Chapter XII: Branding the 'scrubber'

A rancher's life is not an easy one. The hardest work comes in spring and autumn, when the cattle are 'rounded up,' or gathered together from their feeding-grounds all over the place, and parcelled out amongst the different owners. As the great pastures have no fences to mark off one from another, of course the cattle stray, and the Rosebud herd and the Snake River herd mix with one another, and with individuals belonging to ranches even more distant than these. At the great annual round-up a certain number of cowboys from each ranche in the district meet, and proceed to drive the whole of the neighbouring ranges, collecting a vast mass of cattle as they go.

Each cowboy has about a dozen ponies with him, and in the work of the round-up even this large string is very often used up. For horse and man the work is as severe as human muscle and horseflesh can stand. During the day the men ride round by the banks of every crik, investigate every quiet glen among the hills, sweep over the rolling plains, and little by little gather up the waifs and strays into a huge herd. At night this herd has to be watched, as well as the big band of horses accompanying it.

From time to time along the route the occurrence of one of the big home ranches causes a delay. Here a great corral or enclosure of rough logs has been erected, and smaller pens of a like nature. The whole party camp near the ranche, and the cattle are herded beside it. In the morning comes the chief work of the year. Every cow with a calf at her heel is the subject of careful scrutiny. If she bears the Rosebud brand, the calf belongs to the Rosebud ranche, and has to be caught there and then and branded. If not branded whilst still a calf, the little beast will be lost to the owner, for, once grown up, with no ever-present nurse to point out to whom she belongs, the unmarked heifer belongs to anyone who can catch and brand her. There are always a few scrub cattle on every range--beasts like some of those whose capture has been described in the last two chapters--who had succeeded so far in escaping the cowboy's hot iron.

The work of 'cutting out,' that is, separating, the beasts to be branded from the rest of the herd, is to the cowboy what Rugby Union is to the schoolboy. It is full of excitement, tries every muscle of the horse, every quality, mental or physical, of the rider. This, on a small scale, was the work awaiting Snap on the morrow of his bear-hunt. Amongst the beasts driven in were a few which required to be branded, and, though their capture was mere child's play to the old hands, used to following a dodging heifer through a herd a thousand strong, it was intensely exciting to Snap. How the ponies twisted and turned amongst the crowding beasts, never for one moment losing touch of the animal which they wanted to cut out, was a marvel to him for many a day. Polo on a quick pony is trying to a man's seat, but cattle-driving on a pony which twists like a snipe and doubles like a hare, without any warning to the rider, is even more so.

Having cut out, lassoed, and branded all that were unmarked save one, Tony and Wharton held a consultation as to that one. The men had not much to do; they had just had work enough in the crisp air to 'get their monkey up,' and were ready for anything.

'Say, Dick,' said Tony, 'shall we brand that old bull? the old varmint has had the laugh of us long, enough. Let's scar his rump for him this time, anyway!'

The scrub bull alluded to by Tony was an old acquaintance of the men at Rosebud ranche. More than once had he been thrown and tied, always to break away and set the branders at defiance. Whilst the men were talking he was gradually drawing away from the herd, a strong, heavy-built beast, fierce and long-horned as a Texan bull, strong and sturdy as an English shorthorn. A short, crisply curled coat of a dull brown made him look, but for his more graceful build, more like a buffalo than a domestic beast.

'All right, boys, let's have another go at him,' assented Wharton; and Wharton, Tony, Snap, and another rode quietly out to surround and drive in the veteran. The ponies certainly entered into the spirit the thing. Anything more meek and more innocent than 'the Cradle' as he wandered casually out with Snap on his back, now and then stopping for a mouthful of grass, and again turning his back completely on the bull, Snap thought he had never seen. And yet somehow the ponies were all round the bull, and, unless he had the pluck to run the gauntlet, he had only one way open to him, and that led into the small corral. Little by little they drew in, pushing their victim so slowly in front of them that he must still have believed that he was choosing his own course, and only moving at all because he wished to. By quiet, clever generalship old Wharton and his boys got the bull within a short run of the corral. Then the bull began to hesitate. He evidently 'smelt a rat,' and did not mean to go another yard. This was the critical moment. Swinging their lariats round their heads, the four riders dashed at the bull with a yell which would have turned a party of Zulus white with envy. Snap, not to be outdone, yelled in chorus what was really a relic of the old hunting days at Fairbury, and clashed forward with the rest. For a moment the grand old beast lowered his great shaggy front, and looked as if he meant to stand the charge. If he had done so, the band of horsemen must have split upon him as waves upon a rock. But the yell and the swinging lassoes were too much for his nerves. Turning slowly, he galloped into the corral, the horses dashed after him, the huge bars of the fence were put back into their places, and the scrub bull was fairly caged. So far, so good. But this same bull had often been caged before, and was still unbranded.

'Will you rope him, Tony?' asked Wharton.

'You bet,' replied that worthy, divesting himself of pretty nearly everything except his lasso, so as to be 'pretty handy over them rails, if so be as it's necessary,' he explained.

In the corral was a post, firm-set in the ground, and stout as heart of oak. Round this Tony coiled his lasso, leaving lots of loose line and the fatal noose free. Meanwhile the bull kept his eye on Tony just as Tony kept his eye on the bull. Snorting and pawing the ground, the beast backed against the rails, and then, finding that there was no escape, lowered his head and came with a perfect roar of rage at his self-composed enemy. Tony stood his ground just long enough to throw his lasso, and then darted away. The long loop flew straight enough to its mark, but by some ill-luck failed to fix upon the bull, who, free and savage, fairly coursed poor Tony round the ring. But the cowboy 'didn't reckon to be wiped out by one of them scrubbers, no-how,' and, seizing his opportunity, scrambled over the rails of the corral like a monkey up a lamp-post, remarking, when he reached the other side in safety:

'Jeehoshaphat! I did think he would have ventilated my pants for me that time, anyways.'

At the next attempt Tony's lasso settled round the great beast's horns, tightened as he plunged past the post, and as he reached the end of his tether brought him with a stunning crash to the ground. As Snap said afterwards, 'those cowboys hopped over the fence like fleas, and had the old bull's leg tied up, and his head made fast to the pole with the strongest green hide-rope on the ranche, before you could say Jack Robinson.'

For a while the great beast stood trembling, and still dazed by his fall, but the sight of Tony with the branding-iron roused him to fresh fury. The huge quarters seemed to contract for a mighty effort, the shaggy neck bent down with irresistible force, the thongs of green hide creaked and then snapped, as snapped the withy bands which bound the wrists of Samson.

There were four men and a bull in the corral when those ropes broke; there was one man and a bull still left in thirty seconds after that event. With a furious charge the monster scattered his tormentors, who fled in every direction, two over the rails and a third just in time to fling himself flat on his face and roll out underneath the bottom bar, with those sharp horns, 'straight as levelled lances,' only just behind him.

When they had time to turn they saw a sight which, if it had not been so full of peril for a dear old comrade, must have elicited peals of laughter. 'Bust me if you shall lick us,' said Tony, grinding his teeth as he heard the straining thongs begin to give; and when the bull charged the brave old fellow held on to his branding-iron and waited. Of course the flying forms of Tony's companions drew the bull's attention, and his great horned front plunged past the one foe who disdained flight without observing him. With a shattering crash the bull dashed against the corral-fence just too late to pound a man to pieces with his horns, and as he reeled back himself, half stunned by the tremendous collision with those unyielding oaken bars, the bull was aware of a fresh indignity. Tony had him by the tail!!

Yes, it's all very well to plunge and roar with rage, to swing the lithe, active foe clean off his feet, and dash him against the oak rails of your prison, O gallant Texan bull; but that foe, half Yankee as he is now, was bred in gallant Yorkshire, and, once he has his grip, will let go when a bull-dog does, that is, when he is dead; just then and no sooner.

And so the scrub-bull found. In vain he dashed about like a beast possessed, tore up the earth, and rent the air with furious bellowings. Tony had no idea of letting go; his life depended on his holding on; his muscles were like iron, and his nerves were English, hardened by a rough life in America. The absurd part of it was that at every breathing-time Tony made a fresh effort to brand his victim, for he had stuck to his iron with his one hand as tenaciously as to the bull with the other. The story takes long in the telling, but in the doing it did not take half as long. Before anyone could intervene to help the foolhardy old man the end had come. In dashing round the ring in a cloud of dust (no one quite saw how it happened) the old man's head must have struck against the post or against a railing. As the dust cleared, the horrified spectators saw Tony standing in the ring, his head hanging, his eyes vacant, still clinging instinctively to his iron. For a moment the bull paused, almost crouching like a cat, then, with a roar of rage, hurled himself forward. The old man didn't move, didn't seem to understand, and it flashed through the minds of the helpless and horror-stricken spectators that, though still standing, Tony was 'all abroad,' his wits temporarily scattered by collision with the post.

There was a muffled shock: the man was flung, like foam from the crest of a breaker, half across the corral. Three other men's forms were in the ring, a couple of revolver shots rang out, and then, side by side, Tony and the bull lay upon that sandy battlefield, reddened with the life-blood streaming slowly from each. As his companions closed round him Tony managed to struggle to his elbow, saying, with a smile which spoke volumes for his pluck:

'Sorry you killed the scrubber, boys, he'd a been kinder like a monument for me, 'cos you see he has got the Rosebud brand now; you bet, he's got the Rosebud brand----'

Poor Tony! those were his last words, and as his comrades carried him off his last battlefield they felt that the best rough-rider and the gentlest, most kind-hearted giant amongst them had done his last day's work.

A few days later, when the sun was setting on the prairie, making the whole sky crimson, and flooding the world with its last rays of light, they buried him by the river's edge, Nares reading the funeral service over him, who, though perhaps he had said less of religion than most men, had lived a life so close to Nature, and face to face with God and His works, that he must have learnt the great secret and loved the Creator, as he undoubtedly in his own rough way loved all His beautiful creation. Over Tony's grave the men set up a rough headstone, or cross, rather, of timber, and on it they nailed the bleached skull and bones of his dead enemy; while underneath Snap burned with a hot iron some words which he remembered from Bret Harte:--

A roughish chap in his talk was he,
And an awkward man in a row;
But he never funked, and he never lied,
I guess he never knowed how.