5-14-23
I had been helping my cousins for about a week at the Cheyenne River Camp. Almost daily interruptions by nighttime rain showers dramatically increased the number of days required for the annual calf branding part of ranch life. The drains and gullies gushed their floods after each storm. Mud swept down the steep badland ridges long held captive by the sunbaked crusts which seemed almost like ceramic tile in a kiln.
The cows didn’t mind the weather. The dampness of the calves’ hair impeded the hot irons needed to apply the ranch brand. The grass grew green and lush. An occasional outcropping of sweet clover added a surprising treat for the bovine palate. Sure, the sun shone warmly, almost hot, usually in early afternoon, after the morning’s warmth melted away last night’s clouds. The evaporating water helped cool the air and generated a nice breeze.
One day, seemingly much like every other day, Pete announced, “Boys we have to go to town today. If we don’t, Grandma might disown us all!”
I was surprised. He had received no warning phone call. (There was no phone at the camp.) I saw no special delivery of mail. There was no delivery of mail at all. Ever. Not even monthly. Mom had said nothing about any such Big Event. I wondered if she even knew anything about it. (Grandma was Dad’s mother and he would know of any family gathering but he had said nothing. (Of course, he seldom talked about long term plans, such as what project will we work on tomorrow.) Only later did we boys learn what was the Big Deal!
Pete had silently worried about the path to the gravel highway, knowing we might find it impassable. But he thought that the trail could be broken with the Allis Chalmers tractor with tire chains, followed by the four-wheel drive GMC pickup and followed by the two-wheel drive Chevy pickup, the one that could more comfortably drive on pavement the 60 or 70 miles to Chadron.
We made sure the horses were able to run freely for grazing and water. I didn’t spend much time saying good-bye to Old Roanie. He didn’t seem to even notice my departure. Pete tossed my saddle and bridle into the back of the Chevy and I gathered up my dirty clothes, just like everyone else. We put the kitchen utensils into the cupboard and hauled out the garbage to the garbage pit a short walk downwind from the house. We pulled the door shut as we left the cabin. There was no need to lock the door. There was no lock to lock.
Pete mounted the tractor. As instructed, I slid into the driver’s seat of the GMC while Ron took the controls of the Chevy. The three other cowboys hitched rides in whichever pickup had more room. Rick hopped into the GMC with me. I liked that arrangement. Rick was smart. I was not used to asking for advice, but he was good about giving advice when others needed it. We carried log chains and tool boxes and shovels and old broken fence posts. And crescent wrenches. (Wrenches which could be adjusted to fit any size bolt.)
Pete’s tractor made a track the pickups could follow. So far, the trail was along flat ground, seemingly quite solid. When the trail led past a steep shale hill, Pete surprisingly steered the tractor off the flat trail and crowded the tractor as high up the side of that hill as was reasonably safe. The dirt ahead looked just as solid as we had already crossed. However, there was no grass growing below that steep sunbaked badland hill. Pete must have known what to expect. We discovered that our path across the barren path lay on pure mud deceptively hidden by only a thin layer of sun baked silt. The tractor’s tire made a rut perhaps two feet deep, way too deep for any pickup to follow. But we could see that the other tire was on solid ground even though the ground was slippery and steeply sloped. Pete didn’t stop. The old tractor just plowed ahead and clawed its way onto solid ground around the hill. We followed suit. We crowded the pickups as far up the hillsides as possible and did our best to avoid slipping and sliding down into the mud. We passed that hill without need of digging or towing.
We came to a larger stream that was pouring with rushing water running off the badlands and into Cheyenne River. Pete waved us to a stop. I was glad. The flood looked too deep to me. He slowly and carefully eased the tractor off the bank and down into the flood. The water ran over the front tires of the tractor and about half as high as the big tires on the rear. The creek seemed to have a solid bed. The tractor scratched the mud from the path and climbed the bank on the other side, all without difficulty.
Pete drove the tractor back to our side of the creek widening the mud-cleared path as he came. He told us to turn off the pickup engines. (Always a concern. Sometimes an age-weakened battery was not able to crank a hot engine back to life.) He raised the hood of my pickup. He used the crescent wrench to loosen the brace on the idler pulley. He pulled loose the fan belt, the belt that ran the radiator cooling fan. That was strange. The pickup’s engine was already hot from its work so far. Without the water in the radiator being cooled by the fan, the engine would soon overheat and die a fiery death of molten iron.
He then slammed my hood and did the same for Ron’s pickup. He then got onto his tractor and drove across the flood and waved at us to do the same. Our engines started and we slowly followed his path into the flood. Water ran into the pickup cab through the gaps in the doors where the rubber gaskets used to be and through the rusted out floor boards where sheet metal used to be. We drove slowly, in first gear and in 4-wheel drive in my pickup. What looked like smoke leaked and hissed from the engine hood. It was steam, flood water suddenly overheated by our hot engines. The engine did not stop. It seemed impervious to the flood waters even though it was surely submerged just as were our feet. I marveled!
Both pickups made it to the far shore under their own steam. We turned off our engines as soon as we could, to avoid melting our engines. Not a good thing a hundred miles from home. Pete then reinstalled the fan belts and we drove on. Pete said that the typical engine could stand some water. The problem usually was that a radiator fan would blow water over the engine and cover the distributor cap that fed spark to the spark plugs. When the distributor got wet the spark would go every which way and would not get to the right sparkplug at the right time and the engine would die, usually in a very bad place to stop.
After crossing another dozen or so streams, though with lower water levels, and skirting other known bogs and hillsides, we finally made it to a gravel road. We loaded all the tools and other valuables into the 2-wheel drive pickup. We left the tractor and 4-wheel drive pickup in a low place off the road and more or less out of sight. We squished all six of us into the Chevy’s cab and its three-person bench seat.
Pete drove up the gravel road and out the Cheyenne River valley. Soon, he decided to make a detour through downtown Red Shirt Village. It had one store, the general store, and maybe three houses. He stopped outside the general store and gave a five-dollar bill to Rick, who was sitting on top of the pile of legs and nearest the shotgun door. (Shotgun was a term perhaps reminiscent of the guard who rode on the bench beside the driver of the Wells Fargo stagecoach to protect the load of cash or gold from robbers on the trails in the Wild West.)
Pete told Rick to go in and buy a six-pack of Budweiser beer for him and a six-pack of Coke for us kids. Rick was about 14 years old and pretty lithe. He slipped out of the pickup and trotted into the store. He came back to the door of the store and motioned to Pete. Pete backed up the pickup a few feet so he could see through the now open door of the store and see Melva, the lady behind the counter. She yelled out that she just needed to see that Rick was with some adult and that he probably was not going to drink all the beer himself. Pete laughed and thanked her and explained that he was covered with mud and just didn’t want to ruin his reputation in town by getting out of the pickup in public.
With the liquid refreshment, we all survived the two-hour trip to town. The gravel roads were not so dusty, because of the rains, and not so soggy or slippery because of the gravel. Two-wheel drive was all we needed.
Aunt Betty was glad to see us when we got to Chadron but also was pretty disgusted with the condition of our mud caked clothes and maybe by the smells of our unbathed bodies. Aunt Betty got us all cleaned up and we did not get disowned by Grandma Augusta. You see, the Big Deal was the week-long celebration of Grandma’s 50th anniversary of her 1916 marriage to Grandpa Herman.
