Heeding the weather report

John R. Erickson, well known as the author of the great Hank the Cowdog series of children’s books, knows cowdogs because he was first a cowboy. He worked on ranches in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles for eight years, and in 1986 wrote a book titled Cowboy Country based on his experiences along the Beaver River in 1978 and 1979. I’ve put excerpts from that book into four baskets labeled spring, summer, fall, and winter. We are publishing in our Saturday Series one “season” each month. In last month’s episode, Erickson told how he chose the right horse for a job. Hope you enjoy episode three. —Marvin Olasky

Fall and Winter

During the month of September, I spent a lot of time ahorseback. We usually worked small crews of four to seven men. The big fall roundup season didn’t start until the first of October. Then we were going every day, rounding up, sorting, and shaping up the cattle for fall shipping.

Our average crew then was twelve cowboys, though sometimes we had more. Each day we worked a different pasture. We gathered the cattle, separated the dries from the wets, moved the dries to winter range, and moved the cows with calves into traps and small pastures near shipping pens, so that on shipping day we could gather them quickly, cut off the calves, push them across the scales, and load them into trucks.

In the fall, the morning air was crisp and fresh. We hit the saddles right after sunup and had to carry enough clothes to keep ourselves warm in the event that a norther came whistling down while we were out. Once we left the pickups and trailers at sunup, there was no going back. What we wore in the morning was what we had for the rest of the day.

We never knew what to expect from the weather at that time of year. The afternoon temperature might climb into the eighties, or it might be down around the freezing mark. I always carried plenty of clothes, and usually I would start peeling them off around ten o’clock. I would finish the day with a slicker, jacket, leather vest, and maybe even a flannel shirt tied to the saddle strings.

Most of the cowboys on our crew wore leather leggings in the fall and didn’t take them off unless we had to get down and do some work afoot. When the temperature climbed into the eighties, we boiled in our leggings. They were too hot to wear, but a guy didn’t dare go out without them.

We all paid close attention to the weather forecast in the fall. The weatherman wasn’t always right, but he usually gave us advance warning when a major change was on the way.

The weatherman wasn’t always right, but he usually gave us advance warning when a major change was on the way.

One morning toward the end of October, we were supposed to meet at the Open A’s pasture #1, southwest of Knowles. Jake Parker picked me up around eight. The day was sunny and warm, and I went dressed for moderate weather.

I loaded my horse in the trailer and we started north. When we had gone a mile or so, Jake looked me over and said, “Are you sure you’ve got enough clothes? They said on the radio that we’re supposed to get a cold norther before noon.”

I had missed that. We turned around and went back to my place. I put on a pair of one-piece long johns, traded my felt hat for a wool cap, and pulled on a pair of lined gloves.

Half an hour after we had hit the saddles, I started pulling off clothes and tying them to the saddle strings. I was about to roast. While we held herd, I yelled at Parker and told him his weatherman didn’t know what he was talking about.

The words were hardly out of my mouth when I glanced off to the north and saw a dark line of dust and clouds creeping up the horizon. Before long, we were hit by a blast of cold air. My mare started bucking and I started putting my clothes back on.

An hour after the norther hit, we twelve cowboys were humped up in a wind-driven snow.

Over the howl of the wind, I yelled to Jake, “Say, you sure have a smart weatherman!”

Several days later, we moved over to Rosston and worked the big 6,000-acre river pasture. While we were holding herd, I noticed that the man to my right was new. I had never seen him before. He didn’t look comfortable on his horse, and he wasn’t watching the cattle. I guessed that he was somebody’s friend, maybe a man from town who had come out to ride with us.

There was a big red heifer on the edge of the herd, one of those wild brushy critters that had escaped us in the spring. She weighed around 600 pounds, yet she had never been branded or dehorned.

We had flushed her out of the tamaracks and now she had seen enough of the daylight and was ready to go back to the river.

The man to my right wasn’t watching her, but she was watching him. And pretty soon she had him figured out. All at once she threw up her tail and bolted the herd. The man never saw her coming, and by the time he had plow-reined his horse, she was gone.

Under the unwritten cowboy code, he who maketh a mistake payeth the consequences.

I waited to see what he would do about it. Under the unwritten cowboy code, he who maketh a mistake payeth the consequences. He’d let her go, and bringing her back should have been his problem.

But if he was someone’s guest, the rules didn’t apply. I turned Star, left the herd, and went after the heifer.

I caught up with her and turned her north, away from the brush. I tried to point her back to the herd, but she wouldn’t go. When she cut back on me the third time, I built a loop, fell in behind her, and caught her around the horns on the first shot.

When I got her stopped, I noticed that I was only about fifty yards from the herd. If I had missed the shot or made a sloppy job of it, every man on the crew would have seen it, which would have been rather humiliating. I mean, a guy doesn’t mind throwing loops into the dirt when he’s off by himself, but in front of his peers … no.

If I had thought of that during the run, I probably would have choked up, but I hadn’t. I’d made a perfect run in front of a crowd, and that didn’t hurt my reputation.

MY BOSS WANTED TO SHIP THE LD BAR CALVES to the Beaver Livestock Auction on Wednesday, October 11. Several days before the appointed day, I began making preparations. I called all the cowboys from Rosston to Barby Bridge and lined up a crew of eleven men.

Tuesday evening, everything was set, but just to be certain, I drove over to the pasture and walked around the pens, making sure there weren’t any weak spots and that all the gates were set.

On shipping day, you have a lot of things on your mind and decisions that have to be made quickly, and it’s easy to make little mistakes that can be embarrassing. This was my first shipping roundup on the ranch, and I didn’t want to make any slip-ups.

That night, I set my alarm for five o’clock and went to bed early so that I would get a good night’s sleep. I got a good night’s sleep all right. My alarm didn’t go off and I woke up at seven o’clock.

I had ordered trucks for 9:00 and had told the crew to be at the pens at 7:30 sharp. I had exactly 30 minutes to catch, feed, saddle, and load my horse, and drive three miles to the pens—and, if I could work it in, put on some clothes before I got there.

I flew out of bed like a scalded cat, grabbed a banana for breakfast, and ran to the barn. I scared old Star so badly that it took me five minutes to get a bridle on him. I finally got him cornered, stuffed the bit into his mouth, threw a saddle on him, jerked the cinches down so hard he grunted, led him to the trailer, slapped him on the butt, slammed the gate, jumped into the pickup, and gave that poor horse one of the wildest rides through the hills that he ever got.

And then I ate my banana.

I flew out of bed like a scalded cat, grabbed a banana for breakfast, and ran to the barn.

I drove up to the pens in the bridge pasture at exactly 7:32. I was late to my own roundup! Ten cowboys stood around smirking. I knew what was coming.

Hobart was grinning like an alligator. “Where you been, Jawn? I got up at five o’clock so’s I wouldn’t be late to your roundup.” And so on and so forth. Hobart squeezed it for all it was worth and there was nothing I could say.

BY THE MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER, my outfit still had about 70 head of cows up north on summer pasture, and since it was getting late in the season, we decided to move them down to winter pastures on the river before they got caught in a snow storm.

This part of the river was heavily wooded with cottonwoods, willows, tamaracks, and locusts, and it was not ideal country to be driving cattle through. And to make matters worse, these two pairs started acting silly when we drove them away from the bunch.

We had gone about half a mile when they split and ran. One pair went north into the cottonwoods, and the other pair headed for the brush down on the river. Jake and I went after the north pair, and Pat fell in behind the other. Hobart had gone on because his gimp leg was bothering him.

By this time, it was getting cold and dark. Jake and I picked our way through the trees and around fallen limbs and stumps. We followed our pair up a steep bank and then watched them build a new gate in a four-wire fence.

We let them go and rode back down to the meadow to see if Pat had done any better than we had.

When we rode up to the north bank of the river, we started yelling and calling for Pat. There was no reply, and we began to worry. Pat had been riding a small dun mare, and if he had roped his cow out in the brush, he might have gotten himself into a storm.

And if he was hurt and unable to call for help, we would have a devil of a time finding him.

A big full moon was up by then, and it gave us just enough light to see where we were going. We crossed the river and rode into the tamaracks on the south side. Every now and then we stopped and called. Still no answer. The farther we rode, the more we worried. Pat had a wife and four kids at home.

We were out in the middle of the brush when we heard Pat’s voice in the distance. We hit a trot and rode toward the sound. We reached a clearing and there he was.

The full moon seemed to be sitting on his shoulder, and I could see the glow of his cigarette. He had forefooted the cow and bedded her down, and his little dun mare was braced against the rope.

Pat was sitting easy in the saddle and didn’t seem to have a care in the world, as though forefooting cows in the moonlight was something he did every day.

1978 HADN’T BEEN A GOOD GRASS YEAR and I started feeding protein the day after Thanksgiving. Every morning I would back my pickup up to the cakehouse door and load my sacks of feed on the back.

Then I would drive down to the west meadow, call the cattle, and string out the feed in metal troughs. From the west meadow, I would drive down the river to the middle meadow and feed that bunch, then drive on down to the bridge pasture and feed those cattle.

The weather stayed open through December. We had some cold blustery days but no snow. Feeding cake in open weather wasn’t hard work, just a little tedious after a while.

Around Christmas, it appeared to me that we were getting short on grass and that we had some cows that weren’t holding their shape. These were old cows that we should have culled in the fall but hadn’t.

Sometimes your old cows appear to be doing well in the fall, but when cold weather comes, they begin to fall apart. When they are thin going into January, you have problems. A thin cow can’t tolerate cold snowy weather as well as one that is in good shape, and after a big storm, you might find several of them dead.

I was worried about our thin cows.

The day after Christmas, I broke into the hay stack.

Four or five days later, I caught the 12:30 weather report out of KGYN radio in Guymon, Oklahoma. They gave a complete five-state forecast for Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado, and though they weren’t always right, they came as close as anyone.

That day they said that a cold winter storm was moving down out of the Dakotas and that it would hit the Oklahoma Panhandle before morning.

It was getting late in the season and we were overdue for some nasty weather. If this storm turned out to be a bear, we might lose some cattle. I had spotted eight or nine cows that were thin, and I decided I had better bring them up closer to the house where I could keep alfalfa hay in front of them all the time.

If this storm turned out to be a bear, we might lose some cattle.

Later we rode into the herd and spotted several thin ones.

We put them through the gate and drove them through pasture or a mile and a half, then into the horse pasture and down to a hay feeder near the river. I had already filled it with good, bright alfalfa hay.

We had finished just in time. The sun slipped over the horizon and darkness began to fall. I thanked Bud and Jake, and we rode off in different directions.

It was a beautiful evening. A soft blue haze hung over the valley. Deer had come out onto the meadow to graze, and in the silence I could hear the calls of wild turkey, peacocks, and quail.

The next morning, fifteen hours later, the temperature stood at ten degrees and snow was falling sideways in front of a bitter north wind. At noon on New Year’s Eve, the temperature was five degrees and the chill factor had dropped to 35 below zero.

This was the beginning of a cold spell that lasted three weeks. The cows we had brought up to the horse pasture hardly moved away from the hay feeder, and I kept them well supplied with alfalfa. They all survived, and we sold them in February. Had we not brought them in when we did, I imagine that most of them would have died.

The days and weeks began to run together. One day was the same as the next and there was no difference between a Sunday and a Wednesday.

I went through the same routine every day. It began in the morning when I pulled on five or six layers of clothes and ended at night when I went to the house and started pulling them off. In between, I loaded sacks of cake and bales of hay and plowed through snowdrifts on my feed run.

In the afternoon, I went back to the hay stack and loaded up again. I had to feed the horses, the thin cows and the bulls in the corral, and fill the calf feeder in the west meadow pasture. Every animal on the place was cold and hungry and depended on me for feed. There were days when I felt sick, and there were other days when my back hurt and I could hardly stand the thought of lifting another bale of hay. But I had to make my feed run, no matter how bad I felt.

One morning I awoke before dawn and heard a strong north wind roaring in the tops of the cottonwood trees around our house. I got out of bed and discovered that the electricity had gone out. And it was snowing.

Our heating system went out with the electricity, so I turned on two burners on our propane kitchen stove and went back to bed. At daylight, the temperature was three degrees. The snow had stopped, but the high winds continued to blow, creating a phenomenon known as a ground blizzard: snow filled the air and drifted, even though it wasn’t falling from the sky.

This was a brutal storm. The wind numbed your face and took your breath away and blinded you with swirling snow. You found yourself staggering through drifts and gasping for breath, and after walking fifty yards, you felt as though you had run a quarter mile.