We just got back from visiting my parents who live in Idaho. They live in a beautiful valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains and raise beef cattle, alfalfa hay, and Quarter horses. We hoped to get there in time to help with their spring round-up and cattle drive taking cow-calf pairs up into the mountains for summer grazing, but they had some preliminary work to finish up before the drive, so we helped with that.
I got to ride my faithful old horse, Rudy, who is twenty-two years old and still going strong. The sight of his noble face among all the younger horses in Dad’s bunch always brings a surge of affection to my heart, I love that horse! He always seems happy to see me, never avoids being caught or saddled, even though he knows there’s surely hard work coming when he sees a rider headed his way. Rudy has always been eager to work, and that’s what makes him such a valuable ranch horse.
Our job for the day was to gather all of Dad’s cattle from a huge sagebrushed desert pasture and bring them in to the smaller pens near the house to sort. They needed to sort out the cows who weren’t fit to make the long journey up into the mountains, or ones with very small calves who might not hold their own against wolves, and they needed to hold forty-nine head back to keep home. My dad drove the tractor with a feed wagon to help draw the herd towards the holding pens, and my sister, Cowboy Dad, and I rode to gather them.
The round-up went fine until a few calves started missing their mothers, got confused, and turned back the way we had come. A calf who cannot find his mother will feel an instinct to return to the exact spot where he last nursed, and no matter how far or under what circumstances, will try to go back there. So we had three little scoundrels make a break for it, and my husband and I were the only ones available to stop them, as my sister was riding near the front of the herd to turn them into a gate. If it hadn’t been for Rudy, we surely would have lost them, because they were determined and as quick on their feet as deer. Rudy flew over the sagebrush, barely skimming the ground and never missing a step amid the holes, rocks, and uneven ground of that mountain valley. Cowboy Dad wisely kept his horse between the calves and their faraway destination, and we did eventually get all three of them turned back to the herd.
About that time it started raining on us, and just as we brought the cattle towards the corral gate a gust of hail swept through, scattering the cattle and sending them back the way we had come. It took some fine riding by my little sister, mounted on her three year old filly Chickory, to get them turned back and driven through the gate. Cowboy Dad and I were helping, but it was my sister and her horse who did most of the work. Rudy started limping about that time, and I didn’t want to push him as I wasn’t sure how bad he’d hurt himself running through the sagebrush.
We got the cattle corralled, and my sister went to get her sorting horse, Challis, and I put Rudy up since he was limping. My dad rode his horse Red, and I decided to ride my sister’s little filly since she was already saddled and had been riding pretty well already. She was a little tired, but we got along fine. Cowboy Dad rode a horse named Possum, and he was in charge of keeping the gate as we sorted out pairs and pushed them through to the holding pen. It was slow work, as the herd was fairly mixed up with calves bawling for their mothers and convinced that they’d left them behind in the pasture. There were also several bulls in the herd, who caused trouble by trying to chase cows off into their own little herds and separate them, fighting occasionally with the other bulls.
It was fun to watch my dad and sister sort, there is nothing more entertaining then seeing the harmony of horse and rider moving through a cattle herd with fluidity and unity. They knew which cows had weaknesses or calves with illness, and those were deftly separated into the holding pen. I mainly stood around and snapped photos, trying to stay out of the way and help when needed. My little mare was tired out and happy to stand and watch. Here are a few more photos from that day’s work:
Cowboy Dad riding Possum, heading out to start the roundup.
My dad and sister looking through the herd.
The world you see over a horse’s ears is always a more beautiful view.
We rode until well past dark that night, taking the herd back up into some BLM ground and looking for a watering trough in a vast expanse of sagebrush. At one point, we about gave up finding it, for we had driven the tired cattle for miles into the wilderness without finding water. So my sister called a neighboring rancher to ask for details on the whereabouts of the water. My dad dismounted to fix his saddle, which had slipped back quite a bit and the saddle pad was uneven, so I snapped this shot while we waited. I wish I had taken more photos at that time, since the sagebrush and the growing dusk gave an ethereal light to the world we were in. 
It is so beautiful out there—wild and peaceful all at the same time.
