Cowgirl Thrillers
Page 11
In retrospect, maybe a job in this particular country hadn’t been the best idea. Probably why the pay is so pure damn good.
Sure is pretty country though, the finest kind of country. Big mountains, steep enough to pucker up your ass cheeks whilst riding across steep seemingly bottomless slopes on frozen ice slick ground, sidehilling on tiny tilted cow trails gathering cows. Country with beautiful pine, spruce and aspen forests on the high flanks; and sagebrush in the valleys. Country that grows fat calves on plentiful grass. Country I was thinkin’ I could peacefully settle down in afore it had got fractious a few moments back. So much for peace and quiet.
We had started out a force of 25 cowhands hired to round up a couple thousand head of ornery longhorn cattle. Their summer range encompasses round about 40,000 acres of pure damn wild country. We had searched for cows, calves and bulls. Well over 2000, in fact, as a cow and her new calf are counted as one pair rather than two animals. And most of the cows hopefully have a calf by their side. The lease is for 2000 cows. Calves being born into that year are not counted, and the calves are the money end of the operation. Fifty bulls fall on top of that too, as their job is creating those money making calves. No plan of the prime purebred bulls becoming meat.
Anyhow we had made a bunch of figurative circles through the numerous canyons, filled with sage brush in the dry bottoms and willow brush, thick and tough to ride through, in the creek bottoms. Up high, lodgepole pine and Doug fir for forest, speckled with quakies, our name for quaking aspen, in thickets. Beautiful on the outside but dark, nasty, twisted pecker pole mazes on the inside. We had rode over and looked at each square foot of the whole country in the course of about a month. A lot of it twice or thrice.
So thick are the groves of quakies that the sun seems to almost not penetrate. However, a more beautiful sight you will not see than the fall color of the aspen leaf. Yeller, orange, bright pure red, even a lovely mauve, every tree having its own varying and unique shades of beauty, and the super hardy trees still showing quite a bit of bright green, even after the early frosts, though not for long. Truly a pure color mosaic for my hungry eyes. We would even find cattle clear up in the high mountaintops above the tree line, aforagin’ for the alpine feed.
Each pair or so of us cowhands did a half day or day long circle of our allotted share of this range, follerin’ the orders of the Ramrod. We brought our cattle bunches together day by day in a larger and larger gather. Generally we could get them into a big canyon where they would settle and graze and loaf overnight until our morning return. If they didn’t settle we would leave a couple of hands to ride nighthawk and serenade.
After we had the most of them found, we circled them loosely up and sorted out each rancher’s stock in order to get them to their respective home ranches. We split up and delivered each cattleman’s bunch or several ranches’ brands together, if their ranches were in the same direction. All through the gather we had a continuing loss of a few mavericks who would quit the herd and head for the brush. They would hightail it when they thought no one was looking, and by golly if we weren’t lookin’ or our mount hesitated a half a step, they were gone! No brush, however thick or prickly, would stop them. They just knew that there was some grass they needed to get et up before shippin’ out. Also, they figured hiding in the brush would save them from us boogedy bears. They surely had no liking for losin’ their freedom to roam.
Just the pure love of being wild and free up in that open country, few fences and hardly ever a human to bother their pastoral lifestyle, who wouldn’t warm up to that idea? I sure was thinkin’ hard on it. My kind of lonesome land. No one to tell you what to do, just the whisper of the aspen leaves in the breeze. This was my first trip to the Rock and it was more than pleasing to my eyes. Better than I could have even imagined. Hell, peopled with good lookin’ cowboys to boot.
After all the cattle we had gathered and range cut were delivered to be sorted between being shipped to market or moved to winter range, we back rode for the laggards for another 14 days. Some days it is the thankless job of the cowboy: low wages, nasty weather, worse weather, rough terrain, ornery critters, and occasionally contrary horses.
Main gather done, the Ramrod sent most all of the hands home. I was alone, crossing the range for one last ride on my spare horse, Bogey. My partner, Michael, had split out the other direction this morning doing a circle of his own. Michael was a seasoned hand. I grew up in ranchin’, but both he and myself were rookies on this range.
My main equine partner was Spike. A cowhand generally had two or three steady mounts and a couple half broke cayuses for a job like this. Dependin’ on their age and physical condition, each one had a half or full days rest on a regular basis, this being long hours of work in rough terrain.
Life doesn’t always go according to plan. Seriously, does it ever go according to plan?
I seem to be too cold to think straight.
I pull into camp after too long a ride over hill and canyon in the pitch dark, what with the clouds and pouring rain obscuring the full moon I had hoped to use to see. I am cold, wet, shiverin’, and hypothermic. Horses have fur and live outside, so Bogey is warm, comfy and in his element, as he is in most any weather. And like all horses, he always knows the way home. Which is good, ‘cause he’s been in the driver’s seat. I am just a’ hangin’ on.
“Damn, a hot fire’s gonna feel good, old horse.”
Bogey just nods. Nice thing about talkin’ to your animals, they never talk back. Don’t know if you ever noticed; when a horse walks, his head nods continually up and down. It’s him sayin’, ‘Yes, ma’am, I agree, whatever you say.’ He’s the best.
Fortunately, Bogey has been sending some much appreciated horse heat up my way on the ride. Getting off and leaving that horse heat with no fire built and chores to do was gonna be tough. Usually we had banked up coals left in the pit, but the rain had snuck in on us and fixed that.
I slide off old Bogey and...“Shit!”...crash all the way down to the dirt. My bruised and beaten body has stiffened up considerable during the long ride. By the time I unsaddle, grain and turn Bogey loose, I have regained not my pride but at least my composure. I limp and gimp over to the fire pit intent on heat, shelter from the rain and a warm meal.
I am getting out my matches with numb fingers when I hear hoof beats.
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