Читать книгу The Ranch on the Beaver - Andy Adams - Страница 4

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Among the sand-dunes in Northwest Kansas several rivulets unite and form Beaver Creek. The Creek threads its way through dips in the plain, meanders down meadow and valley, and is finally lost in confluence with the Republican River. The farthest western settlement on the Beaver was the ranch of Wells Brothers.

The only landmark in the country was the Texas and Montana cattle trail. This trace passed some six miles to the eastward of the original homestead of John Wells, a Union soldier, who had preempted it some years before. Exiled on account of health, after a short residence on the Beaver his death followed, leaving two healthy, rugged sons, Joel and Dell Wells.

An incident changed the lives of the boys. Two summers before, when on the point of abandoning the little homestead, a man, Quince Forrest by name, from the cattle trail, reached their home, accidentally wounded from a pistol shot. The sod shack of the settler was transformed into a hospital, and the lads lent every aid in caring for the wounded man. Forrest, himself a Texan, had a wide acquaintance amongst the drovers, had been a trail boss himself, and knew the ins and outs of the cattle trace. Confined to the homestead for some two months, he levied on the passing herds, summoned every foreman to his cot in a tent, and established a friendship between the trail men and his benefactors.

The pleadings of the wounded man readily secured for the boys the nucleus of a herd. The long march from Texas had rendered many of the cattle footsore; there were strays in every herd, all of which contributed to stock the new ranch. Every trail foreman, under the pretext of founding a hospital, left his strays and cripples on the Beaver. At the end of that year’s drive of cattle into the Northwest, the brothers had secured a snug little herd of fully five hundred head.

The boys, in their new occupation, took root from a vigorous winter that followed. With the coming of spring, anxiously they looked forward to the arrival of the Texas herds, en route north. The latter were delayed by drouth, but finally came like an army with banners. Among one of the early herds to arrive was a young man stricken with malaria, who found a haven at the little ranch on the Beaver.

Jack Sargent proved himself a worthy successor to Quince Forrest. A drouthy year, the trail drovers dropped on the Beaver range an unusual flotsam of stricken and stray cattle. After his recovery, Sargent remained with the brothers, acting as their foreman. Born to the occupation of cattle, a Texan, his services soon became invaluable. There was no detail of a ranch in which he was not a capable man.

The drouthy summer doubled the holdings of the brothers and they made new acquaintances, among whom was the drover, Don Lovell, employer of Forrest. The old cowman proved his friendship that fall by inviting Joel Wells to come to Dodge City, a trail market to the south, where the boy bought a small herd of cattle on credit. The terms called for a factor in the sale of the cattle when matured into beef, with a trusty man, an employee of the seller, who remained with the cattle until they were consigned to a commission firm, the agent in the sale, at an established market.

This mutual agreement added another man to the ranch, Joe Manly, from the Pease River, in Texas, where the cattle were bred. Manly was a languid, lazy Texan, true to his employer, and never seen to good advantage except on horseback. This, however, was peculiar to the Texans, a pastoral people, who were masters in the occupation of ranching. Thus manned and mounted, the brothers met the second winter, which proved to be a mild one.

The occupation of the boys, maturing beef, was in a class by itself. Texas bred the cattle, but the climate interfered with their maturity into marketable range beeves. It required the rigors of a Northern winter to mature a Texas steer into the pink of condition for the butcher’s block. Two winters in the North were better than one. Hence the cattle trail into the upper country, where maturity brought its certain reward. If above three years of age, a single winter might mature them; if younger, two winters; ‘double-wintered’ was the rule. Nature provided a day of maturity, usually the fall after reaching four years old, when the range finished every hoof prime for market. Therefore two-year-olds were preferred in stocking Northern ranges, where the severity of the climate rounded them into beeves.

Restocking their ranch became a question with the brothers. Kansas, in fear of fever, had quarantined against Texas cattle. A new trail, through Colorado, afforded the needful outlet to the North. The boys had contracted, on the same terms, from Manly’s employer, a Mr. Stoddard, at Ogalalla, Nebraska, for a second herd, which was then under herd on the Republican River and within a few days’ drive of the Beaver. After the shipping season was over, their financial standing enabled the brothers to buy still another herd, at Trail City, in Colorado, on the new trail. This contingent was held in voluntary quarantine by the new owners, in fear of fever among their own wintered herd, until after the first frost, when restrictions were lifted and both herds trailed in to the home range on the Beaver. All told, the ranch faced its third winter with a holding of nearly eight thousand cattle.

It was no easy task. The original range, claimed three summers before, had been extended down the Beaver fully five miles below the old trail crossing. The water controlled the herd; range north or south of the creek was a matter of no concern, the cattle ranging out as far as five miles in the summer and not to exceed ten in the winter.

The pride of the ranch was its equipment of horses. The remuda — a word adopted from the Spanish, meaning the relay mounts — now numbered over a hundred head. The buying of through horses, unacclimated ones, a year in advance of their needs, had proved its wisdom during the beef-shipping season just passed. During that brief period, tense as an army on the march, the rule was frequently four changes of mounts daily. A half-mounted man was useless, and a strong remuda was a first requisite on a beef ranch.

‘This ranch has horse-sense,’ said the solicitor for the commission house, on his second visit. ‘That’s a big point in your favor. You’re mounted until the day, the month, and the end of the year. In ranching, horses are to the cattle industry what marine insurance is to ships putting out to sea. Your horses are your only guarantee.’

The rapid expansion of the Wells Ranch kept a number of horses constantly under saddle. During the idle months, even when working a small outfit, a daily change of mounts was necessary. Only in winter work were a few horses corn-fed, while the remainder, subsisting the year around on grass, were used only during the rush of summer months, and by men who knew the limits of endurance of a range horse. ‘Never tire a grass horse’ was a slogan of the range.

In meeting the requirements of the coming winter, two new line-camps were established, one on the lower end of the range, and the other, an emergency camp, south on the Prairie Dog. They were rough shelters for man and horse, and were known as the ‘Dog House’ and ‘Trail Camp.’ An extra amount of forage had been provided at headquarters, the other camps liberally supplied, and before winter set in, a car of corn would be divided among the various camps.

Necessarily, the new shelters were located during the haying season. Joel and Manly selected the sites, placing Trail Camp on the Beaver, six miles below the old Texas and Montana trail crossing, it being simply a matter of shelter and convenience to meadows. Dug-outs were the order for men and horses, and a creek bluff, facing the sun by day, with running water, met every requirement. In locating the camp on the Prairie Dog, a careful study of the topography of the country governed the site. The latter outpost was intended only as a relay or emergency shelter, in case of a winter drift, and was not meant for regular occupancy. It might be called on to bunk half a dozen men and the stabling to shelter double that number of horses.

The site was important. ‘Allowing the bulk of the cattle to range above headquarters,’ said Manly, summing up the situation, ‘your emergency camp must occupy a strategic point. The lay of the land will govern any possible drift crossing to the Prairie Dog. Whether a storm strikes out of the North or Northwest, the cattle will take advantage of any shelter, and the first arroyo they reach will carry them down to the main creek. My idea is to locate your camp at the mouth of the first arroyo east of the sand-hills.’

Joel and Manly had halted on the crest of the southern divide, between the Beaver and the Prairie Dog. ‘The only arroyo that puts into the Prairie Dog,’ said Joel, indicating the direction, ‘holds almost a due south course. For the last few miles it’s just a big dry wash. Old buffalo trails run down it to the main creek. The mouth of the wash is almost due south from headquarters. I led a drift down it two winters ago. Struck the wash about midnight.’

The site was miles distant and Manly had never seen the ground. ‘The mouth of that dry wash,’ said he, as if he had camped there, ‘is the ideal point for your dug-out. It’s a wonder some buffalo hunter didn’t make his headquarters there.’

‘There are thousands of old buffalo skulls along the Prairie Dog and around the mouth of that wash. Dell and I used them for seats around our camp-fire.’

‘I thought so. The buffalo faces the blizzard, drifting before it strikes. Cattle, caught out in a storm, drift with the wind until it breaks. Nature intended the buffalo to face the storm, and clothed his fore parts accordingly, but gave the cattle the instinct to drift.’

‘Another advantage,’ suggested Joel, ‘in case a storm strikes in the evening and we cross the divide at night, the arroyo will pilot us into camp. We can find it the darkest night that ever blew. Let’s locate the dug-out and stable to-day, and either one of us can bring the haying outfit over later.’

The brothers were fortunate in able assistants. In knowing the inner nature of cattle, their deeps and moods, the Texan stood in a class by himself.

In reading the topography of the surrounding country, Manly was able to tell that cattle adrift would concentrate at a given point. The sand-dunes on the right would turn a cattle drift from the Upper Beaver, and, as did the buffalo, the drifting herd would instinctively cross at the same landmark. It was not in wearing a sombrero or leather chaps or gaudy neckerchief that one qualified as a cowman, but in that sure knowledge of every act, mood, and whim of the cattle of the range.

Joel’s earnestness kept his outfit at concert pitch. ‘One of our sponsors was a soldier,’ said he, ‘and always used military terms in fortifying to meet a winter. This work of building dug-outs, getting in supplies, pickling beef, and the like, he would call bringing up the ammunition and looking after the lines of entrenchment. He believed in strong reserves, in seeing that the firing line lacked for nothing, and then he expected a man to hang and wrestle like a dog to a root. He claimed the only safe way to hold cattle in the winter was to do your sleeping in the summer.’

The new men were selected with care. All four were Texans, two of whom had weathered winters in the North, young, rugged fellows, horsemen of steel, tireless, undaunted, immune to hunger, fair or foul weather, so long as horse or mount of horses could respond to the call of duty.

The new men were coached daily. ‘One extreme follows another,’ said Joel, ‘and last winter let us off easy. We may never see another as severe as our first, but I’m counting on some sure-enough winter this coming one. If it happens to be only dry and cold, there’s nothing to fear, but sleet and wind are to be dreaded.’

‘Wind especially,’ emphasized Sargent, the foreman, nodding to the new men. It not only asks about your summer’s wages, but it searches your very soul for the sins of your ancestors. It ranges from a balmy zephyr up to a blue-cold wind that will shake a horse off his feet. If your hat blows off on the Beaver, wire your friends in dear old Texas to pick it up. These plains are surely some windy in winter.’