Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack: Being an Extremely Humorous & Sarcastic Story of the Trials & Tribulations Endured by a Party of Stockmen Making a Shipment from the West to the East.Benton, Frank
General
Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack: Being an Extremely Humorous & Sarcastic Story of the Trials & Tribulations Endured by a Party of Stockmen Making a Shipment from the West to the East.
Benton, Frank
Benton, Frank, 1853-1921 -- Anecdotes; Cattle trade -- West (U.S.) -- Anecdotes; Cowboys -- West (U.S.) -- Anecdotes; Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Anecdotes; West (U.S.) -- Social life and customs -- Anecdotes
But I reckon she could just knock the hind sights off anybody when it
came to singing. I never did know just whether it was a song or not she
sung, 'cause none of us could understand it. She said it was Italian,
and of course there wasn't any of us understood any Dago talk. But she
would just commence away down in a kind of low growl, like a sleeping
foxhound when he is dreaming of a bear fight, and keep growling a little
louder and little louder, and directly begin to give some short barks,
and then it would sound like a herd of wild cattle bawling round a dead
carcass; then like a lot of hungry coyotes howling of a clear frosty
night, and finally wind up like hundreds of wild geese flying high and
going south for winter. She said her voice had been cultivated and I
reckon it had. You could tell it had been laid off in mighty even rows,
the weeds all pulled out and the dirt throwed up close to the hills. But
somehow I'd a heap rather hear a little blue-eyed girl I know up in the
mountains in Idaho sing "The Suwanee River," and "Coming Through the
Rye," 'cause I can understand that. But I guess them Boston girls are
all right at home. I reckon they are used to them there.
CHAPTER VII.
SELLING CATTLE ON THE RANGE.
Then old Packsaddle Jack got to telling about Senator Dorsey, of Star
Route fame, selling a little herd of cattle he had in northern New
Mexico. He said the Senator had got hold of some eyeglass Englishmen,
and representing to them that he had a large herd of cattle in northern
New Mexico, finally made a sale at $25 a head all round for the cattle.
The Englishmen, however, insisted on counting the herd and wouldn't take
the Senator's books for them. Dorsey finally agreed to this, but said
the cattle would have to be gathered first. The Senator then went to his
foreman, Jack Hill, and asked Jack if he knew of a place where they
could drive the cattle around a hill where they wouldn't have to travel
too far getting around and have a good place to count them on one side.
Jack selected a little round mountain with a canyon on one side of it,
where he stationed the Englishmen and their bookkeepers and Senator
Dorsey. The Senator had about 1,000 cattle, and Jack and the cowboys
separated them into two bunches out in the hills, a couple of miles from
the party of Englishmen and out of sight. Keeping the two herds about a
mile apart, they now drove the first herd into the canyon, which ran
around the edge of the bluff, and on the bank of the canyon sat the
Senator with the Englishmen, and they counted the cattle as the herd
strung along by them. The herd was hardly out of sight before the second
bunch came stringing along. Two or three cowboys, though, had met the
first herd, and, getting behind them, galloped them around back of the
mountain and had them coming down the canyon past the Englishmen again,
and they were counted the second time. And they were hardly out of sight
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