There were eighteen hundred head of calves to be vaccinated, branded,
dehorned and weaned. Over the widespreading hills and meadows the
cattle poured in a long unbroken stream, bellowing and calling as
they moved. The round-up included the mothers, eighteen hundred head
of white-faced Herefords. These, sensing danger to their young, came
unwillingly, moaning and stopping stolidly to bawl their unceasing
protests or to call peremptorily to their straying offspring. Sometimes
a mother would make a break for freedom and a rider would have his
hands full driving her out of the dense brush where the fugitive might
find a temporary asylum.
At the corrals they were driving long posts four feet deep into the
earth. Close by the posts a soft coal fire spat and blazed. “Doc”
Murray, veterinary surgeon, on an upturned wooden box, sleeves rolled
to elbow and pipe in the corner of his mouth, squatted, directing the
preparations. Everything was done ship-shape at O Bar O.
For some time, oblivious to the taunts and jeers cast at him, Cheerio,
returned from the round-up, had been standing by his horse’s head
gazing up the hill in a brown study of rapture. The sight of that
army sweeping in from all directions over the hills and from the
woods, to meet in the lower pastures and automatically form in to that
symmetrical file, fascinated him beyond words. Even the riders, loosely
seated on their horses, their bright handkerchiefs blowing free in the
breeze, whirling lariat and long cattle whips, flanking and following
the herd, seemed pleasing to the eye of the Englishman.
Though the day of the chap-clad, large-hatted type of cowboy is said to
have passed in the Western States, in Alberta he is still a thriving,
living reality. In this “last of the big lands,” where the cattle still
range over hundreds of thousands of acres, their guardians appear to
have somewhat of that romantic element about them which has made
the cowboy famous in story and in song. He wears the fur and leather
chaps, the buckskin shirts and coats, the Indian beaded gauntlets and
the wide felt hats not wholly because they are good to look at, but
because of their sterling qualities for utilitarian purposes. The
chaps are indispensable for the trail, the fur ones for warmth and
general protection and the leather ones for the brush. The great hats,
which the Indians also use in Alberta, serve the double purposes of
protection from a too-ardent sun and as great drinking vessels during a
long ride. The hide shirts are both wind and sun proof and the beadwork
sewn on with gut thread serve as excellent places for the scratching
of matches. Cheerio himself had by now a full cowboy outfit, chaps,
hide shirt, wide hat, flowing tie, but he never tired of looking
appreciatively at the other fellows in similar garb. Now, with eyes
slightly screwed to get the right angle upon them, he planned a canvas
that was some day to hang in a place of great honour.
The morning’s work had been exhilarating. To him had been assigned
some of the most difficult riding tasks of the round-up. He had been
dispatched into the bush on the east side of the Ghost River to gather
in forty-seven strays that had taken refuge in the bog lands and had
drawn with them their young into this insecure and dubious protection
from the riders.
Cheerio had ridden through woods so dense that his horse could barely
squeeze between the bushes and the trees. He had been obliged to draw
his feet out of the stirrups and ride cross-legged in his saddle.
Sometimes he was forced to dismount and lead his horse over trails
so narrow that the animal had balked and hesitated to pass until
led. Rattling a tin bell made of an empty tomato can with a couple
of rocks in it, Cheerio wended his way through the deep woods. This
loudly-clanking contraption served to rouse and frighten the hidden
cattle out into the open, but several of them retreated and plunged
farther into the bush that bordered hidden pools of succulent mud and
quicksand.
The branches of the thick trees had snapped against his face as he rode
and his chin and cheeks were scratched where the wide hat had failed
to afford sufficient protection. The sleeves of his rough riding shirt
were literally torn to shreds and even the bright magenta chaps that
were his especial pride and care came out of that brush ragged, soiled
and full of dead leaves, brush and mud.
He had been delayed at a slough whose surface of dark green growth gave
no intimation of the muddy quicksands beneath. Stuck hard in the mud of
this pool a terrified heifer was slowly sinking, while her bawling calf
was restrained from following its mother only through the quick action
of Cheerio, who drove the distracted little creature a considerable
distance into the woods ere he returned to its mother.
It is one thing to throw the lariat in an open space and to land it
upon the horns or the back feet of a fleeing animal. It is another
thing to swing a lariat in a thickly-wooded bush where the noose is
more likely than not to land securely in the branch or the crotch of a
tree, resisting all tugs and jerks to leave its secure hold. Cheerio,
inexpert with the lariat, gave up all thought of rescuing the animal
in that way. Instead, his quick wits worked to devise a more ingenious
method of pulling the heifer from the slough, where she would have
perished without help.
Along the edges of the woods were fallen willow trees and bushes that
the Indians had cleaved for future fence posts. Cheerio hauled a
quantity of these over to the slough, and shoving and piling them in
criss-cross sections, he made a sort of ford to within about fifteen
feet of the mired cow. His horse was tied by its halter rope to a tree.
With one end of the lariat firmly attached to the pommel of his saddle
which had been cinched on to the animal very tightly and the other
end about his own waist, Cheerio crossed this ford toward the animal.
He now let out the lariat and coiled its end for the toss. It landed
easily upon the horns of the animal. Holding to the rope, now drawn
taut, Cheerio made his way back over the ford. Unfastening his horse,
he mounted. Now began the hard part of the work. His horse rode out a
few feet and the sudden pull upon the horns of the cow brought her to
her feet. She stumbled and swayed but the rope held her up. A pause for
rest for horse and heifer, and then another and harder and longer pull
and tug. The cow, half-strangled in the mud, nevertheless was drawn
along by the stout lariat rope. She slid along the slippery floor of
the slough and not till her feet touched sod was she able to give even
a feeble aid to the now heavily-panting mare.
Once on solid ground, Cheerio burst into a cheer such as an
excited boy might have given, and he called soothingly to the
desperately-frightened heifer.
“You’re doing fine, old girl! There you go! Ripping!” And to the mare:
“Good for you, Sally-Ann! You’re a top-notcher, old girl!”
There was an interval to give the exhausted animals an opportunity for
a rest and then they were on the bush trail again, the heifer going
slowly ahead, thoroughly tamed and dejected, yet raising her head with
monotonous regularity to call and moan her long loud cry for her young.
As Cheerio came out into the open range certain words recurred to his
mind and he repeated them aloud with elation and pride:
“They’s the makings of a damn fine cowboy in you,” had said the foreman
of O Bar O.
He was whooping and hurrahing internally for himself and he felt as
proud of his achievement as if he had won a hard pitched battle.
In fact, if one reckoned success in the terms of dollars and of
cents, then Cheerio had saved for O Bar O the considerable sum of
$1500, which was the value of the pure-bred heifer rescued from the
slough. Moreover, Cheerio had brought from the bush the full quota of
missing cows and their offspring. When at last he joined up with that
steadily-growing line pouring down from all parts of the woods and the
ranges, to join in the lower meadows, he was whistling and jubilantly
keeping time to his music with the clanking “bell,” and when he came
within sight of his “mates” he waved his hat above his head, and rode
gleefully down among them, shouting and boasting of his day’s work. He
counted his cows with triumph before the doubting “Thomases” who had
predicted that the tenderfoot would come out of that dense wood with
half a heifer’s horn and a calf’s foot.
They rode westward under a sky bright blue, while facing them,
wrapped about in a haze of soft mauve, the snow-crowned peaks of the
Rocky Mountains towered before them like a dream. The glow of a late
summer day was tinting all of the horizon and rested in slumberous
splendour upon the widespreading bosom of pastures and meadows and
fair undulating sloping hills. Almost in silence, as if unconsciously
subdued by the beauty of the day, came the O Bar O outfit, riding
ahead, behind, and flanking the two sides of that marvellous army of
cattle.
Small wonder that the Englishman’s heart beat high and that his blood
seemed to race in his veins with an electrical fervour that comes from
sheer joy and satisfaction with life. If anyone had asked him whether
he regretted the life he had deliberately sacrificed for this wild
“adventure” in Western Canada, he would have shouted with all the
vehemence and it may be some of the typical profanity of O Bar O:
“Not by a blistering pipeful! This is the life! It’s r-ripping!
It’s--Jake!”
But now they were at the corrals. Finished the exhilarating riding of
the range, done the pretty work of cutting out the cattle and drawing
the herd into that line while one by one they were passed through the
gates that opened into especial pastures assigned for the mothers,
while the calves that were to be operated upon were “cut out” and
driven into the corrals.
Slowly Cheerio tore his gaze from the fascinating spectacle of that
moving stream of cattle and turned towards the corral. He saw, first
of all, a giant structure, a platform on which was a gallowslike
contrivance. Already a bawling calf had been driven up the incline
and its head had been gripped by the closing gates around its neck.
The Squeezegate! The dehorning shears were being sharpened over the
grindstone and the whirring of the wheel, the grating of the steel
hissed into the moaning cries of the trapped calves in the corrals.