The Last Roundup
Out in West Texas two ranches are fighting a new kind of range war that pits the helicopter against the horse, the fence against the open range, the working cowboy against the modern businessman.
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Hard rain battered the camp again during the night. A wet, dark chill settled over the top country several hours before daylight, and a full moon flooded the sky with an eerie radiance. Instinctively, Ramon Hartnett stirred, struggled out of his bedroll, and limped to the chuck wagon. He added four large logs to the smoldering bed of coals and warmed his old bones for a few minutes before starting the coffee. For a man with bad knees, Ramon moved about with considerable authority; cowboys who stood between Ramon and the fire felt a shovelful of hot coals under their back pockets. Ramon had cowboyed for the 06 and other ranches for 40 years and had been cooking now for 25. People who knew him said he looked 20 years younger out here on the range. At home he could barely walk across the room, but out here he joked and clowned and sometimes jumped on a horse and tore off down a canyon.
Ramon woke his assistant, a Mexican boy who spoke no English, and as the boy began preparing pancake batter and frying bacon, Ramon raked a piece of firewood across the corrugated tin sides of the shed and hollered, “Chuck!” Tent flaps opened, and the cowboys began crawling out, boots first. It was going to be a long day, the day they moved the bulk of the herd from the top country down to the holding pens at headquarters.
Breakfast was pancakes, bacon, eggs, and chili colorado, left over from last night’s supper. Nobody ate better than the cowboys at the 06. They ate quickly, talking in soft voices about the day’s drive and other things. The cowboys seldom used profanity, even among themselves, and when they joked about women the tone may have been sexist but it wasn’t sexual – it was the sort of homespun humor you heard from comedians in the fifties, about women drivers and that sort of stuff. They were unfailingly polite, especially to strangers, and even the give and take among equals showed a respect rare among professionals. When breakfast was finished, Ramon leaned on the handle of his shovel and watched the cowboys jingle their morning horses. It was still dark, but he could see the flicker of ropes in the remuda.
When the men had saddled and mounted, Chris Lacy divided them into four groups, each headed by an 06 regular. Diane Lacy and their two children rode with Chris. Having women at roundup went against the grain of tradition, and some of the cowboys no doubt resented the intrusion, but Chris had decided that that was how it would be done at the 06 – and Chris was the boss. Besides, Diane could ride with the best of them.
The groups fanned out in separate directions, making a wide circle through the canyons and draws, gathering cattle as they found them. I rode with Ty Holland’s crew, sticking close to Ron Goddard as we moved slowly through heavy brush, down rocky canyons, and across endless meadows. Though we could see for miles in all directions, we didn’t see a single cow for nearly two hours. Most of the time I couldn’t even see Ty Holland or the other two cowboys in our group, but Goddard knew where they were. “It’s important we don’t get behind or ahead of them,” he told me. “We could miss some cattle.” We stopped for a time and sat astride our mounts, listening to the wind. We could see the remuda strung out on the other side of the canyon, moving across the top of the next ridge to a camp called Number Eight, where we would meet up with the other groups around noon and saddle fresh horses before driving the herd down to headquarters. There the herd would rest for a few days and recover from the drive before being loaded into trucks and shipped.
Presently Goddard spotted another rider scrambling up a ravine of brush, chasing a group of seven or eight calves. He spurred his mount to head them off and turn them along the opposite side of the ridge, toward Number Eight. I followed him around the ridge, and we stopped again on the opposite side of the mountain, above a draw leading up another hill to our rendezvous point. Ty Holland rode up beside us. “We’re going down and work that brush,” he told me. “Stay here and watch for strays.” I interpreted that to mean “Stay the hell out of our way,” which I did.
For more than an hour I sat there, astride an exceptionally gentle horse named Preacher, studying the spectacular terrain. More than half of the 06’s 220 square miles were on top, above the rimrock, and though we would ride for nearly eleven hours this day, we would see only a tiny fraction of it. Nobody, including Mr. Kokernot himself, had ever seen all of it. Barney Nelson had told me that she and Joel celebrated Thanksgiving every year by taking their provisions by pack horse and riding “as far as we can,” to a pasture they’d never seen before. Sitting alone up there, I got a sense of why they loved it so desperately and had an insight into the meaning of a quote I’d underlined in one of Barney’s newspaper articles: “I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are 40 freedoms without a blank spot on the map.”
We didn’t stop for lunch. When the herd had come together at the Number Eight pens, the cowboys saddled fresh horses from the remuda and we started down with the herd. We dropped off into a canyon and topped out through a pass, then down another smaller canyon and up a hill. From the crest of the hill we could see the great valley of Number Seven and the dirt road that led to headquarters. Polk’s Peak was off to our left. I could just make out Clayton Williams’ flagpole naked on the horizon. The herd had spread out now into a long oval, with a point man out front, eight riders at the flanks, and the others riding drag, picking up strays and laggards. The horses were almost as expert as the riders. When a slobbering, mud-caked old bull at the rear of the herd turned back uphill, my horse, Preacher, wheeled around, and before I knew what had happened I had caught the bull and brought him back to the herd. I looked at Chris Lacy, hoping my grin wasn’t as foolish as it felt.
“Let’s take ‘em all the way to Abilene,” I shouted.
“If you’re sure there’s a railroad,” the 06 boss shouted back.
At the floor of the valley, near a tank, the cowboys circled the herd and held it while Chris and Diane Lacy and Joel Nelson cut out the steer calves and their mamas, separating them from the cows with heifer calves and the young calves that had been born since spring branding. The heifer calves would be returned to their home pastures to help rebuild the herd, as would the young calves and most of the mother cows. The mothers of steer calves would lead their children to the shipping pens, then most of them would also be turned back to pasture. That was part of the grisly cycle of ranching – the mamas literally led their babies to slaughter, then, by some ancient homing instinct, found their own way back to pasture, where they would breed again. When the mother cows had gotten worn out, they, too, would go to slaughter, ending up, in the inglorious argot of the industry, as “cheaper cuts.”
It was late afternoon before we headed back up top to Number Nine. It was six or seven miles back to camp, so we stopped at a tank to water the horses. Nobody had eaten or had a drink of water since before daylight. Cowboys never carry canteens, Diane Lacy had warned me. They think canteens are sissy. When one cowboy dismounted, scraped away the scum, and drank from the tank, another said, “Hey H.A., there’s a dead bird in that tank.” H.A. said he didn’t care. “It’s a buzzard,” the other cowboy added. By the time we returned to camp, riding at full gallop, I had blisters on my hand from gripping the saddle horn, and I could barely walk. I calculated that I had ridden fifteen miles that day. Joel and the others had ridden at least twice that far, every day for two weeks, and they still had two weeks to go. Ramon had supper ready – steak, fried potatoes, camp bread, and cherry cobbler. I ate and was in my bedroll before dark. Another squall hit camp that night, but I didn’t hear a thing.
They broke camp the following morning. From Number Nine they moved to headquarters, to Number Five, to Cienega, back to headquarters, to Willow Springs, to Berrendo Flat, and finally back to headquarters again. By the end of October the last of the cattle had been shipped. Normally the 06 shipped between two thousand and three thousand cattle, but this year the total was barely more than a thousand. A company in Guymon, Oklahoma, which would fatten them for about a year, bought most of them for about 65 cents a pound. The ranch’s gross income for the year would come to about $350,000.
In early november I visited Clayton Williams’ roundup. Williams’ crew consisted of eight regular cowboys, mostly from his other Texas ranches, and a handful of neighbors. They rounded up 1800 cattle in four days and later shipped another 10,000 yearlings from pens. Williams didn’t actually “ship” cattle in the traditional sense, meaning he didn’t sell them. Instead, he transferred them to wheatfields, feedlots, and his irrigated farm in Fort Stockton. Later he would sell them at auction. “I’m waiting for the market to adjust,” he said. “The 06 and most of the others are selling right now for sixty-five cents a pound. I can’t tell you what I’ll get, but it’ll be about double what they’re getting now.”
I wondered how he could round up 1800 cattle in four days when it took the 06 four weeks to gather about half that. Of course it was easier to gather cattle on the flats than it was in high country, but still the difference seemed enormous. “I can tell you in one word,” he said. “Improvements.” Because of the extensive cross-fencing, he had pens and corrals scattered all over the ranch. His pastures were pens, huge pens, which meant, among other things, that there wasn’t much rounding up to do. You could ride across the 06 for hours without seeing a single cow, but on Williams’ place cows were thick as flies. Williams and his crew worked on horseback; they could just as easily have used pickups or ever motor-scooters. It was quicker, cheaper, and considerably more efficient than the elaborate ritual at the 06.
“Another thing,” Clayton Williams said, unable to resist a parting shot. “I imagine all those TV cameras slowed down the 06.” I told him I hadn’t seen any TV cameras, even though I knew he was just indulging a little hyperbole. Clayton snapped up his chaps and mounted. “I may be a poor cowboy,” he said, “but I’m one helluva cowman.”
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