Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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The day herder, at ease, on a ridge a quarter mile to the west—probably reading a Frank Merriwell baseball story—was letting the herd feed north, and so long as the cattle did not attempt to go over the rise to the east, out of sight, Wes Shuemaker would have no occasion to ride down my way. And it would have been futile for me to have tried to call him, with a south wind blowing forty-fifty mph.

My brother was safely on the other side of the ravine close to trees, but he slipped out the back way and went home. I knew he was doing the right thing. And I knew too that I would remain in the tree until the arrival of the riders. Those Texas cattle behaved nicely for mounted men, but they could not abide a person on foot.

I really had no business on that side of the ravine, with those cattle feeding there—but I guess I was, as always, a little too venturesome. I knew that herd had some bad actors in it. In fact, I had been warned to never get off my horse when riding as relief herder of that same herd, on several occasions. And one time while all alone at the dinner hour my mount, in jumping a ditch, broke the saddle girth and spilled me on a rattlesnake infested prairie, amongst those longhorns—with not a tree in sight.