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| Our home place in the spring. |
This time of the year is full of beauty and tranquility; the cattle all have babies by their side, the grass is a deep dark green and up to the horses bellies in places, the sky is strikingly blue and life is good! This is what the cattle industry apears to the untrained eye to be all about, and it is, it is why we do what we do; for those fleeting peacful, deeply spiritual days like the ones we get often in the spring.
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| Momma and Baby |
Last week we trailed our cows to the mountain and it was the most perfect day. A day that makes you feel like you might understand God a little more.
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| Headed up the mountain |
The days leading to that moment however usually consist of at least one wild ride. The tale of Tuesday is what I'll call this or The Wild Ride. Tuesday seems more fitting because we have many days of wild rides. Western wrecks, or our own personal ranch rodeo. Tuesday we were gathering our neighbors cows to move to the mountain for summer. All week we moved cows to the mountain, some we had to gather and haul on semi trucks, ours we were able to drive them up the mountain from our lower pasture horseback. We only had about 8 miles to go. But tuesday we had about 45 miles to go, so it was gather, load on trucks, haul and then push up the mountain. Tuesday, we consisted of 4 cowboy's/cowgirls, 4 horses, 3 dogs and a few hundred head of cattle. Gathering them all off their winter pasture went rather smoothly, it wasn't until we got to the corral or close to the corral, should I say, that things went a little haywire.
We had Tony (cowboy 1, our neighbor) Kelly (cowgirl 1, neigbor's wife) Jim Bob (cowboy 2, my husband) and Laurel (cowgirl 2, me) Cowboy's and cowgirl's got all cattle within 100 yards of the corral and one wild cow made a break for it, the cowboy's went after her, cowgirls stayed to hold the cows in the corral while we waited for the wild cow's return. Cowboy's shortly after get the wild cow again about 100 yards from the corral, so cowgirl 2 (me) goes to the left to turn her towards the corral.....uhoh....cowgirl 1 has another jail break wild cow #2 wants to join wild cow #1 for back up and this is where it gets really interesting and the death defying stunts start to unfold.
Cowboy 1 takes off after wild cow 2, wild cow 1 turns and goes the other direction and Cowboy 2 takes off after her, cowgirl 2 goes after her husband at a gallop, cowgirl 1 closes the gate to the corral on all the cows we have left in there and then takes off after her husband on a dead run. Cowboy 2, my husband gets around wild cow 1 and gets a rope on her, I catch up and get behind her with my horse to try and push her towards the corral. We get very close and she decides to take a right, right into a bog, with the rope dallyed to his saddle still and the not able to get any closer to wild cow 1, I have to get off my horse and try to push her out of the bog, on my walk into the bog I step on a log that low and behold a rattle snake is resting on. In a very calm voice I say (SH**) and freeze, the rattler goes under the log....but....now what? It is never good to be afoot when you should be horseback! Thankfully we pass death defying stunt #1 and get the cow out of the bog and into the corral. While we are getting the rope off wild cow 1. Kelly rides up hard and fast, "Jim Bob we need your dogs, I can't get this cow to move, Tony has a rope on her but she just keeps turning on him to fight the horses" JB and I ride fast towards where Tony has this cow roped. Jim Bob gets there faster than Kelly and I, just as we ride up, the roped cow runs around Tony's horse to the right, Tony's horse starts bucking, he is on a colt that hasn't been roped on before. The odds of a wreck happening are extreamly high at this point, the rope hits Tony and catupults him out of his saddle, he hits the ground hard, and is slow to get up, slow for a cowboy anyway. While his hands are on his knees and he tries to catch his breath his horse is still dallyed to the cow and has taken off bucking. I get around the horse and get ahold of his reins, Kelly gets the rope and hands it to Jim Bob who then dallys to his horse, they take off whooping and hollering, this gets the dogs excited that way they know it's okay to push this cow.....well.....they push her right into the bog!. She is hot and tired and so are the dogs and horses and cowboy's and cowgirl's. I wish I had a picture at this moment because she layed down in the water and so did the dogs right next to her. We were stuck again. So we took a breather, but she was in a spot that the horse couldn't get to from any direction, so wanting to get on with it I face the bog again only this time I have to crawl under some brush and low branching trees to get in behind her to try and push her out. Well I get on my belly, keeping my eyes wide open for snakes, I make it under one last branch and she is still laying there and I basically have my face on her rump. I have just barely enough room to stand up so I do and innocently smack her on the backside; all of a sudden she has all the energy in the world. She jumps up whirls around bellers at me with hatred in her eyes snorts and takes after me (this all happens within the matter of one second) I scream!!!!!! Tony is off his horse trying to get in there with me telling me to get out of there but there is no where to go, I would have to get down on my belly to get back out and I can't do that with a cow trying to crush me, my husband is yelling "I've got her, I've got her." Like I shouldn't be worried he still has a rope on her and he and his horse are trying to pull her the other way. No serious damage done, I am now soaking wet, she hit me in the hip and I hurt my wrist somehow but I'm fine. Tony gets behind her they get her out of the bog. Jim Bob jumps his horse across the creek, and tries to pull the cow in the right direction. The dogs convince her finally but not calmly, instead of walking across the creek, she jumps, and ends up halfway under Jim Bob's horse with the rope still dallyed but not tight enough. Kelly and I are mounted up and watching the wreck. It's like watching a movie in slow motion, you can't do anything about it so you just watch to see what the ending will be. My husband being the movie star he is, the real cowboy he is; doesn't even flinch and works himself the horse and cow out of that wreck and into the corral. The gate is closed and we get the cows loaded on the truck, by the time we get to the corral at the base of the mountain everyone is so happy to be to the summer pasture, the cows take off right up the mountain.
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| That Chore is done! All the cows are at their summer homes, feels good! Now onto much less fun chores like putting up the hay. |
They were done testing us for the day and we headed to town to get some dinner. In true ranch life form we had planned to be to town for lunch but it was now way past dinner and we had a few starving cowhands on our hands. I think we have cheated death a few times today, at least 3 times, the cowboy's just laugh it off. It's always the cowgirls who can see how bad an accident could be, I think it's some kind of short in the cowboy's brains that they don't see it. They know it and are fiercely protective over everyone and everything but themselves. They simply don't scare and don't worry. I think that's what keeps them alive for all their wild rides!
