THE CATTLE STAMPEDE.
The boys all got to talking about stampedes one night while we were
waiting on a sidetrack, and I related to them an experience of my own.
A number of years ago, I bought some 15,000 steers in southern Arizona,
and shipping them to Denver, Colorado, divided them up into herds of
about 3,500 head in each herd and started to trail these herds north to
Wyoming. About 4,000 head of these steers were from 1 to 10 years old
and were known as outlaws in the country where they were raised. These
steers were almost as wild as elk; very tall, thin, raw-boned,
high-headed, with enormous horns and long tails, and as there was great
danger of their stampeding at any time, I put all of them in a herd by
themselves and went with that herd myself. I worried about these steers
night and day, and talked to my men incessantly about how to handle them
and what to do if the cattle stampeded. There is only one thing to do in
case of a stampede of a herd of wild range steers, and that is for every
cowboy to get in the lead of them with a good horse and keep in the lead
without trying to stop them, but gradually turn them and get them to
running in a circle, or "milling," as it is commonly known among
cowboys. Cattle on the trail never stampede but one way, and that is
back the way they come from. If you can succeed in turning them in some
other direction, you can gradually bring them to a stop. These
long-legged range steers can run almost as fast as the swiftest horse.
So we kept our best and swiftest horses saddled all night, ready to
spring onto in case the herd ever got started. We were driving in a
northerly direction all the time, and every night took the herd fully a
mile north of the mess wagon camp before we bedded them down. I had
fourteen men in the outfit, half of them old-time cowboys and the other
half would-be cowboys; several of them what we used to call tenderfeet.
Amongst the green hands at trailing cattle was the nephew of my eastern
partner, a college-bred boy, with blonde, curly hair and a face as merry
as a girl's at a May day picnic. The boys all called him Curley. He was
as lovable a lad as I ever met, but positively refused to take this
enormous herd of old outlaw, long-horned steers as a serious
proposition.
We had always four men on night herd at a time, each gang standing night
guard three hours, when they were relieved by another four men. The
first gang was 8 to 11 o'clock in the evening; the next 11 till 2 and
the last guard stood from 2 till daylight, and then started the herd
traveling north again. I kept two old cow hands and two green ones on
each guard, and had been nine days on the trail; had traveled about a
hundred miles without any mishap. We had bright moonlight nights. The
grass was fine, being about the first of June, and I was beginning to
feel a little easier, when one night we were camped on a high rolling
prairie near the Wyoming line.
Curley and three other men had just went on guard at 2 o'clock in the
morning. The moon was shining bright as day. Everything was as still as
could be, the old long-horned outlaws all lying down sleeping, probably
dreaming of the cactus-covered hillsides in their old home in Arizona.
Curley was on the north side of the herd and rolling a cigarette. He
forgot my oft-repeated injunction not to light a parlor match around the
herd in the night, but scratched one on his saddle horn. When that match
popped, there was a roar like an earthquake and the herd was gone in the
wink of an eyelid; just two minutes from the time Curley scratched his
match, that wild, crazy avalanche of cattle was running over that camp
outfit, two and three deep. But at that first roar, I was out of my
blankets, running for my hoss and hollering, "Come on, boys!" with a
rising inflection on "boys." The old hands knew what was coming and were
on their hosses soon as I was, but the tenderfeet stampeded their own
hosses trying to get onto them, and their hosses all got away except
two, and when their riders finally got on them, they took across the
hills as fast as they could go out the way of that horde of oncoming
wild-eyed demons. The men who lost their hosses crawled under the front
end of the big heavy roundup wagon, and for a wonder the herd didn't
overturn the wagon, although lots of them broke their horns on it and
some broke their legs. When I lit in the saddle, and looked around, five
of my cowboys was lined up side of me, their hosses jumping and
snorting, for them old cow hosses scented the danger and I only had time
to say, "Keep cool; hold your hosses' heads high, boys, and keep two
hundred yards ahead of the cattle for at least five miles. If your hoss
gives out try to get off to one side," and then that earthquake (as one
of the tenderfeet called it when he first woke up) was at our heels, and
we were riding for our own lives as well as to stop the cattle, because
if a hoss stumbled or stepped in a badger hole there wouldn't be even a
semblance of his rider left after those thousands of hoofs had got
through pounding him. I was riding a Blackhawk Morgan hoss with
wonderful speed and endurance and very sure footed, which was the main
thing, and I allowed the herd to get up in a hundred yards of me, and
seeing the country was comparatively smooth ahead of me, I turned in my
saddle and looked back at the cattle.
[Illustration: _The Stampede._]
I had been in stampedes before, but nothing like this. The cattle were
running their best, all the cripples and drags in the lead, their sore
feet forgotten. Every steer had his long tail in the air, and those
4,000 waving tails made me think of a sudden whirlwind in a forest of
young timber. Once in a while I could see a little ripple in the sea of
shining backs, and I knew a steer had stumbled and gone down and his
fellows had tramped him into mincemeat as they went over him. They were
constantly breaking one another's big horns as they clashed and crowded
together, and I could hear their horns striking and breaking above the
roar of the thousands of hoofs on the hard ground.
As my eyes moved over the herd and to one side, I caught sight of a
rider on a grey hoss, using whip and spur, trying to get ahead of the
cattle, and I knew at a glance it was Curley, as none of the other boys
had a grey hoss that night. I could see he was slowly forging ahead and
getting nearer the lead of the cattle all the time.
We had gone about ten or twelve miles and had left the smooth, rolling
prairie behind us and were thundering down the divide on to the broken
country along Crow Creek. Now, cattle on a stampede all follow the
leaders, and after I and my half dozen cowboys had ridden in the lead of
that herd for twelve or fifteen miles, gradually letting the cattle get
close to us, but none by us, why we were the leaders, and when we began
to strike that rough ground, my cowboys gradually veered to the left, so
as to lead the herd away from the creek and onto the divide again. But
Curley was on the left side of the herd. None of the other boys had
noticed him, and when the herd began to swerve to the left, it put him
on the inside of a quarter moon of rushing, roaring cattle. I hollered
and screamed to my men, but in that awful roar could hardly hear my own
voice, let alone make my men hear me, and just then we went down into a
steep gulch and up the other side. I saw the hind end of the herd sweep
across from their course of the quarter circle towards the leaders, saw
the grey hoss and Curley go over the bank of the gulch out of sight
amidst hordes of struggling animals. But as I looked back at the cattle
swarming up the other bank I looked in vain for that grey hoss and his
curly-haired rider. Sick at heart, I thought of what was lying in the
bottom of that gulch in place of the sunny-haired boy my partner had
sent out to me, and I wished that eighty thousand dollars worth of
hides, horns and hoofs that was still thundering on behind was back in
the cactus forests of Arizona.
As the herd swung out on the divide they split in two, part of them
turning to the left, making a circle of about two miles, myself and two
cowboys heading this part of the herd and keeping them running in a
smaller circle all the time till they stopped. The other part of the
herd kept on for about five miles further, then they split in two, and
the cowboys divided and finally got both bunches stopped; not, however,
till one bunch had gone about ten miles beyond where I had got the first
herd quieted.
It was now broad daylight, and I started back to the gulch where poor
Curley had disappeared. When I came in sight of the gulch, I saw his
dead hoss, trampled into an unrecognizable mass, lying in the bottom of
the gulch, but could see nothing of Curley. While gazing up and down
the gulch which was overhung with rocks in places, I heard someone
whistling a tune, and looking in that direction, saw Curley with his
back to me, perched on a rock whistling as merry as a bird.
He told me that as his hoss tumbled over the rocky bank, he fell off
into a crevice, and crawling back under the rocks, he watched the
procession go over him.
We were three days getting the cattle back to where they had started and
two hundred of them were dead or had to be shot, and hundreds had their
horns broken off and hanging by slivers. It had cost in dead cattle and
damage to the living at least $10,000. But I was so glad to get that
curly-headed scamp back alive and unhurt I never said a word to him.