SELLING CATTLE ON THE RANGE.
Then old Packsaddle Jack got to telling about Senator Dorsey, of Star
Route fame, selling a little herd of cattle he had in northern New
Mexico. He said the Senator had got hold of some eyeglass Englishmen,
and representing to them that he had a large herd of cattle in northern
New Mexico, finally made a sale at $25 a head all round for the cattle.
The Englishmen, however, insisted on counting the herd and wouldn't take
the Senator's books for them. Dorsey finally agreed to this, but said
the cattle would have to be gathered first. The Senator then went to his
foreman, Jack Hill, and asked Jack if he knew of a place where they
could drive the cattle around a hill where they wouldn't have to travel
too far getting around and have a good place to count them on one side.
Jack selected a little round mountain with a canyon on one side of it,
where he stationed the Englishmen and their bookkeepers and Senator
Dorsey. The Senator had about 1,000 cattle, and Jack and the cowboys
separated them into two bunches out in the hills, a couple of miles from
the party of Englishmen and out of sight. Keeping the two herds about a
mile apart, they now drove the first herd into the canyon, which ran
around the edge of the bluff, and on the bank of the canyon sat the
Senator with the Englishmen, and they counted the cattle as the herd
strung along by them. The herd was hardly out of sight before the second
bunch came stringing along. Two or three cowboys, though, had met the
first herd, and, getting behind them, galloped them around back of the
mountain and had them coming down the canyon past the Englishmen again,
and they were counted the second time. And they were hardly out of sight
before the second division was around the mountain and coming along to
be tallied some more. And thus the good work went on all day long, the
Senator and the Englishmen only having a few minutes to snatch a bite to
eat and tap fresh bottles.
The foreman told the English party at noon that they was holding an
enormous herd back in the hills yet from which they were cutting off
these small bunches of 500 and bringing them along to be tallied. But
along about 3 o'clock in the afternoon the cattle began to get thirsty
and footsore. Every critter had traveled thirty miles that day, and lots
of them began to drop out and lay down. In one of the herds was an old
yellow steer. He was bobtailed, lophorned and had a game leg, and for
the fifteenth time he limped by the crowd that was counting. Milord
screwed his eyeglass a little tighter into his eye, and says, "There is
more bloody, blarsted, lophorned, bobtailed, yellow, crippled brutes
than anything else, don't you know." Milord's dogrobber speaks up, and
says, "But, me lord, there's no hanimal like 'im hin the hither 'erd."
The Senator overheard this interesting conversation, and taking the
foreman aside, told him when they got that herd on the other side of the
mountain again to cut out that old yellow reprobate, and not let him
come by again. So Jack cut him out and run him off aways in the
mountains. But old yellow had got trained to going around that mountain,
and the herd wasn't any more than tallied again till here come old Buck,
as the cowboys called him, limping along behind down the canyon, the
Englishmen staring at him with open mouths, and Senator Dorsey looking
at old Jack Hill in a reproachful, grieved kind of way. The cowboys ran
old Buck off still farther next time, but half an hour afterwards he
appeared over a little rise and slowly limped by again.
The Senator now announced that there was only one herd more to count
and signaled to Jack to ride around and stop the cowboys from bringing
the bunches around any more, which they done. But as the party broke up
and started for the ranch, old Buck came by again, looking like he was
in a trance, and painfully limped down the canyon. That night the
cowboys said the Senator was groaning in his sleep in a frightful way,
and when one of them woke him up and asked if he was sick, he told them,
while big drops of cold sweat was dropping off his face, that he'd had a
terrible nightmare. He thought he was yoked up with a yellow, bobtailed,
lophorned, lame steer and was being dragged by the animal through a
canyon and around a mountain day after day in a hot, broiling sun, while
crowds of witless Englishmen and jibbering cowboys were looking on. He
insisted on saddling up and going back through the moonlight to the
mountain and see if old Buck was still there. When they arrived, after
waiting awhile, they heard something coming down the canyon, and in the
bright moonlight they could see old Buck painfully limping along,
stopping now and then to rest.
A cowboy reported finding old Buck dead on his well-worn trail a week
afterwards. But no one ever rides that way moonlight nights now, as so
many cowboys have a tradition that old Buck's ghost still limps down the
canyon moonlight nights.
[Illustration: _Counting "'Old Buck."_]
OLD BUCK'S GHOST.
Down in New Mexico, where the plains are brown and sere,
There is a ghostly story of a yellow spectral steer.
His spirit wanders always when the moon is shining bright;
One horn is lopping downwards, the other sticks upright.
On three legs he comes limping, as the fourth is sore and lame;
His left eye is quite sightless, but still this steer is game.
Many times he was bought and counted by a dude with a monocle in his eye;
The steer kept limping round a mountain to be counted by that guy.
When footsore, weary, gasping, he laid him down at last,
His good eye quit its winking; counting was a matter of the past;
But his spirit keeps a tramping 'round that mountain trail,
And that's the cause, says Packsaddle, that I have told this tale.