Power of the Prairies

MUSTANGS AND COW HORSES edited by J. Frank Dobie, Mody C. Boatwright and Harry H. Ransom. 429 pages. Southern Methodist University. $7.50.

"The whole country seemed to be running! Thousands and tens of thousands of wild horses running in immense herds as far as the eye or telescope could sweep the horizon. Time and again immense masses of mustangs, circling and circling around us, charging and threatening to rush over us, would wheel from our yelling and firing and go thundering away."

As late as 1847, when this scene was witnessed, the mustang myriads that wandered the great plains were one of the principal natural resources of the wild West. Broken to the saddle, harnessed to the plow, they became an instrument of manifest destiny, the brute force that bore forward the men who won the West. In this classic compendium of horse lore, republished for the first time since 1940, a generation obsessed with horsepower is vividly reminded of the power of the horse.

From the Arabs. Mustang is the Texas translation of the Mexican mesteno, a general term for anything that looks more like a horse than a cow. The animal the word describes was principally descended from the fiery Arabs imported to the New World by Cortes and his conquistadors, and the rigors of the prairies notably improved the breed. The mustangs of 1850 were short (14-15 hands), hardy and fast: the stronger stallions kept manadas of 20 or 30 mares, and to defend the mares from randy rivals they fought frightful battles to the death.

Cunning as well as courageous, the stallions kept plenty of grass between manada and man, but during the 1850s the mustangers multiplied, and the odds in favor of the animals were disastrously reduced, Some were roped, some stampeded into pens, some "walked down" by patient riders who followed the herd for a week or two and imperceptibly and gradually assumed control of its movements.

Three Methods. Once captured, the best of the mustangs were broken to the bridle by several established procedures. The Mexican method was subtle but brutal: the horse was slowly starved and beaten into docility. The American method was stupid but decent: a man jumped on the horse's back and rode him till the man was thrown or the bronco was busted. The Indian method was noble and humane: immobilized by ropes, the horse was approached by his master, who spoke to him softly in "horse talk," stroked his body until every part of it had been touched and every fear assuaged, then mounted the pacified animal and quietly rode away.

By whatever method they were broken, good mustangs made good riding horses--some of them, in fact, displayed undeniable genius. In the 1880s, the authors report, a horse in Texas was trained to run backwards--fast. And a cutting horse named Bosley Blue, who could handle 1,500 head of cattle without a rider to direct him, once grabbed the tail of a raging steer in his teeth, flipped the brute on his back, then calmly sat on top of him till he sizzled down.

The Untamed. The most poignant passages in the volume, however, describe what happened to mustangs who could not be tamed. Many of them broke their own backs while trying to buck their riders off. The great White Pacing Stallion, the most famous mustang of them all, was captured after a pursuit of more than 200 miles, but proudly refused to eat in captivity and died. Wildest of all was "the massive steel-dust stallion" described by Blackfoot Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance. When his herd was corraled, the stallion went mad with fury and frustration. He murdered two other young stallions, fought off a dozen men with rawhide lariats, climbed over a seven-foot fence, smashed through a barrier of logs, charged into the open prairie, met up with eight horses, slaughtered them all--and went right on slaughtering his own kind. Till the day he died he was a four-footed psychopath.

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