The Sunlight Basin

Sunlight Basin, Wyoming


Cowboys drift around a lot looking for new country to ride and new knots to tie. After I left active duty in late 1974, I headed back home to my beloved west to get back on a horse chasing cattle and starting colts. First to Texas along the Brazos River starting colts for Old Man Seybold. Then along the Mexican border in Arizona working horses and babysitting dudes. April of 1975 found Chance, my red bone hound, and me crossing Dead Indian Pass on what was then a badly maintained Forest Service road north of Cody, Wyoming. Thirty years old and loose as ashes in the wind.

Negotiating our way down the west side of the pass, we dropped down into the Sunlight Basin and some of the prettiest country out of doors. The ranch, once featured in a National Geographic Magazine article, lay along Sunlight Creek and was still deep in snow. Two other hands were on the place and would be pulling out as soon as I got the lay of the land. I was assigned to a tar paper cowboy shack that was six feet wide by ten feet in length - the same approximate size as a prison cell but without insulation or bathroom facilities. It was typical for hired hand quarters and I had seen worse. It always struck me as odd that I lived better and cleaner in a sandbagged tent at an FOB (Forward Operating Base) in the jungles of Viet Nam and Central America than in a typical western cow camp or headquarters outfit.

It made me determined that if I ever had an outfit of my own that I would provide decent quarters for my hired hands - a policy I have assiduously followed and regretted with every employee I have had over the past eleven years leading me to consider the conclusion that the ranchers I worked for knew something I didn't.

As soon as the two hands that had wintered on the place pulled out, I moved into the Chef's cabin and put up a cot in the combination sitting room and kitchen that was reserved for the ranch chef, when he or she might arrive. The cabin also served as the dining room for the ranch staff. It had a wood stove for heat and its own bathroom. Definite upgrades. In those days, hired hands, white or Mexican were viewed more or less as disposable and were treated accordingly. There were lots of cowboys and folks willing and able to work. The Nanny State was still in its infancy and welfare was not as easy to come by. Folks had more pride and would rather take a job they were overqualified for than take a government handout. But, it was certainly an employers market. Pay was low, benefits nil, but being horseback in God's country was the draw.

The job required that the cattle be fed each day using a sled pulled by a team of draft horses. The horses knew the drill better than I did, so I just hitched them up, drove the mile or so to the winter holding pastures, loaded the sled with hay and turned the horses loose. They just slowly plodded around in a great circle while I pitched hay and looked for new calves.

There was a piece of pipe stuck in a hole on the back of the wagon to use as a snubbin' post. When a momma cow with a new calf would come up to the wagon for hay, I'd holler at the team, and they would stop and stand quietly while I roped the calf from the back of the wagon. All the momma cows would get right on the fight when the calf started bawling and doing somersaults at the end of the rope. I'd run down the rope and leave Chance to head off the mother while I gave the calf an injection or two and put some iodine on their umbilical. I was pretty helpless kneeling in the snow holding the calf down with the mother bellowing, charging and generally raising hell.

Most of the other mother cows would come running up to see what all the uproar was about and a cowboy had to have eyes on all sides of his head if he didn't want to get hooked or run over. Chance did a great job of staying between me and the irate mother and getting their attention on him. I'd release the calf and while mother and young were getting reunited, Chance and I would sprint for the wagon where the drill would start over. We'd head back to headquarters and get the team unhitched and fed with the other horses. Until evening feeding time there wasn't much else to do except chop wood, read, and stay warm.

Ten days or so into the routine and I was down in the snow with a new calf when I was suddenly launched into the air and slammed face down in the trampled snow. The mother cow was a mean old bitch but a good momma and she was serious about protecting her calf. Fortunately, Chance got back into the game and went after her. I was lucky in that her horns went on either side of me and she hit me just over my right kidney. I wobbled back to my feet and wrestled the calf down again, finished the doctoring and got the lariat off the little guy before I staggered back to the wagon, finished the feeding and headed back to the cabin. Knowing I was hurt more seriously than usual but with no phone, no radio, and the roads snowed in, I was on my own. I forked down several days worth of hay for the horses and made my way back to the cabin.

By that evening, I could barely stand or walk and I was burning up with fever accompanied by bloody urine. Not good. Dragging the cot up next to the stove, I put the tea pot on top with all the tea bags I could find and lay back down. Throughout the night, I wandered between burning up and violent chills. Shock was taking its toll on me and all I could do was keep my feet elevated and myself hydrated with tea.

That night a storm roared in out of the north west with howling winds and heavy snow. By morning, I was light headed and very sick. I am not sure if I passed out or just slept like a dead man on and off for the next day. Worried that if I died and Chance was confined inside with me, he might gnaw on my bones to stay alive and when we were eventually discovered, if such was the case, they would probably destroy him so I propped the only door open, just wide enough for him to get out. I could no longer make it to the bathroom so I got a thunder mug and didn't leave the cot for the next three or four days.

When I finally began to recover there was a razor backed snow drift across the kitchen floor broken only where Chance had plowed through the door to take care of business. I was out of commission for at least five days. By the time I made it back out to the barn to hitch up the team the horses were plenty hungry and the cattle were starving. That was the last real snow of the season and when the owners and summer help arrived about a month later, things were back to normal. I never mentioned it to the owners. Fortunately, the Good Lord looks after drunks, fools and cowboys.

The Far Rider

See to your weapons and stand to your horses