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THE BOREDOM OF RANCH LIFE is Now BROKEN B
WoRD AND 1EN UCTURES OF THE JlrDAR RANCH
Bry Remington Schu^ler
STATIC" describes perfectly the evenings on the old ranch in South Dakota. So static were our evenings that in desperation we turned in along about nine o'clock of a winter's evening, bored to death with each other.
The same old faces, stories, and magazines grew terribly dog-eared. We knew the magazines from cover to cover. We knew the advertisements with the same close intimacy. We knew every yarn of the other fellow's and every "funny story." Dynamite is "static" till you wallop it. It only needed some slight wallop to start something in the close harmony of our bunk-house. It was a desperate time. You can't forever talk horses, cattle, and women.
Living the same life, doing the same things, day after day atrophied our brains. Our conversation moved sluggishly in deeply worn channels, all too familiar and threadbare.
The nearest ranch, Isaac Battleyoun's, was fifteen miles over across the broken buttes of the Key-a-pa-ha. Ike had a wax cylinder Edison; a Steinway, a pipe organ, and a daughter who could certainly play. At times my bunkie and I would ride over and sit in on some music. It was not often, for by sundown we were dog-tired, and thirty miles, what with the drifts, was no great sport after a fourteen-hour day.
We were building up the E Bar. Our days were long and full of toil. Four A. M, when it was still dark and bitterly cold we "came alive," bustled into our frozen, board-like clothes and got out and going. There were seven of us.
Six cow-hands and Bob Emory, our genial foreman. Into the frosty darkness, one of us would ride over the drifted prairies and round up the pony herd and work horses. By lantern light another chopped wood. A third pumped water for the stock and calves in the pens. The rest busied themselves pitching hay or building the board corral and branding chute. At six o'clock and barely dawn we were heartened by the familiar ring of the lustily beaten frying pan and the welcome whoop, "Come and get it." In a ravening pack we scrambled to be first into the grub house. This nine by nine end of the log cabin was also kitchen and washroom.
Hustling in the door, one slopped a dipper of icy water into the tin basin — hurriedly soaped and washed face and hands and slicked one's hair. Then on to the grabbing match at the oil cloth covered table.
At the round corral a lively scene followed. The pony herd led by the wise old bell mare had been driven in. With saddle rope dragging we stealthily stalked our horse for the day. If you were crafty enough, to mislead the horse you were after into thinking you were after some other one, then a sudden swish of the throw rope and you had your mount for the day.
Saddles were slapped on, latigoes made snug and we were off about our several businesses. Some rounded up and counted the scattered herd and threw them back on the range, then looked for strays or cattle that had "gotten down." Others set out with running gear and teams to haul logs from the "breaks"