Dusk Along the Niobrara

by John D. Nesbitt

  My good luck came in part from Del Bancroft being the roundup boss this fall. Each outfit contributed workers in proportion to its size and holdings, and a couple of new hands were hired on. This season, the night wrangler was new, as was the day wrangler. The riders went out in pairs to ride circles in the gather, so I was paired with Dunbar.

  After meeting up with the other outfits and setting camp the first day, we set out at sunrise on the second day. Dunbar had brought both of his horses, so he was riding his blue roan. He had the horse’s neck rope coiled and tied to the left side of his saddle, while he had his stock rope or catch rope tied to the right. He wore riding gloves and had his pistol on his hip.

  I rode the bay horse from my string. I wanted a horse that wouldn’t give me trouble on the first day, and he was a good choice. He was calm and gentle, but he could run when I wanted him to, and he had good endurance. Though the days were still warm, they were growing shorter, and a briskness carried on the morning air. It made some horses frisky. It also put me in mind to tie a canvas jacket onto the back of my saddle and to wear a wool shirt. I had my gloves tucked under my belt, and my pistol and holster lay tucked away in my saddlebag. I did not have the habit of toting a gun, and I had not developed a comfortable way for it to ride on my hip while I was in the saddle.

  As we rode out, I rehearsed the work ahead. As a general rule, during fall roundup, we did not gather cows with branded calves. This was beef roundup, so we gathered steers to be shipped to Omaha. While we were at it, we brought in stock that needed to be branded or re-branded. Every day or so we would brand, and we would let go any stock that we did not intend to drive to the shipping pens.

  Dunbar and I split up a couple of miles from camp, each to ride on his own circle. As I turned north, I caught a view of the morning sun. It had cleared the hills in the east, and the pink sky of sunrise had given way to yellow and blue.

  I passed up a couple of cow-calf pairs and rode on to find my first animal to herd, a rangy steer with lean hips and foot-long horns. I spurred my horse, slapped my leg, and shouted, “Heeyaw!” as I headed him toward camp. The bay horse knew what to do, and with his help, I launched into the fall season’s work of being a cowpuncher.

  Two hands from the Bonner ranch were holding the herd on the bedding ground as I drove five head of cattle in from my ride. Three were steers, and the other two were a branded cow with an unbranded calf. I turned them all into the herd and headed to the cavvy ground, where I could unsaddle my horse. I saw Dunbar’s blue roan in the cavvy, standing head-to-head with the buckskin. I stripped my horse, left my rigging where it would not be in the way, and walked to camp. My legs felt light and bowed as they do after a time in the saddle, and my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten for more than six hours.

  The roundup crew consisted of eighteen riders, the two wranglers, and Dan, the cook. The BC outfit had five riders present—Ainsworth, Larose, Mullet, and two others. They sat on the ground in a group by themselves and paid no attention to me or Dunbar. I thought that was a good beginning.

  When I brought in my second gather in late afternoon of the same day, Del Bancroft met me on horseback. He was wearing a hat, gloves, and chaps, as well as a shirt with a full row of buttons and two chest pockets. I thought he looked quite like a roundup boss. His teeth showed as he smiled and then spoke.

  “Afternoon, Tag. Don’t put your horse away yet. We’ve got enough to brand already, so you stand by.”

  As a crew, we did not yet have a routine set, but the usual practice would be to have one or two men cut the animals from the herd, one or two rope, and one or two brand. Del took stock of who was on hand, and he assigned our tasks. Dunbar and I sat by on our horses to go after anything that got loose. Mullet and Larose were going to cut and rope, the two men from Hat Creek would wrestle and hold the stock, and Ainsworth and Del were going to brand.

  The first couple of animals went through all right. Bawling and braying filled the air, along with the pungent smell of burned hair. Larose cut out the third animal, a steer that weighed about seven or eight hundred pounds and needed to be re-branded. As soon as the steer emerged from the herd, it cut to the right and began running.

  Mullet took off in pursuit, shaking out a loop. He didn’t throw right away, and the loop grew. When he made his throw, the steer lowered its head and picked up its feet at just the right moment, and it ran through the loop. By the time Mullet pulled his slack, he caught only the right hind leg. The steer bolted, yanking the rope from Mullet’s grasp, and headed for the open plain with the rope trailing.

  Dunbar, riding the buckskin, sprang into action. He took down his rope from the right side, shook out a loop, and roped the steer by the horns. He gained on the steer, shook his slack over the steer’s back and onto its right hip, turned his horse to the left, and tripped the steer. The buckskin continued dragging, to keep the steer from getting up. Dunbar dismounted, ran back to the steer, and untied Mullet’s rope. The buckskin kept tension on the rope until Dunbar re-mounted and faced the horse toward the steer. When he moved the horse forward, the steer scrambled to its feet. Dunbar rode ahead, tightening the rope again, and led the steer toward the branding fire. The steer danced along, straining back, but it followed.

  Meanwhile, Mullet had recovered his rope and made ready to catch the steer by its hind feet. He caught it on his second toss. He and Dunbar stretched the animal out, and Del branded it.

  Larose and I rode up on either side, ready to haze the steer into the herd.

  “That was slick,” said Mullet. “Did you see the way he tripped that steer?”

  Larose took a long sniff. “Oh, yeah. Just about any hand that come up the trail can do that. I learned from an old vah-kerro. But it’s not just any old hand that can trip ’em from the front.”

  Mullet’s mouth hung open as it sometimes did. “Really? I’d like to see that. Kin you do it?”

  Larose shrugged, as if modesty was his nature. “Haven’t done it in a while.”

  “Why don’t you show us?”

  Larose motioned with his head toward the steer. “I don’t think this fella has got much play left in him at the moment.”

  “We’ll cut out another one.”

  “Nah. Leave it be.” Larose waved his hand.

  “I’d like to see it.” Mullet smiled as he glanced around. By now, a few other men had gathered to watch, so he said, “We all would. Don’t you think?”

  A couple of the other men said, “Sure,” and “Why not?”

  “Leave it be,” said Larose. “We have enough real work to do.”

  Mullet was wearing his simpleton’s smile. “How about you, Dunbar? Do you know how to trip ’em from the front?”

  “I didn’t learn from an old vaquero, but I do know how.”

  “Ha, ha,” said Mullet. “Let’s see it.”

  By now, George Olney had joined the group of onlookers. “Oh, yes,” he said. “We can even take wagers. Who’d like to bet that he can, and who’d like to bet that he can’t?”

  Dunbar held up his hand. “Let’s not do it for money. Just for sport. Anyone else who wants to can give it a try as well.”

  Now Mullet was happy. He asked for someone to point out a steer that was a real buster, and when the re-branded steer was back in the herd, Mullet cut out the one that was recommended.

  As the fresh steer came to the edge of the herd, I saw that it was at least as large as the previous one. It was brownish black and husky, and it moved its head from one side to another as it looked for an opening. As the steer broke free, Mullet slapped it with the loop end of his rope and hollered, “Yahhh!”

  The steer bolted, and Dunbar followed on the buckskin. As before, he rode up on the left side and made his throw. He settled the loop on the steer’s horns, then sped up as he shook out slack beyond and in front of the steer’s head. As he slowed and sagged back, the rope fell in front of the steer and tripped it. The animal flew in the air, head over heels, and landed with a thud a
nd a grunt that I could hear from fifty yards away. As the steer came to its feet, Dunbar rode forward and shook slack into his rope. He shook again, and the rope came free.

  The steer was already branded, so Mullet and I hazed it back to the herd and pushed it in.

  By now, Dick Ainsworth had walked onto the scene. He stood in front of Mullet’s horse and said, “Are you through fooling around? There’s work to do, you know.”

  “Aw, hell,” said Mullet. “It wasn’t but a minute or two, and it’s not every day you get to see something like that.”

  “Don’t talk back to me. I might not be the boss on this roundup, but I’m still your foreman. Don’t forget where you come from, because that’s where we go back to when this thing is over and we’ve got the steers shipped.” Ainsworth made his dry spitting sound. “At least Boots knows better than to fool around.”

  Dunbar had coiled his rope and was riding toward me at a walk. The buckskin’s breathing was audible, but the horse looked loose and relaxed.

  Ainsworth shifted so that he had his back turned to Dunbar.

  Dunbar spoke to me. “Let’s go back and take our posts, and the others can get under way again with the day’s branding.”

  Mullet spoke past Ainsworth and toward us. “Dunbar, that was pretty damn good. Just goes to show, you don’t know what a man’s got in him, just to look at him.” He raised his head as he smiled at me.

  “Ain’t that right, kid?”

  I was searching for an answer, but Ainsworth saved me the trouble.

  He said, “You talk too much, Mullet.”

  A week into the roundup, halfway through the second half of September, a slow, cold, wet spell of weather came in. Cold rain turned to sleet and went back to rain. The short grass was slick, and the muddy ground was slicker. Work came to a standstill until the weather cleared up. The men who did not have to be out on shift watching the herds were gathered under the canvas tent. Nearby, the cookfire threw out thick clouds of smoke, so the air beneath the canopy was heavy with the mixed odors of woodsmoke, wet wool clothing, wet leather, and old sweat.

  A couple of men sat on crates, a few including myself sat on folded saddle blankets, and the rest stood around. No one spoke much, and if a newcomer had stepped under the canvas awning, he would have sensed right away that humor was in short supply.

  At the rear of the tent, standing at the tailgate mixing dough, Dan turned and said, “This is a hell of a time to mention it, but we’re going to run out of beef.”

  Del Bancroft tipped back his hat. “It’s not so bad in one sense. At least we have time to butcher one.”

  Ainsworth cleared his throat. “Sure. We can divvy up the work. Boots, you and Mullet can cut out that heifer, and a couple of others can do the butcherin’.” His dark blue eyes bore down on me. “This lad here, and maybe someone else. Just a suggestion.”

  A dozen pair of eyes fell on me. “I can do my share,” I said.

  Ainsworth turned to Larose. “You know the heifer that we held back for that purpose, don’t you?”

  “Sure. Brockle face, walks with a gimp.”

  “That’s the one. You and Mullet can cut it out of the herd, lead it over to where you’re going to kill it, and drop it there.”

  I stood up and stepped around Ainsworth. I said to Dan, “If you give me the knives, I’ll go do this work.”

  “Thanks, kid. I appreciate it.” He took out the knives that he kept for that purpose, and he handed them to me.

  With the knives in hand, I went out into the cold drizzle and selected a place away from the camp and away from the herd. There I waited for Mullet and Larose to show up. I realized I could have stayed in the tent until they saddled their horses, but that time had passed, and I figured they would make as short a work of it as possible. So I stood like a fool with my hands drawn up inside the sleeves of my jacket, with slow, cold rain falling around me.

  After a while they came looming out of the mist with a chubby heifer limping along at the end of a rope. When they reached the spot where I stood, Larose swung down from his horse and swaggered forward. He tossed a cigarette butt aside onto the wet grass. I had not liked his careless way of smoking on the range, and even though I knew it wouldn’t start a fire at the moment, I didn’t care for his present gesture.

  Mullet sat hunched in the saddle, holding the rope, while Larose’s horse stood with the reins on the ground.

  “Here’s how you do it,” said Larose. He drew his yellow-handled pistol, raised it, and cocked it. “You wait until they look straight at you, and then you give it to ’em.”

  After a long moment, the heifer lifted its head, lolled, and gazed forward. The gun blasted, and the animal cleared the ground by three inches with all four feet and fell onto its side.

  “That’s with cattle,” said Larose. “With horses it’s a little different.” His own horse had lurched away, run a few yards, and stopped. He holstered his gun and walked away toward his mount.

  I went to work on the animal. I had butchered on the ground before, so I knew how to go about it, turning the animal from one side to another as I skinned it. I was getting started on the first front hock when I heard a swishing sound behind me. I dropped the foot, straightened up, and turned around.

  Dunbar was wearing a canvas capote with the hood up over his head. Moisture was gathering on his dark mustache. “Thought you could use a hand.”

  “Thanks. I can. Sorry to see you out in the wet and cold, though.”

  “Not so bad. Just part of divvying up the work.”

  Aside from getting wet and developing a sore back, I didn’t mind the work. It kept me away from the close company of Ainsworth and Larose for a couple of hours, and the smell of fresh warm meat in the cold air was not disagreeable. As for humor, it still seemed distant. Dunbar did not speak much, and he did not indulge in his whimsical and morbid comments as he had done in the past. But as I was finishing up, and he dragged away the feet, head, and guts, I thought I heard him humming the tune about the woman who died in the snow.

  The weather cleared out, and the days warmed up, but the nights stayed cold. Freezing temperatures, along with the humidity from the recent rain, made for slow drying of wool garments, cold leather on saddles and straps, and cold, stiff ropes. Dunbar and I took our ropes into our tent at night and kept them under our blankets. In the morning we warmed our horses’ bits by holding the bridles inside our coats. Even at that, sometimes a webbed cinch had frozen before it dried out, and the horse would rear up in the morning when I pulled the latigo.

  Men who did not have tents but slept under tarpaulins had it even more difficult. They awoke with frost on the canvas that covered them. They held their ropes close to the fire in the morning, trying to make them more pliant. They said that their beds never dried out, even on sunny days when they spread the blankets on sagebrush.

  As we moved into October, the days became shorter a few minutes at a time. Shadows became darker; dusk, thicker. The cold wind blew out of the northwest, and we didn’t know when the next storm would come.

  Each sunny day seemed like a short reprieve. Meanwhile, the herd of animals to be shipped grew by the day, and Del Bancroft reminded us that we would have a short end to the season, for instead of having to drive the cattle all the way to Chadron, as in years past, we had only to drive them to the shipping pens in Brome.

  Borden Crowley rode into the roundup camp at noon on a warm October day. The crew had made a swing west and north, and now that the operation was moving south and east, it was close enough for Crowley to ride out from his ranch. As soon as he appeared, Mullet jumped and made haste to the bed wagon, where he took out a small canvas bag that held the three-legged camp stool with the leather seat. At that moment I realized that the BC crew carried the stool on the whole campaign in order to accommodate their boss at such moments as he might choose to drop in.

  Crowley dismounted a few yards out and handed his reins to the day wrangler. He stood for a minute and surveyed
the camp with a peculiar air I had noted about him, as if he wanted to be admired at the same time that he avoided men who were not of his immediate circle. Taller than average and neither lean nor heavy, decked out in a hat the color of dull silver and a jacket and vest to match, and a pair of light-gray wool pants, he looked as if he could have been a land speculator or an investor on a ditch project.

  Mullet set the camp stool in place, and Crowley walked forward to take a seat. He glanced around and nodded at the hands who were seated and eating their grub, but his brown eyes did not rest on anyone. They glided over Dunbar and me, then raised to meet Dan, who handed him a tin plate heaped with a chunk of fried beef and a side of fried potatoes.

  “Thanks,” he said. He stared at the grub for a long moment until he leaned to one side and took out a pocketknife. After another fifteen seconds, he opened the knife and cut into the chunk of beef. In a way, he was a neat man, reserved in his motions and always clean-shaven, but his hair, a mix of mousy brown and gray, had a dull, matted texture suggesting that he did not wash it often, and his fingernails were not trimmed or clean. I found myself wincing, then looked away at the campfire coals, lest he see me watching.

  I put Borden Crowley and his men out of my mind as I finished my meal. After a cup of coffee, I was ready to pick out a horse for the afternoon ride.

  As Dunbar and I reached the horse herd, the day wrangler met us with a troubled expression on his face. Directing his words toward Dunbar, he said, “I don’t mean to be startin’ anything, but I think you should know that Boots Larose tried to rope out your blue roan like he wanted to ride it. I told him not to.”

  “When was this?”

  “A few minutes ago. He went back to the camp. Maybe he wanted to ask Dick Ainsworth somethin’.”

  Dunbar turned square around and headed for the wagon. I thought there might be trouble, for he did not have his calm demeanor, so I walked alongside him.