The Tally Book At The Pen Gate

Chad counted the money out of Bev’s check like it was his to count.

He stood by the tailgate of his pickup with the dust of her pen still on his jeans, peeled off four twenties and a ten, and held them out to me.

“Ninety,” he said. “Good day. You’re getting there, Riley. Another season or two and you’ll be worth top dollar.”

I took the ninety dollars and folded it into my shirt pocket.

Behind us, Bev’s calves were bawling for their mothers across the fence, and the smoke from her branding fire was still drifting low over the grass.

What Chad did not know was that twenty minutes earlier I had been standing in Bev’s kitchen when she wrote that check.

Bev had run her place alone since her husband passed, and she wrote every check herself at that kitchen table. She had written it out to him for five hundred dollars, two hands at two hundred fifty apiece.

“Two-fifty apiece,” she had said, tearing it out of the book and smiling at me. “Worth every dime, even if Chad says you’re still learning. I’ve never seen anybody still learning heel like that.”

I had smiled back and said thank you, ma’am, because that was all I could think of to say.

Then I walked out of her kitchen and across her yard, and my brother-in-law handed me ninety dollars and told me I was getting there.

That was the second day of April, a Thursday, near Faith, South Dakota. It was the sixth branding of the spring. By the end of May there would be twenty-four of them before Merle Faber’s.

My name is Riley Brost. I was thirty-four that spring. I am a day-work cowboy, which means I hire out by the day to whatever outfit needs a man on a horse, and in the spring that mostly means brandings.

If you have never been to a branding in western South Dakota, I will tell you how it goes, because the work is the whole story and I am proud of it.

You gather at daylight. The crew rides out and brings the pairs in off the pasture, cows and calves together, and you pen them in the wooden corrals.

Then you sort the cows off and leave the calves in the branding pen.

Somebody builds the fire. Most outfits around us still use a small wood fire with the irons laid in it, though some have gone to propane.

The irons need to be the color of a gray ash, not glowing red, or they blot the brand.

Then the ropers ride into the pen. A heeler rides up quiet behind a calf, swings a small loop low, and lays it under the calf’s hind feet so it catches both of them when he steps in.

You take your dallies on the horn and drag him to the fire.

At the fire the ground crew takes over. Two men flank him down, one on the head and one on the hind legs.

Then the irons go on, the vaccine gun goes in, the knife does its work on the bull calves, and somebody puts in an ear tag if the outfit tags.

It takes less than a minute when the crew is good. Then you pull your slack, shake your loop loose, and ride back in for the next one.

A good branding runs two hundred to five hundred calves. A good heeler catches most of them on the first loop.