On the way the driver pointed out the line of the original Santa Fe Trail which we crossed and I made some remark about the improvement in roads and transportation methods which enabled a transcontinental driver only a week before to complete the ocean-to-ocean trip in a little over seven days. Our driver had not heard of this feat and as the purport of my remark percolated to his brain he burst out,
“Don’t believe it; clean impossible for a single driver to do it. He’d have to average five hundred miles a day.”
I assured him, however, that it had been done; that the Los Angeles papers were full of it when we left that city.
“Don’t care if they were; there’s a fake of some sort about it,” and he expressed his disapproval of fakes in general by urging the Ford at a vicious rate over the sandy trail.
As we came near the hotel we saw signs of great activity in the stable yard—the girls mounting saddle horses and cowboys dashing hither and thither in the valley beyond.
“Big cattle round-up to-day,” said our driver, and we were seized with a desire to see as much as possible of said round-up. Mr. Campbell assured us that we still had time before dinner to visit the scene of the round-up and that our driver could take the Ford anywhere a mustang could go. So we struck out across the broad, sandy wash of the Rio Puerco in face of stinging gusts of sand, for the wind had been steadily rising all morning. We pursued our way across the desert toward the scene of activity, jumping over hummocks, plunging in and out of little ravines, and crawling through the sagebrush, but making progress all the time at an astonishing rate.
Our driver in the meanwhile was regaling us with blood-curdling tales of his experiences as a cowpuncher—stories of thrilling fights with Indians, of how he was lost for days in a blizzard to be rescued in last extremity, and similar harrowing adventures. He was interrupted by a cowboy who rode up to us, touching his sombrero to the ladies. “Hello, Gulliver,” he cried, “How’s the Ford for rounding ’em up?” Our pilot now had little to say, but the newcomer was very courteous in answering our queries and explaining the maneuvers of the round-up.
They were now coming in from every side, bringing about a thousand cattle in all—the object being to separate—“cut out”—the cows with young calves for branding and the merchantable steers for shipment to the east. The herd was assembled in a level plain near a corral and the cowboys, some three or four dozen in number, dashed furiously about, dexterously singling out the proper animals and turning them into the corrals. Sometimes a calf, bawling wildly, would bolt for the hills, followed by his terrified mama. It was astonishing how fast and how far the little beast’s spindling legs could carry him, but his pursuer soon had him lassoed and dragged him, in spite of his stiff legs, to the corral. Poor fellow, if he could have realized the fate awaiting him, he would probably have increased his desperate struggles for freedom; a little later he was thrown to the ground and his owner’s brand imprinted on his smooth hide with a red-hot iron.
One of the ladies of our party had a kodak and, being anxious to have a few snaps at closer range, asked one of the cowboys to take the camera and ride nearer the herd.
“I’m afraid I don’t know how to work the machine. Say, Gulliver, you take my horse and try it,” which Gulliver did with sublime assurance. In the meanwhile perhaps a dozen girls from the hotel and vicinity came cantering to the scene and were the recipients of most respectful attention on part of the cowboys. A couple of heavy covered wagons came lumbering on the scene a little later and paused beside a pond filled by windmills on the opposite side of the herd.