[2] Appendix, Note III.
CHAPTER VIII
ODDS AND ENDS
The "Staked Plains"—High Winds—Lobo Wolves—Branding—Cows—Black Jack—Lightning and Hail—Classing Cattle—Conventions—"Cutting" versus Polo—Bull-Fight—Prize-Fights—River and Sea Fishing—Sharks.
More odds and ends! and more apologies for the disconnected character of this chapter. It must be remembered that these notes are only jotted down as they have occurred to me. Of their irrelativeness one to another I am quite conscious, but the art of bringing them together in more proper order is beyond my capacity. Possibly it might not be advisable anyway.
In my pasture of some 100,000 acres there was not a tree, a bush, or a shrub, or object of any nature bigger than a jack-rabbit; yet no sight was so gladsome to the eyes, no scenery (save the mark!) so beautiful as the range when clothed in green, the grass heading out, the lakes filled with water and the cattle fat, sleek and contented. Yet in after years, when passing through this same country by the newly-built railway in winter-time, it came as a wonder to me how one could have possibly passed so many years of his life in such a dreary, desolate, uninteresting-looking region. To-day the whole district, even my own old and familiar ranch, is desecrated (in the cattleman's eyes) by little nesters' (settlers) cottages, and fences so thick and close together as to resemble a Boer entanglement. I had done a bit of farming and some years raised good crops of Milo maize, Kafir corn, sorghum, rye, and even Indian corn. But severe droughts come on, when, as a nester once told me, for two years nothing was raised, not even umbrellas!
These plains are, it may be safely said, the windiest place on earth, especially in early spring, when the measured velocity sometimes shows eighty miles per hour. When the big circular tumble weeds are bounding over the plains then is the time to look out for prairie fires; and woe betide the man caught in a blizzard in these lonely regions.
Once when driving from a certain ranch to another, a distance of fifty miles, my directions were to "follow the main road." Fifty miles was no great distance and my team was a good one. I knew there were no houses between the two points. After driving what long experience told me was more than fifty miles, and still no ranch, I became a bit anxious; but there was nothing for it but to keep going. Black clouds in the north warned me of danger. I pushed the team along till they were wet with sweat; some snow fell; it grew dark as night; and a regular blizzard set in and I was in despair. I had a good bed in the buggy, so would myself probably have got through the night all right, but my horses were bound to freeze to death if staked out or tied up. As a last resource I threw the reins down and left it to the team to go wherever they pleased. For some time they kept on the road, but soon the jolting told me that they had left it and we began to go down a hill; in a little while great was my joy to see a light and to find ourselves soon in the hospitable shelter of a Mexican sheep-herder's hut. The Mexican unhitched the team and put them in a warm shed. For myself, he soon had hot coffee and tortillas on the table. I never felt so thankful in my life for such accommodation and such humble fare. The horses had never been in that part of the country before, that I knew; it was pitch dark, and yet they must have known in some mysterious way that in that direction was shelter and safety, as when I threw the lines down they even then continued to face the storm.
It may be noted here that buffaloes always face the storm and travel against it; cattle and horses never.