Crippling Kelly, Blind Fox and Cows
- September 12, 2025
- |
- Jan Swan Wood
Posted in: Featured, Horse Care, Ranch Life
It had been a long, hot and dry summer grazing season and it was a relief when the yearling cattle I’d
ridden on all summer had been shipped. I was short of horses as I’d lost my top horse to lightning
midsummer and had sent the outside horses home that I’d been putting miles on. I still had Kelly, who
had proven to be a good one over the summer and was my remaining personal horse. I had taken a job
processing cattle at a feedlot and was day working until I figured out what I wanted to do next.
The pastures that I’d ridden on had been grazed hard by the steers that were now gone, but with the
lease running until the end of the year, it must have seemed like a good idea to utilize what was left. No
one asked me, as my job was done for the year, but I was disappointed when several loads of cows were
unloaded and turned into the one pasture that had decent water in it yet.
The day before the cows arrived, the relentless drought broke and it rained. It really rained, like inches
of rain, and the gumbo went boggy as it absorbed it. Wonderful rain, but it sure added to the situation that I’ll tell about now.
Regarding the cows turned out into that pasture, there’s a world of difference between a “cow man”
and a “cow owner”. The owner, manager and alleged cowboss were not cow men by any stretch of the
imagination or they wouldn’t have done what they did with the cows.
The pasture they were unloaded into was about 1000 acres with the only good dam in the northwest
quarter, therefore drawing the cows that way to begin with. On the south was a county road, to the west
was my uncle’s winter pastures with beautiful creek bottoms belly deep in good feed to winter his cows
on. To the north was a very good fence and my folk’s land. On the northwest side was a deep draw that
was a booger to keep a fence good in and I’d kept working on it all summer to keep the steers where they belonged and not on my uncle’s place.
My uncle had asked me to do his chores and keep an eye on their place while they were on a trip to visit their daughter. No worries, as his cows were healthy, chores easy and a simple mile and a half ride over from my folks place, where I was living at the time. I was caring for Dad’s place too, as he had gone on an elk hunt with my brothers.
The cows that were brought to pasture were a nice set of cows that had belonged to an old man who had decided to sell out and retire and the cows had never been off of his ranch. The guy that bought them was the cow owner type, not a cow man, so he had his cowboss, who was more ornamental than a real cowboy, go receive the cows at the ranch, where they sorted the calves off as they loaded the cows on the trucks.
They didn’t put a brand on them, as they reasoned they could do it later when they were taken home for
the winter and the old man’s brand was clearly on their ribs. See any red flags here yet?
Sure enough, they hauled them about 40 miles to the pasture, backed up to a portable chute and dumped them, fresh weaned, into a pasture they’d never seen before, at day’s last light, and it was raining.
Those cows were disoriented, cold and started walking. They walked most of the way around the pasture before they happened on the dam that had water in it. By morning their bags were as tight as they could be and those cows were bawling as they walked, looking for their calves.
The alarm bells had gone off for me at daylight when I could hear them bawling in the distance. I just
couldn’t believe someone would be so foolish as to dump fresh weaned cows out like they had, but then I thought some more on who was involved and wasn’t too surprised. I just hoped for the best, as they
weren’t my concern. Yet.
It kept raining, and since it was early fall, it was chilly. I bundled up a bit and headed over to chore and check things at my uncle’s place on Kelly. The prairie was really soaking up the rain and no water was running yet. On my return I topped out on a ridge in the middle of his winter pasture and looked out over the meadows to the south. I was not thrilled to see a few cows out on the meadows below the bad draw. I knew who the cows belonged to. Grumbling about poor cattle people, Kelly and I headed for them, crossed the creek, and gathered them up. The main bunch hadn’t found the hole that had been created, so it wasn’t too hard to get the handful of cows trailed to a gate and put back where they belonged. Then I hit a trot and headed for the deep draw to see what had happened to the fence.
Apparently a cow or two had leaned over the fence to graze the good grass on the other side and in so
doing, had broken a wire and a rotted post off and they were able to waller across. It was easy then for the cows to cross over and start enjoying that good grass. Fortunately there hadn’t been many that had found it, so with my hopes still high, I patched the fence up enough that it should hold until I could return with a stretcher and a steel post or two.
I got the fence fixed and as tight as I could make it without resetting H braces and rebuilding it. By this time it was dusk. I spent a restless night, thinking about that whole bunch of cows getting out onto those meadows and tromping more grass into the mud than they would actually eat. As soon as it was
light enough to see, I jumped into my pickup to go check, and to my horror, the whole bunch were
scattered out all over my uncle’s meadows, led back no doubt, by the earlier visitors. I sped back, called
the so-called cowboss to tell him what was going on via the secretary, and saddled Kelly. We cut down
across the pasture and started gathering cows and driving them back.
It was tough riding, as the gumbo was fetlock deep from the rain. The cows had no interest in going back and fought us every step of the way. Reaching Sand Creek, which was not sandy but a bottomless
gumbo nightmare, it was a battle to make them cross back to the east side. As Kelly and I pushed the
drags across the narrow crossing, the leaders of the bunch turned south at a trot, searching for a crossing to go back to the west side. Kelly saw them, and true to his working horse nature, decided we ought to cut across and head them before they could get back on us.
So, against my wishes, Kelly went down the channel below the crossing and hit a boggier spot where
he went in to his belly. Lunging to free himself, his eyes still on the cows, he finally jerked his hind legs
free of the mud, but not without consequences. He kept going on three legs, though, and we scrambled out of the creek and headed the cows before he finally turned things back over to me for instructions.
Too late, my good young gelding was crippled. I couldn’t tell how bad it was, but the tough booger
was packing his left hind leg without touching his toe on the ground. Furious at the cow owners, I had to
quit the battle since I was afoot until I could get another horse. Feeling terrible about my horse, my uncle’s pasture and boiling with anger, I slogged the mile and more home in my boots, chaps, and slicker, leading my one good horse.
I put Kelly up, caught a horse from Dad’s 2nd string (the only one left after the horses were loaded up
for a Wyoming elk hunt), saddled him and then went to the house to call the office again, and was able to talk to the manager. The dressing down he received from me about the whole situation and the explosion that occurred when he said he could probably get a fencing crew out in a few days was epic, to say the least.
I explained to him that he’d better have some trucks and a portable corral set up by morning, a crew to
gather the cows and load them, or I was going to turn them on to the county road and they could find their way to some other country. As it was, I would be putting the cows in the little trap by the road as soon as I could get them gathered. Back then if one slammed a phone down into the receiver, it would jingle. I made it jingle on both ends.
I hit a trot on the nearly blind, nothing special gelding, Fox to regather the cows. What a mess! They
didn’t gather easier the second time and I worked that poor horse nearly to death in the process. He wasn’t hard and fit like Kelly, so it was harder work for him, plus he couldn’t see much, so it was scarier for me having to see for him while fighting with the cows.
The gathering and moving of the cows took most of the day and when I finally stepped off to shut the
gate behind them at the little trap, Fox was trembling with exhaustion. He had a mud ball in his tail the
size of an softball and was painted with gumbo everywhere, with sweat pooling in the gumbo boats on his feet. I sure felt sorry for him, as he had had the tar ridden out of him to get the job done.
I led him quite a ways until he quit breathing hard and quit sweating. Then I stepped on him and walked him home at a slow walk. The gumbo would ball up on his feet and he’d stumble as it would come off and trip him. He fell once hard enough that he dragged his forehead in the mud. I had stepped off of him in case he went completely down, then just led him the rest of the way. We were both pretty shot by then.
I cleaned him up and curried him off when I got him home and put him in a big pen in the barn where
he could be out of the rain and lay down and rest. I’d fed him a good pile of hay and he had water in the
pen, so I turned him loose, rubbing his ears and telling him he’d done okay that day. As I looked through
the gate while latching it, I watched him just stand and not walk off. Hoping I hadn’t busted an egg in him, I went to take care of Kelly. Still on three legs, I curried him off and fussed over him for a while. My
heart was sure aching over that hind leg.
As I left Kelly’s pen, I saw Fox finally move over to get a drink and start eating his hay. That was a relief. Any horse that will eat and drink is probably okay, and he was.
The next day the cowboss and some crew set up panels and gathered the cows and loaded them up. I
was afoot, so didn’t help, but drove down to watch them get loaded and to submit a bill for my time
fighting with the cows, as I thought that was fair. The cows in the trap didn’t tally out and there were
about 20-some cows missing. I assured them that I’d gathered everything that was there, and after a circle of the pasture by the crew, there were no more found.
For the next several years, though, cows wearing that very distinctive rib brand showed up at sale
barns and in creek bottoms all the way back to where they’d been raised. Most of them probably had a
few calves that paid their feed bill for the people along the way who ended up with them.
Kelly? My vet, who was at best a cow vet, said he was probably string halted and only time would tell if he would ever be usable again. You have to understand that there were no specialists in the area back then. Most vets didn’t even have an x-ray machine, and mine didn’t. So, upon his recommendation, when the mud firmed up, I turned Kelly out on grass to hopefully heal up. By the next summer he was in
no pain, though he always had a hitch in that leg and some knots on his fetlock, but went on to put in 19
more years as a working ranch horse.
Related Posts:
Posted in: Featured, Horse Care, Ranch Life
About Jan Swan Wood
Jan was raised on a ranch in far western South Dakota. She grew up horseback working all descriptions of cattle, plus sheep and horses. After leaving home she pursued a post-graduate study of cowboying and dayworking in Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota....