This article is found on page 12 in the Winter 2004 issue. I never stayed on one ranch long enough to be a boss, but one time me and Leppy went to work for a young cowboy that had got the cow boss's job because his father knew lots of cattlemen and had lots of pull in government circles. Consequently, Andy got the cow boss job.
Well, this ranch ran in a big, rough country that was called "The Devil's Garden." I'm damned sure it wasn't misnamed. It was all malpais rock with sagebrush and juniper; rolling country with no landmarks to set your compass on. It was high desert, but it had springs that just popped up in the desert floor.
If you rode across one of those places, maybe just a few feet in diameter, a horse would drop like stepping in a hole. You'd flop off as best you could, and your horse would have a devil of a time getting back on solid ground. The only good thing was that those native horses were hard to ride into one of those places. It sure made you spooky to be trying to head an old cow and have one of those wet suck holes loom right in front of you.
Ordinarily, the fall gathering there had to be done by a crew of ten or eleven riders, mostly local men. Andy told the owner we could do it. We didn't need any extra help.
Andy was the "boss," but every morning, while he was messing up the hotcakes, he would tell Leppy and me what the plans were for the day. We'd mull it over, and if it was nothing serious we'd let Andy be boss. It if took a little extra past cow experience than we figured Andy had, Leppy and I would decide who'd be the segundo that day.
Our first work was to ride the country for young, barren cows to send to market. There was a set of corrals and a large lot on a lake at the upper end of the Garden. We decided we'd work that country first. We could hold our cows in the water lot, and, when we got a hundred or so, trail them down to the big, fenced-in meadow at the main camp. We'd hold them there until we got a large enough herd to trail them on down to the main ranch.
Andy, as boss that morning, told me to get our camp outfit together, enough for four or five days, but keep it as slim as possible. We moved our camp outfit up on one pack horse.
That first evening, when Andy went to make us up some dough-gods, he asked where the mixing bowl was.
"You said, 'Keep it slim.' I didn't bring one," I replied.
"How we gonna mix up anything?" was his question.
I got the sack of flour out, opened up the top, and hollowed out the flour like a bowl. Into that flour bowl, I put baking powder, salt, and shortening. Then I added watered-down canned milk and proceeded to stir it around until it was the right consistency to pinch the dough-gods out and fry them on the grill with the meat and taters.
Andy was a good hand and a good guy, but, like I said, he'd spent a lot of time in agricultural college while Leppy and I were out tormenting the cows.
We'd had good luck and gathered 150 or so fat cows in the first two or three days. We finished breakfast and were deciding we'd better take them to the trap at the headquarters camp. I'd stepped out and had my lass rope around my horse's neck when I heard something that spooked the cows, causing them to run in a bunch against the side of the lot they were in. There was a pole fence there, but it didn't even slow them down.
It was between a quarter- and a half-mile to heavy timber. They were in a bunch. If I could beat them to the timber, maybe I could turn them. If not, they'd be hell to gather again.
I jerked my bridle on my horse, grabbed my saddle, ignoring the blankets, and slung it on him. I ran the latigo through the cinch ring, jerked it up, and took a couple turns around the horn with the loose end as I bailed on and bogged it to him. He blowed up in a running buck in the right direction.
I still had my lass rope around his neck, so I had my reins and rope coils in my left hand. I'd managed to get over the loose end of my latigo after it coiled around the horn and down across the right jockey of the seat. I grabbed the coils with my right hand and went to thumping and sqaulling like a panther. It got that old pony past his bucking stage into a dead run.
I outran the cows and came in just right to haze them away from the timber and toward open country.
Of course, Andy and Leppy weren't moseying along. They got saddled about as fast as I did and came to my rescue. I had just got a good head start on them.
We were headed in the right direction and were a couple miles on our way before we got the cattle settled down some, so we just took them on to the camp trap.
We had about 500 head in the half-section trap, along with the strays of several local ranchers. We notified everybody concerned that we'd hold a "rodero," and they could come cut out their strays.
One rancher had five big three- or four-year-old steers that had dodged the gathering for two years. He hand-raised his cattle and had them all named. He claimed he could call them and they'd come to him. He rode up to the roundup and called his steers, but they didn't come out of the herd. They just stood shaking their heads and looked at him.
I can still hear that guy saying, "What's the matter, boys? Have these fellers been chousing you and got you wild?"
We'd choused them alright, the wild-running sons-of-guns. When we finally got them out in the open country, we team-roped them all just for the hell of it.
The three of us took that herd to the headquarters. We had fat dry cows and a lot of old cows with calves in the herd.
The first couple days, we let Andy be boss until about the middle of the morning. I rode back from the lead and saw Andy with about 200 calves. I told Andy to quit pushing the calves and to see if he could just hold them.
I was going to circle the lead around that knoll off to the right and bring them around and back up through the calves. Then, when we started out again, he and Leppy were going to stay with the lead. He was going to stay away from the drags, and we'd go on. It worked better than I'd hoped it would, and almost every calf mothered up and went on with its mammy. I just let the drag mostly take care of themselves.
We made it to the meadow where all the cattle were left together for a few days to rest. We drank a little beer that night, before starting out on a hog roundup the next day.
I didn't know what we were up to, but should have figured something was up when Andy and Leppy both caught young horses and Andy casually suggested I ride my good roping horse.
A lot of the ranches used to run hogs semi-wild. They'd just let them run in the meadows and gather them like cattle when they needed a fresh supply of pork.
Well, Andy informs us we were going on a hog roundup. We'd corral them in a big, high, boarded-to-the-ground corral. When we finally got them all corralled, Andy informed me that he and Leppy would do the ground work-castrating, ringing, and so on, on the 40- to 50-pound pigs. All I had to do was ride into the hog corral and catch the young pigs and drag them out. The hog corral was full of sows, boars, and young pigs, all mixed together. Andy and Leppy would run the gate to keep the sows in when I drug a pig out at a hard lope. They'd flat-ass the pig like a calf and do the work, then turn the pig back inside when finished.
There were several sows and a couple boars that stood as high as my stirrups ahorseback. They all had tusks shining at me.
A couple times, the boys didn't get the gate shut in time to cut the sow off, so I'd have to make a circle, ride back into the hog corral while dragging the pig, and then escape those long, snapping tusks while circling back to ride outside again. Of course, all this time, those pigs are squealing as only pigs know how to do.
We finally got them all worked without any serious mishaps, but, if you really crave a thrill, you should try that sometime.
When we went back to the Devil's Garden to finish our fall work, Andy mentioned to the owner that we were sort of short on horses. All the owner said was, "There's lots of young horses out there. Use them."
We gathered a bunch of 15 or so into our wrangle trap. When we came in, in the evening, if it wasn't full dark, we'd catch a couple, get a hackamore on them, and tie them up for the night. We had a good, stout corral for this. They didn't have too much buck left in them the next morning when we went to use them.
One day, Andy and Leppy were both riding broncs, and I was on a good cow horse. Now, like lots of semi-desert country, some of that open country was so big it took three looks to see clear across it to the distant horizon or low hills. It was a big country.
I don't remember why, but Leppy went off on a circle, planning to meet us over yonder some time around noon. He was in camp when we finally got in.
Andy and I had picked up a bunch of cows and were moseying along with them when we spotted a band of 40 or 50 antelope out on a long, narrow piece of land that ran way out in a lake.
We'd both always wanted to rope an antelope, so down came our ropes with a loop poked in the business end. We got between the antelope and the free country before they saw us and here they came, right on close by us.
They can outrun a horse for a ways, and we were letting them drift by. A real good young buck was coming up in range of my rope. We were running full out, and I was just ready to sail my loop when I felt my horse hit a very odd gait. He was running on only one front leg. A three-inch strip of hide was all that was holding his hoof to his body.
We got stopped without a fall, and there was nothing I could do. It was ten miles across roadless rocky desert back to our camp. I had to put my good horse out of his misery, a very hard thing to do.
There we were, two men, two heavy stock saddles, and one bronc horse.
"What'll we do now"" asked Andy.
I surpogulated the situation over for a spell and then came out with, "Go run those cows back over this way. Catch me a good stout one, and I'll saddle her and ride her home."
It was just a short ways to where the cows were, so I figured he'd be right back. After a half hour or so, I got worried and hoofed it to the highest piece of ground around. Off in the near distance grazed our cows, but no Andy. I was getting worried but then noticed that, off to my left, a band of horses, Andy hot behind them, was leaving a dust cloud behind as they headed directly my way.
I had my lass rope, so I ran back to my saddle and got my long yellow slicker. The horses were coming on my side of the lake.
I got behind a juniper bush, and, at the right time, I jumped out, flagging the slicker, and was able to turn them right down the peninsula where we'd run the antelope. Andy and I built right in behind them and ran them off into the lake.
"Catch me a good one when they come out," I yelled, as I started throwing rocks at them to keep them going.
When they came out, Andy was right in the middle of them, and he latched onto a big, fat, stout, strawberry-roan mare. This was the first time his old pony had seen anything like that. Actually, it was his first ride outside a corral.
Andy took his turns, and his horse blew the plug. He was doing a fairly good job of it, too. The old roan mare sold out and ran on the other side of a 20-foot-tall juniper tree. That tree really gave both horses a whale of a jerk!
Of course, all this time, I was coming full bore as fast as old Shank's pony could get me there.
I cast a loop about the time the mare's front feet were coming back to earth, and picked them both up. There was a good snag stump there, and I was able to get my turns on it, and we got the mare down.
Andy's horse had quit bucking when his rope came tight around the juniper.
I ran up and got the mare's feet tied together so she couldn't get up. Then we rolled her some and got my cinches underneath and my saddle on her back. I took the chin strap off my grazer bit, the better to pull her head around without a curb strap.
We got the ropes off her feet and I came up with her. We boiled up a little desert, but then I got her lined out and rode back to camp. I don't know why I didn't keep her and use her the rest of the fall except that, back in those days, a good ranch cowboy wouldn't be caught dead riding a "Nelly!"
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