It is curious how certain things go to the bad in the Far West, or a
certain proportion of them,--bad lands, bad horses, and bad men. And
it is a degree of badness that the East has no conception of,--land
that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping
and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads
to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly,
resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to
kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by
shooting about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who
ride along the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the old
plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the Rockies, and hint
very strongly of the infernal regions, so a kind of satanic element in
men and animals--an underlying devilishness--crops out, and we have
the border ruffian and the bucking broncho.
The President told of an Englishman on a hunting trip in the West,
who, being an expert horseman at home, scorned the idea that he could
not ride any of their "grass-fed ponies." So they gave him a bucking
broncho. He was soon lying on the ground, much stunned. When he could
speak, he said, "I should not have minded him, you know, _but 'e 'ides
'is 'ead_."