Along the edges of the woods were fallen willow trees and bushes that the Indians had cleaved for future fence posts. Cheerio hauled a quantity of these over to the slough, and shoving and piling them in criss-cross sections, he made a sort of ford to within about fifteen feet of the mired cow. His horse was tied by its halter rope to a tree. With one end of the lariat firmly attached to the pommel of his saddle which had been cinched on to the animal very tightly and the other end about his own waist, Cheerio crossed this ford toward the animal. He now let out the lariat and coiled its end for the toss. It landed easily upon the horns of the animal. Holding to the rope, now drawn taut, Cheerio made his way back over the ford. Unfastening his horse, he mounted. Now began the hard part of the work. His horse rode out a few feet and the sudden pull upon the horns of the cow brought her to her feet. She stumbled and swayed but the rope held her up. A pause for rest for horse and heifer, and then another and harder and longer pull and tug. The cow, half-strangled in the mud, nevertheless was drawn along by the stout lariat rope. She slid along the slippery floor of the slough and not till her feet touched sod was she able to give even a feeble aid to the now heavily-panting mare.
Once on solid ground, Cheerio burst into a cheer such as an excited boy might have given, and he called soothingly to the desperately-frightened heifer.
“You’re doing fine, old girl! There you go! Ripping!” And to the mare:
“Good for you, Sally-Ann! You’re a top-notcher, old girl!”
There was an interval to give the exhausted animals an opportunity for a rest and then they were on the bush trail again, the heifer going slowly ahead, thoroughly tamed and dejected, yet raising her head with monotonous regularity to call and moan her long loud cry for her young.
As Cheerio came out into the open range certain words recurred to his mind and he repeated them aloud with elation and pride:
“They’s the makings of a damn fine cowboy in you,” had said the foreman of O Bar O.
He was whooping and hurrahing internally for himself and he felt as proud of his achievement as if he had won a hard pitched battle. In fact, if one reckoned success in the terms of dollars and of cents, then Cheerio had saved for O Bar O the considerable sum of $1500, which was the value of the pure-bred heifer rescued from the slough. Moreover, Cheerio had brought from the bush the full quota of missing cows and their offspring. When at last he joined up with that steadily-growing line pouring down from all parts of the woods and the ranges, to join in the lower meadows, he was whistling and jubilantly keeping time to his music with the clanking “bell,” and when he came within sight of his “mates” he waved his hat above his head, and rode gleefully down among them, shouting and boasting of his day’s work. He counted his cows with triumph before the doubting “Thomases” who had predicted that the tenderfoot would come out of that dense wood with half a heifer’s horn and a calf’s foot.
They rode westward under a sky bright blue, while facing them, wrapped about in a haze of soft mauve, the snow-crowned peaks of the Rocky Mountains towered before them like a dream. The glow of a late summer day was tinting all of the horizon and rested in slumberous splendour upon the widespreading bosom of pastures and meadows and fair undulating sloping hills. Almost in silence, as if unconsciously subdued by the beauty of the day, came the O Bar O outfit, riding ahead, behind, and flanking the two sides of that marvellous army of cattle.
Small wonder that the Englishman’s heart beat high and that his blood seemed to race in his veins with an electrical fervour that comes from sheer joy and satisfaction with life. If anyone had asked him whether he regretted the life he had deliberately sacrificed for this wild “adventure” in Western Canada, he would have shouted with all the vehemence and it may be some of the typical profanity of O Bar O: