A Man and His Music

CATTLE DRIVE

In the afternoon, however, we got to the big water hole near the Chiricahua Ranch headquarters and to a bully meal of beef and “spotted pup pudding,” rice cooked with raisins.

The next morning it was still raining, and it kept raining all day. We did not try to move the cattle. About noon Crocker saddled his horse, cut holes for his head and arms in three gunny sacks that he pulled on, one after the other, said, "Dobie, take my slicker. You'll need it worse than I will before you get to the river," and struck out for the ranch. "I'll see you boys at the pens," were his parting words. We knew that he would get in his automobile at the ranch, drive 150 miles around the road to Calva, and be on hand to load and deliver Filiman's herd as well as our own.

The next day was clear and fresh, and the cattle walked out in fine style. Most of our way was over ground fairly free of rocks. About nine o'clock I saw the remuda and the cook with his burros going around us for a camp somewhere ahead.

At Clover Creek we watered. Then in the shank of the evening, we held the herd on Squaw Creek while the men took turns eating a hearty meal that combined their dinner and supper. Shortly before dark, we turned the cattle loose in a little holding trap just beyond camp. We made 10 miles that day.

The second day out we made eight miles, crossing Saw Mill Creek, then climbing the malpais boulders of Natanes Mountain. At Summit, as the long ridge of this mountain plateau is called, we left the Double Circle range to enter the Chiricahua holdings.

For 40 years Circle cattle have been night-herded on Summit, and nearly every year there used to be a night run. Some of the old-timers used to claim that there were spooks on the bed ground. Then one night, Willis discovered a "spook" in the form of a packrat right under the nose of a sleeping yearling. The next time he held a herd on Summit he shifted the bed ground. This summer he had a small trap built to save night-herding. The cattle we put inside it were thirsty for they had had no water since the preceding afternoon. With a bawling, thirsty herd, we set out the next morning down as rough a trail as cattle ever travel. Beyond us we could see half the world: the boundless Ash Flat below, beyond it the Gila range, beyond the Gila range the Graham Mountains across the hidden Gila River, and looming up here and there behind them the peaks of yet another range.

In some places along that rocky route, not more than a half dozen cattle can pass at a time. They bank up at boulder-walled passes, and unless a cowboy who knows his business is at these places at the right time, the whole herd may stall so as to delay movement for an hour.

At last we were down on the Flat. Ash Creek that had looked so near from above could no longer be seen. In the afternoon, however, we got to the big water hole near the Chiricahua Ranch headquarters and to a bully meal of beef and "spotted pup pudding," rice cooked with raisins.

The established procedure at this stage of the trail was to night-herd on the prairie.

We learned from Chiricahua hands that Joe Filiman's herd had passed a good night. But Willis decided for the sake of safety and ease to pen in the Chiricahua corrals.

Shortly after three o'clock the next morning, an Apache yelled out: "Willis, Willis, cattle run!"

We were camped half a mile or more from the corrals, but our horses were saddled and tied at hand, as they were every night. When we got to the pens, cattle were still pouring out. Fifty yards of picket fence were flat, and the lead stampeders were a mile away.

But we had good luck. Beyond having some of their horns slipped and their feet worn a little more tender, not an animal seemed injured. Nothing got away. When we finally got the herd headed west, the sun was straight up.

The cattle had not eaten now for three days and very little for five days. They were leg weary from travel from the run, and from being choused during the cutting process. They were hot and thirsty. Thus we began the snaillike march up the steep hills of the Gila range.

A little before dark, we walked onto the bed grounds overlooking Yellowjack Canyon. This day we had covered five or six miles. No water. Horses petered out, and two or three of the hands "wringy," mad and disgusted. Willis had somehow got word to Joe Filiman to send four men back to help us herd the cattle, and the recruits reached the Yellowjacket while we were still stringing up the slope.

I shall never forget that camp in Yellowjacket. As the cattle walked in on their bed ground, Willis designated various ones of us to go to camp while he kept three or four men to settle the herd down. He merely motioned in the direction of camp to me and said it was "about half a mile down there."

I gave my horse, Dirtbobber, his head, and he instantly showed that he knew where he was going. He took me up to the canyon brink, then corkscrewed up and down the canyon side for a quarter of a mile. Presently, hundreds of feet below, I saw horses standing in a canyon box, a cottonwood tree that indicated water, the smoke of a fire, and the white gleam of bedrolls. Surely, for a gang of bandits this secluded spot would have made the neatest hiding place anywhere south of the notorious Jackson's Hole in Wyoming.

C A T T L E D R I V E

As we leisurely rode to catch up with the herd, the sun was painting the morning clouds and the peaks of the Gila range with a thousand colors... the world was all alive and we were young. It was a joy to take our places with the moving line of cattle.