Welcome to the West as I see it

Cowboys are born with a trading gene. Usually this involves swapping horses, livestock, trailers, saddles or pocketknives.

Horse-trading requires a special language. If both parties in a trade are cowboys, the buyer is already in “beware” mode. However, for those who were not born down dirt roads, here is an example of a few choice phrases of trading vernacular used mostly in print advertisements.

“Very alert 12-year-old gelding, foundation stock, strong, heavy-muscled, will watch a cow. Friendly nature, quiet in the arena. Must see to appreciate. $27,000 or best offer.”

The literal translation is:

* Alert – he will spook if a bug within five miles moves. Nothing is going to sneak up on him.

* Twelve years old is about the age where horses can no longer be positively aged by their teeth. He could be 34.

* Foundation-bred means he looks exactly like a mustang and was adopted from the BLM in their effort to preserve the world before the wild horses eat it up.

* Strong means your best antique, foot-long, 40-pound Mexican bit won’t hold him.

* Will watch a cow means he will watch the cow go right by.

* Friendly nature – he will pick your gloves out of your back pocket as well as gnaw on everything in the barn and everybody else’s saddle if tied next to another horse.

* Quiet in the arena – he won’t wake up before the cattle get through the stripping chute at the end of the run.

* Quiet in the box – he will sit there until next Friday if you don’t liberally apply the spurs when you nod for your steer.

* Must see – the seller is hoping to get you to their pen, lock the gate and not let you out until you buy something.

* The price – that’s always a starting place. Actually, the guy would be happy to see $800 and that horse’s backside out his gate.

The trading world has three basic components: sellers, buyers and tire kickers. The variety of descriptive phrases applied to horses would enchant any clever wordsmith.

“Not the prettiest head you ever saw, but it’s full of cow sense.” That means his head looks like a pump jack, is exactly the same length as his back and it would give most horses whiplash to hold it up.

“This is an after-dinner horse.” A compliment, to mean that he is a smooth trotting horse who won’t jiggle your dinner. It also likely means that he can trot all day in the shade of
one tree.

“He has a smooth little cowboy lope that you’ll love.” This is supposed to infer that he can cover the miles smoothly. Nobody mentioned that it takes the first five miles to get him worked up to this cowboy lope and only 15 steps for him to fall back to that teeth-jarring trot.

“This is a horse who will let you do all the thinking.” A good bit of this required thinking will also involve your spurs.

“All that chrome really dresses him up.” This horse has enough white that the Quarter Horse Association referred the owner to the paint horse association, and he has white hooves, which will require that he have shoes every day of his useful life.

A buyer might comment that the horse “looks a mite lively.” To which the seller will reply, “He’s just fun-loving. Don’t take that little bucking streak too seriously.”

When faced with tire kickers or reluctant buyers, the sellers will sometimes offer incentives.

· Horses are just like bananas. They get cheaper by the bunch.

· Better buy him today, I’m just like an old cow, get up in a different mood every day.

· “He’s an easy keeper, and we’ve had him turned out for about six months resting him. He may be a little fresh.” Which really means this fat, fresh horse hasn’t been touched in the six months it took for the seller to get his leg cast off after the last time this horse bucked him off.

· “This horse can be ridden by little kids.” This invariably refers to the little kid who was raised at the head of the creek and whose normal working attire includes a turkey feather in his hat and his britches tucked in his high top boots.

When all the insults and high-flying rhetoric are over, generally both the buyer and seller will be secretly happy. Both will be heard down at the feed store in a day or two describing exactly how they got the better of the trade.

Trading is an art and nobody does it better than the cowboys.

By Julie Carter

Photo by Stacy Hamilton

http://community.webshots.com/user/stacyhamilton

Romance is all about viewpoint. The level of romance is relative to the amount of time a rancher and his wife spend working together, often making little seem like more.

When you pick up the coffee table photo album, the photos are often of big
brandings in a working pen with friends and neighbors hard at it.

That is not all there is to the action and the photo never reveals the endless hours of work that led to that particular Western Currier and Ives pictorial.

First, a date must be selected for a branding, usually a Saturday so the kids can be there to flank calves. All the neighbors and friends are called and the calendars
marked.

The requisite vaccines, wormers and implants are ordered and the necessary
equipment, i.e. branding irons, vaccine guns, sterilizing solutions, buckets, implant guns, knives for earmarking and castrating, and whetstones will all be checked to make sure they are in working order.

The cattle have to be gathered, sometimes done over a period of days, culminating in the final gathering to the pens on branding day.

The assignments will be well thought out who is going to rope, flank, give shots, brand and turn little bulls into little steers.

A long grocery list for beverages, snacks, coffee breaks, breakfast and lunch meals for a big crew will be written, shopped and stored.

All this is done ahead. By the time the assorted friend/neighbor crew shows up, the work is ready to commence.
A week before a branding can look like this:

Monday: Cattle are gathered from the big, rough, brushy pastures to smaller traps lose to the working pens. The head cowboy, being good to his wife, will give her the choice of driving the feed truck with the clutch that slips or riding the green colt to push up the calves at the back of that herd.

At noon the same day, the wife mentions that she needs to go to town to get groceries or feeding the big crew. He will answer,”This afternoon we have to make another drive. We didn’t gather all the cattle out of that pasture yet.”

Making plans for the next day, the cowboy gives her instruction. “Tomorrow you better ride a broke horse, we¹re going to have to separate the bulls and move them to the back pastures to keep them from fighting and tearing down every fence on the place.”

She recognizes the thoughtful caring in his consideration of the horse she should ride. She again mentions that she is going to need a day to go get groceries, since it’s only 85 miles to town.

Tuesday: They saddle for the long trip to the back pasture where the bulls will go. He gives her a broke horse and decides he will ride a green colt. That will give the colt the needed miles of riding and guarantee that his wife will have to ride twice as hard doing whatever needs to be done. And, more importantly, with a good solid horse, she will be able to pack their lunches in the saddlebags.

Arriving back home late, it’s too late to go to town for groceries, but she reminds him again she’ll need time to do that and that it is 85 miles to town.

Wednesday: The cull cows are separated and driven to a separate trap for shipping later. Her good, broke horse is worn out from yesterday, so she gets her choice of the colts to hold herd on while he cuts the cows.
Today the cowboy will give her lots of free, valuable instruction about how to get that colt to work a cow. When she seems less than appreciative of his wisdom, he lays it off to some hormone fluctuation.

At dark when the routine chores are done, she stands right in front of him and says, “I have to go to town no later than tomorrow to get groceries to feed this mob Saturday. You know it’s 85 miles.”

He replies, “We’ll see. We have to go check waters tomorrow. Haven¹t done that for a couple days, and we should probably go make sure the bulls are staying put.”

Thursday: The bulls tore down a good stretch of fence to escape, the standpipe on one of the water reserves broke and the water valve that has been needing a little attention decided to finally go bad.
That evening his response to the grocery dilemma was: “Don’t you have anything in the freezer you can just feed them?”

Friday: Bulls re-gathered, fences fixed, water valve patched and at noon, she gathers the checkbook, her list and heads out without saying anything to the other hat in the house. The last and only thing she had said to him since the previous evening was, “pass the butter.”

He realizes she is going the 85 miles to town and to make good use of the effort he tells her, “While you’re in town, pick up 250 doses of IBR and 250 doses of 7-Way, and 250 implants. We have 200 calves to work, but the women will probably give those things and you know they always waste some of the shots. While you are at it, you’d better get some 14-gauge needles, too. Those women always bend a lot of needles.”

Silence.

Saturday: Depending on a gal’s viewpoint and her proximity to the skillet, breakfast with 20 or so cowboys around the table can be fun. Funny stories, neighbors not seen through the winter months and plenty of good food start the day off best.

The anticipation of all the cowboy action when the sun comes up makes for a happy crowd. It is a strange but true phenomenon: Cowboys do not always regard cowboy activities as work.

When everyone has their fill of breakfast, the rancher will adjourn the crowd to begin the day’s work. At this point, the ranch wife will often stay behind.

She deals with the debris left from breakfast and proceeds to prepare coffee break snacks and drinks. With that lined out, she will start lunch for the same crew that just left the table.

In middle of the morning, one of the neighbors may notice the ranch wife is not around. “Hey, Jim, where’s Karen today?”

Jim’s sincere reply is, “I gave her the day off so she could cook.”

Truly, in his mind, that endearing gesture was all about love. Mostly.

Time to think about Valentine’s Day –I know, it’s a trick to boost the local economy but it could buy ya some smoochin’ bliss — for a few days anyway. Here’s a Valentine Story for you :

Hearts, flowers and chicken feathers

By Julie Carter

Saddle up boys, here it arrives every year, ready or not. Valentine’s is February’s claim to fame. Commercialism has painted the world with pink and red hearts and accented it with chocolate.

Some will attest to the theory that Valentine’s Day was invented as a clever ploy to stimulate the economy in an otherwise financially sluggish time of year. Greeting card companies, florists, jewelers and chocolate manufacturers who flourish because of the promotion would have to agree.

Valentine’s Day advertisements, even locally in a rural part of the world, promise evenings of lasting romance and adoration if you will just come dine with them for only $175 a couple. I don’t believe too many pickup trucks will be leaving the ranch for that offer.

But there will be some “romantic” gestures made out on the range.  It may not be wine and roses but a cowboy on a Valentine’s Day date will offer his heart’s delight a romantic late night walk through the frosty pastures for a “just once more” check of the heifers. After all, it is calving season.

I know a gal who books her husband and herself into the dentist for a teeth cleaning every Valentine’s Day. “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a plaque-less kiss,” she claims.

But this year’s top story demonstrating “true love” in the best way they know how comes from a local ranch. The boss left home in the morning, as usual, to go make his rounds feeding cattle and checking waters.

Millie, the Border collie, was pleased he was going alone because that meant she got to sit up front and ride shotgun in the feed pickup.

Quite a distance into the feed route and miles from the house, the rancher happened to catch a glimpse of something in his rear view mirror. He stopped the pickup and walked to the back only to find one of his wife’s beloved and treasured chickens riding on the flat bed of pickup.

At this point in time, this man had many options before him, none of which would have been healthy for the chicken.

Most men would have, at the very minimum, denied all knowledge of ever seeing the hen and more than likely left her in the pasture to fend for herself against the natural order of the food chain in the wild. Chickens usually rank pretty low on the compassion scale for cowboys.

But knowing how much his wife adored her birds of all kinds and especially her hand-raised chickens; he gathered the hen up and put her in the front of the pickup on the seat between Millie and himself.

Millie was indignant and completely insulted. She turned her head, nose in the air, and stared out the passenger window the remainder of the trip trying to her best to pretend there was not a chicken in seat next to her.

The rancher finished his feed route and returned home a few hours later, the hen nestled tight against him for warmth.

The sight had to be one of those rare moments none of us actually ever see. The visual of this guy driving down the road with his dog and his wife’s chicken in the front seat of the pickup is enough to put anyone into fits of laughter.

It also makes a good “true love” story. Not many, chicken lovers or not, will miss the depth of the affection it took for this guy to cozy up to a chicken, even for the little woman.