Ranch hand

“ In the summer this ranch is covered with green, and little yellow and pink flowers carpet the range for miles. It is at its best then, and is as varied and beautiful in its changes as the ocean.
The ranches that stretch along and away from the Rio Grande River are very different from this; they are owned by Mexicans, and every one on the ranch is a Mexican; the country is desolate here, and dead and dying cattle are everywhere.
No ranch-owner, whether he has fifty thousand or five hundred head of cattle, will ever attempt to help one that may be ailing or dying. ”

“ By dint of great exertion we managed to reach the ranch the next evening, where we lay over a day and rigged up a second wagon, purposely for calves. It was the intention to send the stock cattle to my new ranch on the Clear Fork, and releasing all but four men, the idle help about the home ranch were substituted. In moving cattle from one range to another, it should always be done with the coming of grass, as it gives them a full summer to locate and become attached to their new range. ”

“ Besides, there’s plenty to be doing down at the home ranch. Over yonder, a few miles more, are the cattle, and some more of the boys. There’s about five hundred head. I used to have a larger herd, in the old Texan trail days, but there are few real ranches left now. They’re all stockmen and farmers. I’ve got some of the last long-horned steers in the county, now, out yonder, and when I settled here, they were all Texans. ”

“ Only my ranch is ever so much bigger than his pastures, even all of them put together. And there are very few fences around any of my fields, so the cattle or horses might easily stray off, or be taken.
"Because of that I have to hire men—cowboys they are called—to watch my cattle and horses, to see that they do not run away and that no white men or Indians come and run away with them. ”

“ The Circle and Dot is our brand—you can see it on the ponies," and he showed on the flank of his mount a circle burned in the hide—a circle in the center of which was a dot. Each ranch owner brands, with a hot iron, all his cattle, that he may pick out his own when they mix with another bunch at the grazing. Each ranch has a different brand, and they consist of simple marks and symbols, each one being properly registered in case of lawsuits. ”

“ Thrifty little towns were springing up along the railroad, land was in demand as a result of the boom in cattle, and an air of prosperity pervaded both city and hamlet and was reflected in a general activity throughout the State. The improved herd was the pride of the Double Mountain ranch, now increased by over seven hundred half-blood heifers, while the young males were annually claimed for the improvement of the main ranch stock. ”

“ There, some two hundred yards distant, upon a patch of open ground partially encircled by dense, willow-scrub, lay a ghostly-shadowed cluster of ranch buildings. The living habitation itself stood upon a slightly raised knoll, hard upon the river-bank. To their nostrils the night air brought the strong, not unpleasant scent of cattle, drifting up from the numerous recumbent bovine forms which dotted the ground all around the ranch. ”

“ We passed an occasional lonely farm known as a "milk ranch," or "chicken ranch." There are no farms in California: no matter how small the tract is, it is always a ranch.
In the strong, warm sunshine chance objects on the bare slopes cast intense, purplish shadows. That of a distant tree is as dark as if a pit had been dug under it. That of a bird, flying low, is followed as distinctly as the bird itself. ”

“ They were two Arapahoes, a Blackfoot, and a Delaware, and they followed the ravine and soon came in sight of the little [Pg 275] mountain pasture, dotted with cedar bushes and sparsely covered with grass, which sloped gently down the mountain side. In the fading twilight the so-called ranch stood vaguely outlined, the nature of its log and adobe walls indiscernible, its mill and the still house looming vaguely over the main building against the darker background of the slope. ”

“ The ranch buildings, which consisted of half a dozen rough sheds and as many more corrals, beside the ranch house or log shack, lay in a valley. On one side rose a high range of mountains, wooded to the summit; on the other, a long, rolling, grass-covered plain.
"I don't see any sheep," said John, after scanning; the country in every direction.
Abe looked up, but held his stubby forefinger pressed firmly on the last word he was deciphering, as if to make sure of its safety.
"Oh, they're twenty-five miles down the creek now," he answered. "We only keep them here in the winter. ”

“ I know a good deal of ranching in western North Dakota, eastern Montana and north-eastern Wyoming. My ranch is in the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri, a good cattle-country, with shelter, traversed by a river, into which run here and there perennial streams. It is a dry country, but not in any sense a desert. Year in and year out we found that it took about twenty-five acres to support a steer or cow. When less than that was allowed the ranch became overstocked, and loss was certain to follow. ”

“ Even to-day, when peaceful ranches dot the floor of the Spout and the shuf-shuf of Tin Lizzies sounds where once the yip-yip of Zang Whistler's men rounded stolen cattle into a trail herd for surreptitious markets in another State, there are but two ways into the mountains' treasure box: The road that comes from the east over a high shoulder of one bounding wall up to the old Bar C Ranch and another passing up from the south where the Tisdale ranch stands and into the valley through the natural gate at the southernmost end. ”

“ Yet if, as I suspect, you have an ostrich farm, I can’t blame their curiosity. I’m hoping to visit one, myself.”
“Ours is not a real ‘farm.’ It is just one of the many things our ranch is good for. But I know my mother would make you very welcome. You–but there! Look down, please. Yonder it is, Sobrante. That means ‘richness,’ you know. And now up. The next turn will land us on the mesa, and I hope, I hope, I have come in time!”
10The road had now broadened, and with a little chirrup to King Zulu, she passed and forged ahead so rapidly that she was soon out of sight. ”

“ They are no more ranchmen than the absentee landlord who lives in his London house is a gentleman farmer.
The largest ranch in the United States, and probably in the world, owned by one person, is in Texas, and belongs to Mrs. Richard King, the widow of Captain Richard King. It lies forty-five miles south of Corpus Christi. ”

“ We rode out the corral gate and directly into the open country. The animals chafed to be away; and when we loosened the reins, leaped forward in long bounds. Over the rough country they skimmed like swallows, their hoofs hardly seeming to touch the ground, the powerful muscles playing smoothly beneath us like engines. After a mile of this we pulled up, and set about the serious business of the day.
One after another we oversaw all the major activities of such a ranch; outside, I mean, of the ranch enclosure proper where were the fowls, the vegetable gardens, and the like. ”

“ Fortunately I was able to reach the ranch all right, finding there one of the sons of a Little Beaver ranchman, and a young cowpuncher belonging to a Texas outfit, whom I knew very well. After putting my horse into the corral and throwing him down some hay I strode into the low hut, made partly of turf and partly of cottonwood logs, and speedily warmed myself before the fire. We had a good warm supper, of bread, potatoes, fried venison, and tea. My two companions grew very sociable and began to talk freely over their pipes. ”

“ But give me the prairie, smooth and level as far as the eye can reach! There's nothing like it in all the world! The open prairie, a cool, spring day like this, and a horse that will go till it's ready to fall dead—that is life! Who is it that lives over there?" she asked, pointing toward some ranch buildings, nestled in a low, green valley. [Pg 47]
"That's the Englishman's place," answered the soft-voiced twin.
"Sheep-man," explained Dave disgustedly. "See them sheds?"
"Oh, the new man by the name of Livingston. Do you boys know him?" asked the girl curiously. ”

“ As the rain began to fall in torrents, we heard the men who had been detailed to guard the La Monte place galloping off.
An itinerant tailor had pulled into the ranch just before our return, and was peacefully sleeping in his wagon. He was awakened when the horses were driven into the corral, and came out to learn the cause of the commotion. He was so excited when he heard that an insane person was in the vicinity he asked to sleep at the bunk house with the men. They tried to laugh him out of his fears, but his fright was so genuine they told him to “come on.” ”

“ So, with only a small trunk, hastily packed, of her belongings, and an iron-bound chest of the trader's, the two had started before dawn in Uncle Bill's stout buckboard, behind his famous four mule team, with Pete to drive, and two sturdy ranchmen as outriders, hoping to reach the Medicine Bow by late afternoon, and rest at Brenner's Ranch. ”

“ And to an Eastern man it appears almost as lonely. Some light-houses are isolated in the ocean, some stand in bays, and some in harbors; and in the same proportion the ranches in Texas differ in size, from principalities to farms no larger than those around Jersey City. The simile is not altogether exact, as there are small bodies of men constantly leaving the “ranch-house” and wandering about over the range, sleeping wherever night catches them, and in this way different parts of the ranch are inhabited as well as the house itself. ”

“ While the registry of cattle brands in the local western newspaper always includes among its symbols some three-ply hook or decimal fraction or swastika design that stands for the ranch of an enterprising and successful woman, there is always a suggested possibility to the mind of the young girl that lends fervor to her efforts. It is not forbidden that she should excel and even have a ranch of her own. [Pg 111]
The author knows of an efficient woman who owned and ran for twenty-five years a ranch of fifty thousand acres in the midst of the southern Rockies. ”

“ The old ranching days of California are to all intents and purposes past and gone. To be sure there remain many large tracts supporting a single group of ranch buildings, and over which the cattle wander "on a thousand hills." There are even a few, a very few—like the ranch of which I am going to write—that are still undivided, still game haunted, still hospitable, still delightful. ”

“ I should permit my hair to grow "as God planted it"; I should chasten my bitter tongue and heart; I should cultivate my neighbors, and I should not set myself up against my fellow men. Hm! Sounds very fine, my Scotch friend, but what do you know of what I have been through? How can you know that I am frozen inside?
My ranch—and I would rather write of my ranch [Pg 86] than dig into my personal thoughts and emotions—if there are any left in me—my ranch lies midway between the good grain lands on one side and the hill country, the cattle lands, on the other. I suppose I am part of Yankee Valley. ”

“ All this time we had been working steadily away from the ranch. Long zigzags and side trips carried us little forward, and a constant leftward tendency swung us always around, until we had completed a half circle of which the ranch itself was the centre. The irrigated fields had given place to open country of a semi-desert character grown high with patches of greasewood, sagebrush, thorn-bush; with wide patches of scattered bunch grass; and stretches of alkali waste. ”

“ This discovery simply served to strengthen all the more the theory that the ranch was the site of the missing loot, and again these two sleuths set diligently to work to find it, making an exhaustive hunt of the premises, exploring the barn from mudsill to rafter, prying into every nook and corner of the house, wielding the pick and shovel in the garden, the corrals, the field, questing with the ardor of bloodhounds each spot or locality where a man would be tempted to conceal a stolen fortune. ”

“ Eight thousand graded merino sheep, with the necessary equipment of horses, vehicles and general ranch paraphernalia. Ranch-house built of brick, with six rooms comfortably furnished according to the requirements of the climate. All within a strong barbed-wire fence.
“‘The present ranch manager seems to be competent and reliable, and is rapidly placing upon a paying basis a business that, in other hands, had been allowed to suffer from neglect and misconduct. ”

“ In the outdoor life and freedom from conventional cares—there has been a peculiar charm in ranch life. In no life are the grit and efficiency of the well-bred in such marked contrast with the puling whine and shiftlessness of the settler from the cesspool of the city slums. I have gone into a prairie shanty where an Englishwoman sat in filth and rags and idleness, cursing the country to which she had come and bewailing in cockney English that she had come to this ”

“ A house, it would seem, is almost the least important part of a ranch; one can camp, with frying pan and blankets, in the shade of a bush or the shelter of canvas. But to do anything upon a ranch, one must have many things—burnable things, for the most part, as Manley was to learn by experience when he left Val at the hotel and rode out, the next day, to Cold Spring Coulee. ”