Posted on October 9, 2009 - by Hubba

More Fall Work

After I get done writing about the “Disaster of ‘89,” and write about the “Adventure of ‘90″ I can write about the “Adventurous Disaster of ‘92.”  All of these, in case you hadn’t guessed, are stories of our ill-fated cattle drives.

The only one of the above three that has survived is the “Adventurous Disaster of ‘92″ in the form of the YR fall cattle drive.  I won’t tell the story of the original cattle drive now, but it has become a less disastous adventure these days.  We trail the Wilson Bros. cattle 30 miles in two days, first across Sage Creek, the Cheyenne River and Box Elder Creek, then right through the town of Wasta, under the interstate overpass and all, and then onto the flat north of Wasta.  The second day we trail them across the flat, Alkali and Elk Creeks, and leave them on the Cheyenne River bottom again.  I just got back from the first day.

Yesterday I accompanied the Wilson Bros. to the Pipal place where we gathered the cows and put them in a holding pasture for the next morning.  Although the weather wasn’t bad last night, we chickened out and camped in Wall.  This morning we were up before the crack of dawn, drove out and saddled our ponies and one four wheeler.

The weather was really glorious for the first five miles, as we crossed Sage Creek and over a hogback ridge to the river bottom.  As we were crossing the river bottom, the temperature dropped drastically, and by the time we were across the river, the wind picked up.  Seven miles south of Wasta we hit a nasty squall. 

Andy Linn had met us at the river with his boys Ben and Jake and Clyde Arneson.  We all took turns driving the Linnmobile and managed to keep everyone from freezing to death.  Other than the cold weather, which can be expected this time of year, the trip was unremarkable.  Well except for the fact that we made almost record time, just over five hours for a fifteen mile trip with 145 pairs.

But tomorrow’s supposed to be worse…