The Crowstarver by Dick King-Smith Page B

cinch would be tightened, the pen door opened, and out into the makeshift ring would go the bronco, kicking madly against the pain of the cinch, while the amateur cowboy on its back promptly fell off it.
    Now they were free again, and the Wiltshire downs were a fair substitute for their native prairies, and they had no intention of ever being caught again.
    Each day Mister rode out into the Far Hanging on his big bay, and each day, at sight of him, or Percy on his motorbike, or of Tom on foot among his ewes in a neighbouring piece, the broncos would kick up their heels and gallop away into the distance.
    Mister consulted the horseman, and Ephraim said that the only thing to do was to drive them into a confined space where it might be possible to handle them.
    â€˜Round ’em up and corral them, eh?’ said Mister.‘Like the cowboys do in the movies!’
    â€˜Don’t know about that, sir,’ said Ephraim. ‘I never bin to the talkies. I only ever went once to the cinema in Warminster, to see that Charlie Chaplin. But the lambing-pens’d be the only place.’
    Out of the lambing season, Tom Sparrow did not use the stone-walled yard in which he set up his pens, except perhaps to house the occasional sick ewe, and often the shepherd’s hut, with Flower in the shafts, would be hauled out to some handier location. So now it was an easy matter to stack the hurdles of the pens to make space for the broncos within the walled enclosure. But first they must be rounded up.
    Mister planned this operation with military precision, to be undertaken by cavalry, supported by infantry. All the farm staff would take part. It would be spearheaded by three mounted men, himself on Sturdiboy, and Ephraim Stanhope and his soldier son Albie, who chanced to be home on leave, riding the two ex-hunters, Em’ly and Jack.
    They would enter the Far Hanging and between them drive the broncos out through the gate that led into the drove. Above this gateway, to turn the animals down, would be stationed the poultryman and his two sons. Towards the lower end of the drove Percy Pound and Tom Sparrowand Spider and the three Butts would bar the further progress of the broncos and turn them in through the gate of the walled yard.
    At first the operation looked doomed to failure. Hard as Mister and the two Stanhopes galloped, the six wild horses ran rings round them, but eventually, by good luck, the riders herded them close enough to the open gate for them to see it, and to see it as a place of escape. Through it they dashed, to be greeted by a wild chorus of yells from the three Ogles, and away they galloped down the drove, till they met the other section of the infantry and another loud hullabaloo that turned them into the yard. Then the gate was slammed shut behind them. When the horsemen and the Ogles arrived, it was to find the broncos standing bunched and blowing, flanks heaving, the steam rising from their odd-colored coats.
    They had circled the yard at speed, trying madly to find an escape route. But the stone wall was too high, and on the top bar of the gate, over which they might have been able to jump, Tom and the others sat and so barred that way out.
    Once the cavalry had dismounted and tethered their horses, the scene was set for the strangest confrontation ever to take place onOutoverdown Farm. Inside the yard were six American-bred broncos. Outside it, eleven men and a boy looked on.
    â€˜Right,’ said Mister. ‘Let’s get a halter on one of them, and then we can tie him up, and catch the rest one at a time.’
    There was a moment’s silence, all hoping that someone else would be chosen to go in among those snorting wild-eyed brutes, and then Billy Butt voiced the thoughts of all.
    â€˜Begging your pardon, sir,’ he squeaked, ‘but I don’t want to go in with they baggers. Now years ago, when I were a young chap, I might have risked me life and me limb in amongst they bleddy