Shades of old time Cowboys

Shades of old time Cowboys

Early Fall Works

Cultural Heritage

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Where is Duke Davis these days?

            At dawn this morning, I listened once again to the haunting phrasing of the old grey headed gentleman as he was prompted to reminisce about bygone days. He sat there to himself in that big town saloon listening to those fellows talk about places they’d been and things they’d seen. They finally called him out and ask him where he preferred to be.

            It wasn’t Chicago, or New Orleans, or New York for him. As a top hand of widespread renown, he took his hat off and his words took him home to Texas in the early spring.

His eyes betrayed his presence. He wasn’t there as he began his response. He was on a hundred hills with ten thousand head of cattle. He saw the smoke from campfires before dawn and the call of the cocinero. He heard the nickering of the horses and the song of the nighthawk as he jingled the remuda. He remembered the green grass of yet another promised year. He remembered home.

“I’d like to be in Texas, Boys, for the Roundup in the spring … “

Fall Work

For a bit of fancy, I switched to another Davis ditty. ‘Fall Work’ it was. Altered nostalgia, it was blue. Everything was a bit more subdued. The cook had been up since 4:30 and coffee was commenced to be poured. The Boss had ordered the horses to be wrangled, but the fall works would soon be over. Nobody was saying much.

I understand the blues. Fall offers them in abundance. Given a choice, though, fall works are my preferred days and memories.

There is too much New Mexico in my blood. When we were little kids we eventually learned at school about the beauty of spring from words. We had to nod our heads, ‘yes’, but our experience belied that as truth. Big winds, cold, hot, dust, dry, and more wind were what we knew. Green grass … we wouldn’t see green grass until the rains fell starting July 4 during the first afternoon performance of the Frontier Days Rodeo in Silver City.

Sure it was always a hopeful time, but spring in our country is just hard. I can only imagine now how fitfully those old time cowmen slept facing that time of the year. I do the same thing now, and our world is so much better equipped to face the horrors of spring and early summer.

So, let’s wait until spring to revisit a fresh start. Fall is with us, and it is time to saddle a horse for a different kind of ride.

Already saddled

At sunup Saturday morning, the four of us were headed to the ranch. Papolote was up front breaking the big wind in the open stock trailer. Bailey was in close and snug against him with her head dropped and relaxed. Tom was behind her pushed up and tight without having to be tied. Each of them would fill a special role today. Each had a job of importance, and each would spare the others.

Leonard and I decided we would start together from the south end of our Burris Pasture. That would put us at the pens earlier than the rest of the crew so we could start sorting cattle. Normally, Leonard goes north with the big crew sweeping south while I start from the south where I enter the ranch. Saturday, we had two other riders with us to cover the six sections on our end of the drive.

I called to Tom and he backed out of the trailer. He was quiet and alert. I was first out and on the west side of the road. That became my side of the drive by simple courtesy of position. Tom and I would cover the section and a half west of the road and throw cattle to our ‘half way drinker’ to join up with Leonard and the other two cowboys and make the final mile drive to the headquarters.

With big sweeping zigzags, we had 45 pairs at the trough when the other three cowboys appeared with at least another 100. We never hesitated and started the whole bunch north together.

In our current system, fall calves are easier to drive. Bigger and strong from abundant feed and milk, the calves of fall are strongly paired and growing. They drive much easier.  Pitching and wringing their tails they’ll make jueltes around as they are started. They’ll then fall in with their mothers and stay close.

As the drive to the headquarters commenced, I was reminded of what I was seeing as I observed Leonard and a vaquero friend with us that day, Miguel. Without discussion, we assumed the position in the drive where we were when the cattle came together. That put me on the left quarter and side, Leonard in drag and left and right quarter, and Mike in right quarter and side.  Sweeping left and right and front and back, the movements were synchronized and coordinated.

The cattle quickly fell into a steady movement northward. The vocalization of split pairs was minimal. A spring drive would have been just the opposite. Confusion and chaos accompanies those drives with young mothers and young calves split and lost from each other.

 At that moment in that scene, something special was taking place. There were real cowboys at hand. It was timeless. It could have been 1900 or 1950. The only difference was no cowboy was smoking hand rolled cigarettes or riding broncs. If the latter was the case, those cowboys would have been quietly schooling horses with their hands and their actions as they rode.

Our horses were veterans. Today’s operations cannot afford many horses. Those that make the grade are valuable and important. If anything, good ranch horses are rarer that good cowboys. So much has changed.

Leonard and I both swapped horses after we penned our drive and got a drink. Our drink was a sports drink with electrolytes rather than water. That, too, has changed.

I rode Papolote into the pens to start sorting. In the old days, we would have sorted the bulls off, lit a juniper and oak fire and started dragging calves to the fire. Today, we sort everything, in part, to look at each animal. That is done whether we rope and drag or use our calf table. The work this day called only for branding late season calves and sorting off some neighbors’ cattle we knew we had mixed with ours. There was no intention of weaning anything and there was no intention to work cows unless something was found in the sort.

It was a rare day of a single purpose and departed only on the basis of encountering calves too big to go in our table. Those calves had to be further sorted to go through the chute.

We broke at 1:00 PM after we completed the cut on our initial draft of cattle. We ate Doris’ home cooked ‘dinner’. She had fried round steak, beans, salad, white bread and butter, a squash casserole, and apple pies. That meal, too, was a glimpse of time past.

After ‘dinner’ I pulled the cinch on Bailey and we rode into the pen of cattle that had come from the north end of the gather. Those were the cattle we knew had neighbor cattle mixed. We sorted off a black bull. It then took us a full hour to pair the seven cows but we still had one, a cow with a big, fresh bag, we couldn’t pair. The calf had to be a new baby and we concluded we just didn’t have that calf in the pens.

By 4:00 it was apparent the delay would cost us finishing before dark. We made the decision to finish sorting and hold off until morning to finish branding. We paired the branded calves, unsaddled, and the crew headed to the house. I headed home. My three horses were worked, but fresh from their division of labor. Before sundown, Leonard found the missing calf and paired it with the strutted bag cow. Tomorrow, we would finish branding, pair everything, and turn them back into the same pasture at least a month before we thought about weaning.

As I drove down through the Coldiron Pasture, I thought about those visions of old time cowboys. I concluded that at least four of them had been with us today. I miss the smell of their freshly lit cigarettes rolled with Prince Albert tobacco, though, as I miss their predominance of silver belly hats.

I would fix one of the two … I wore my old 20X Bailey the next morning.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “We had no idea of the skill level of cowboys in our midst 45 years ago. God bless them and … their memories.”