Tuesday was branding day at Mac’s. Us Pica Springs hands did some fencing, ran some errands in town, and packed. The skies were threatening, and Cass warned us that it might get called off. But 3:30 came with no call from Mac so we piled into the old flatbed Dodge with all our stuff and off we rattled to the MX Ranch.
It was drizzling when we got there, but Mac just nodded at the sky and said, “We’ll see.” He was tall, had a full mustache (like almost everyone else at the branding, it would turn out), used his words sparingly. He gave me a hearty handshake, and told me he was glad to have me there, though. He was wearing his slicker, a dark oilskin jacked. I just had the crappy yellow vinyl kind. Someday.
We loaded up the chuckwagon with our supplies, and bedrolls, and ol’ Dennis hitched up his team of Suffolk Punch draft horses. They were almost six foot at the shoulder it seemed. Big. But calm. Finally, after Tony arrived, and saddled up, we were off. The Suffolks took us at a good trot, and it was surprisingly comfy to ride on the wagon. My fellow ranch hand Thomas and I just sat up top, Lydia (Thomas’s girlfriend) got to ride shotgun. I think Dennis enjoyed sharing the narrow bench a bit more than she might have.
In front of us, the road was steep and muddy. Several times we had to get off and walk, to lighten the load. Several times, I was nervous that we wouldn’t pull through. But we did, never once bogging down. As we went along, the cowboys and girls started peeling off, heading up into the hills to bring down the cattle. Soon we were all alone, but in the distance I could see the cowboys working. Tony scared up a coyote. The sleek grey-brown dog leapt a few bushes and melted into the woods. We could hear the drum-like sound of grouse calling mates. The sun was slowly slipping behind the mountains, and we rolled up to camp.
Our duty was to set up, and cook dinner. We had a cooler full of steaks, a giant can of beans, and a sack of potatoes. And some butter, salt and pepper. So we wrestled a wall tent up (which included me skinning up an aspen to lash a pole). We put the tipi aside, having no idea how one of those got up, and we started dinner. Meanwhile, the clouds broke. I heard hooves, and turning about, I saw the cowboys riding up from round up, riding toward the sun, and toward us. I had just enough time to snap a photo.
Mac helped us set up the tipi. As he said, “It takes two good squaws. Or a dozen white men.” It was a tricky deal, but logical. There are three main tripod poles, and the rest get laid on those in a circle. The door has to face east, and there is a single anchor rope which runs around all the poles where they meet and then is staked down near the center of the tipi floor. It sure beats a tent, since there is so much room to stand up inside. We should have made a fire, but never did.
Finally, after a few drinks and plenty of story telling, horse talk, and laughing, well all turned in for what was going to be a cold night under the stars, with only a layer of canvas and some nylon down between us and the universe. It was cold, and I wasn’t that bothered when I had to get up at 5:30, when the light sidled in through the tipi seams. Stepping out there was a cold clear frost on everything. The fire had been rekindled by Thomas, up just a minute or two before me, and we three cooks started our early work. We cut the leftover potatoes, put on a pot of coffee, and started laying out the bacon. Lydia mixed up the pancakes. Before long, the cowboys were milling about, sucking their coffee and hunching their shoulders. The smell of frying bacon got most everyone out of bed.
Soon more folks started to show. By seven, the whole crew had arrived. There were Wyatt and Mickey, Mac’s boys. There was Dennis, the old cranky roper who thought I stole his gloves until late afternoon when I found them in the back of his truck. Travis, the quiet roper who seemed to never miss. Jack and Jordy, pure cowboys who ride a ranch in Saskatchewan for a living. Ed, the castration man, always ready with a joke, always asking, “We got nuts?” Riley, fourteen or so, with a handshake like a printing press. Ed’s dad, born 1924, a cripple, who found his calling on the back of a horse. Tracy: taxidermist, ranch manager, and individualist. Ross, the Englishman who had become a cowboy. The whole bunch were as diverse as the trees in the valley, all bound together by friendship and love of their landscape and its history. They were keeping this all alive.
Finally, about 9:00, the cattle were all rounded up. The horseless, myself included, had chopped firewood for the branding fire, and set up all our supplies. On either side of the fire were two pairs of “forks” a sort of a calf immobilizer. It was my job to run one of these contraptions. Before long, a roper started my way, lariat dallied around his horn, calf roped by the back legs, dragging toward me tail first. I gripped my fork, tense as the bawling calf. I jammed the fork down, pulling the rope the held it taught as the roper took out the slack on his end. There was the calf, stretched out in front of me, helpless, and ready to be worked on.
Before I could even congratulate myself for doing a good job, first try, the other workers swooped in. Lydia had one vaccine. Joann had another. Bill was had the brand, Tony the dehorning iron. Ed his jackknife. In a flash, it was over. I signaled the roper, and popped the forks off up over the calf’s head. Off he wobbled, understandably a bit tender. The heifers still had a bit more kick afterwards, and one or two had to be chased down, to be freed properly from a lariat or a tangled fork rope. I soon settled into the rhythm, and had reassuringly few go foul on me.
I had picked a bad spot. First forks, right next to the branding fire. I must have pin nearly 80 calves of the 220. Far more than Thomas, who had the experience to know you don’t take the forks by the fire.
By the part way through the day, everyone was wearing down, but there were enough folks that breaks were possible without breaking the work flow. Ropers would switch out to give their mounts a break. I got a reprieve long enough to learn to dehorn and grab some water and food. At about two o’clock, the last calf was dragged my way. As I was about to release him, I looked up to see that three cowboys had roped the only think left in the corral. A yearling heifer. She must have weighed 500 pounds. One had the head, the others were trying for her legs, to pull her over. I looked up at my roper. He siad, “You gonna let me go? I don’t wanna miss the fun.” He was grinning under his mustache. I quickly released my calf, and off he galloped, looping up his lasso as he rode.
The yearling was surrounded, cowboys on all sides, still she kicked, pulled, dragged lariats loose and led the riders on a chase for five minutes. Then in one swift moment she was down, with a heavy bellow and thud. Jordy had hooked her back legs just right, sending her flailing onto her side, to be dogpiled by the branding crew. They dehorned her, vaccinated her, and branded her.
Then the hard work was over. It was time to feast! Wendy, Mac’s wife, had brought up a branding meal. We had chili, potato salad, coleslaw, beef (of course), pie, pie, pie, and cake.
And of course, the oysters. I know them as Rocky Mountain Oysters, the folks here call ‘em prarie oysters. Regardless, they are a branding delicacy. Fried in about a pound of butter, in a cast iron skillet over a camp fire, they are surprisingly tasty. And might account for all those mustaches.
Branding as a job is hot, dirty, smelly and tough. You have to catch 150 pound calves, pin them down, castrated some, burn horns off, burn a brand onto their side, stick them with vaccines, and send them off to their worried moms. Several hundred times. You get kicked now and then, you get bloody, you might even get burned. But you also get to know the folks your working with. You get to know the cows. You get to know the landscape. And somewhere in there, you even get to see a bit about yourself. You can do more than you think.
Work is what people do. Out here, trying to avoid it demeans you, demotes you, and marks you as a weak sort. But if you can make a festival out of work; if you can turn work into something joyful, cheerful, even beautiful, then you have created something bigger than yourself. Something that touches the lives of friends, something that builds a community. That is what branding does.
