and had begun to swing my loop. As it came forward on the fourth swing, I yanked it down hard at Pinch’s head. But his head wasn’t there—and I came awfully near not being there either. In the split fraction of a second it took that loop to strike, Pinch had snaked his head away and dodged to one side. Clay dodged right with him, and I had to grab for the saddle horn again.

    I don’t think Pinch ever moved his hind feet, but he kept feinting and dodging with his front ones, and Clay feinted and dodged a little quicker. He didn’t pay any more attention to me than if I’d been a sack of rags—and that’s just about the way I rode him. More than half the time I was half out of the saddle, and the only way I could stay in it at all was by keeping a death grip on the horn. Hank was yelling orders at me, I could hear the men hooting and laughing, but the two horses kept feinting so fast I couldn’t get my balance long enough to coil in my rope.
    I must have slid back and forth across my saddle a thousand times before I had sense enough to pull Clay away from that corner, so he’d stand still long enough for me to think. I knew I’d lost my head in trying to handle Pinch, and I guess that’s what made me think of Hi Beckman. At the Y-B ranch he was always telling me, “A man that loses his head loses his horse. Don’t never tackle a horse till you’ve watched him and know his quirks.”
    When I’d sat still and thought a couple of minutes, I was sure I knew how to catch Pinch—and it worked just the way I’d thought it would. I whirled my rope, drove him out of the corner and into the merry-go-round, then crowded him until he caught up to the slowest runners. He did what I knew he’d do; snaked his head out to nip the horse in front of him on the rump. My loop caught him when he was looking where he was going to nip.
    Pinch behaved all right when I led him to the breaking pen, but Sid didn’t. When I was swinging out of my saddle, he fanned my behind with his hat, as if he thought I’d burned it when I was sliding around