At night we stood guard over the band, and it was amusing, and even alarming, how the stallions would charge out and threaten any rider who approached too near his ladies.

A good deal of fighting went on too between these very jealous gentlemen.

As illustrating what the wild stallions are capable of, I may relate here how, one night when we had a small bunch of quite gentle mares and colts in a corral, a mustang stallion approached it, tore down the gate poles, took the mares out and forced them to his own range, some thirty miles away; and he must have driven them at a great pace, as when we followed next morning it was quite that distance before we saw any sign of them.

The story is told of M---- himself who one dark night saw what he supposed was one of these depredators, shot it with his rifle, and found he had killed the only highly-bred stud he possessed.
At last we started homewards, meaning to separate the properties of the two claimants; but M---- owned the only proper horse-separating corral in the whole country, and from obstinacy and cussedness would not let us use it.

Here was a pretty go! To drive to any other corral would mean taking M----'s horses off their proper range and the law forbade us doing so, and he knew it.