The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail DaysAdams, Andy
General
The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days
Adams, Andy
Cattle drives -- Fiction; Cowboys -- Fiction; Western stories
Trailing by moonlight was a novelty to all of us, and in the stillness
of those splendid July nights we could hear the point men chatting
across the lead in front, while well in the rear, the rattling of our
heavily loaded wagon and the whistling of the horse wrangler to his
charges reached our ears. The swing men were scattered so far apart
there was no chance for conversation amongst us, but every once in a
while a song would be started, and as it surged up and down the line,
every voice, good, bad, and indifferent, joined in. Singing is
supposed to have a soothing effect on cattle, though I will vouch for
the fact that none of our Circle Dots stopped that night to listen to
our vocal efforts. The herd was traveling so nicely that our foreman
hardly noticed the passing hours, but along about midnight the singing
ceased, and we were nodding in our saddles and wondering if they in
the lead were never going to throw off the trail, when a great
wig-wagging occurred in front, and presently we overtook The Rebel,
holding the lantern and turning the herd out of the trail. It was then
after midnight, and within another half hour we had the cattle bedded
down within a few hundred yards of the trail. One-hour guards was the
order of the night, and as soon as our wagon and saddle horses came
up, we stretched ropes and caught out our night horses. These we
either tied to the wagon wheels or picketed near at hand, and then we
sought our blankets for a few hours’ sleep. It was half past three in
the morning when our guard was called, and before the hour passed, the
first signs of day were visible in the east. But even before our watch
had ended, Flood and the last guard came to our relief, and we pushed
the sleeping cattle off the bed ground and started them grazing
forward.
Cattle will not graze freely in a heavy dew or too early in the
morning, and before the sun was high enough to dry the grass, we had
put several miles behind us. When the sun was about an hour high, the
remainder of the outfit overtook us, and shortly afterward the wagon
and saddle horses passed on up the trail, from which it was evident
that “breakfast would be served in the dining car ahead,” as the
traveled Priest aptly put it. After the sun was well up, the cattle
grazed freely for several hours; but when we sighted the _remuda_ and
our commissary some two miles in our lead, Flood ordered the herd
lined up for a count. The Rebel was always a reliable counter, and he
and the foreman now rode forward and selected the crossing of a dry
wash for the counting. On receiving their signal to come on, we
allowed the herd to graze slowly forward, but gradually pointed them
into an immense “V,” and as the point of the herd crossed the dry
arroyo, we compelled them to pass in a narrow file between the two
counters, when they again spread out fan-like and continued their
feeding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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