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.