Cowboy-Author Maynard Lehman, Part III

Spring and fall roundups were the best of times. "Riding fence and checking on the cattle at calving time, but it was not all work you did in the saddle, There was hay to put up and feeding the cows in the winter, but I didn't mind that too much. I enjoyed breaking in the new saddle and work horses. When I worked at Venables, he's buy a bunch of horses and a lot of times there would be saddle horses. If it looked like there was a saddle mark on a horse, you'd grab it and ride."

Grooming them was a hit and miss practice, whenever the men had time. "We'd trim their hooves and pull a long hair and cockleburs out of their manes and tails. If we were riding in the dust, like working a herd, there would be a ring of muddy sweat around the saddle blanket that we would rub off. That was about the extent of grooming."

While Lehman worked the JK ranch he received $60 a month. After the financial crash of the Great Depression in 1929, "that changed things," he said. "Before the depression the going wage was forty to sixty dollars a month. After the crash you were lucky to find work at any wage. During the early thirties, cattle wasn't worth enough to ship to market. I broke horses for five and a ten dollars each and I broke horses for hay to feed my own horses. The JK Ranch was owned by some people who had a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and when the steel mill went broke so did the ranch in thirty-one. My  job went with it and they still owed me money, the only wages I ever lost. So from then until about nineteen-thirty-seven, it was whatever you could find  to do."

The cowboy worked two winters feeding sheep and hunting coyotes. "And I worked for twenty-five dollars a month. When I worked for CBC I got forty to forty-five a month, but they figured it by the day."

Feeding sheep was a cowboy's anathema. "My dad had a band of sheep, which is one of the reasons I left home," he said laughing. The CBC job was the only job available so he took it because it included hunting coyotes. He also managed to work cattle. The JK, located on the Tongue River, ran a thousand  head of cattle as well as Shire and Morgan horses. "We had one Shire that weighed twenty-four hundred pounds and a couple of other [heavyweights]." There were no real quarter horses. Most were range horses, Morgan and Arabian blood among them. The short-legged range horses, regardless of their bloodlines, were a cowboy's favorites. They were less likely to stumble over their own feet, and made better cutting horses, much like current quarter horses.

Lehman and his cohorts worked long hours during the depression. He worked for the CBC outfit, "and they always said, 'Sell your bedroll and buy a lantern,'" because we'd get in about ten o'clock at night and were up at four-thirty. I worked for them until they cleared the range of all their horses. They ran over two hundred thousand head in seven states, with headquarters in Rawlins, Wyoming. Most of the horse meat was shipped overseas."

The CBC was owned by the Chappel Brothers, who ran a packing plant in Rockford, Illinois, "And their horses were nothing by scrubs. They didn't have a decent horse on the range. Same way with our saddle horses." Most spreads, he said, like the LO and larger ranches, had 75-100 saddle horses available and each cowboy had seven in his string. Most of them, including the CBC, had no strings at all, and "you rode whatever you could catch, whether it was broke, wind broke, it didn't make any difference. You rode it. 

That was the general rule around most horse ranches.Spring and fall roundups were the best of times. "Riding fence and checking on the cattle at calving time, but it was not all work you did in the saddle, There was hay to put up and feeding the cows in the winter, but I didn't mind that too much. I enjoyed breaking in the new saddle and work horses. When I worked at Venables, he's buy a bunch of horses and a lot of times there would be saddle horses. If it looked like there was a saddle mark on a horse, you'd grab it and ride."

Grooming them was a hit and miss practice, whenever the men had time. "We'd trim their hooves and pull a long hair and cockleburs out of their manes and tails. If we were riding in the dust, like working a herd, there would be a ring of muddy sweat around the saddle blanket that we would rub off. That was about the extent of grooming."

While Lehman worked the JK ranch he received $60 a month. After the financial crash of the Great Depression in 1929, "that changed things," he said. "Before the depression the going wage was forty to sixty dollars a month. After the crash you were lucky to find work at any wage. During the early thirties, cattle wasn't worth enough to ship to market. I broke horses for five and a ten dollars each and I broke horses for hay to feed my own horses. 

The JK Ranch was owned by some people who had a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and when the steel mill went broke so did the ranch in thirty-one. My  job went with it and they still owed me money, the only wages I ever lost. So from then until about nineteen-thirty-seven, it was whatever you could find  to do."

The cowboy worked two winters feeding sheep and hunting coyotes. "And I worked for twenty-five dollars a month. When I worked for CBC I got forty to forty-five a month, but they figured it by the day."

Feeding sheep was a cowboy's anathema. "My dad had a band of sheep, which is one of the reasons I left home," he said laughing. The CBC job was the only job available so he took it because it included hunting coyotes. He also managed to work cattle. The JK, located on the Tongue River, ran a thousand  head of cattle as well as Shire and Morgan horses. "We had one Shire that weighed twenty-four hundred pounds and a couple of other [heavyweights]." There were no real quarter horses. Most were range horses, Morgan and Arabian blood among them. The short-legged range horses, regardless of their bloodlines, were a cowboy's favorites. They were less likely to stumble over their own feet, and made better cutting horses, much like current quarter horses.

Lehman and his cohorts worked long hours during the depression. He worked for the CBC outfit, "and they always said, 'Sell your bedroll and buy a lantern,'" because we'd get in about ten o'clock at night and were up at four-thirty. I worked for them until they cleared the range of all their horses. They ran over two hundred thousand head in seven states, with headquarters in Rawlins, Wyoming. Most of the horse meat was shipped overseas."

The CBC was owned by the Chappel Brothers, who ran a packing plant in Rockford, Illinois, "And their horses were nothing by scrubs. They didn't have a decent horse on the range. Same way with our saddle horses." Most spreads, he said, like the LO and larger ranches, had 75-100 saddle horses available and each cowboy had seven in his string. Most of them, including the CBC, had no strings at all, and "you rode whatever you could catch, whether it was broke, wind broke, it didn't make any difference. You rode it. That was the general rule around most horse ranches.

Cowboy Author, Maynard Lehman, Part II

When Maynard Lehman was 16, he and two Indian boys his age decided to rescue horses from the Sioux Reservation. “Any horse not branded or not running with its mother was called a slick. It belonged to anyone who put a brand on it. That rule didn’t hold true on the reservation because slicks belonged to the agency. Every two years they held a roundup and the white guys who ran the roundup would take any horse that looked good for themselves. The Indians didn’t like the practice any more than I did, so we decided to hold our own roundup.”

Lehman paused to envision his small roan roping horse and the forty-five slicks they rounded up. Grinning, he said the three boys had first located an abandoned spread and repaired the pasture fence. Following the roundup they corralled the horses in the pasture until they learned that members of the Indian agency were on their trail.

“It was raining and dark as the inside of a boot when we got what we could out of the pasture. By  daylight we were across the state line, but we only had 36 head.“ The horses were driven to the Lehman’s North Dakota ranch where they were sold, and the Indian teens returned to the reservation. There they were arrested and placed in the county jail. Lehman wasn’t sure whether they were charged with horse theft and never returned to find out.

That spring the young cowpoke drove 12 horses on a triple plow to break up alfalfa sod that gone to grass. He said, “When we started I had four gentle horses and eight broncs. The boss rode alongside to keep them in line while I sat on the plow with a handful of reins.  After the second day the boss turned me loose with the outfit, so I learned to drive early on.”

That winter Lehman supplemented his meager income with coyote pelts. “The first winter we had pretty good luck. We got about 35.” The ranch owner had a pack of hounds “and we put ‘em on the front bobs with a rack on it. When we’d spot some coyotes, we’d open the rack and turn ‘em loose. Then they’d run the coyotes down. Coyotes weren’t that speedy but the dogs wouldn’t kill ‘em, so you had to have a killer among the pack, which was generally a Russian wolfhound. The dogs would knock the coyotes down and play with ‘em until the killer came along and grabbed ‘em.” The coyotes were skinned and sold to fur houses for $7-$8 apiece. “Pretty good pay in those days. If you could catch one a day, you were doing good.”

Good food depended on the ranch. “When I was working at the Venables, Herm had just married and his wife couldn’t boil water. She’d put on a pot of beans half an hour before dinner and they’d rattle on your plate. At the SY Ranch I was the cook so we ate pretty good. The ranch was 45 miles from town and I cooked for the haying crew, but we didn’t have bread or butter. We had syrup and I made sourdough biscuits all the time, but we had lots of good meat and potatoes.”

With abundant cattle the cowboys didn’t waste time hunting game animals, and there were always plenty of bacon and ham. “We had purtinear every kind of canned food and we’d butcher a critter, usually a two-year old and hang ‘em up at night, propped on a wagon tongue. Leave ‘em out overnight and wrap ‘em [the following morning] in a blanket or tarp  and put ‘em in the wagon. That meat would keep for a couple of weeks. It wouldn’t spoil and the older it got, the better it was.”

Lehman rode herd accompanied by chuck wagons several times before they were fazed out of cattle roundups. “Most of the ranches were smaller by then and didn’t use one. But the JK went together with the Birchers, and some others still used them for a couple more years. He knew a man whose lower arm had been blown off during the Johnson County War. “He was the cook for the LO outfit for a time. He made sourdough biscuits that would melt in your mouth. He showed me how to make ‘em but over the years I must have forgotten, ‘cause mine don’t turn out like his.”

The best part of cowboying, he said, was the comraderie among the men. “I really enjoyed it. In fact, I never enjoyed anything I’ve ever done as well. I would have chucked any job I’ve had since to go back on the range.”

(Continued next week . . .)