On the ranch, on long days a-horseback, I did lots of listening, for I felt at my age I had few stories worth telling. What I was learning, in those days, was to be a good audience. I honored the storytellers by being attentive, by riding carefully abreast of them so as not to miss a single word.
Life on the ranch, of course, was not all stories of the past. Drama was a part of everyday life. One summer day Ern Morgan sent me off to help on the Marsh with an old cowboy named Roy. We shunned the roads and cut across country, both of us tired of the usual well-worn trails.
Roy was up in his seventies but fighting old age as though life had gone too fast and there were still places to go and things to do. I remember listening to the creak of him as we trotted along through towering virgin ponderosa pines, leaving a faint trail of pumice dust as we rode. I wasn’t sure whether the creak came from his old bones or from his ancient Hamley saddle, which showed a lifetime of hard use. We were conscious, both of us, that one day these giant trees would be cut and hauled away, and we had best drink in the scenery before it was gone.
I had the usual pity of youth for the old, after seeing that Roy needed a pine stump to mount and having heard him groan as he settled into the saddle. But before the day was out I learned that the old man had plenty of life left in him.
That afternoon we were dropping down off the ridges to the edge of Klamath Marsh, along Big Wocus Bay, when the old man’s horse stepped on a stick and began to limp. We still had miles to go, and there seemed to be little we could do but spend the night in the woods. But Roy had other ideas.
“Look,” he said, pointing to fresh tracks in the pumice and a faint haze of dust still hanging in the forest. “There’s a band of wild horses just ahead of us heading down to water. Maybe I’ll just get me another horse.”
We moved to a rim above Klamath Marsh, and sat and watched the horses from afar as they came out of the forest, crossed a meadow, and moved out toward the shine of water. The old cowboy crawled off his horse and tightened his cinch, motioning for me to tighten mine. “Can you rope, kid?” he asked.
“Just a little,” I replied. “Damn little, if you want to know the truth.”
Calmly, he took down his rawhide reata and shook out a loop so big it almost dragged the ground.
“Get ready to ride, boy. I’m about to catch me a fresh horse.”
He ignored my look of disbelief. “See that little peninsula that sticks out into the marsh? I reckon they’ll head out there to drink, then we’ll rush ’em. If it works, I might be able to get in a good throw as they try to break past us. Reckon they’ll do that rather than chance getting stuck out there in that muck.”
I stared at the old man, thinking he was crazy, but suddenly we were out of the woods and the spooked horses were blasting on ahead, running right out on that narrow neck. The old lead mare reached the end, paused, looked back, then piled into the water, throwing up a spray that drenched the other animals. She panicked in the muck and lurched back out of the water onto firm ground.
“Get a loop built, kid!” Roy shouted. “Here they come!” Before we were ready, the wild horses saw the trap and charged for freedom. Suddenly they were all around us as they tried to escape. I threw a desperation loop at a young sorrel and caught a willow bush instead. I looked around just in time to see Roy drop a loop around the big, battle-scarred gray stud, jerk his slack, and take his dallies around his saddle horn. “Git around him, boy!” Roy shouted. The rubber covering on his saddle horn began to smoke and stink as he rendered slack in his rope. The stallion slowed and plunged, nearly jerking Roy’s horse down. Giving in to the pressure of the rope, the desperate animal reared and fell over on his back.
As I galloped between the stud and the vanishing herd, I built another loop. The horse came to its feet, reared, and strained, trying to break the reata. Through flaring nostrils it gasped for air. I laid a loop in front of his hind feet as Roy dragged the horse into my trap. Stretched between two ropes, the stallion screamed in anger, then tumbled to the ground flat on its side. Keeping his reata tight, Roy rode around a small pine tree, stepping his horse across the rope three times. Then he slipped from his horse and tied the reata to the pine. “Ain’t the hoss I throwed at,” Roy admitted, “but he’ll do.
“Keep your rope tight!” he ordered as he unsaddled his horse.
Approaching the angry animal carefully, he took his tie rope by both ends and sawed it under the horse’s girth, then, as the horse snapped at him with yellowed teeth, got his old Hamley. Tying one end of the tie rope to the cinch ring, he pulled the cinch and latigo underneath the horse until the saddle sat in place on the animal’s back. Soon the saddle was cinched tight and ready for a rider.
The old man was out of breath. For a few minutes he sat on a log to catch his wind. I had the desperate fear that he was going to make me ride in his place.
“You think I’m going to ride that horse, you’re crazy as hell,” I snapped.
“You ride him?” Roy grinned. “Why, hell no. I’m going to show you a thing or two. Being young or old doesn’t matter half as much as knowin’ how.”
Roy straightened himself up to all of his five feet four. I could hear his old frame snap as he moved. “When I’m good and ready, you’re goin’ to turn ’im loose. You just be damn sure you keep ’im herded out in the mud away from shore!”
I was full of can’ts at that point, scared to death of riding in that quaking morass of a stinking black swamp. But before I knew it, Roy had jerked the snaffle bit off his own horse and had it between the stallion’s yellow teeth. He knelt on the horse’s neck while he got the reins in place and the throat latch buckled.
“Git ready,” he ordered. “Give ’im slack when I tell you and let ’im have his hind feet. We’ll pick up my reata tomorrow when we come back this way.”
He loosened his reata and tossed it free of the animal’s head, then crouched over the saddle. With a lunge, the horse came to its feet. Roy found the off stirrup with his toe. “Wish me luck, kid!” he shouted.
With a scream of anger, the stud leaped toward the marsh. Out in the deep the horse lost its footing, and for a moment there was only the boil of brown swamp water. Then, suddenly, both horse and rider were up and sputtering. Roy pulled the animal’s head around until it was pointed parallel to the shore.
“Haaaah!” I shouted, kicking my horse into the water. One more jump and the pair went down again, but this
time the angry animal kept its head up. Finding its footing, it lurched forward through the mud. Every time the horse would lower its head to buck, its nostrils would go under, and it would lift its head and charge on. Once it reared and fell sideways, pinning Roy under, but the man pulled the horse’s nose beneath the surface and it struggled up again to its feet. I kept busy splashing back and forth, keeping the animal herded away from shore.
We had gone only a quarter of a mile or so when Roy sensed that the animal was ready. “Ride right in front of him,” the old man said. “Lead him ashore. I think he’ll follow your horse.”
Before I knew it, Roy and the horse were on firm ground, and the stud, which had wanted to kill a cowboy only moments before, now trotted along behind mine, with only an occasional look back at the forest where his mares had disappeared. We moved west along the shoreline, holding as close as possible to the swamp, with Roy’s old saddle horse bringing up the rear. I shook my head in disbelief. I had seen a real cowboy at work and seen a touch of the past when old men were still men.
That fall, Roy and I were staying in the old white Houston ranch house on the west side of Klamath Marsh, riding for strays. The land was white with the first snows off the Cascades, towering above us to the west. I had come in early to start the cook fire, and Roy was taking one last sashay out on the flats to check stock water in the troughs. Outside the house I heard hoofbeats and looked out to see Roy’s horse coming in alone. The old Hamley saddle was empty, and the reins were dragging. Roy had been one of the lucky ones, avoiding
old age. I got the neighbors, and we brought his body in by moonlight with a team and wagon.
Chapter Seven
UNTIL WORLD WAR II CAME ALONG, changes to the West came slowly, almost imperceptibly. Then, almost over-night, the young men were gone, and even older ranch hands with able bodies had gone off to make money in factories. The ranches were left to survive as best they could with the dregs of the labor pool.
At Yamsi, we used old saddle horses that should have been retired, since there was no one around to ride Whingding or break colts. The young horses were there, of course. You can’t turn off a pregnant mare. But the horses that were ready for training got older every year and harder to handle when someone did pass by willing to start one.
At seventeen, I wasn’t quite old enough for the service, but I had to grow up in a hurry with all the responsibilities that were thrust upon me. I was a-horseback dawn to dark, moving cattle, doctoring, looking for strays. Buck had to open his own gates, for I was gone before he got up in the morning and back after he had gone to bed.
For years I had wanted to ride Whingding, but he had always been in someone else’s string. Now he was mine if I wanted him. He snorted a little as I got on him one cold morning, but he seemed to know I was itching for him to explode, and I couldn’t have made him buck if I tried.
My uncle liked to migrate to warmer climes in winter. Rather than be stuck with me, he shipped me off to school in California. I was an indifferent student, my mind filled with horses rather than mathematics and Latin. I couldn’t wait to get back to the ranch for Christmas vacation.
Most of the crew had been sent to the Williams, California, area to take care of several thousand wintering cattle. I spent the first of my vacation at Yamsi on long, bone-chilling rides to gather strays from lonely draws or meadows, which, coated with snow, were a far cry from the beautiful grasslands of summer. Outside of Ern Morgan, an old sheepman named Jim O’Connor, and Fred Shepherd, who we called Shep, the ancient chore man, there was no one around to help when things needed being done.
Morgan was beside himself with worry. “This goddam war! All the employment office in Klamath Falls ever sends me are winos, stinking of strawberry wine. I’m already three weeks late getting the cattle out of here for the winter, and if a storm strikes we’re in deep trouble!”
There was just so much hay in the Yamsi haystacks, but the long meadows were dark with cattle gathered off the ninety-thousand-acre range, cattle that would soon have to be fed. Morgan was right. We should already be moving out with the herd, driving them overland across the tablelands to the wintering area on the BK Ranch at Bly.
Morgan stayed at the telephone, trying to find men, but when the promised help failed to show up, the old foreman had little choice but to pray for decent weather. Each day we delayed increased the chances we would be snowed in with the cattle for the winter. Every day found Morgan up at dawn’s first light watching for clouds scudding along the tops of the Cascade Mountains to the west, indicating whether or not a storm was in the offing.
It was twenty below zero and still dark when we saddled our horses and started the herd of six hundred dry cows up over the long, snowy trail through the pine forest, up past Taylor Butte toward Bly, forty miles away. Most years the cows would have been eager for the trip and the herd stretched out down that snowy road through the lonely forest, thinking only of the stacks of timothy, clover, and bluegrass hay awaiting them at the end of the trail. But this time there were no leaders. These cattle had been summered on Klamath Marsh and wintered in California. They had no idea of the trail.
We were so desperate for riders, we let the old lady come along to help us over the hills. She was bundled up so only the tip of her nose and her faded blue eyes showed, but we saddled her horse, Ginger, for her, lifted her up on a stump, and shoved her aboard. There wasn’t a peep out of her, swathed as she was in wool. It turned out we couldn’t have made it up that first hill without her.
We had gone maybe two miles when it started to snow hard, and in minutes the backs of the cattle were covered, making them hard to see. It was just breaking daylight, but the woods were still ominously dark with the storm. Had the decision been mine, I would have turned the herd back, but somewhere in front of us, Ernie Morgan had taken a small bunch of cows at the point and was pushing them up the hill, breaking trail in what was now knee-deep snow. Morgan wasn’t a man to give up, and besides that, he knew from long experience that this might be the last chance left to get the cattle out of the valley before Yamsi Ranch was snowed in until spring.
The cows were hungry and stopped at each snow-covered bitterbrush bush to nose the snow from the branches and strip the leaves. I was riding Whingding at the rear of the herd, and he shied and snorted at each unfamiliar snow-covered shape. All I need now, I thought, is to get bucked off and have the drag take off back to the ranch.
All I had for help in the drag was a couple of red-nosed, well-intentioned neighbor kids and Margaret Biddle. Somewhere up along the flank was seventy-five-year-old Jim O’Connor, who would be doing his best because that was Jim’s way. But he was known as a better hand with sheep than with cows. Jim wasn’t very well mounted, and besides, there was only so much any man could do in a storm like this.
I screamed and cursed at the cattle, but the wind tore my words away. The kids seemed to be trying hard. I grinned at them whenever I passed, but already their horses were leaden with fatigue. Even with daylight, there was not much visibility. Each of us rode in a small world limited by how far we could see around us in that storm. We would ride up to a cow, scream, and pop the animal with the ends of our reins, only to find we were trying to drive a snow-covered bush. Whingding moved angrily back and forth, ears laid back, biting at the backs of cattle to drive them on. There was a gleam in his eye; he was tough as iron, and this was what he had been bred to do. He had two passions in life, bucking off cowboys and driving cattle.
We rode with one hand under our chaps for warmth, but one hand had to be out in the weather to rein the horse. Our fingers ached horribly, and our cheeks burned even as we snuggled our faces in our scarves and rode with heads bowed against the onslaught.
Now and then I would see the old sheepman ahead of me, hunched up and cold but doing his level best. He would glance back at me, reading my misery.
“Be the Jaisus, lad,” he’d shout with a grin. “Ain’t this fun, though? ’Tis a great day I be havin’!”
Trailing the herd at a distance was the chuck wagon, pulled by the gray Percheron draft team, Rock and Steel. Shep was in his eighties but a good chore man. He had been instructed to follow the herd to Eldon Springs, where we planned to take shelter for the night. The wagon carried a tent and our bedrolls, plus beefsteaks, eggs, coffee, biscuits, and candy bars to help us survive the ordeal of sleeping out in a blizzard.
Margaret Biddle and the kids in the drag were pounding on the cattle, moving them up twenty feet at a time, but as soon as the pressure was off and the riders rode after another laggard cow, the first cows would stop to eat. I trotted back and forth behind the herd, making sure I kept on the outside of all the tracks. Now and then I would find a bunch of cows trying to sneak off through the pines and head back down the hill. I would scream at them like a banshee and run them back into the herd.
It was noon when we finally made it to the top of the ridge, but here the wind came charging down off Fuego Mountain, ready to freeze us to our saddles, and blinding us with icy pellets. I hadn’t seen Morgan in two hours and hoped he could still locate the road through the trees. The old lady was a frozen lump on her horse, and I begged her to go back to the ranch. A few teardrops froze to my face, for I wasn’t sure I would ever see her again alive.
One of the kids in the drag was too cold to get off his horse and tried to pee from the saddle, but all he managed to do was wet his chaps. The laugh we had at his expense made us feel a little better, but we all had our own battle to fight, and the storm seemed determined to defeat us.
Three o’clock, and the storm showed no signs of abating. Whingding was tired but still determined to make the cows go. We were out of the pines now and surrounded by groves of mountain mahogany that gave scant shelter.
“It won’t be long now,” I shouted to the kids in the drag, but they were so bundled up in misery, they didn’t seem to hear.
Darkness came, and still we had not come to Eldon Springs. I was worried about the chuck wagon. It had been right on our tail at Teddy Power Meadow, but I had not seen it since. I kept thinking about possible disasters. What if old Fred lost track of the herd in the snow? What if he had a heart attack and died? What if the wagon lost a wheel, or a tree collapsed on the team?
We kept pounding on the cattle until at last the herd became thicker, and some of the tired cattle were even bedding down in the snow. I recognized some of those cows as having been part of Morgan’s herd in the lead. Maybe we had gotten as far as he wanted to go. Not far ahead I saw flames shoot up as Ern Morgan set fire to a big pitch snag. We had made it to the shelter of aspen groves at Eldon Springs, and here we would set up camp with the wagon and hot food, spending the night warm and snug in the tent.
The Pastures of Beyond: An Old Cowboy Looks Back at the Old West Page 6