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Light rain formed dark pools in the muddy corrals. Fell hard enough for us to seek shelter in the saddle house. Old herders know that if a saddle shed feels comfortable, life is hard as hell outside. We knew the cow had to be removed. Just didn’t know how to move her on a wet track. We were so thankful she hadn’t expired in the chute that it took time for us to worry how hard it was going to be to pass her through the gate at the angle she was lying. The subject changed to other cows falling and staying down. My helper said the longest he ever had a cow stay down was one that suffered an emotional block. He and a kid on horses dragged her into a trailer, upsetting her so badly she refused to arise for two weeks. Laid where she landed until one morning the kid taunted her so much swinging an empty feed bucket in front of her nose that she arose on all fours, dead set on hooking the kid with her horns. Rain fell harder. Only tale I knew equal to the sulky cow story was the time one of my boys brought home a wife, or maybe it was a girlfriend, who refused to get out of bed on the day they were to leave. Mother called crying, demanding I settle the matter. Happened to remember a Mexican cowboy saying that his brother once lit a corn shuck mattress to give his wife more interest in arising to cook his breakfast. So I asked Mother to hand the girl the telephone. I am ashamed now that I told the old gal if she didn’t get up I was going to come to town and set the bed on fire. But I am not ashamed of the results. Mother called ecstatic, saying old so-and-so was packed and sitting out in the front seat of my son’s car, ready to go. Snowflakes began to mix in the mist. The black cow looked mighty sad with a white sheen on her black hair. Morning paper reported a death at the rodeo in Angelo. A bucking horse named Buffalo Gap died in action in the arena before the cowboy qualified. The daily newspaper reported the cowboy must have been uninjured, as he limped away without being interviewed. (Life makes cowboys wary of attention. Pal of mine lying on an operating table in Angelo last week was ordered by the surgeon to stop groaning because it made him nervous.) The cowboy probably realized the devil must have been in a big hurry to claim the horse if Old Ned couldn’t wait until the horse bucked the rider into a steel rail or an iron pipe gate. Rodeo cowboys have a deep appreciation of impending danger. Most likely the boy limped away because he figured if the call date on bucking horses was becoming so critical that they wouldn’t last a 10-second ride, he’d better quit the arena and find a better landing place than underneath a 1200-pound horse. (Bedding dirt in the arena is soft, but having a bull or a bucking horse pressing on your chest impedes breathing normally.) Standing in the saddle house door and watching the weather worsen brought back the time the Big Boss led a crew of us as far as the barn at the Bentley Line Camp in a rain that turned into a flood. Big Boss kept us there all morning, hoping not to lose a day’s work. Cowboys in those days owed the bosses for lots of lost time. Steady hands napped from dark to four in the morning. Most of us knocked off early for Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. We didn’t discuss why the cow died, but I will. She was five years old on good grass and feed. She hadn’t been nursing her calf but two months and didn’t show signs of fever. We had 23 head of her great-grandmothers on the same kind of pasture who, combined, couldn’t have donated enough teeth to match hers. Also, she wasn’t being ridden like the bucking horse. All she had to do to recover was stand in the shade of the barn and eat hay and soft alfalfa cubes twice a day. Sure wasn’t from mourning her calf we sold. She bawled twice the day he left, and those were short ones. Wish I knew more about the cowboy who rode the horse to his last jump. Might be a sad poem or a song possible about riding ‘Ol Buffalo Gap to the literal end of his trail. Sure wish those kinds of events were predictable beforehand. Be a relief to watch someone else’s stock die. |
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Questions? Comments? Suggestions? |
Yesterday
my time, and 10 days ago yours, our last hospital patient crumpled and
fell on the way to the chute for her final shot. We watched helpless
as she passed on to the black cow paradise of spineless prickly pear,
mountains of yellow cottonseed meal, and limitless meadows of mesquite
grasses.