Hot Iron - Part III of III

Far Rider and Sensei Robert Koga. Forty years after meeting at the Los Angeles Police Academy and thiry years after the incident relayed in this story. Robert Koga is known worldwide for his teachings and development of the Koga System of Weaponless Control, Police Defensive Tactics and the Koga Method of the Police Baton. During Far Rider's assignment as a counter-terrorist undercover operative, Sensei Koga often provided over watch and protection for his young student.

http://www.kogainst.com/

Ten years as a Green Beret and Special Operations soldier, and two years working the mean streets of Los Angeles as a police officer after returning from the bloody killing grounds of Southeast Asia had taught Far Rider much about brutality and men like Clete. He had arrested many of them. They were the kind of men that beat up women and bullied smaller and more timid souls. He had done his share of killing Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers that practiced cruelty and butchery for the sake of cruelty and butchery. For as long as he could remember, and particularly after seeing so much cruelty in the blood soaked jungles of South East Asia, he could not abide suffering. To witness the unnecessary infliction of pain on any helpless creature aroused a murderous rage in him. Trouble was coming. He could feel it as one feels and senses an impending lightning strike. The problem was that he could not initiate a deserved preemptive assault without ending up in irons himself. Clete and men like him only understood physical force as a means of restraining behavior.

Gritting his teeth, he concentrated on his breathing to slow his respiration and the wicked increase in his heart rate as anger pushed the adrenal chemical cocktail through his system. He could hear Bob Koga, his Sensei, echoing in his head “You must be in control of yourself in order to control others.” Well, right now, he felt more like going into Spec Ops mode and applying sudden and terminal violence against a brute that took pleasure from inflicting needless suffering.

By nature, training and experience he was not prepared to be a street fighter. The training he had rigorously undergone and used for so many years was confined to two distinct modes. The application of lethal or crippling force against an enemy or the restrained application of control techniques designed to place a suspect in custody without injury. Being witness to countless incidents of violence and violent death, he knew that in the absence of weapons, size, speed and strength were enormous advantages. The risk of losing an eye, teeth or sustaining a crippling injury in a brawl never appealed to him. However, he also adhered to the idea that there are times when an honorable man needs to step up, regardless of the risk.

The afternoon wore on until the last calf of the day stood glaring warily from a corner of the large holding corral. He was a handsome, strapping red brangus bull yearling and easily pushing 600 pounds from the look of him. Eight inch horns topped a magnificent and belligerent face. It was obvious he was a remnant missed in the preceding fall gather. One of the ropers shook out a loop and laughingly hollered “Any of you boys have the huevos to flank this bad boy or do we need to head and heel him?”

Everybody moved back along the fence to watch the show as another rider eased up with his loop down to heel the big beast.

The accumulated affects of the afternoon’s conflict and pent up anger had Far Rider thoroughly wound up. He eyed the juvenile red bull and thought, What the hell? He was either going to set an example or make a complete fool of himself and possibly get hurt in the process.

“Un macho hombre” the header said and nodded to him as he quietly moved his horse towards the wary animal standing now with his head up looking defiantly at the approaching horse and rider. A soft whir and the loop gently settled around the animal’s horns. The rider spun his horse and dragged the bucking, bawling red bull yearling out into the middle of the corral.

Far Rider sprinted towards the 600 pounds of twisting red hide, flying snot and horns. Grabbing the lariat just above the hondo and waiting until all four of the animals feet were in the air, he grabbed the right flank of the animal with his right hand and heaved backwards with every ounce of his hundred and seventy five pounds. The red brangus crashed neatly onto his left side emitting an audible “whoosh” as the air was partially knocked out of him. Far Rider quickly trapped the right foreleg and sat on the enraged animal’s neck. Other cowboys rushed forward to help restrain the animal and the branding procedure began. A few congratulatory remarks were directed towards his accomplishment as work proceeded.

Far Rider thought they might let the big yearling keep his horns but somebody brought out a set of horn shears that looked like large bolt cutters. Better than a saw but not much. The horn crunched sickeningly and the red bull bellowed in pain and rage as the blood squirted into the air staining Far Rider’s chaps and quickly soaking his shirt front. After the second horn was cut, the castrated bull lay with the whites of its eyes showing and groaning with deep panting moans. Clete approached with the cauterizing iron glowing an ugly dull red with heat smoking in wavy lines from the tip. At the application of the searing heat, the bull jerked violently and a sound that Far Rider had heard from men having their throats slit burst forth from the animal. The red bull’s tongue hung out coated in dirt and cow shit as the hissing iron smoked and burned into the raw horn.

“Ease up. It’s done” Far Rider said and twisted the suffering animals head up so the other bloody horn was exposed. The young bull was panting quietly and long swaths of silvery snot ran down the side of his jaw and across Far Rider’s chaps.

Clete brought another iron from the fire and applied it to the animals remaining bleeding horn stub. The bull reacted only slightly as if the stress and pain had succeeded in sending him to some other place.

It’s a wonder this shit doesn’t kill him Far Rider thought as he turned his face away from the stinking sizzle of seared horn. Clete continued applying the iron for several seconds longer than was needed and Far Rider, having had enough, angrily slapped the iron away with his gloved hand. “That’s enough you sonofabitch.”

Clete gaped momentarily at Far Rider as if he could not believe what had just happened. As his thought processes sorted out the event, his face took on a look of rage and he squared up in pre-attack posture. Far Rider released the bull’s head and stood up backing away out of range of the iron in Clete’s right hand. The other hands working on the animal also stood and stepped back watching the two men. Soon the entire crew, including the boss, was forming a rough circle around them.

Far Rider found himself facing a bigger, stronger opponent with a three foot piece of red hot iron in his hand. He looked towards his gun belt hanging on his saddle horn, judged the distance and realized there was no chance of getting to it. Quickly glancing around for another iron or something he could use as a baton or staff proved fruitless. He considered the ball point pen in his shirt pocket as he watched the center of Clete’s chest but decided to keep both of his hands clear. A stab to the eye or throat of his adversary would be the end of the fight for sure, but would see him arrested. Glad that he had removed his spurs, he thought, I’ll be lucky if I get out of this without a broken arm or burns. He checked the ground out of the corner of his eye for obstacles that could cause him to trip. He surely did not want to be on the ground with Clete coming at him with the iron.

Clete had obviously been in his share of barroom brawls but did not appear to be a trained fighter. Not that that meant much as Far Rider had seen street fighters that could whip most of the dojo black belts he had worked out with. There were a few martial practitioners like Ed Parker, Joe Lewis, Bob Koga, Bobby Haynes, Brad Steiner, Richard Ryan, Troy Coe, Dennis Laycock and several other world class fighters he had known and trained with that could take this guy down without any problem, but he did not possess their level of skill for this sort of brawl. Everything he knew would be lethal or result in serious physical injury if he was able to apply it and that could mean jail time or worse.

“Nobody slaps my iron away.” Clete spat.

Far Rider remained silent and hoped none of the rest of the crew would get involved. Clete dropped the iron and moved forward raising large knuckled, scarred fists. Clete stepped in and threw a couple of feints with his left and Far Rider circled counter clockwise to stay away from Clete’s right hand. He had no doubt that one solid blow from Clete’s huge fists and it would be over.

Clete suddenly lunged forward with a straight right. Far Rider leaned back and stepped to the outside as he had practiced for so many hours in the dojo. He deflected the right slightly downward with his left hand and, launching himself over the top of Clete’s arm, struck him in the trachea with the inside of his right wrist and applied a bar arm choke. The blow staggered the bigger man and Far Rider folded at the knees taking them both to the ground with his knees on either side of Clete’s hips. Violently slamming his right bicep into the side of the cowboy’s neck and the point of his shoulder into the back of his head further stunned the man and Far Rider transitioned to a carotid compression hold locking down with a classic chancery. He applied pressure to both sides of Clete’s neck restricting the flow of blood to his brain.

Clete clawed frantically at the arm locked like a steel vice around his neck but weakened quickly as he began to lose consciousness. Easing the pressure slightly to allow blood back into his brain Far Rider said “Put your hands behind your back or I’ll put you out.”

Through the fog of partial hypoxia, pride prompted Clete to hesitate. Far Rider reapplied the pressure on his neck and the big man immediately placed his hands behind his neck with a gagging noise as he attempted to get more oxygen into his lungs. Far Rider rolled him none too gently onto his face and applied a twist lock to his right arm behind his back. As oxygen filled blood rejuvenated his brain Clete made a reflexive effort to get up but a quick twist and upward pull on the arm trapped behind his back brought a groan of pain and a cessation of struggle.

Far Rider wasn’t quite sure what to do next. He did not have handcuffs to finish the job of controlling Clete as he had so many times on the streets and in the alleys of Los Angeles and even if he did, what would he do then? He wasn’t going to arrest the man. He just wanted the fight to be over. Keeping an eye on the other cowboys standing around with looks of incredulity on their faces, he quietly said to Clete “If I release you, do I have your word that this is over?” He was putting his faith in a code of conduct that some in the American West still respected.

“OK. OK” came the muffled response as small clouds of dust puffed away from where Clete’s face was pressed into the dirt. Far Rider was struck by how similar those puffs of dust were to those made by the calves as they endured their misery.

Carefully releasing his grip on the big man’s hand Far Rider stood and backed towards where his horse was tied with his gun belt hanging from the saddle horn. Clete did not look at him as he got up and picked up his hat rubbing his shoulder. The boss inclined his head slightly in puzzlement and said “Let’s make sure these critters are separated and kick them out. Weanlings go east to the next cross fence. Just open the gate and let the mothers find their own way out.”

Work continued for the next three days but the other crew members conspicuously avoided him as much as possible. Clete and Far Rider worked together in a quiet but tense truce and nothing was ever said about the incident. Far Rider never removed his gun belt and was glad to draw his wages at the end of the gather. He did not bother to ask if there might be more work in the future.

As he headed his pickup north towards Phoenix, the desert rolled away in its timeless desolate beauty and the hot evening breeze blew in the window. He idly stroked Chance’s head resting on his thigh and thought that the whole incident was probably pointless. It was doubtful it had changed anything or reduced the suffering to any of God’s critters. But, he also knew he would do it again. Sometimes, doing the right thing is not always the safest or smartest thing. Bob Koga would shake his head disapprovingly if he was there, but he also knew that his old friend, mentor and teacher would understand.

Far Rider
See to your weapons and stand to your horses

Hot Iron - Part II of III

Note the stress on the calf's face

Two and a half weeks into the cycle and the crew was working a large bunch at a remote set of corrals far from the headquarters. At midday, the owner’s wife had showed up with sandwiches and several gallons of ice tea. A welcome treat as the cowboys normally skipped lunch and worked through until dark. After lunch was over the men headed back to work. It was approaching ninety degrees and everyone was tired, hot and banged up. The previous seventeen days of eighteen hours a day on two meals and little rest was making tempers short. After herding the sixty pair of mother cows, calves and remnants into the large holding corral from the trap where they had been gathered during the morning, they tied their horses to the branding corral fence and received assignments from the boss.

Two crews were working using one branding fire. Far Rider drew out as flanker for his crew. It is the most physically demanding of the ground work assignments and is usually given to hands with low seniority or the younger guys. The flanker was required to run down the rope and drop a bucking and bawling one to two hundred pound calf onto their side quickly trapping the nearest foreleg and putting a knee on their necks to hold them down. Flankers are always grateful to see a calf that has been heeled dragged to the fire rather than one that had been headed and is turning inside out at the end of the rope.

Spring branded calves are usually much smaller than fall branded calves, but for whatever reason, the calves on this outfit had some size on them. The cattle were Brangus; Angus mommas and Brahma bulls. The calves were long eared and bred for the toughness required to do well in the harsh environment of the Sonoran Desert.

Dust roiled and blew through the sweating mix of men, horses and cattle. The stink of burning hair, hide and horn was pungent accompanied by the deafening bawling of the calves and the stressful cries of the momma cows. The calves were roped, wrestled to the ground and for the next couple of minutes hurt all over their body. As painful as castration and hot iron branding is, dehorning is the most painful procedure done to them. It is akin to having a finger cut off or a knuckle dug out with a sharp spoon. The poor critters bawl piteously with the terrible pain and their eyes roll up in their head. After the horns are sheared off or the nubbins are dug out of their skulls, the raw horn is bleeding and must be cauterized with a red hot iron. The rule on every outfit that dehorned their cattle that Far Rider had worked was to apply the iron just long enough to stop the bleeding and seal the end of the severed bone enough to prevent infection. The iron was to be kept on just long enough to turn the bone "Mexican brown" then removed as quickly as possible to end the suffering of the animal.

The raw, exposed horn sizzles and squeaks as the heat is applied and the calf's bawling changes tone into one of pure agony. Far Rider hated it. He figured that the Good Lord hung horns on them for a reason. They needed them for protection out on the range where they would spend their short lives before being gathered up to be shipped off and butchered in another ordeal of terror before turning up wrapped in cellophane at the super market or pushed across the counter at Mickey D's. He really did not like cowboy work. Looks romantic as hell in the movies but it is just hot, hard, brutal and cruel work.

Far Rider enjoyed beef but was dismayed by all of the suffering that got it to the table. As he watched the antics of the calves as they played and frolicked out on the open range he thought that they ought to be allowed to grow up on good grass and that their end should be humane. He had made the mistake of expressing such sentiments a time or two and had been held in thorough contempt by other wage earning cowboys. Nonetheless, privately he refused to accept suffering as a necessity to put money in the bank.

Clete was one of the day work hands that had been hired for the roundup. He was known to most of the other members of the crew that had been drawn from the local area. He was in his mid-thirties, six feet tall and carrying over two hundred pounds with the broad fleshy face of a serious beer drinker and his eyes were hard. He was a good cowboy, tough and strong. Far Rider had not had any conversation with the man but had listened to him at meals and during breaks. He wasn’t exactly a braggart but he was crude and had the shadow of meanness about him. Far Rider pegged him as someone that would be a mean, ugly drunk and prone to physical violence.

Clete was the hot iron man responsible for cauterizing the horn stubs on the calves. Far Rider would flank and hold the animal down while other hands branded, castrated, ear marked, inoculated and dehorned the animal. The last operation was the application of the hot iron to the raw horn.

The calf let out a guttural bawl and struggled when Clete put the glowing steel rod down on the horn and wiggled it around. He left it on longer than Far Rider knew was necessary but he held his tongue. After several repeats of the same procedure Far Rider quietly said “Don’t hold the iron on so long. It hurts these guys.”

Clete looked down at him as he was turning away with the smoking iron in his hand with a contemptuous look that said “You must be kidding.”

“College boy” he muttered as he returned the iron to the fire.

Far Rider released the calf and it staggered to its feet wobbling off towards its mother and shaking its head. The terrible pain in the critters skull could only be imagined, not to mention the smoking burn from the brand and the bloody sack where his nuts had been less than three minutes past.

Spring calves usually run about Two to three hundred pounds, but most of the calves being worked on this outfit were over four hundred. He began to suspect that calves had not been gathered or branded since the previous spring. Not knowing the management or conditions at the ranch he could not make a judgment and it was none of his business. Just get the job done and move on was his attitude.

One of the ropers on a big gray horse rode by dragging the smallest calf Far Rider had seen yet. The calf had been heeled and was sliding along through the dirt and dry cow shit on his belly with his head up calmly looking around at all of the action. Far Rider rolled him onto his side and patted him sympathetically as one of the other cowboys undid the loop on the calf’s rear heels.

“I’m sure sorry son” he said under his breath while trying to believe the old cow country saw that it was the calf’s tough luck for being born a cow.

The branding procedure started again and because the calf was smaller, the dehorn man had to use a dehorning spoon to dig the nubs out of the little critters skull. The agonized bawling from the calf began to infuriate Far Rider and he swore he would never again work for any outfit that cut the damn horns off of their cattle.

Clete approached and put the red iron down on the bloody depressions in calf’s skull from which a tiny stream of blood was squirting six inches into the air and dissipating in the breeze as a fine red mist. The calf was panting in agony and stress as the smoke rose from the burned hair, bone and flesh in the bloody socket.

“How do you like that you little shit?” Clete said as he bore down on the iron.

Far Rider looked up into Clete’s face with its crooked, yellow toothed grin and said “I’m not telling you again. Get the goddamned iron off his head.”

Looking at him with good old boy contempt, Clete cursed and walked away. Far Rider massaged the calf’s neck and had to prod him to get up. He appeared stunned nearly into unconsciousness. Standing, Far Rider peeled off his gloves and angrily slapped the dust from his chaps. Nobody appeared to pay any attention to the brewing storm as the work continued.

Hot Iron - Part I of III

Baboquiveri Mountains

Note to the reader: The stories posted to this blog are true. It is hard for many folks in contmporary America to realize that even in 1978 this was a much different country. It was a better place. Pockets of the Old West with its codes and values remained. There were far fewer cops and lawyers meddling in people's lives. Out in cow country, problems were settled among the participants without the interference of government bureaucrats and social engineers. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

My thanks to my close friend LB for her editorial assistance.






If Creation is God's handiwork, cruelty is the province of Satan. The unspeakable barbarity committed by mankind, individually and collectively, has left history awash in death, blood, misery and suffering. It is one of the great mysteries that the magnificence of the human mind granted by the Creator is so often used to devise ways to inflict suffering, pain, and agony upon fellow humans. Usually unnoticed and ignored by everyday folks is the gratuitous and ceremonial cruelty inflicted upon the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the denizens of the deep and watery places. The butchery inflicted upon sentient beings is justified in the name of economic efficiency, superstition, and sport.

Cowboying is tedious, hard and often hazardous work. Most things in cow country are bigger, stronger, and faster than the cowboy. The horse he rides and the cattle he works can be explosively dangerous. When a one to two thousand pound animal collides with a human, the winner is unanimously predictable. Some of the cruelty exacted against cattle and horses by cowboys is pure revenge for the bumps, bruises, broken bones and peeled hide that is the inevitable result of working with livestock. The infliction of cruelty for the sake of cruelty upon an animal makes an unequivocal statement about the brutish and brutal character of the perpetrator.

1978 found Far Rider attending Phoenix College and struggling to make ends meet. In early April, Alfred Haught, owner of the Triangle K Ranch in Pleasant Valley, Arizona site of the Pleasant Valley War in the late 1880s, and for whom he had worked, called him and told him about an outfit down in southern Arizona that was looking for riders for spring roundup. Spring gather coincided with Spring Break and Far Rider was able to work it out with his professors to take an extra week off so that he could finish roundup. Cowboys that still followed the old Code of the West did not hire on and then quit in the middle of the work. Living below the poverty line, a cowboy had his word and his saddle and precious little else. He could not afford to have either one of them in poor condition. Far Rider contacted the owner of the outfit and hired on.

The ranch was a hard-scrabble cow-calf and steer operation spread out over several hundred square miles of the tough, dry country that was the Sonoran Desert. The only way cattle could be worked and gathered in the desolate country was by men on horseback. Cactus, greasewood, palo verde and desert grasses grew profusely across a rugged landscape cut by deep arroyos, rocky canyons and steep broken hills that struggled westward towards the Baboquiveri Mountains. The country was hotter than the hinges of hell in the summer but spring was merely warm with daytime temperatures hovering near the ninety degree mark in mid-afternoon. A dozen other day-work cowboys had been hired to help out and along with the boss and two permanent hands the crew was filled out. Sleeping quarters were typical which meant they weren't fit for white men with any sense of hygiene. His dog, Chance, was not allowed indoors and over a number of years and outfits he had grown accustomed to taking his comfort curling up with the dog in the back of his pickup for the night

A cowboy was something Far Rider had never really wanted to be. He wanted to work horses in rough country and work as a cowhand provided the saddle time and experience not available in a show barn. The 1970s saw irreversible changes affecting the traditional role of the American cowboy. More work was done in a pickup and a cowboy was expected to do maintenance chores more like a common field hand. The handwriting was on the wall for a way of life that had captured the imagination of the world for over a century. No other icon in the young Republic’s history had so defined the American character of independence, self-reliance, freedom and rectitude.

The skill set of the working cowboy began to deteriorate as the competent and prescient ones adapted to the changing world and moved on to other occupations. The caliber and character of the cowboys he met and worked with were not the same as the men he had known growing up in northern Nevada and the mountains of east central Idaho. Wannabes and riff raff began to infiltrate the ranks of a once proud and honorable trade.

Never a top hand but considered competent and a good hand, was the best he could manage and as far as his aspirations took him. Roping was part of the trade, but unlike most cowboys, he didn’t care to know more about it than was necessary to get the job done efficiently. Ranch roping is unlike calf or steer roping competitions. Range cattle require a gentler approach to avoid injuring them. Turning the stock upside down or crippling horses in the process will get a cowboy sent down the road in short order. Heading steers was easier for him by far than neck-roping calves. When it came to roping calves he threw enough loops that eventually something would run into it. If he didn't rim fire his horse and get bucked off the job was a success. He could, however, throw a hoolihan loop for catching remuda horses. This rare skill got him noticed along with his ability to start young horses. If the place had colts to start, he usually got the job. It suited him just fine as it beat hell out of looking at the messy southern end of northbound cattle and it often paid a bit more.

During brandings, the job of roping and dragging calves to the fire was reserved for the older and most experienced cowboys. Day workers and younger cowboys made up the ground crews. Ground crew work is hot, physically demanding and beats the daylights out of a cowboy's body. Tasks include handling sorting gates, flanking and throwing calves, branding, administering inoculations, ear marking, dehorning, castrating and dressing the wounds inflicted during the process. It is hard on cattle and it is hard on cowboys.

Every crew has its own personality. Some run like clockwork while others are staffed by sullen, unpleasant and crude fellows. Like a police or a military unit, the crews reflected the caliber of the leadership or lack thereof. Poor crews are often marked by cliquish behavior where new hands are belittled and not helped to understand the particulars of working a new outfit, sometimes to the point where new guys would get hurt. This was viewed as a source of amusement by the rest of the hands. Far Rider despised such attitudes. Similarly, he detested those cowboys that liked to “rope and choke” cattle for pleasure and that treated their horses like tools to be used and tossed aside when they were no longer able to meet the rigors of range work.

That spring, roundup proceeded with grueling and monotonous regularity. The horses were grained and saddled by four a.m. and by five the riders were mounted and moving out a full two hours before the sun was up. The crew was one of those where there was not much personal interaction except among those that had worked together before. Far Rider didn't know any of the other hands and, as was his nature, kept to himself. He was ignored by the regulars except when work demanded communication. Before the roundup ended, there would be physical violence prompted by what little communication there was.

Far Rider
See to your weapons and stand to your horses