Free The Pastures of Beyond by Dayton O. Hyde Page A

that were thrust upon me. I was a-horseback dawn to dark, moving cattle, doctoring, looking for strays. Buck had to open his own gates, for I was gone before he got up in the morning and back after he had gone to bed.
    For years I had wanted to ride Whingding, but he had always been in someone else’s string. Now he was mine if I wanted him. He snorted a little as I got on him one cold morning, but he seemed to know I was itching for him to explode, and I couldn’t have made him buck if I tried.
    My uncle liked to migrate to warmer climes in winter. Rather than be stuck with me, he shipped me off to school in California. I was an indifferent student, my mind filled with horses rather than mathematics and Latin. I couldn’t wait to get back to the ranch for Christmas vacation.
    Most of the crew had been sent to the Williams, California, area to take care of several thousand wintering cattle. I spent the first of my vacation at Yamsi on long, bone-chilling rides to gather strays from lonely draws or meadows, which, coated with snow, were a far cry from the beautiful grasslands of summer. Outside of Ern Morgan, an old sheepman named Jim O’Connor, and Fred Shepherd, who we called Shep, the ancient chore man, there was no one around to help when things needed being done.
    Morgan was beside himself with worry. “This goddam war! All the employment office in Klamath Falls ever sends me are winos, stinking of strawberry wine. I’m already three weeks late getting the cattle out of here for the winter, and if a storm strikes we’re in deep trouble!”
    There was just so much hay in the Yamsi haystacks, but the long meadows were dark with cattle gathered off the ninety-thousand-acre range, cattle that would soon have to be fed. Morgan was right. We should already be moving out with the herd, driving them overland across the tablelands to the wintering area on the BK Ranch at Bly.
    Morgan stayed at the telephone, trying to find men, but when the promised help failed to show up, the old foreman had little choice but to pray for decent weather. Each day we delayed increased the chances we would be snowed in with the cattle for the winter. Every day found Morgan up at dawn’s first light watching for clouds scudding along the tops of the Cascade Mountains to the west, indicating whether or not a storm was in the offing.
    It was twenty below zero and still dark when we saddled our horses and started the herd of six hundred dry cows up over the long, snowy trail through the pine forest, up past Taylor Butte toward Bly, forty miles away. Most years the cows would have been eager for the trip and the herd stretched out down that snowy road through the lonely forest, thinking only of the stacks of timothy, clover, and bluegrass hay awaiting them at the end of the trail. But this time there were no leaders. These cattle had been summered on Klamath Marsh and wintered in California. They had no idea of the trail.
    We were so desperate for riders, we let the old lady come along to help us over the hills. She was bundled up so only the tip of her nose and her faded blue eyes showed, but we saddled her horse, Ginger, for her, lifted her up on a stump, and shoved her aboard. There wasn’t a peep out of her, swathed as she was in wool. It turned out we couldn’t have made it up that first hill without her.
    We had gone maybe two miles when it started to snow hard, and in minutes the backs of the cattle were covered, making them hard to see. It was just breaking daylight, but the woods were still ominously dark with the storm. Had the decision been mine, I would have turned the herd back, but somewhere in front of us, Ernie Morgan had taken a small bunch of cows at the point and was pushing them up the hill, breaking trail in what was now knee-deep snow. Morgan wasn’t a man to give up, and besides that, he knew from long experience that this might be the last chance left to get the cattle out of the