The morning’s work had been exhilarating. To him had been assigned some of the most difficult riding tasks of the roundup. He had been dispatched into the bush on the east side of the Ghost River to gather in forty-seven strays that had taken refuge in the bog lands and had drawn with them their young into this insecure and dubious protection from the riders.
Cheerio had ridden through woods so dense that his horse could barely squeeze between the bushes and the trees. He had been obliged to draw his feet out of the stirrups and ride cross-legged in his saddle. Sometimes he was forced to dismount and lead his horse over trails so narrow that the animal had balked and hesitated to pass until led. Rattling a tin bell made of an empty tomato can with a couple of rocks in it, Cheerio wended his way through the deep woods. This loudly-clanking contraption served to rouse and frighten the hidden cattle out into the open, but several of them retreated and plunged farther into the bush that bordered hidden pools of succulent mud and quicksand.
The branches of the thick trees had snapped against his face as he rode and his chin and cheeks were scratched where the wide hat had failed to afford sufficient protection. The sleeves of his rough riding shirt were literally torn to shreds and even the bright magenta chaps that were his especial pride and care came out of that brush ragged, soiled and full of dead leaves, brush and mud.
He had been delayed at a slough whose surface of dark green growth gave no intimation of the muddy quicksands beneath. Stuck hard in the mud of this pool a terrified heifer was slowly sinking, while her bawling calf was restrained from following its mother only through the quick action of Cheerio, who drove the distracted little creature a considerable distance into the woods ere he returned to its mother.
It is one thing to throw the lariat in an open space and to land it upon the horns or the back feet of a fleeing animal. It is another thing to swing a lariat in a thickly-wooded bush where the noose is more likely than not to land securely in the branch or the crotch of a tree, resisting all tugs and jerks to leave its secure hold. Cheerio, inexpert with the lariat, gave up all thought of rescuing the animal in that way. Instead, his quick wits worked to devise a more ingenious method of pulling the heifer from the slough, where she would have perished without help.
Along the edges of the woods were fallen willow trees and bushes that the Indians had cleaved for future fence posts. Cheerio hauled a quantity of these over to the slough, and shoving and piling them in crisscross sections, he made a sort of ford to within about fifteen feet of the mired cow. His horse was tied by its halter rope to a tree. With one end of the lariat firmly attached to the pommel of his saddle which had been cinched on to the animal very tightly and the other end about his own waist, Cheerio crossed this ford toward the animal. He now let out the lariat and coiled its end for the toss. It landed easily upon the horns of the animal. Holding to the rope, now drawn taut, Cheerio made his way back over the ford. Unfastening his horse, he mounted. Now began the hard part of the work. His horse rode out a few feet and the sudden pull upon the horns of the cow brought her to her feet. She stumbled and swayed but the rope held her up. A pause for rest for horse and heifer, and then another and harder and longer pull and tug. The cow, half-strangled in the mud, nevertheless was drawn along by the stout lariat rope. She slid along the slippery floor of the slough and not till her feet touched sod was she able to give even a feeble aid to the now heavily-panting mare.
Once on solid ground, Cheerio burst into a cheer such as an excited boy might have given, and he called soothingly to the desperately-frightened heifer.
“You’re doing fine, old girl! There you go! Ripping!” And to the mare:
“Good for you, Sally-Ann! You’re a top-notcher, old girl!”
There was an interval to give the exhausted animals an opportunity for a rest and then they were on the bush trail again, the heifer going slowly ahead, thoroughly tamed and dejected, yet raising her head with monotonous regularity to call and moan her long loud cry for her young.
As Cheerio came out into the open range certain words recurred to his mind and he repeated them aloud with elation and pride:
“They’s the makings of a damn fine cowboy in you,” had
