This story is from James Greet, written in 1991 about his life as a cowboy in the 1940’s.
When looking for a good sheepherder’s horse, pick a range horse that is a “loner”, which is nearly always an unattached male. He is used to being alone and has no desire to join any group of loose horses. This type of horse also makes a good corral horse for the ranch for getting in the other horses, and bringing in the milk cows.
The horse that we used for this purpose I rode bareback, with just a halter. Well, that was yesteryear.
This may be a good place to include another record of ranch life experiences.
There was several times in the mid and late thirties, that we delivered some beef cattle to market in Worland. This meant a cattle drive of about thirty five miles across the badlands.
One time I remember well. We had culled about forty head of dry cows and a couple of bulls. It was George’s (the oldest of the Greet siblings) and my lot to trail them to Worland, over on the Big Horn River. This would be a three day trip west through the badlands. It was late November, and cold weather had come early that year. The ground was frozen, and we had about six inches of snow. The days were short, and this meant that we would have to make good use of the daylight hours every day. We didn’t know it then, but we would even take advantage of the early morning moonlight before we would reach our destination.
Our first day on the trail went well. It was clear and sunny, and ideal for being out on the open range trailing cattle. We had ridden this country ever since we were kids, so we had no trouble staying on the proper route. In the late afternoon, the temperature started falling fast. It was close to twenty below zero by midnight.
It is quite ordinary when you have bulls in a herd like this, that they will bring up the drag. It was close to dark, and we had all the cattle in the corral but one bull that decided he wasn’t going in. By the time George and I both got him convinced to comply with us, we were all warmed up.
With the cattle all secured for the night, and our horses watered and cared for, we were ready to call it a day.
James, George, and Marjorie Greet, 1927.
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Yesteryear! such interesting memories. But I wouldn’t want to be riding
in 20 below zero.
For a minute I thought I George was a picture of my dad in his young days, but he was in Montana, not Wyoming and he wasn’t George.
My mom grew up on a farm in Nebraska and rode bareback on a horse named Pearl, so this tale especially rang a bell for me.
On a note about the error that I get all the time when I try to post a comment, I notice that it takes a long time with a spinning circle on the tab. It would be really nice if that didn’t happen, but then you’d have to put up with more comments from me.
If I was smarter, I could fix it… but just post away anyway!
Thanks for sharing the stories and the photo is wonderful! You can tell they’re brothers and sister!