The Dog Who Brought the Cows Home

And Kurt had walked out alone. He was standing on the slope about halfway between the corral and us, out in the open grass, with no machine and no horse, just watching.

The herd came down past him in a long black line. He did not move. A couple of cows swung their heads at him and he did not flinch. He just stood there, and as they went by, I could see his lips moving. He was counting them.

Duke brought them right into the big corral like he was putting water in a bucket. The last cow went through the gate. Pete swung it shut and dropped the chain over the post.

I gave the last whistle, the one that means “that’ll do.” Duke turned and trotted back to me, his tongue hanging out, and sat down beside Ginger’s front hoof.

The crew boss looked at his watch. He was a big man in his sixties with a gray beard named Lyle, and he had been running branding crews for twenty years.

“Forty minutes,” he said. “Hundred and eighty pairs.” He shook his head and spat in the dirt. “Ma’am, I’ve seen a lot of dogs. I’ve not seen that.”

Gus slapped his knee and laughed again.

Kurt came walking down the hill behind the last of the herd. He stopped at the fence and looked at the corral full of pairs, every one of them, the calves tucked up against their mothers, the dust settling.

“A hundred and eighty cows,” he said. “I counted every one.”

“A hundred and eighty-one calves,” I said. “The one-eyed red cow had twins. One of them always lies down flat behind the water tank.”

Kurt looked at me for a long time. Then he climbed over the fence and walked to the water tank on the far side of the corral, and he found the red cow standing there with the second calf curled up in the mud behind the tank. He stood there with his hand on the rail.

Branding

We started at nine. Lyle and one of his men roped off horseback, heeling calves and dragging them to the fire. Pete roped too, because Lyle asked him to. Pete is a good heeler. He is not flashy, but he does not miss much.

Kurt had planned to stand at the branding pot and run the irons. That is the job you give the owner when he does not know how to do anything else. But after the first half hour, he came over to where I was wrestling calves with Jeff, the young man from Halliday.

“Show me,” he said.

So I showed him. You take the front leg and fold it back, and you put your knee on the calf’s neck, and your partner takes the back legs. You keep your head out of the way of the hooves. You talk to the calf. It sounds silly, but you do.

Kurt was not good at it. He got kicked in the shin the first time and in the stomach the second. The third time he got it, and the calf lay still, and Gus came over with the iron and set the brand clean on the left rib, lazy H over a bar, and the smell of burning hair rose up between us.

Kurt looked at the brand. Then he looked at me across the calf.

“I haven’t done this since I was sixteen,” he said.

“I know.”

“I hated it.”

“I know that too.”

He held the calf while I gave it the vaccine shot under the skin of the neck. His hands were shaking a little. Then he let go and the calf jumped up and ran bawling back to the herd.

We worked calves until almost two in the afternoon. One hundred and eighty-one calves, counting the twin. Pete and Lyle roped. Gus ran the irons. The hired men vaccinated and castrated and tagged. Kurt and I wrestled together the whole time, and by the end he was doing it right without having to think about it.