12/25/2022
Title: “June 9th in the Black Hills………..
P’ard all I remember,….. t’was a cold som-bitch”
We arrived the afternoon of the 8th, at a ranch on the South Dakota and Wyoming boarder. I was there to help out the Foreman of the ranch, move cows to the north, for their summer pasture. The Forman, a colorful, tough old cowboy in his own right, was the image you think of when you read about the west. He has an old time sense to him, and is a man of few words, he’s been cowboy’n since he was a kid, eats one meal a day and cuts his hair only one time each spring. We got up the 9th of June, at 4:30 a.m. and started to prepare for the day. Not too much conversation is exchanged in these early hours, its just business as usual and everyone knows what they need to do. I remember waking up and standing in the basement with my eyes half open looking at all the rows of jarred beans, and peaches and canned goods. I herd my friend George, suggest to me to wear my heavy winter gear but since it was just 75 degrees the day before, I thought for a moment, he was trying to pull a typical prank on me. I decided to take a chance, so I put on my long johns, heavy wool vest, carhartt jacket packed my gloves and rolled my oil slicker. I dragged my saddle out, to get ready and found a cool drizzle breaking the silence of that dark morning. As I saddled up my horse, he hu**ed up, and decided to shake out the cold by taking a trip around the corral, bucking and kicking. we all mounted up and sat in the rain planning the trip up the “limestone” to the summer pasture.
I wanted to get a good view of the 1000′ s of cows snaking up the limestone canyon, so after awhile I was sent up to the front to take a small bunch way ahead to point the rest of the herd. At one point I was too far ahead so I stopped at a bottleneck canyon, held the bunch to let the drags catch up. The cows had spread out a couple miles and needed to be slowed and as they were held they started to bunch up and fill the bottom of this high walled canyon. They were bawling and bunched up so tight they were shoulder to shoulder and thicker than flees on a fat pup. As the temperature started to drop, as we got higher into the mountains, the rain started to turn to large wet flakes and the canyon walls started to collect the snow. The draggs finally were catching up and as I got the hand signal we started to push on. As the cows were heating up, steam started to rise off there backs until billowing clouds rose up high through the tall canyon, like a train, puffing through the Black Hills. I was glad to have my slicker, and my “wild rag” around my neck, as the snow really started to come down until it was an all out blizzard. After awhile the cows got real quiet and at one point I was off from the main bunch, I sat tucked up under a pine tree branch out of the snowfall. On my sorrel horse, I sat just listening to the sounds of the flakes coming through the trees. My horse hung his head down low and I sat with my hands under my saddle blanket, I just thought how amazing this day was, and how I hoped I’d never forget every detail. As the snow collected on my hat and the black dye ran down my back, I couldn’t wait to paint this scene, unfolding before my eyes. Finally we made it out of the canyon, up high on an open flat, the cows really spread out and the forest and the cows disappeared in the white of the snow fall. With about ten inches of snow on the ground, George and I rode up the side of the herd yelling “this is the life for me” but our excitement fell on deaf and very cold ears, it seemed no one else shared our enthusiasm, since most were not as prepared. By the end of the day our voices were worn out from trying to keep the young fresh branded calves from lying down and wondering off into the forest. In the end as we sat horseback in the snow, we waited for the cows to “mother up”, and as no one really said much, I thought to myself, this was a day I was waiting for my entire life, and this was defiantly the “west” I was searching for, as a kid, reading books about cowboy’n in the north country.
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