RIDING HIGH

Ranching in Northern Arizona has never been easy - not for cattle, not for cowboys. Although it's a more efficient line of work than it was 60 years ago, there are some, including our writer, who long for a time when all the work was done on horseback. Especially when late summer rolls around.

IN THE FULLNESS of August, armadas of clouds sally across the sky. Like ghostly warships, they spew thunder and lightning. Rain pounds the parched prairie and runs in rivulets into arroyos, then into stock tanks where cattle and pronghorns water.

When the daily thunderstorms retreat, a stream of cool air weaves across the high plains. Cattle lift their nostrils, scent the air and go back to grazing. Birds feel a sudden ancient impulse. The hearts of old horses living out their years in stiff-legged retirement beat faster. A ranch wife hanging out the wash feels a cold hand brush her face and thinks about stocking her pantry for winter.

On the range, a man on horseback checks his cattle. The grass is beginning to head out. The wayward breeze that spoke to the cattle, the horses and the woman speaks to the man. He begins to calculate how many pounds his steer yearlings can gain before heavy frost sets in.

The living isn't easy in Northern Arizona - not for cattle, not for ranchers. Range cows have to travel some for food and water. Depending on range conditions, the country will support eight to 12 mother cows per square mile. A working ranch is 100 sections or thereabouts.

The cow pony breaks into a fast walk as the rancher turns toward home. He thinks he'll go into town and call a buyer. Maybe take his wife out to dinner. There's a lot of work ahead for both of them. Fall roundup is the culmination of a year's work on a ranch. Sixty years ago on a Northern Ari-

I feel blessed to have known a time when all the work was on horseback and the sun was our clock.

September. A cow buyer from Texas drives up to the ranch in a Cadillac. My husband takes him on a VIP tour in our Jeep Wagoneer. The buyer sees a uniform bunch of Hereford calves and yearlings that will gain on wheat over the winter in Kansas, Nebraska or the Texas Panhandle. He agrees to take the old bulls and cows, along with the others. They close the deal with a handshake, and a delivery date is set. We're gambling it won't storm before November 1.

Old-time cowboys call fall roundup "the work." It begins before the buyer's dust settles. The cowboys ride fence, repairing the bottom wires that pronghorns have pulled up, fixing water gaps that have washed out in flash floods, tightening gates so they'll hold when we're working cattle.

Our year-round cowboys are Sam Yellowhair at headquarters and E.P. "Ep" Casner, who stays at the west camp. Sam sees more with one eye than most cowboys do with two. Sam's boy Samuel hires on for roundup. That makes five, counting me. I'm a long way from being a cowboy, but I'm a fair hand with a horse. Our partners are a couple of Australian shepherds, Bess and Annie. They would rather work than eat. Ep lives in a one-room cabin made of railroad ties with his dog, Brownie, his tomcat, Snip, and a few chickens. He cooks on a wood stove and sleeps on an Army cot. If he has coffee, cannedmilk, pinto beans, salted pork, potatoes, dried apples, Grandma's molasses and Day's Work tobacco, he's happy. The cracks around his mouth are stained with tobacco juice. He doesn't need glasses, but he wears store-bought teeth. He keeps two gray saddle horses, Old Smoky and Little Smoky, at the camp. His main jobs are keeping the windmill pumping and checking on the cattle that come in to water. "Eppie" has a family back in Texas, but they stay in Texas. Sam and Samuel drive the remuda in from the horse pasture to be shod. We have 18 head and need all of them. The saddle horses know what's in store for them. They grunt and groan and lean on the horseshoer, but they don't throw fits. The truth is, our cow ponies take as much pride in their work as we do. When a horse gets too old for thework, we turn it out to run free. Our retired cow horses spend their last days just being horses. If they come in, we feed them, but they prefer to fend for themselves. The working life of our horses is 12 to 14 years. A horse with stiff joints and slow reflexes is a dangerous horse on a cattle drive. We trust our horses. They won't step on a rattlesnake or into a badger hole. They're tough, range-bred ponies who know what to watch for.

The old turned-out horses may be running in the farthest corner of the ranch, but they always know when the work begins. A half-dozen gimpy old veterans line up at the corral gate, reporting for duty. They are dim-eyed, sway-backed, yellow-toothed and sandfooted, with tails dragging the ground and matted manes. The oldest, a black Ranch hands brand a calf near Redlands Camp on the Babbitt Ranch in Northern Arizona. PETER SCHWEPKER October called Nightie, nickers to the young horses in the corral: The circles were longer and the cattle were wilder in our day! We throw them some hay, and they mill around, then go back out to pasture. We each have four horses in our string. A wrangling horse is kept up each night. We'll be making circles every day from now on, starting with the Woodruff pasture in the east and working our way back to the home ranch. There we'll put the cattle we want to sell in a holding pasture and turn the others back out. After that, we'll work the west side of the ranch.

Mornings are nippy. The saddle horses snort and crow-hop around the corral a little when they feel our weight. The windmill and corrals take shape in the growing light. We jog four abreast to the top of the ridge above the ranch. The boss lights a smoke and tells us what our drives will be. We listen, because he won't repeat it. He always takes the outside circle, the longest, hardest one.

We spread out over the country, close enough to catch sight of each other now and then. Our horses will tell us where our partners are if we watch their ears. I ride alongside a wash while the men throw little bunches of cattle down to me. By noon I have about 100 head of cows, calves and yearlings. We meet at a dirt tank when the sun is high.

It looks like we've made a clean drive. We let the cattle water out, then push them down the trail to the headquarters ranch. The boss rides point to slow down the leaders. Sam and Samuel take the flanks, heading off all the cattle that try to break out. Bess and Annie help them work the flanks. I ride the drags, the dustiest, most aggravating position on a drive. In an hour or so, the herd settles down and strings out.

When the cattle are penned, I go to the house and warm up some dinner. After dinner, Sam, Samuel and I hold the herd while the boss cuts out what he wants to sell. The cattle are tired and cranky. So are we. Someone is likely to get yelled at before the day is over.

Before we call it a day, the horses are fed and turned out to roll. We eat a bite and go to bed. We have to sleep fast, as daylight holds another circle. It will be a repeat of the first day, over new country.

We ride when our lips crack from the dust and heat, when our noses and ears are numb with cold, when our boots slosh with water and it rains down our necks. We ride from sunup to dark. We count every day a blessing and love our own misery.

By the end of October we throw fashion to the wind. We're wearing long underwear, flannel shirts and warm jackets. Sam wears a plaid cap with earflaps. The breeze that whispered across the high plains in August is a blast of north wind coming down off snow in the Rockies. Wobbly formations of geese fly over us.

Friends from town come to help us round up the holding pasture and cut the cattle one more time. The yearlings and big calves are held in dry corrals so we won't have to take a "shrink" on the price. The mother cows bawl to their calves all night. There's little sleeping this night. At the break of dawn, stock trucks drive up to the loading chute. I put on a big pot of coffee for the buyers, livestock inspector, truckers and cowboys. The cattle are pushed through the alleys, and the weighing begins. By midmorning, the cattle are on their way to Kansas.

Slowly, the mother cows turn away from the corrals and walk back to their home ranges. They will give birth to more calves in the spring. The shoes are jerked off the saddle horses. They can rest and blow, chase rainbows and play. We'll ride all winter, checking on cattle, fences and water. The big work is over for another year. AH