Free Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West by Bryce Andrews

picked up the middle wire when I wanted the top one and strung a dozen posts before I noticed the mistake; the wires twisted together so I had to walk up and down the hill to unwind them, yanking in different directions and pinching my fingers.
    At the midway point I was thoroughly browbeaten. I no longer looked uphill to see what was ahead of me, or down to check how far I had come. My attention shifted from the ground to the post and back again, that was all. It was a shame: less than a month on the ranch and already the work was breaking me.
    It took me a while to realize that I had reached the top. I might have crossed the crest without looking up, except I came to a braced corner, glanced past it, and found myself staring out across what seemed an endless void.
    I stood on the ridge’s end. Beyond me the ground dropped precipitously away toward where the Madison River ran north for miles in its willow cradle. The winding course of it was framed on either side by mountains and was darker blue than the sky. For a moment, in spite of the sweat in my eyes or because of it, I saw the land more clearly than I ever had, and it was beautiful.



– II –
THE WORK

Bad Luck
    T he stockman Orville Skogen arrived at the head of a convoy of cattle trucks, leaped down to the ground, and started barking greetings and orders in quick succession. He stuck out a stubby, powerful hand for Jeremy to shake and yelled at one of his drivers to back up to a portable loading chute. James and I were horseback, watching from a distance in the pasture as the first load of cattle poured off the truck. Steers banged down the metal ramp, took a flying leap onto the grass, and then trotted toward us. There seemed to be an impossible number of them in the trailer. Once a couple dozen got into the pasture, they began to mill and bunch against the fences. James and I rode back and forth to keep them together and calm. Orville and Jeremy stood on either side of the chute, counting animals with little flicking motions of their hands. Every so often Orville would shake his head at a thin steer or nod approvingly at a fat one. Both motions set his jowls trembling, like a bulldog worrying a bone.
    Orville’s cattle were a motley bunch. Some ranchers take pride in the genetics of their herd and breed carefully through the years toward a particular conformation or an ideal amount of marbling in the meat. The family line is an inheritance, passed through generations of cows and cowboys. If it earns a reputation, the calves will fetch a higher price.
    With the cattle he brought to the Sun, Orville preferred to make his money by the pound. He cruised stock sales every fall, buying calves by the lot. After a winter’s worth of growth, the calves matured into yearlings. Orville made sure all his steers were properly castrated, and he spayed most of his heifers, too, since sterile animals spend less time screwing and more time eating. In late spring, he brought his vast herds out to places like the Sun Ranch for the grazing season. When fall rolled around, he hauled them to feedlots in the Midwest or sold them for slaughter.
    On the ranch we charged fifty cents per head per day for all the grass a yearling could eat. In the right conditions, grass became flesh at a rate of two or three pounds per day. Since cattle sold at around a dollar per pound and there were more than one hundred days in the grazing season, Orville’s operation made a lot of economic sense.
    The trucks took turns at the loading chute, each disgorging all manner of steers: Charolais, Red and Black Angus, Simmental, Hereford, and every crossbreed in between. When the last steerstepped off the ramp, we let the herd spill past us. They trotted uphill and we followed, driving them toward tall grass, salt tubs, and water. The steers didn’t move easily. Nervous and squirrely from their long interstate haul, they shoved each other and looked for routes of escape. Conscious of the fact that Jeremy