COWBOY ROMANCE PASSING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 243, 13 April 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

COWBOY ROMANCE PASSING

THE AMERICAN LIFE. The fiscal year of the American cowboy -begins in the early spring, just aftir the snow has melted from the hills and the grass gels a good start and the season for feeding the poor stock is over. Then it is that he puts aside his winter ways of recklessness and buckles his belt to a hard six: months' work. As soon as the weather permits the •'feeders"' are driven to the fresh green grass on the hillsides. About this time it is necessary to bunch the cattle that have wintered on the "high desert" and on the plains where the grass is protected by the summer droughts. A little litter the range and the pastures are systematically ridden and the lively days of the great round-ups be-o-in. * The cook waggon has previously been loaded with "grub" and cigarettelooking rolls of bedding, and each "bueharoo" has picked out his string of four or five saddle horses, one or two of which are usually fresh from the bunch-grass bronco. The spring ride is meant to accomplish two things: to .brand the calves and to get the cattle that will make beef in the fall to a good fattening pasture. One might think that where the cattle are kept within wire fences for a good part of the year and some of them all of the time the process of searing an ugly big brand deep into the hides and hacking off a big fraction of each ear and cutting loose the skin of the jaw or neck or brisket so that a bloody piece of themselves may grow into a chin waddle or neck waddle or "dewlap"—one might think that all this were useless. So thought a historic, tender-hearted man named Sam Maverick, who came from Boston to Texas in an early day to scatter seeds of kindness and to make his fortune in the raising of cattle. He didn't have a wire pasture, but he trusted humanity, and his calves and cattle carried their ears and their hides whole as nature had given them. As the other story goes, the catching up of Maverick's "slic kears" became very popular among the worldly, get rich, ambitious stockmen of the section. The story became sectional parlance, so to-day Webster tells us that a maverick is a "bullock or a heifer that has not been branded and is unclaimed or wild." Also the lesson of Maverick's loss of his herds seems to have been remembered. So it is to-day that the brand of the cattlemen must be registered with the county officials and becomes legal proof of ownership unless of course theft be proved. But the days of stock rustling are almost over in the west, largely owing to the rigid brand inspection at the larger market centres. Driving beef to the railway is the most important work of the cowboy year. Perhaps it is also the most interesting, though physically wearing. Many of the steers are very wild, and a herd has been stampeded by the fright of one animal that was surprised by a bird flying suddenly from a bush. Every effort is made to keep the beef from wearing away their tallow. It is the greatest of cowboy sins ever to allow them carelessly to go faster than a slow walk. To afford a better trail the cattle are strung out single file when the country is open. From a high point one can then look down the road sometimes for three miles and see the same living, vibrating, slow-moving thread. From six to ten miles is a day's drive, and if the range is good before dark the cattle will have satisfied tlis desire for grass and water. Then they are bunched, and they soon lie down in one compact, cud-chewing mass. In the early days of the drive they must be night-guarded, the men being grouped in shifts, each to spend half of the night in riding slowly round and round the herd from one sage brush Are to another. Later the cattle can be left alone, and they will not stir until daybreak.