Ranching

“ From Fort Sumner I then started for the round-up, taking with me a white man, the Mexican having got scared and quit. Having bought more horses, enough to fully mount two men, we joined the work. Fortunately M——'s outfit had gone up the river with a large herd of cattle, and was during their absence represented by the foreman of another ranch. ”

“ After five or six hours’ travelling through this country of marsh and of palm forest we reached the ranch for which we were heading. In the neighborhood stood giant fig-trees, singly or in groups, with dense, darkgreen foliage. Ponds, overgrown with water-plants, lay about; wet meadow, and drier pastureland, open or dotted with palms and varied with tree jungle, stretched for many miles on every hand. There are some thirty thousand head of cattle on the ranch, besides herds of horses and droves of swine, and a few flocks of sheep and goats. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once a day the cattle, in twos and threes, in bands, in strings, could be seen winding leisurely down the deep-trodden and converging trails to the water troughs at the home ranch, there leisurely to drink, and then leisurely to drift away into the saffron and violet and amethyst distances of the desert. At ten other outlying ranches this daily scene was repeated. All these cattle belonged to the man, great by reason of his priority in the country, the balance of his even character, and the grim determination of his spirit. ”

“ Interminable plains, that occasionally roll into waves, stretch away to the horizon to right and left, dotted with skeletons of dead cattle and widely scattered herds of living ones. Here and there a cow-boy's shed, and here and there a ranch of the ordinary primitive type, and here and there a dug-out, are all the "features" of the long ride. An occasional emigrant waggon perhaps breaks the dull, dead monotony of the landscape, and in one place there is a solitary bush upon a mound. A hawk floats in the air above a prairie-dog village. ”

“ Roy, whose father owned the Triple O ranch, had come out on this round-up about a week previously. On all big ranches it is the custom, at stated intervals to send out a party of men to round-up, or gather together, in herds, the cattle or horses that may have strayed to distant pastures.
Sometimes a week or more is spent on this work, the men sleeping out of doors, and making camp wherever darkness overtakes them. During the night they take turns riding around the cattle, to keep them from straying away. ”

“ The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear, lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed as dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The miraculous air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues of wild flowerets, gave tang and savour to the breath. In the sky was a great, round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but the dark lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. ”

“ A rancher's life is not an easy one. The hardest work comes in spring and autumn, when the cattle are 'rounded up,' or gathered together from their feeding-grounds all over the place, and parcelled out amongst the different owners. As the great pastures have no fences to mark off one from another, of course the cattle stray, and the Rosebud herd and the Snake River herd mix with one another, and with individuals belonging to ranches even more distant than these. ”

“ From them branched veins supplying the fields with the water that gave them life—the water without which the land was waste and barren; but with which it bore marvellously with the stored fertility of fallow centuries. Away at one end of the ranch, sheltered to north and west by low hills, was the ranch house itself, surrounded by young orchards, the stables, the corrals, the granaries, the cattle sheds, tool and implement houses. ”

“ Her father's ranch lay forty miles from San Lorenzo, high up in the foothills--a sterile tract of scrub--oak and cedar, of manzanita and chaparral, with here and there good grazing ground, and lower down, where the creek ran, a hundred acres of arable land. Behind the house bubbled a big spring which irrigated the orchard and garden.
Teamsters, hauling grain from the Carisa Plains to the San Lorenzo landing, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, would beguile themselves thinking of the apples which old man Ransom would be sure to offer, and the first big drink from the cold spring. ”

“ After the round ups and on returning from our long rides after strayed cattle we would have to prepare to take the trail with herds of cattle and horses for market and to be delivered to other large ranch owners. The party of cow boys to make these trips were all selected men. We would spend several days at the home ranch resting up and preparing our outfit, in which our guns, saddles, blankets and horses were given a thorough overhauling and placed in first class condition, as they would be called on to do good hard service on these trips on the trail. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were several ranches at which we could touch, en route, but we loitered along, making wide detours in order to drive through cattle, not a feature of the country escaping the attention of my quiet little companion. The soil, the native grasses, the natural waters, the general topography of the country, rich in its primal beauty, furnished a panorama to the eye both pleasing and exhilarating. But the main interest centred in the cattle, thousands of which were always in sight, lingering along the watercourses or grazing at random. ”

“ As the grass becomes scarce on the lower ranges the herds of cattle climb to the higher, along the spiral trails they make in grazing, taking always, like good surveyors, the easiest upward grade.
In the fall the cattle-men send out their cowboys, or “riders,” to drive the herds down from these highest ranges, where snow falls early, and to collect them in some valley chosen for the autumn “round-up.”
At Giles’s ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up and to ask a drink all [Pg 60] around from the spring which every traveler who has tasted it remembers. ”

“ ON A CATTLE RANCH—AN UNRULY STEER.
With the work of a cow ranch or horse ranch there comes more excitement. Every man on such a ranch has a string of eight or ten horses for his own riding, and there is a great deal of exciting galloping and hot riding across the plains; and the work in a stampede at night, or in line-riding during the winter, or in breaking the fierce little horses to the saddle, is as exciting as it is hard and dangerous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was heart sick, Virg, at the thought that some clever cattle thieves had made away with our prize stock. The distance that they had already traveled, if they were our yearlings, was so great I could have no hope of overtaking them. There was one thing that puzzled me. That rapidly moving cloud of sand was headed directly for the part of our desert that is called Burning Acres. Not a ranch nor a water hole for miles and miles and sure death awaits man, horse or cattle if they get stranded in that barren waste. ”

“ Twice a year on the big, western ranches, the cattle are driven in from the outlying ranges, to be tallied, inspected, marked and shipped away. The spring and fall round-ups are always busy seasons at any ranch.
During the times between round-ups the new calves attained their growth, but they needed to have branded into their hides the marks of their owners. Then, too, some yearlings escaped branding at times, either by remaining out of sight at the round-up, or in the attending confusion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we looked over that rolling icy field beyond the garden this morning, with the dazzling light on the snow, just as it is at home, and I shut my eyes, I could see the ranch, and Uncle Sandy and the boys, and fat Mrs. Malone, the housekeeper, so plainly that I almost put out my hand to touch them. There’s something queer about March; lots of the range cattle get through almost until spring and then give out, and the boys that have held out well all winter often go nearly blind of a sudden. ”

“ The Springs are on a great ranch which covers thousands of acres and supports hundreds of cattle. To reach them one drives over long stretches of plain, partly rich grass, where cattle feed, partly somewhat barren country.
Leaving the Hot Springs, we drove again across the vast sandy stretches and the rich green plains of the Warner Ranch, coming from there through picturesque and somewhat broken country to the [Pg 72] little Pala Mission. Before reaching the Mission one comes along a mountain road cut like a shelf into the hill and very high above the valley. ”

“ I bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.'
"'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.'
"'Can you herd sheep?' asks the little ranchman. ”

“ Help is scarce out here, and they have to help father with his haying. Ours is not a big ranch, you know, girls. We’re only a home ranch, so we hardly depend on the range at all for feed. It used to be a case of everybody turn out the cattle to graze, and then have the two big round-ups, spring and fall, but now everything has gone into sheep, as the cow-men say. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Riding many miles after stray cattle, milking, butter-making, rearing crops for cattle food in the winter. There is plenty of occupation and they work well.
The cattle on such ranches stay out the year round. On the largest the owner often knows not how many there are. Occasionally they are driven into corrals (wooden enclosures) , and counted, while the young stock are then branded. The life is necessarily wild, rough, and solitary. The ranch-owner, like Robinson Crusoe, is lord of all he surveys for many miles round. ”

“ Every week a man from the ranch made the rounds of the sheep camps, carrying mail, tobacco, and food,—brown sugar, coffee, flour, bacon, beans, potatoes, dried apples. On the morning when this was to happen I have watched the flickering light of the lantern travel back and forth over the ceiling of the room where I was supposed to be asleep, as the finishing touches were put on the load, and the horses were brought and hitched to the wagon before daylight, so that the long rounds could be made before night. ”