Shortgrass Country 

By Monte Noelke

The principal subject of the fall range meetings has been whether the fall rains have ended the drouth. Herders respond by showing their hands. Consensus goes to the undecided — a symptom of mistrust, deep mistrust of the shortgrass weather pattern. I think the correct answer is: "part of the drouth is over."

For the drouth to be over, completely over, every woolie operator and hollow horn player would have to be broken-hearted and on the verge of financial, physical and emotional collapse. Also, debts incurred in grass and money losses must be settled. Fractures and fissures in the nervous systems have to have time to heal. Wrestling doctors need to be summoned to apply their chiropractic skills to realign spinal columns damaged from lifting sacked and baled goods. And married folks will have to be brought under a general amnesty order to recover from the close calls with hay hooks and tire tools the stress of dry weather upon their relationships.

Ranges are so much better than last fall, it’s hard not to overreact. West of San Angelo, winter weeds are the principal crop covering the bare spots. Filaree and tallow weeds are high enough for cattle to graze. Woolies abound in this trove of rich forbs. I predict the spring kill by the coyotes and eagles will produce the fattest canines and birds this side of the San Diego Zoo.

The fierce shortgrass ragweeds passed through an autumn growing spree unprecedented for all times. The other day in Mertzon an old boy going out to pick up his morning paper sneezed so hard he lifted the latch on his front gate. Potions, like zinc lozenges, that work on mountain cedar pollens don’t faze ragweed allergies. By the time an hombre becomes affected, his system is so weak, his digestive juices won’t dissolve anything stronger than a sugar pill.

The drouth hit us in a new way this fall. Thirty days into our heifer calving season, a perfect score switched to two stillborn calves in one morning. The cattle were in the horse trap, so we discovered the loss before buzzards struck. Other than being a little dazed, the heifers arose and appeared normal. I was so frightened of all the diseases connected to stillbirth, I rushed off to the vets with the cow in the trailer and her dead calf lying on the salt sack.

In a week, lab reports showed every test negative except for the vaccine’s titer. The diagnostic lab and the veterinarian’s report of the calf showed an absence of body fat, indicating the mother used the past 90 days to restore her own body condition. We hadn’t lost any more calves during the waiting period. However, we still had the rest of the cattle to calve. I thought about asking the doctor if he kept smelling salts around for his patients, but the better horse and cow specialists out here lose their sense of humor from listening to herders complain about their bills.

The vet clinic is 56 miles of West Texas road from the ranch. There aren’t any stop signs, only a blinking light at a dangerous intersection of two highways. I strained to recall the past 50 some-odd calving seasons. 1955 was the hardest winter at the old ranch. Starved range hogs killed lambs and calves; senna poisons sent mother cows reeling about the pastures drunk as payday cowboys, and bitterweed toxins turned hundreds of old ewes into lumbering replicas of brown bears. We had to deepen the wells on the big draw for the first time since Grandfather Noelke patented the land. Blue bugs killed all the chickens, except a few game hens too old to lay. Rabies broke out in the spring; the drip gasoline we were bootlegging from the oilfield burned up the motor in the pickup. But I don’t remember having calves born dead.

I sure hadn’t forgotten the dust storms darkening the sky the day Jose and I were caught in the White Mill pasture, or the 43 boxcars of rotten hay the government program billed to Noelke Switch to help the ranchers. The trauma of sitting on the sunshine row at San Angelo National Bank waiting to renew my notes and borrow the money to pay the interest is forever imprinted to memory. Shipping the last of the Hereford cattle to the final dumping ground in Kansas, or rounding up the last of the Estate’s saddle horses for a farewell trip to the Turkish army is as clear as yesterday’s newspaper. Sure, we had trouble calving heifers, yet full-term calves weren’t born dead.

Those two heifers looked as good as the rest of the herd. Maybe a little better than some due to their youth. If I had just thought how merciless drouths are, I could have saved the doctor bill and charged the loss against that grand ledger labeled "experience."