Wild Cows of the San Juan

WILD COWS OF THE SAN JUAN

BY KARL YOUNGDRAWINGS BY J. ROMAN ANDRUS

"See all them trees down there?" said Zeke Johnson to a bunch of dudes on the south rim of Elk Mountain. They reined up and looked out over the vast forest of pifions and junipers that sweeps south toward the San Juan River and Monument Valley and west to the Colorado. "Sure thick," Zeke went on, "And I've had a wild cow tied to every one of 'em."

The remark was no more exaggerated than the country at which they were looking. It was the wild canyon country of southeastern Utah, a wilderness of pinnacles and spires, of slickrocks and sudden gorges, of box canyons and rimrocks; a place that called for absurd boasts like Zeke's. But the boast was no more than a match for the trouble it took to catch a wild cow and get her out to market.

In July of 1962, I rounded up seven of Zeke's old-time cowboy companions who chased wild cattle here when they were spring-heeled and reckless. Unfortunately, Zeke was not among them, as he had drifted on to the big range in 1957. Riding in trucks, which hauled our horses, and following roads recently dozed out by uranium and oil seekers, we penetrated deep into the areas where the wild stuff once ran. The object of the trip was to get on tape the stories of the chase by the cowboys who had ridden in it.

The wild cattle which these men rode after were a product of their remote and isolated habitat. Cows that did not see a man and horse more than once or twice a year became especially spooky when horse and man started interfering with their lives. They tried to escape. And if a critter once eluded the riders who sifted the trees, arroyos, and canyons during the roundup, its next escape was easier. Thus escape became a habit, and the critter became a "runnygade," a wild one.

Runnygade cows had calves, some of which matured before they ever saw a man. These critters were wilder than deer, much more wily, and almost as fleet. By comparison with them, deer were naive. The runnygades, for example, would drift ahead of riders, stealing away before the horses came in sight and circling back around as the searchers passed them. Or they would learn to run hard and fast and then lie down and watch the back track. They generally haunted the most difficult terrain, which was slashed and cut by gullies and canyons, walled with rimrock, and densely grown with thickets of pifion and juniper. A horseman here might well be frustrated when trying to ride through this snaggled labyrinth at a jog trot.

Yet it was here that Zeke Johnson, with a score of other old-time, wild cow hunters, rode at full speed, flinging himself violently from side to side of his horse's withers or ducking clear down below his saddle horn to avoid being swept off by low limbs as his eager cow pony strained to catch a fleeing critter.

From 1900 to the late thirties, wild cattle infested the heavily treed sandrock country lying between the summer range on the Elk and Blue mountains and the winter range on the desert. Ordinary range cattle, when drifting to or from the summer range, would sometimes join with wild cows and, after running with them for a year or so, would become just as wild as the runnygades — spooky, hard to catch, and difficult to control when caught.

Rye Butt tells how one night some cowboys put a bunch of cows they had been rounding up into a small corral to hold them until the next day. Since there were a few wild ones in the bunch, one of the cowboys objected when the boss, Dalton, directed the men to tie a couple of night horses to the corral posts. But Dalton cut him down with the curt reply, "That corral is made of cedars. I built it myself. They won't get out of there." However, shortly after midnight one of the night horses shook his saddle. The rattle of the stirrups and fenders and the coiled rope hanging against the skirts was too much for the herd, and the cows stampeded. They went right through that cedar fence, taking down several panels and tromping three cows to death as they fled.

Not that ordinary range cattle would be unlikely to stampede at night for trivial causes, but wild cattle intensified the probabilities. Therefore, to prevent this erosion and contamination of their herds, the cowmen attempted to eliminate the wild stock by taking everything they could capture out to market. The difficulty was that by no means could every cowboy catch wild critters. To do so required a special kind of cowboy, both gifted and heedless. He had to have one of the top horses in the country, clever as well as speedy, for the pony had to have the whole business in his head. There was little time for a rider to give directions when crashing through the trees after a longear.

Charlie Redd, whose success in building up the Cross-H Ranch in San Juan County makes the talk good around a camp fire or in a London drawing room (he was decorated by Queen Elizabeth for his years of genial hospitality to visiting English notables and "got to kiss the Queen," as the natives tell it), gives an ebullient account of the chase, which earmarks the kind of man and horse that were necessary to catch wild cows.

"Just catching up with the wild cattle was a sort of victory all in itself. For a cowboy couldn't begin to dodge all the trees in his way. He had to hit many of them and hit them so hard that he'd break the limbs. And both horse and rider had to have pretty fair judgment about how big a tree and how big a limb would break. But they could never hesitate. They had to hit it so hard that something would give, and they were always in hopes it would be the tree or limb, not them. However, there was something about chasing these wild cattle that got into their blood. It was kind of like a young feller getting all hopped up over a love affair. Once you got started after the critter you forgot yourself. You forgot the risk of breaking a bone or shoulder or the bumps and pains you were going to be exposed to and felt only the intense excitement of a terrific sport. You did it partly because it was your job and your livelihood depended on it, and as you set out you usually rather hated to find the wild cattle because you knew that when you did you were going to be in for some heavy bruises. It was deadly earnest business. But once you got under way, both you and the horse got the feel of it, and then the excitement swept you along, and nothing but a crippling pile-up could stop you.

"You were often very glad when the chase was over, especially if you had a nice two-year-old tied to a pifion tree. But the satisfaction you felt was not merely owing to the $18.00 your critter would bring if you got it out to the railroad. It was also the hunger for victory that must have made those Greek boys go after the wild boars with nothing but a spear. Nothing else mattered but getting your critter."

Bill Young, another of my old-timers, who was man enough at the age of 22 to run Hardy Redd's cattle outfit when the latter died suddenly in the 1920's, illustrated the point.

"Once Wally Burnham and I chased two wild bulls down onto a steep point. Wally, who was in the lead, throwed his rope over one of the bulls just as it took off over the hillside. The bull's weight as he run down the slope was too much for Wally's horse, and it jerked the horse off his feet, bustin' the rope and at the same time pinning Wally under him. The bull galloped and slid on down the hill and out across the flats. A moment later when I caught up with Wally and jumped off my horse to help him, he was laying there under his horse, pointing off down the hill and yelling, 'Right down there! They went right down there!' He didn't want no help. He wanted me to catch them bulls."

It was rough going, and the wear and tear on man and horse were brutal. I have seen Charlie Redd recall, with a far look in his eyes, how his mother used to cry when, as a boy, he would come in from these wild cow hunts looking skinny and poor, with his clothes all torn and no meat on his bones.

Nevertheless, certain cowboys became proficient in catching wild critters, and every year the big cattlemen would send out two or three of their most skilled hands to clean up an area where the wild stuff was beginning to multiply. Or a group of small, independent owners, the "league of nations," as they got to calling themselves, would plan a ride together. Four or five men combined their resources in an attempt to capture the outlaws. Sometimes 15 or 20 cowboys would gather from the ranches and pack into the Brushy Basin, or Wooden Shoe, or Dark Canyon to make a sustained drive for two weeks in an attempt to rid the area of wild stock.

On such occasions each man brought his three best horses and a pack mule. He packed about 200 pounds of oats for his mounts, but otherwise he rode on grass, and his supply of chuck and his bed were scanty, for he traveled light.

Usually the cowboys made these rides for wild cattle in the late winter or early spring when the cows had just come through the hard part of the year and were a little on the weak side. On the other hand, the men chased the critters on stout, grain-fed horses. And they needed this advantage, for even so it was touch and go whether a horse carrying a 40-pound saddle and a man with boots and chaps could overtake a longear running free in all these rocks and trees.

But winter also gave the cowboy two more advantages he needed. First, it was easier to locate the animals by their tracks, and once on a fresh track in the snow a man could follow it as fast as he could ride. But more important, if a rider jumped a critter in heavy snow, it had to break trail, whereas the horse, merely following along, had much easier going and tired less quickly. So after a hard run in the snow, a rider might get right up alongside his critter and drop his loop over its head without snagging up on a cedar limb.

But the advantages of making drives for wild stuff in the winter were partially offset by the hardships implicit in riding and living in the snow. There were no wagon roads into the country then, and cowboys never cared to bother with tents; so they slept in the open or under overhangs in the rocks, such as sheltered the ancient "Moki" dwellings in this remote area. When they slept out, they would not infrequently wake up under four to six inches of snow.

"The only trouble with that," said Harve Williams, an old-timer whose unremitting days in the saddle from dark to dark had earned him a partnership in the immense Indian Creek Cattle outfit, "was that you got so hot under the snow. Your tarpoleon shed the water all right, but the snow like to smothered you. But that wasn't so bad. The odds against you rose when you got up after a fresh snow and started chasing wild cows. Big, old wet snow over all the trees, and after you hit a few branches you'd be pretty cold-shouldered and miserable. But suddenly you'd jump a cow and start to run, and after you'd knocked two or three saddlefuls of snow down, why you'd just turn everything loose and go. You'd be sweating inside three minutes. I see John Palmer run a steer through wet trees with snow on 'em like that, and when he caught the steer he had so much snow in the bottom of his saddle he could hardly reach the stirrups. Six or eight inches right in the seat of his saddle!"

"Yes," said Clarence Rogers, summing it up, "you get wetter chasin' through these cedars after a snow than you would jumpin' in a pond. It just piles right on you, piles in yer eye, and yer ear, and down yer neck, and everywhere else. You hate to hit 'er at first, but after you get going it's all right."

Yet, whether chasing wild cows in snow or in sand, the cowboy had merely made a beginning when he caught up with his critter. He then had to rope it and get the cow out to the ranch and so to market. And roping was a tricky business in the trees. John D. Rogers, now an official in the Mormon Temple at Manti, Utah, but once a wild-cow chaser with the best of them, told us what happened then.

"You couldn't lay that rope on in any fancy way like these trick ropers in the rodeos because of the thick trees. Oh, they wasn't so thick but what you could get your breath, but too thick for ridin'. Here's where a good fast tree horse earned his money. He'd get you right up there, trompin' on the steer's heels where you could lean over and lay your loop right over his horns easy like. Then you'd bust him. When his head whipped around behind him and his belly went into the air, if you hurried you could get him hogtied before he even tried to get up.

"Of course, a cowboy was in luck if he got his steer hogtied in those few seconds, because any critter older than a calf or yearlin' would most likely get up full of fight. Older cows and steers had long, sharp horns, which were wicked and vicious, and a bull's strength and quickness could give you a scare. Many a horse has been horned, and some of them gutted and killed by angry critters that got up before the hogtie was completed. But a good horse would keep the rope taut and the animal stretched out. Without that perhaps you'd just as well not try."

Gradually the punchers worked out a routine for handling the wild stuff in this area. The first step after bustin' and hogtyin' a critter was to get rid of those murderous horns. Clarence Rogers, a cowman who, seen from a distance sitting in his saddle, would pass for one of his sons, described the technique this way:

"Every puncher carried a small keyhole saw in a scabbard tied to his saddle, and as soon as he had a critter hogtied he'd cut off his horns with this saw, leaving only short stubs, just long enough to keep a headrope from slipping off. The headrope was a soft rope about 12 feet long, like the tie-rope we used to carry in a rig to hitch horses to a rail in town. Once he'd sawed off those horns and drawed up the headrope tight under the stubs, he'd tie a knot around the nearest pifion, not too tight but what the rope would slip round the tree when the animal circled it, and then untie the critter's legs. Of course, the brute would fight the tree and rope, but the more he fought, the more tender his head became at the base of the horns and the better he was gentled for leading out when the time came.

"Usually you'd leave your critter tied up for a day or two, but if it was a bull or some other big stout animal, you might leave it longer. I've heard tell of leaving them four days or more but never did see it. Then you'd come back and get the end of that headrope in your hand. When the critter came at you, which he'd sure do, you'd wind your dallies quick around the saddle horn, snubbing him up so short that his nose was practically in your lap and you'd be gettin' each other's breath."

Cutting off the critter's horns and "gentlin' him down" were essential steps because the next phase in the routine was the leading of the animal off to a holding pen. John D. explained how a man used to lead them.

"Well, next morning you'd come back to that tree where your steer was tied short, and how you'd find it in all those trees might be a problem to some folks, but a cowboy can do it, cuttin' sign and all that if he has to. You didn't need to bring your best horse 'cause 'most any horse could lead a steer if he knew his business. He'd have to crowd the steer, which was snubbed right up to your saddle horn. The steer would rear back, and push, and try to hook, but you'd cut off his horns to prevent that hookin'. He'd jump around, but the horse would keep crowdin' him. When the steer would break to run, why the horse would go with him, and when he'd stop and start plungin' again, the horse would just keep crowdin' him.

"Sometimes you'd have a big bull that stood eight inches higher than your pony's withers, and he'd be a lot heavier. Then your horse would have a rough time to keep from being jerked over. But the critter's horns would be tender from being tied to the tree for so long, and pretty soon he'd be leadin' just like a calf right down through the trees.

"Of course, a man and his horse got bruised aplenty by those stub horns, and the puncher's right leg was black and blue clear down to his ankle. But if his horse knew when to crowd and when to give, he could generally handle the critters. We'd lead them down to where we had a little holding canyon fenced off under the rim. They'd find a little grass and water in there, and we'd leave them in for a few days and then if we'd gathered enough, we'd teach them to drive and take them out to town."

When the steer's horns were sawed off close to his head, he bled profusely. Hence, after dehorning a few animals, a cowboy got to looking like a butcher would if he were real careless. The fact that the animals bled heavily was another reason for riding after wild cows in the winter when there was no danger of fly-blowing. Moreover, an animal could endure being tied short to a tree for one day or two if the weather were cool, whereas if he were tied this way in the summer, he would very soon die.

Actually, the visiting dude is appalled at how easily cattle will die when they are subjected to treatment sharply different from their usual life patterns. The mere pursuit of cattle in hot weather is sometimes fatal to them, though this is probably more true of "soft" ranch cattle nowdays than it was of the tough wild stock that grew up on the run, as deer do.

When the cowboys had finished riding in an area or had collected enough wild cattle to make a drive out to town, they would go into the pasture and teach the critters how to drive. What the brutes had to learn, of course, was to heed a man on a horse. They had to learn to obey — to turn when he rode out in front of them. The men entered the pasture and drove the cows up and down, teaching them to stay together and move in a herd. If a critter broke from the bunch and refused to turn back, a cowboy roped it and led it back. It had, of course, already had some tolerably rugged experience in leading, which it remembered. Nevertheless, quite often, when turned loose in the herd again, the critter went right on through and out the other side. Then a rider on that side had to repeat the lesson. Occasionally, this routine of running away and being roped and brought back would go on as many as five or six times. But gradually most of the critters learned that they had to turn for a horse. When they had thus been taught to handle, they were ready to be driven to town.

If there were some gentle cows around, the men would run a few of them into the pasture with the wild herd to help teach them to drive. But despite all this, when the bars were dropped and the herd was headed toward home, there was generally some headstrong old outlaw that got away. Naturally the cowmen would all get acquainted in time with such animals and give them names, such as "Old Brock" for a brockle-faced steer that had given the drivers the slip many times, or "Old Garda" for a cow that had never been taken clear out of the cedars. Garda was the name of the wife of the cattleman whose brand the shrewd old cow bore, and the nickname was bestowed without malice by the cowboys who had to cope with the old outlaw.

"When we'd catch one of these real bad ones," Bill Young observed, "we used to try to figure out ways that we could hold 'em. We'd sometimes tie their head to their foot, or perhaps tie a little pole across those stub horns, or we might neck two of them together. Occasionally, we even cut the cord over the knees so the critters couldn't run. But the ones I did that to died later. We tried every scheme we could think of to keep these cattle in the herd and under control.

"I remember," said Bill, "there was a Flyin' V-Bar got off the V-Bar range and wandered down into Chimney Park. He was a big brocklefaced steer, and he lived there for years. Of course, everybody would be looking for him whenever they were in the area. This one spring Rye Butt and I were riding down there and caught that steer and tied him up. Then the next day we led him right up over the top of Elk Mountain and down to the rim of Dark Canyon. He got a mite tired and so we tied him to a big sapling, a pine tree. It was a good big sapling, what you'd call a pretty good tree. Well, we went on down to the cabin to see if there was anyone there, and we found John Palmer and Andy and stayed with them overnight and told them about this steer. Next day they went back up to get him, but the old boy had pulled up this big sapling and drug it off. They had to trail him up to get 'im."

Sometimes the cowboys would have a streak of good luck catching the wily wild stuff. John D. tells of one winter when quite a crowd of cowboys were riding in the Brushy Basin and all lucked out.

"We went up on top of that black knoll and run onto a bunch of six big steers and two cows. We were all acquainted with those animals. They had been in here for years. One of the cows belonged to me, had my brand on, and the other was a Flyin' V-Bar cow. That cow of mine had raised a calf every year, but I don't think I ever did get one of her calves. But I helped to eat one of them one time when we killed a beef out here to live on. Well, those big steers were all from five to eight years old and had been chased a lot of times, and they knew how to take care of themselves. However, this time the snow was about a foot and a half deep, and we jumped them on what you'd call pretty good country for runnin' 'em. It was about as good a place as you could jump anything in this area. We were close to them when we started, and we all made a break, and caught those six big steers, all six of 'em.

"The steer I got after was one of Bayles', and I happened to be riding for Bayles at the time, partly for him, and I was mounted on one of his horses that he had just bought out in Colorado. It was the first time this horse had ever been up in here, and I thought he was a pretty good horse. But it didn't turn out that way. Well, he got me up close enough for me to throw a rope, and I caught the steer around one horn. He had high, long horns, and my rope was wet from draggin' in the snow, and that loop drawed up right close against his head on that one horn and stayed there. I throwed the steer and jumped off and run for him. But my horse give rope, give slack, and the steer got up. I got back to my horse again, but the steer was on the fight and I had an awful time with him. I couldn't throw him. The horse wouldn't run on him hard enough. He'd hit the rope a little bit and turn and start to buck. And all the time we had to keep away from that steer. I couldn't throw the steer, and I couldn't jerk the rope loose off his horn. I was tryin' there for two hours, I guess, until Wally Burnham come back-trackin' and helped me tie up the steer. Wally had caught a steer, a Flyin' V-Bar, and Zeke had got after another and roped him, a big one.

"Zeke was riding a pretty good horse, one that I had owned formerly and sold to him. The horse knew his business and you could usually trust him, but when Zeke roped that steer and run on him, the windup was that the steer throwed the horse. The horse fell downhill, with his back right against a tree, right kinda under the tree. And the rope, of course, was fast to the horn of the saddle. You had to tie your rope hard and fast to the horn in all those trees, or when you were chasing something a tree would take it away from you.

"Well, the steer was out there on the end of the rope and the horse couldn't get up. Zeke had to whip out his knife in a hurry and cut the rope He cut it right at the horn of the saddle, and the steer took off down the ridge. Zeke got hold of his horse's tail and twisted him round in the snow and got him onto his feet, and then he follered that steer down off the ridge and into Cottonwood. When he caught up with the critter he picked up the rope and throwed him and tied him. It wasn't too hard to catch up with him in that deep snow.

"Tom Jones was there and caught a steer, and though I don't remember all the fellers that were there, we caught those six big steers in that bunch and tied them and led them up to our corral and got them out. It was a kind of record. We took every steer in the bunch, and at the end of the trip we got them all out to town and fed them till spring and sold them and got rid of'em."

Incidents in John's story suggest how important the horse was in the teamwork that was necessary for the catching of wild cattle. If the horse was really good, the cowboy was generally free in giving credit to him as being the more important member of the team. Rye Butt tells how, as a stripling of fifteen, with the guidance of an experienced old cow horse, he caught his first wild steer.

"George Dalton was running the K-T outfit over at Verdure, and my dad was riding for him and wanted me to learn to be a cowboy. So they give me a horse that they called old Danny. He was a good cow horse, and Vern Dalton had been ridin' him before they give him to me. Of course, the reason George give me the horse to ride was that I was light, didn't weigh over 85 pounds, and would be easy on the horse, which was gettin' kinda old. Then, too, George knew that old Danny could teach me a lot about chasin' wild cattle.

"Old Vern didn't much like their givin' Danny to me to ride, because Danny was one of his best horses. He didn't own him, but he'd been used to ridin' him in his string and had got to feelin' like he was his own horse, as a cowboy workin' for an outfit is bound to do. So old Vern kep' tellin' me, he says, 'That ol' Danny's goin' to take you for a ride one of these days. When he does,' he says, 'you'll be up the top of one of them cedar trees.'

"So we was ridin' down on the Devil Canyon rim one day, and I was moseyin' along on old Danny when they suddenly jumped a bunch. We was just runnin' trail, and all at once Danny took out to the side, and I thought, well, here is where he takes me for that ride. He started down through the trees with me, goin' just as hard as he could go. Maybe I could've held 'im, but I realized he wasn't tryin' to scrub me off. He was after something, and I didn't know what it was he was runnin' for, but I let 'im go. I figured he must be chasin' something, but I couldn't see; I was too busy dodgin' trees.

"Pretty quick he come out into a little flat, and he was trompin' right on the heels of a big, old two-year-old steer. And that's the first I'd seen of the steer. Well, I had my rope down, and I just made a hole in it. And there was Danny trompin' that old steer's hind legs, so I throwed the rope down, and it happened, I guess, to go over his head. When I looked around, why that steer was about four feet off the ground and all his legs up in the air. I had a piggin' string looped around my saddle bows, and when he hit, I jumped off and wrapped two of his legs together. I also had a headrope, and I tied the legs together with that rope too. Then I tied my lasso rope over to a pine tree and went back to find the fellers."

The well-trained cow horse, then, was indispensable to efficient pursuit of wild cattle. But without cowboy ingenuity it would, of course, still be inadequate. Bill Young tells how his brother Ray improvised to meet the unexpected situation over in isolated Wooden Shoe canyon one spring.

"Wooden Shoe Canyon is a wild place, hardly anyone ever in it, and the cattle that run in there never see anyone hardly and become mighty spooky. We used to try to get in there once a year and get the calves branded up and bring out what sale stuff there was. Then we'd let the rest of the critters go for a year.

"Well, Ray and I went up to the head of the canyon and saw the tracks of a few animals going off up a side canyon. So Ray stayed at the mouth of that little canyon, and I went up in to drive 'em out. He was going to hold them up and get them bunched there at the bottom. Ray was riding a little bay horse we called Geronimo. Quite a small horse, but with a lot of pep and go. So I got up ahead of these cattle, four head of long-eared yearlings that we had missed branding the year before. They had been in there all the time, born there, and had never seen a man and was mighty spooky.

"But I got behind them and turned them back, and they kept goin' a little faster and a little faster. When we got down near the mouth, I dropped back to give them room, so's Ray could bunch 'em and hold 'em. But when I come down to Wooden Shoe I see that he was gone. I started to ride on down the canyon, and right away I run across one yearlin' tied up with his piggin' string. I follered on down a little further, about a quarter of a mile, and there was another tied up with his lasso rope. Then about another quarter further down I found one side-lined with one of Ray's bridle reins. And as I continued on down the canyon I at last found Ray sittin' on a fourth one.

"When Ray give up his lasso rope, he spurred this little horse he was ridin' till he would crowd these calves so close he'd knock 'em down, and then Ray would pile off and get on 'em before they could get up again. So he caught all four of 'em within a mile. We just branded them there and turned 'em loose."

The cowboys kept insisting that you couldn't catch these wild cattle on an ordinary horse. You had to ride an animal that was not only strong and willing, but also fast and sure-footed. Most of all, however, he had to have quick and accurate judgment about how wide a gully he could safely jump with more than 200 pounds on his back and which trees he could go through and which he'd have to go around. The cows would rarely turn aside for anything as they crashed through the trees and purely flew over washes and slickrocks in their panic. The best tree-horses could generally outrun the cattle in a fair race, but occasionally the cowboys struck a critter that was long-legged and rangy, built like a horse and able to outrun most horses. John Rogers remembers a superb creature that gave his horse a good exercising down in the Milkranch country years ago.

"We were riding down there by the slickrocks where the trail comes up onto the Milkranch point, when we saw a bunch of cattle quite a ways off. Their location give us a good chance to go around by a draw towards Hammond Canyon on the north, and we climbed up over the hill and got right onto the bunch before they saw us. They were in a little sagebrush flat, and we all made a break for them. I got after a big Bar-X-Bar steer about three years old. He belonged to Hardy Redd's Dark Canyon outfit. Hardy was in our party, but not right on the spot with us at the time, and I knew he would want this steer pretty bad. So I took after him. I was riding a fairly good horse and I thought I could catch the steer. I ran him for about a quarter of a mile and caught up quite close to him, but he was just loafing along. When he looked back over his shoulder and saw me, he lit out and just run away from me.

"The trees weren't too thick there, not bad at all, and I was plumb surprised. But it was the first day I had ridden that horse this spring, and I thought maybe he would settle down a little bit and I could do better. So when the steer got out of sight I followed his tracks for a few miles on down toward Cottonwood, where the trees were a little thicker but there weren't so many rocks. It wasn't a bad place to run where I caught up with him a second time. But he was high-headed and high-horned, and he took off like he was real fresh and soon got out of sight again. I followed him the third time, and each time I caught up with that steer he'd run away from me. He just clear outrun me.

"So I give up. My horse was about run down anyway, and I went back to camp. Well, that night I got to tellin' about him, and Hardy was kinda mad. He says, 'Been your own steer you'd a got 'im. They just don't get away from you, John.'

"I said, 'I wish I had been on my other horse. I could a caught 'im on that other horse.'

"Well, the next day we moved camp. We moved several miles further down and then rode out in the trees. And if I didn't jump that steer again! This time I was on my best horse, old Ike. But I did the same thing over again. I run that steer three or four times, good heats, and every time I caught up to him he run away from me. He was long-legged, and highheaded, and built like a horse, and when he saw me comin' he just run away from me.

"So he got away again. Hardy was mad at me for sure then. He says, 'Don't anything get away from that old horse if you want him.' He says| 'You didn't try. You let'im go.'

"But we moved camp again the next day, on down into the head of the Butler Wash. That's where Old Posey, the runnygade Ute that started the last Indian war in the country was shot in 1922. Well, there's a lot of open country down through there, over next to the Comb. There's trees and then open flats, and that steer had moved right on into there. Well, the next day Hardy was ridin' the best horse he owned, a big old roan that was a good tree-horse. He was the best horse in our bunch and one of the best in the country. And Hardy jumped that steer. He run him for all he was worth for three or four miles right down through that open country, and the steer just run off and hid from him. He told me that night, 'I'd always been mad at you if I hadn't chased that steer myself.'

"A good many cowboys chased that steer after that for several years, and he had the reputation of being the fastest cow brute that ever run in the trees. He run there till he was about eight years old. And then one winter we were out there when it snowed deep and was right hard going. And in that deep snow and rough country Frank and Wylie Redd struck that steer's trail and follered him until he got tired from breakin' trail for them. So they got up to him and roped him. But they hadn't had much experience with these wild critters and hardly knew what to do. They both roped him around the neck, and when they set back, one up and one down, they choked him to death right there. The steer couldn't give when they were pulling from opposite directions.

"So they got off and bled 'im and skinned 'im and hung 'im up in a tree and went to camp. Then they brought back some mules and packed him out, and that was the end of the fastest steer that ever run in that country."

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