The Blue Corriente

I settled into my new life as the reporter, columnist, and cartoonist for a small town newspaper. It was a bit surreal, dressing for work, leaving my dogs home, and boarding my horses. 

The job was interesting, the people I wrote about were fun and tickled to be featured, and my writing skills took a satisfying leap forward. 

I didn't miss the job of horse training, but I missed the time in the saddle something fierce, and the cows, I ached to work cows. Lucky for me, I found a boarding stable a few blocks from the office, run by Jay, roper/rancher/boarder who knew his way around a horse. 

We got along fine, he honored my request not to tell boarders about my training background, and I began to enjoy getting on my horses and just, you know, riding. One afternoon, Jay asked me to help him sort a lame steer out of his holding pen and soon after, told me I could work his cattle. 

I was in heaven. Did I care if they were Corriente roping steers? Not a whit. I was creative in how I used them anyway, I didn't want them ducking under a loop because I'd been taking them down the fence, and for the first time ever, I could just dink with them. So, I did. 

I trailed after them at a walk, played with the bubble (the air space between horse and cow), picked a random spot in the arena and made the steer stand quiet, ran them up the shoot for the ropers, and taught my horses how to wait patiently in the box. I even played with learning to rope,  ranch classes were beginning to take off and I thought I might give them a try. That didn't last long, I only had one thumb left, and the gnarled, twisted, and sometimes missing pieces of the ropers fingers made me nervous. It was the most fun I'd had in memory and both me and the horses were becoming pretty handy, you know, practical handy, not just show pen handy. Jay spent a lot of time watching me work. At first, I'm sure he was keeping an eye on his cattle, but eventually, he just seemed to enjoy it. 

One cool evening I turned my horses out in the arena and kept an idle eye on them while they rolled. Clouds of hair and sand came off them when they stood and shook. Jay came up next to me and handed me a beer. I rolled it across the back of my sunburned neck and felt like I was back where I belonged.

"I wondered if you'd work a cow for me," he said.

"Sure, what do you need?" I was puzzled, Jay could work his cattle anyway he needed.

"There's a blue heifer in the pen. She runs crooked right out of the gate," he said. 

"I'm guessing you hazed her pretty hard?" I said.

"Well, that's the tricky part. She'll hook you if you crowd her and she'll turn right into a horse when she feels a loop. "

Now I'd like to think Jay would have shared this tidbit before I started pushing her around, but you never know what some of these old cowboys consider funny. Corrientes are small, quick, and horned. An aggressive one would normally be a quick cull at a roping arena. "Jay, just what are you setting me up for?"  

"Ah, nothing, she's just a real looker and I want to turn her out at the ranch. If she's nuts she isn't going to do me any good, and if she's mean, even less. I thought you could do some of your cowhorse stuff on her and get her moving off a horse instead of into them."

"OK then," I said, "tomorrow after work?"

I saddled Madonna and long-trotted along the rail on a loose rein. She knew we were working cattle as soon as I slid the hackamore over her nose and was focused and cheerful, a place she only frequented when there were cattle. She was going well in the two-rein, but the hackamore kept us honest. A bridle made it too easy for me to correct instead of ride and gave Madonna something to fret over instead of pay attention. 

She was justified in her worry because she fed off mine. I was getting used to the new drug cocktail my neurologist has concocted and had lost trust in riding with a steady hand. The entire purpose of a horse straight up in the bridle was perfect communication between hand and horse. If my mare couldn't trust me we were never going to get there. 

The blue heifer was easy to spot in the pen filled with black, brown, and speckled steers. She was a beautiful blue roan color, doe-eyed and dainty. I could see why Jay wanted her to work. She was huddled in hock-deep mud with about four or five dull, used-up steers. A sour steer might be the dullest, slowest, pile of hamburger a person ever met. She watched our approach, bright and alert.

Madonna was beginning to fuss. She didn't like mud, she hated pools of pee in mud, and she knew we were going to jump a rusted bunk feeder to get to our target. In situations like this, it helped to be mounted on a horse bred to face and follow the things that spooked her most. As soon as she knew which cow we were after she hopped the jagged-edged feeder without a second spook. 

I rolled my shoulders until they cracked and sat back. I can curl over my horn like a circus monkey when I'm nerved up and I did not want to come over a shoulder in that muck and face plant in front of a stabby little heifer. 

We shoved between two sullen steers, and when they didn't get out of our way Madonna pinned her ears and bit first one then the other, hard enough to make them scatter. She snorted, I looked up to focus on our cow and she was gone. It took me a minute to find her, tucked behind the barn wall, a good fifty yards off.

"Dammit Madonna, keep your eye on the ball," I said. Her ear flick told me she was about to say the same to me. 

This was going to be a long afternoon.

***Mugs here: I'm thinking of switching over to WIX. I can't comment on the comments here at blogger and am about to lose my email notification abilities. Any thoughts? I've been out of the game too long.

***I tried to make it easier to comment...did it work?