UP AT THE CORRAL, of course, there are some changes. Pete, who took part of the photographs illustrating this article, is off taking pictures in Egypt; Ben has got married and is off on his honeymoon; and Bruce has taken a carload of horses to Pittsburgh.
But how long and sad a time it seems since Howard used to travel East in a box car with fifty or sixty elk for the parks there, emerging at the end of the trip pretty weary and with straws stuck to his clothes and in his hair, but smiling and cheerful. And having brushed his clothes and generally cleaned up, went in that same old gray sack suit and soft hat to dinners in great houses, and graced those tables, too, by heaven, from the White House on down.
But Howard is gracing the table of the good Lord God now, and riding the trails of Paradise. Only somehow, lately, when I have been seeing the elk about——
Curley is not here either. But Curley is still young and still alive. I saw him ride his first bucker, and now he is with the Hundred and One Ranch outfit, riding, roping, and bulldogging steers. Earning good money, too, but probably not saving any of it. You will know him if you see his show this year; the small dark-haired boy who isn’t afraid of the worst of the rough string.
“Scratch him, Curley!” we used to yell, and Curley would scratch him higher and higher. And if this means little or nothing to you, let me say that this scratching is not a caress such as one uses on a pet dog, but that art of the rider of a wild and bucking horse which requires him to scratch his horse’s neck with his spurs. The higher he scratches, the more points it counts. And by the same token, the higher he lifts his feet the less purchase on the saddle. It’s a rough game, but a fair one; man against horse, and all the advantage to the horse.
How disappointed that grand-stand audience was at the Montana State Fair when the announcer through a megaphone announced the presence there that day of the—let’s be modest, but this is what he said—“celebrated writer, Mary Roberts Rinehart,” and they thought he had said “rider”!
But there are others here who ride as well as Curley. Bill and George and Bruce. A day or two ago they brought in a few of the bad string and we had some riding.
In the old days, I remember, we had no bucking chute, and the wild horses had to be saddled in the open. It was a time to pick out your shelter and get ready to make for it. But now they saddle in the chute, working through the bars, and to the accompaniment of wild squeals and savage kicks. When the saddle is on and the cinch well tightened, the rider climbs up over the top and lowers himself carefully. Then he settles himself in the saddle and takes a death grip on the reins, and when the word is given and the door is opened, out shoots a malignant, twisting, roaring and rearing devil, whose one ambition is to get his rider off and then turn on him and trample him.
Man against horse, you see, and all the advantage to the horse; but somehow the man wins. Mostly. Now and then, of course, there are mishaps, and there is a sort of dreadful silence. But generally the hurts are small ones. A few compresses, a day or two in bed with the phonograph going and perhaps a crap game on the counterpane, a delicious turning over when at four A.M. comes the call: “Turn out, you fellows.”
And then again a drawing of names out of a hat:
“What have you got?”
“Satan. What’s yours?”
“Dynamite again.”
“You better watch out, boy. You’re going to break that horse one of these days!” And so it goes.
The saddle horses have not come back from their winter quarters on Wild Horse Creek, just beyond the Powder River at the Bar Eleven Ranch. Within a day or so now Bill is going after them to drive them up. Bringing three hundred horses a hundred miles was no trick in the old days of the open range, but the range is wired now and so it means sticking to the roads.
Gentle hints on my part that I would enjoy seeing the drive, nay, even being a part of it, have brought no response as yet. This West still draws a fine line between what is fitting for a woman to do and what is man’s work. Even although it has a woman governor, whom it dubs in facetious moments the governess, and seems rather to like her. But even there there was a reason. Partially it was sentimental, this appointing of the governor’s widow to fill his almost expired term. But partly, too, it was good politics, for it was too late for the party to groom a new candidate.
Still, it is not so long since a woman who wore riding breeches out here instead of a divided skirt was likely to be regarded with a certain suspicion.
So it is spring on the ranch, and will soon be summer.
The milk herd is giving great pailfuls of creamy milk, and tiny calves are learning to drink out of tin pans.
“Don’t you ever let them—er—nurse at all?” I inquired timidly of Pete, the Danish dairy maid, whose name is certainly not Pete at all.
And Pete, who is milking a fractious cow and has her legs tied together, says: “No. It iss not good. I yust feed them out of a pan.”
In the barnyard are still a goodly number of young Hereford steers, sad remnant of the great herd of the past. And in a small and private enclosure is the shorthorn bull. His eye is mild, but his manner is not. He has a habit of scraping the ground with his fore feet, which is less polite than it sounds, and this afternoon I caught him stealing the pig’s milk. In vain they protested, in vain they got into the trough and tried to edge him out, With one thrust of his great head he shoved them aside, amid furious squealing, and drank and drank and drank.
Time was, and not so long ago either, when such a thing as a milk cow was practically unknown on a cattle ranch; when condensed milk was as staple as bacon and canned tomatoes. Indeed, riding up the trail yesterday with Peter, who is a young British scion of nobility and a visitor to a ranch near by, Peter confided to me that condensed milk not being to his taste, he was milking a cow once daily. “Nobody else can milk,” he explained, “and I am not much good at it myself. But anyhow I have to leave some for the calf.”
The blacksmith’s shop is already in full blast. Just now he is repairing the broken irons of farm wagons; his fire glows as he works the bellows, and is reflected in the hundreds of horseshoes hung on the rafters over his head. But it is when the rest of the horses come back that he will have his rush season. Quiet horses, with an upturned foot between his leather-clad knees; less quiet ones; “Whoa, boy! Stand still there.” And wild and terrified horses, lunging and rearing.
Wham, bang! Big shoes for big horses, little shoes for small ones, and the stocks for the crazy ones who aren’t willing to stand at all.
Two great wooden frames hinged to the wall are brought out parallel. The frantic horse is placed between them and a strong web band thrown across underneath him. The turning of a handle, and he is lifted into the air. Now let him struggle and bite and kick. The foot to be shod is securely tied, and if a horse could faint with horror, it would happen now.
Wham, bang, bang, wham! And so the shoe is on, and the horse freed. He rushes out and into the corral, there to reflect on what has happened to him, and to store up in a singularly retentive memory these insults against another attack.
But there are other signs of an early spring. In five minutes’ walk yesterday evening we saw ten deer feeding in these comparatively low meadows. Not so low, really, at five thousand feet. Later on they will retreat into the interior of the range, and fight flies in the heat of the day in brush and timber. But now they are still here, black-tailed deer with round white rumps which give them, in retreat, the appearance of small white boulders leaping up the hillside.
They are not easily alarmed, however. Rather, they are curious. They are apt, if you are a bit wary, to come toward you, tense, watchful and inquisitive. The buck leads and the does follow. But he is filled with responsibility, and before long his caution stops him. He is unarmed and knows it; his new spring headgear is just sprouting and is still only a pair of velvet-covered prongs, some three or four inches long. His last year’s ones he scratched off against a tree some time ago.
But it is the elk which really thrill us. Stalking elk is a difficult matter. They are very wary, and have already commenced their retreat into the interior fastnesses. To see our elk, then, we have had to climb on horses up to the head of the canon, and then go still on and up to nine thousand feet, toward the salt lick. A long pull, this, and a hard one.
A rattlesnake under a stone in a ticklish spot causes a small excitement. It is rather early for him, and a trifle high; some misogynist of a snake, perhaps, leaving his kind for these upper levels, and rattling his venom at a passing world; an orange marmot on a rock, sentry for his colony and ridiculously sticking to his post until we are almost on him; blue grouse, flying into trees and so protectively colored that only a keen eye can see them against the branches; little water ousels, their nests under waterfalls so that their babies are true children of the mist.
Up and up. The horses are still soft and are covered with sweat. Already the men from the ranger station have cleared the trail, but to the novice it is still an adventure. Here it hangs on the edge of a cliff, here it twists and turns on itself in a switchback.
Again it strikes an open spot and the horses pull hard at the reins; they want to eat the grass and early flowers, they yearn to lie down and roll, for under the saddles they are intolerably itchy with the heat. One indeed tries it. I turn around and see Moxie clear down and preparing to roll, and a white-faced young Eastern woman still hanging to the saddle and rather bewildered.
“Kick him!” I yell. “Jerk him up! He’s going to roll!” She jerks, and Moxie lifts an annoyed head, slowly following it with his body.
“Why in the world did you let him do it?” I inquire.
“I just thought he was tired and wanted to lie down,” she explains.
And she is still more bewildered by the laughter that follows.