On west beyond the end of this trail, in Spanish California,
even the drivers of oxen rode horseback. The first
transcontinental express was the Pony Express.
Outlaws and bad men were called "long riders." The Texas
Ranger who followed them was, according to his own proverb,
"no better than his horse." Booted sheriffs from Brownsville
on the Rio Grande to the Hole in the Wall in
the Big Horn Mountains lived in the saddle. Climactic of all
the riders rode the cowboy, who lived with horse and herd.
In the Old West the phrase "left afoot" meant nothing short of
being left flat on your back. "A man on foot is no man at
all," the saying went. If an enemy could not take a man's
life, the next best thing was to take his horse. Where cow
thieves went scot free, horse thieves were hanged, and to say
that a man was "as common as a horse thief" was to express the
nadir of commonness. The pillow of the frontiersmen who slept
with a six-shooter under it was a saddle, and hitched to the
horn was the loose end of a stake rope. Just as "Colonel Colt"
made all men equal in a fight, the horse made all men equal in
swiftness and mobility.
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