Cowboy Lee Herding the Steers
We had another interesting guest last month – this one all the way from Chicago. Lee drove here for a five-day ranch mini-vacation. He wanted a real-life ranch experience, not a typical dude ranch vacation. So we took him at his word and put him right to work gathering, cutting out cattle, sorting loads, and penning and loading cattle. Now gathering and shipping cattle is one of the hardest cowboy jobs on the ranch. Lee had only been horseback a couple of times in his life, so Doug and I weren’t sure he could handle the work. But we needn’t have worried. Lee is young, athletic, listens to directions, pretty darn fearless – he did fine. Of course we did mount him on good broke cowponies who knew their job.
Generally an old hand cowhorse is the way to go for a beginner cowpuncher. This time it did have one drawback. We were cutting a batch of steers off the main bunch to drive them down to a holding trap for the next days’ load. The steers decided to light out for the main herd – at a fast run. Lee was riding Flash. Now Flash has been catching steers for a lot of years. He sized up the situation and figured he could get around the steers before they joined the herd. Flash lived up to his name. He took off – Lee on board. I figured that at worst Lee would have to be picked up off the ground and at best he would just want to go back East – wrong on both counts. All I could do was holler – “Pull back on the reins” and wait to see what happened next. Lee reined ole Flash in like he had been practicing it. Flash stopped – cattle didn’t – so we had to start again. But the main thing is that the only casualty was Lee’s cowboy hat, and we finally found it, slightly dirty but in one piece, way up the pasture. If Lee was scared, he didn’t act like it. He just started gathering steers again. You would have thought he rode runaways every day.
All in all, Lee was a big help – and a good riding buddy. He never complained about long hours in the saddle. He jumped in the chutes to help Doug get the gates closed on steers that weighted 1400+ lbs and had huge horns that could skewer a grown man. He stood amazed when one of the big steers cleared an eight-foot fence and quit the pens, but Lee went right back after more steers. Lee will be back – and next time will be bringing his wife. If she is half as much fun as Lee, they will be welcome. We are looking forward to an email from Chicago.
Lee on Horseback Lookin for Strays
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