A Day With The Cowboys by Myrth Russell
We had to be up at eight a.m. and ready to go at nine. The weather looked good. We all had cowboy boots by now except for Nicholas, and we had worked out a method of keeping our hats secure so that they wouldn’t blow off every few minutes.
We combed and saddled the ponies. I was on Badger that day. Nicholas again had LeRoy, Susannah who was thirteen rode Candy and Patrick, a year younger, had Nameless. David and Nathaniel were coming as well. They had been at the ranch for the whole year and were familiar with the ranch routines.
We had learnt to ride these dude ponies cowboy style a couple of days earlier. The ranch, which was in New Mexico, seemed huge to us coming from Britain. It covered an area of 96,000 acres. The driveway up to the house was six miles, and the nearest shop was in Las Vegas, but not the famous one, twenty-six miles away. The house was built so that it had cool airs flowing through and required no air conditioning despite temperatures of thirty to forty degrees centigrade outside.
The cattle on the ranch had become emaciated because the grass was poor owing to the drought conditions, and our job that day was to collect the cattle from the hills to the right while the others went further along the canyon to collect the rest. Then all together we were to drive them slowly down to the southern areas of the ranch. We were really going to be active members of the cowboy team.
Having combed and saddled the ponies we took a final drink from the ladle at the drinking pipe and set off, variously walking and loping, to the same gate that we had gone through on our trek the previous day. Firstly we four were told to guard the cattle that were gathered near the drinking containers, not letting any of them stray. David and Nathaniel went on along the canyon, but many of the cattle were up in the rocky hills. After a long while we saw a herd that had been rounded up and brought down from the hills. They were still far off in the distance, coming towards us along the valley. Here was my chance to do some real cowboy work. Badger and I set off at a good gallop, taking a route well round to the left so that we could come up behind the cattle, not frightening them. We got them all in safely, and David joined us at the end. I felt pleased and thrilled at the speed and marvellous obedience of the pony.
Clyde, the superintendent as he was called, joined us and we took the cattle, about a hundred, down the fence to the gate, and then all the way across to the house, walking steadily and rounding up any strays.
The weather was hot and heavenly again, and we had success with the hats.
We four went into the house for bathroom visits while the others went back to help in the canyon. We then remounted and rode back a long, long way to meet them just as the rounding up was complete. There should have been about two hundred cattle, but approximately sixty were missing. We were able to walk these cattle back along the valley again. They were terribly thin. My knees were getting pretty sore.
We all had lunch prepared by Nite’s wife, Cindy. Clyde was friendly and fatherly to all. He looked gorgeous, blue eyes and slow talking like them all, and quite unruffled and trusting. Only later did I learn that he could complain and fuss a lot, especially since his wife had left him the previous year. Several others were there. Clyde’s son was wearing very dark glasses so that I had no idea what he looked like. Alex was brown and wrinkled and had a lovely expression. A rather large girl was also helping.
After lunch the others all went back to sort out the cattle, but we decided to save the remains of our tired legs for the next day. We swam (not Patrick who was reading) and sunbathed.
After macaroni cheese we drove the twenty-six miles to Las Vegas and went to the cinema to see….Mary Poppins. We drove home, very tired, forty minutes with much back seat driving from me, which annoyed Nicholas, and fell into bed.
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