OUT WHERE THE STEAKS BEGIN

ee OUT WHERE THE STEAKS BEGIN 99

There's a whale of a pile of beefsteaks come out of these Arizona mountains but not many folks realize, when they tuck a napkin into the crotch of their wing collars or into the bosom of their decollete gown or wherever they tuck them in top flight steak-joints, just how much of a neck-breaking aggravation the steak before them has been to some mountain cowpuncher before it started on its long journey to the table.

By the time calves are a couple of months old their mothers have taught them all the bovine perversity and tricks they didn't absorb prenatally. Calves have to be branded and steers gathered and sold. Endowed with an acute sense of smell, sight, and hearing, a crafty knowledge of every canyon and thicket, and the necessary disregard for life and limb to jump over ledges and turn cartwheels down the sides of brushy canyons, these mountain cattle are a terrific strain on their own ers' ingenuity.

And ingenuity seasoned with a lot of luck and reckless riding is what started that steak toward your platter. There are any number of ways to gather mountain cattle, all of them full of fascinating excitement, scratches and bruises, and more or less mild insanity. It's not a gentlemanly game. Catch as catch can is the theory. No holds are barred. Traps, corrals, ropes, dogs, and sure-footed horses are unblushingly marshaled against the poor cows.

The brush is so high on our range that it is usually necessary to track a bunch of cows with dogs, but last fall Lonny and Sheldon. two of my neighbors, and I spotted twentyfive or thirty head grazing on a fairly open hillside. We dropped off into a canyon out of sight and followed it until we were between the cattle and Hell's Half Acre. The "Acre," a deep, gully-scarred basin at the foot of thousand foot bluffs on the south side of Diamond Mountain, is so thickly matted with manzanita and scrub oak that it is deserving of its name even in this country, and is a safe refuge for critters when cowboys and dogs molest them.

We spread out and approached the bunch from three sides. riding slow and whistling to avoid spooking them. As we closed in, several wise old sisters began wringing their tails and looking anxiously toward the Acre. Our horses chewed the bits and tossed their heads and the dogs whined impatiently. The situation was old stuff to all of us, including the cows.

There is dignity and nobility in the bearing of this fine range bull, whose portrait was taken deep in Mohave County. After the camera clicked he ambled about his business.

An old T-U-Bar cow with an unbranded calf, and a yearling steer wearing my brand made the first break. Lonny turned them back. They ran through the bunch without slowing down and plunged off into a deep wash on my side. The other cattle acted like they were going to stand. I wanted that steer.

I hissed my dogs and touched Tony with my spurs. The race was on. The dogs charged down the wash bawling every jump. Running, jumping, stumbling, Tony was tearing down the brush in the wake of the yelping dogs. Dodging from side to side to miss limbs and brush and twisting free from snags that caught in my jumper and shirt above my chaps, I was protecting my face with an upthrown arm, and snatching at my lasso-rope with my other hand.

Things were happening behind me. Above our own racket I could hear horses and cattle crashing through the brush, dogs yapping hysterically, and Lonny and Sheldon squalling and cussing.

Tony scrambled up a steep cut-bank onto a little flat where my dogs had set up a snarling, snapping bedlam. They had overhauled the old cow and were darting in snapping at her nose and dodging her slashing horns. My steer and the unbranded calf were disappearing into a brushy boulder pile of a canyon a quarter of a mile ahead. I called the dogs off of the cow and started after the steer and calf.

It was no use. Tony was winded and the dogs were panting in harsh, raspy gasps. I pulled my saddle off and cleaned the brush and twigs from under the blankets, and tucked in my shirt-tail and wiped the scratch across my nose that had been trickling blood into the corner of my mouth.

I joined Lonny and Sheldon on a high ridge. They too had failed to catch anything we wanted. The cows had scattered in every direction. Round one went to the cows.

Of course the easiest way to get close to your stock and keep them together is to trap them. I don't know what old-timer devised the first trap, but they are simple after you see one. In this country where grass is scarce the cattle practically live on brush and require a lot of salt. A trap is two pole gates about eight feet long set V-shape into a corral. They are hinged at the wide ends with the narrow ends swung on chains from an overhead cross pole so they will open readily and swing shut decisively. It is baited with a couple blocks of salt. The salt-hungry cattle will enter the wide opening and crowd their way through the narrow end to get to the salt and wonder why they can't find a way out. But steers won't bring a dime in a salt-corral; they have to be moved to a holding pasture and finally out to a loading chute along the highway where trucks can navigate.

A little after daylight one morning the three of us rode up to Lost Corral trap. A dozen head, including a couple of fat steers and three or four unbranded calves stampeded to the far corner of the corral and considered us malignantly. While they got used to the looks of us, we smoked a couple of cigarettes and planned which way we'd take them to the pasture. Lonny opened the let-out gate and they nearly ran over him when they saw the opening. That was the last I saw of Lonny and Sheldon that day. Before any one could move, critters were clattering over the loose limestone slabs and spreading in all directions. "Get 'em, dogs!"

I was riding Rascal. I raked him with my spurs and reached for my rope. My dogs had singled out a big two-year-old steer and were fighting his head trying to hold him up. I reined in after them, dodging limbs and trying to build a loop. Slipping and sliding on the slick limestone and tripping in the tangled brush, Rascal was literally falling toward the steer. I was whirling my loop.

Busy with the dogs, we were on top of the steer before he realized it. I made my throw. The loop settled true but hung on a bush. Before I could jerk it tight the steer ran through it and really began going from there. Half a mile down a long ridge I missed another throw. Then Rascal hung his foot in a bush and fell down with me, giving the steer another lead. The dogs were still barking and fighting him. Crossing a brushy saddle the steer ended over into a thicket and I regained the distance we had lost, but the steer was up and on his way before I got to him. We came to the end of the ridge. The steer folded up and rolled down. Rascal set his feet and slid off, hitting the fairly open country at the bottom about the time the steer got up. I had been building loops and the brush jerk-ing them out of my hand all the way down. I shook out another one and dabbed it over the steer's horns and jerked it tight.

Out in front of us in an open patch was a clean trunked little cedar tree. We raced on and forked it with the rope, giving the steer the short end. He wound a few hitches around the tree and then wished he hadn't when he found himself snubbed up close.

Woof! He was full of fight. He bawled and bucked and made bark fly with his horns. Rascal sat back on our end of the rope tied to the saddle horn while I got down with a "necking-rope." I finally got the middle of it looped around the steer's horns and the ends tied around the tree after he had knocked me over the lass-rope and stepped on my arm, and kicked me on the shin.

He would have to be led in. Before leaving him to "suck a sapling" all night, I tipped a couple of inches off each horn with a little pocket-saw we carry for that purpose. This dis-concerts their aim by about two inches the next morning.

There are very few things as exciting (and unpredictable) as leading a wild cow-brute. In case you ever decide to lead one, there is a happy medium between enough slack rope for them to tangle it around your horse's legs and snubbing it short enough to encourage them to climb up in the saddle with you. Both extremes are sincerely advised against.

To save time and men and horses many of the larger mountain outfits keep a few gentle steers or burros for leading stock. But not having a big outfit nor any lead-steers, I saddled Tony the next morning and went down to lead my steer in the hard way. He was still wrathy and during the night he had pawed the ground and fought the tree and sat back on the rope. He was tired and had a sore head and had discovered that the rope around his horns didn't bite unless he sat back against it.

Tony was disgusted. Leading is his pet peeve. He probably remembers the first one he led, an old cow with a nasty disposition. Before we got started she hooked him in the ribs and he whirled and kicked at her with both hind feet and then went to bucking. I slacked off on the rope and she wound it around his feet. We all went down in a pile tangled in the rope. Tony was trying to kick. The cow was trying to hook. And I was wanting to be someplace else. But it broke Tony from buck-ing with a cow tied to the saddle horn.

I looped my lass-rope around the steer's horns and snubbed his head up to the saddle horn before I untied the necking-rope from

around the tree. At first he didn't want to leave. Then he remembered some important business in the wrong direction and lit out shaking his head and wringing his tail. We raced alongside of him for a hundred yards and started circling toward home.

He slammed his feet in the ground and stopped. I gave him a little slack and touched Tony with my spurs. The rope gnawed at his sore head. He lunged forward and began lashing with his stub horns. I was glad I'd tipped them. We gained a couple of hundred yards with him gouging at Tony's hocks every time we hit the ground.He sulked and sat back. The rope tightened around the sore spot. He responded with a flying leap and landed on Tony's rump behind the saddle and knocked the wind out of me. He rolled off backwards and got up really on the fight. In time I got everything straightened around and he quit hooking at my leg. We'd circle and mill towards home; the steer would take a few steps, then sulk a while, and then charge forward, hooking and slashing with his tipped horns. After a couple of miles he settled down and began getting the savvy about leading. By the time we got to the pasture I was leading him un-snubbed and he was following like a saddle horse.

Most any critter can be taught to lead in one gruelling lesson, but it isn't always handy to lead in each cow individually. Cows that are going to stay on the range had better be taught to stop when dogs overtake them and to follow a trail when they are being driven. This is hard to get into a cow's head when she is free and the brush is nice and thick. Usually one hobbling, that is, tying her head down to a forefoot so she can's take a full stride, is remembered all her life. But like all the other ingenious schemes for hand-ling wild cattle, the cow has to be caught before she can be hobbled.

One of my biggest, most productive cows went wild a year or so ago without any reason that I know of; just suddenly decided to run over dogs, tumble over bluffs and hunt a brushy canyon every time she saw a rider. She was always a mile away going at a long trot when you saw her. She'd quit a bunch or even leave her calf when crowded. After tearing my clothes and skinning up horses in several unsuccessful attempts to overhaul her, I found her in an open corral licking salt one day. I met her at the gate with a loop cocked. As she came out I hung it on her and jerked her down.

Hobbles were a new adventure. When I let her up she snuffed and was all for showing us a clean pair of heels. I hissed the dogs and they charged her. With her natural speed cut in half and her hooking ability hampered by the hobble, the dogs had her stopped in a quarter mile. When I rode up she tried it again. She plunged into a thicket and tangled up. The dogs were taking advantage of her predicament and making hair fly when I caught up again and called them off.

She was cured of thickets. She hunted open country. Every time she broke to run I put the dogs on her, and called them off when she stopped. By the time we got home she was walking down the trail like an old milk cow. After a few days in the home pasture I turned her outside again. Even to this day when dogs jump her she stops dead still and begins looking around for a cowboy to call them off.

But it seems like by the time you get one cured, another one goes wild or something else happens to make you ride off of bluffs and through the brush like you didn't have good sense. With mountain cattle and cowboys it all sums up to who is the craziest, the cow or the cowboy. The craziest one wins. So, when you sink your bridgework into a succulent steak it may add a zestful flavor to realize that somewhere there is a cowboy who was crazier than the critter it came off of.