So Far from Spring. Peggy Simson Curry

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      CHAPTER IV

      His pride smarting from the sting of Monte Maguire’s words, Kelsey set out to learn the cattle business. During the two and a half months that followed his first meeting with her he sat late in the bunkhouse, throwing question after question at Jake. Sometimes he used pencil and paper, trying to make clear in his mind the cycle of grass and cows and weather. At every opportunity he observed at first hand some small detail of a complex business—a calf being born, a cow being doctored for disease, a bull being marked for discard and shipping because of age. And as he began to understand a little about the cattle he saw their relationship to the land.

      Grass controlled where they would go at what time of the year. When cattle became restless on the spring meadows, pacing the fences, that meant the flats were turning green. Cowpunchers had only to open the gates, and the cows drifted naturally and easily to the spring range which lay between the ranch and town. In the brownish meadows they had just left, more grass came on, greening later than the flats, where the prairie sagebrush held moisture. And in June, when the flats had been grazed clean, cattle moved on to the fresh, close-to-the-snow grass of the high summer range in the mountains. As old snow melted they moved higher, and as fall came on, with the first flurries of new snowfall, cattle drifted back down onto the flats and meadows.

      “I’ve got to get it right in my mind,” Kelsey would say to Jake. “I’ve got to understand more than weather and grass and where the ranges are. There’s the business of keeping calves and bulls and cows separated at the right time.”

      And Jake would answer, smiling, “It’s simple, son.”

      And after a while Kelsey saw that this was true. Bulls were with cows only at proper breeding time—a time that guaranteed a calf wouldn’t be born in a snowbank. Bulls went out of their tightly fenced pastures to the mountain ranges in July, and ran with the cows until fall. Rock salt was placed in grassy parks, where cows would gather and the bulls would find them. Steers were pushed on the higher slopes to keep them away from the cows. Steer and heifer calves were kept in separate pastures after their first winter. “Because a steer is cut,” Jake said, “that doesn’t change his notions when he reaches a certain age.”

      June was branding time; fall was weaning and shipping time. Summer was for making hay, and winter was for feeding from the cured haystacks.

      There were two kinds of cattle: range cattle, and purebred stuff. Purebreds were used only for breeding purposes. Range cattle went to the beef markets. In the Park most of the cattle were Herefords, commonly called “white faces” because of their white markings.

      “Purebreds are full-horned, Kelsey,” Jake explained patiently, “and got numbers burned in the horns to match numbers on their pedigree. They gotta be kept in tight pastures all the time. Full-eared, too. You never see a purebred with an ear mark.”

      Everything about cow business cost money, Kelsey concluded—especially bulls. All bulls were purebred, and a good bull meant good calves. How long would a man have to work at forty dollars a month to buy a bull? His figuring gave him a sense of mingled impatience and futility, but neither feeling lasted. With each new day he went about his work, eager to learn more. And this fine June morning he wished he were helping with the branding and cutting, but Tommy had sent him to town for rock salt.

      The lumber wagon rattled along the narrow road. Kelsey, holding the lines lightly in his hands, looked over the backs of the team to the rolling country. One of Taraleean’s letters was in his pocket, but he had not heard from Prim, although he had written her two or three times a week. A paragraph in his mother’s letter stood out vividly in his mind: “Prim Munro’s gone for the summer—to the highlands, some say, but not a soul seems to know where. . . . Before she left, Crowter the rag-buyer was seen with her along the highroad and in the town of a Saturday night. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I think you should know . . .”

      He had written Prim again last night, an angry letter with words crossed out and then put in again. What did she mean, running with Crowter after what they had been to each other that night on the shore? And why hadn’t she answered his letters? What was he to think of her, anyhow?

      He felt foolish, remembering the words he’d so painstakingly put down the first weeks at the Red Hill Ranch—“Prim, my dearest one . . . Prim, my very own . . .”

      Before him now was the wide river he had crossed the first day he was in the Park, and the ranch house south of the pole bridge was the home place of Monte СКАЧАТЬ