Next morning we were tossing our bedrolls on the chuck wagon when the boss walked up.
“Kid,” he says, “don’t load your bed. I want you to go to the Diamond A wagon tomorrow. Wilbur Stevens wrote me that quite a few of our steers are on their range. So you’ll join the outfit over in Animas Valley near their headquarters and work with them until they reach High Lonesome down there in the Playas. Chances are you won’t find any of our cattle any farther along, so when you get there, cut your steers and your string and bring ’em in here to headquarters.”
I nodded and followed him as he went to the rope corral to rope out a string of horses for me to take along. He was one of the best at flipping the hoolihan overhand. (One never swings his rope “ala the movies” around horses.)
First he caught a small dun, good but old. I saddled him. The roping went on. Timber would catch a horse, Alec would open the gate, then the horse would be turned out ort the flat where he started grazing.
As I watched Timber, a slow boil was working. Finally he roped out the “white elephant” for me to pack my bed on. I just stood there looking at the eight horses he had roped out.
Instead of putting my rope on the pack horse, I unsaddled the small dun and turned him loose. Then I threw my saddle on the hood of the boss’s Dodge car parked nearby and fastened it on the long saddle strings. Then I picked up my bedroll and threw it in the tonneau of the vehicle.
“What in the heck are you doing, kid?” he yelled.
“I’m gettin’ ready to go to town with you, sir.”
“But heck fire, I wanted you to go to the Diamond A wagon.”
“And I wanted to go, but if l had wanted to walk I’d have got me a job herdin’ sheep. No way I’ll take such a bunch of crowbait as that to any body’s wagon. You only cut out one of my regular string, and that only because you know no one else will try to ride him. No sir! I’m a-quittin’!”
For a long minute I thought the big, hardboiled booger was going to hit me. He was, I’d say, furious. He turned away and looked off toward the mountains.
No one said a word or moved.
At last he turned around, grinned, then yelled at a mounted man to run the eight horses back into the corral.
“Get that dad-blamed bed and saddle out of my car,” was all he said as he went back inside the rope enclosure and again started shaking loops out into the remuda.
When he had caught seven head, all my regular horses, he paused and looked at me with that odd, and very rare, grin. Once more the small loop shot out.
When he led this last animal out I could hardly believe I was not dreaming. It was his own pet, Snorter, the big bay cutting horse.
When he led him to me, he only said, “Be good to ‘m, kid.”
I could only nod.
My rope was now on the small roan I’ a first ridden, a quiet but sensible roping horse with a nice jog trot, so I saddled him up. Alec caught my pack horse and helped me tie my bed on the animal. Then with no further ado, Roanie and I hazed the string out toward where the rocky trail led over the canyons and foothills to my cowcamp under the tall sycamore trees. After reaching camp, I just “soaked” (loafed) while the ponies filled up on good grass.
By nine o’clock next morning, I topped the San Luis Pass and paused to scan the wide expanse of the Animas Valley lying far below and to the west. Those big mountains just a short ride away on my left were the northernmost peaks of the Sierra Madre in Chihuahua.
Several miles to the west a moving mass had to be the roundup. Squinting my eyes for a better look, I decided those dots near a windmiil would be the chuck wagon and the bed wagon.
I overtook my string and trotted down the long slope, following a dim rode. At the foot of the pass, I shook out a loop, eased ahead quietly, and flipped the rope over Snorter’s good looking head. The Spur Ranch rep would ride into the neighbor’s camp in style.
When near the wagon, I could smell the fine aroma of cooking food. The white-aproned cook waved a pot hook in friendly greeting as I skirted his fire by forty yards.
A small, stooped man on a shiny black pony sat quietly, watching me approach.
“Spur man?” he asked as I rode up and stopped.
“Yes sir.”
“I’m Wilbur Stevens. The remuda’s coming in. Turn your string in with it. I reckon part of the boys will be coming in to dinner purty quick,” he said with a nod toward the herd a quarter mile distant.
Great story