For more than a hundred years, American cowboys made their living through the skilled use of horse and rope. Whole libraries have been devoted to the horse, but no one, until now, has written a thorough study of the origins and evolution of ranch roping - which differs from arena roping as practiced by rodeo cowboys. Author/cowboy John Erickson studies ranch roping; and the endless debate between those cowboys who rope "hard and fast" and those who "dally." Mixing scholarship with this working-cowboy"s knowledge of the subject, Erickson tells stories of cowboys who could not resist fitting their loops on "things that ort not to be roped, " such as elk, deer, badgers, bears, and bobcats. He tells of jackrabbit roping contests, and of cowboys who roped mice, geese, hogs, wives, or a runaway milk wagon. Anyone who has ever "built a loop" or even thought about it will find this book hard to put down.