I turned around to look back and saw two things. First, the rope that was holding me was stretched back taut to the horn on the saddle of Zeke’s horse. Second, Zeke himself was running towards me holding a smaller rope in his hands. Before I could react, he reached me, skillfully flipped the rope around my ankles, pulled it tight and yanked my feet out from under me. However, rather than letting me crash to the ground and perhaps get injured, Zeke caught me and lowered me gently onto my right side. He called out, “Someone hand me that iron!”
At that point, I asked, “What are you doing, Zeke?”
“Why, whenever we get a new filly, we gotta brand her, of course. We don’t want some other ranch rustling our fillies.”
“Branding? Are you crazy? I didn’t agree to be mutilated!” I complained.
Zeke whispered confidentially to me, “Don’t worry — we just stamp you with a little ink, and it wears off in a week or two.” While he was explaining this to me, someone must’ve handed him the iron that he’d asked for, because I felt something cold pressed firmly against the side of my left buttock. Once that had been done, Zeke showed me the end of the iron. It was circular and inside the circle was a horizontal line of metal underneath which was the large letter ‘M’ so I asked him what it meant. “Why, this here’s the Bar M ranch. And the symbol means that you belong to us.”
Sighing with relief as Zeke untied me, I looked down at the black marking on my left buttock and started giggling. The ranch hands around the corral began applauding, so Zeke and I both took little bows of acknowledgment before we walked over to where his horse was standing. When we got there, Zeke pull something out of his saddle bag, stooped down and attached some leather cuffs that sealed with Velcro to my ankles. The cuffs had a short length of chain between them.
“What are these for?” I asked.
“Them’re hobbles. We put them on the horses to keep them from going too far,” Zeke explained. He then led his horse back to the barn and to its stall, while I hobbled along after them. And I suddenly understood where the term ‘hobbling along’ came from.
Once I found Zeke, he was closing his horse into its stall. He told me, “That the small roping chase that Thunder and I did when pursuing you wasn’t enough to merit any special horse care for Thunder. However, in your case, your running and tumbling to the ground did get you all sweaty and dirty.” So saying, he pulled a leather head harness off the wall and slipped it onto my head. I didn’t mind the thin straps that went over the crown of my head, circled my head at forehead height, and buckled under my chin… but I didn’t like the rubbery bit that he had me clench in my teeth. He hooked a leash to the head harness, and tied the leash off on a wall peg. So now I was hobbled and tethered, somewhat like I imagined a horse could be. This was sure becoming a strange, but Western flavored adventure, and I was glad to be having these new experiences while being controlled!