A Splitting Headache

        We were working cattle at the Chavez place.  This pasture was pure hell.  The well is in a canyon which opens to a large plain filled with Tamarisk trees or “salt cedars.”  It is a briar patch without the thorns.  Gathering cattle there should have been done with a 30-30 Winchester!

         One the east side of the pasture is an area upon a hill that covers several square miles.  We were in the process of chasing wild animals off that hill country so they could hide in the thicket below.  Not too many geniuses on that roundup.

         There was one rangy old cow that would go every way but the direction we wanted her to go.  There were three cowboys chasing her, and she wasn’t slow.  She came around the base of a cedar tree and hung a leg up in some roots.  You could hear the bone snap across the valley.  She was down and wasn’t going anywhere else.

         Our foreman relayed a message via pony express to bring the truck over.  I was the official truck driver because I fell off the horse too many times; usually because I fell asleep too many times.  I drove the beat up truck to the injured animal.  Dick, our foreman, rummaged through the truck but had forgotten his gun.  After a thorough search we only found a few screw drivers, a lot of trash, and a pickaxe.

         Dick picked up that pickaxe and shrugged his shoulders.  It was me and Dick and the injured cow.  The others were riding the thicket searching for more animals.  Dick was old and wiry.  He was a tough old man, but was not one to swing the pick very well.  He handed the tool to me instead.

         “Hit here right between the eyes to kill her,” he said. If you draw an imaginary line from each ear to the opposite eye, the spot where the lines cross is where slaughterhouse workers use an air-powered bolt to dispatch the animal quickly and humanely. I grabbed that pick, stood over that cow, and swung with all my might.  The pick whistled through the air and glanced off the cow’s head as she moved at the last second.  She bellowed and tried to get up with me still straddling her.  She dropped again just in time for me to make another attempt.  The pick came down perfectly and went right into the cow’s brain.  The cow convulsed and died.  One way to stop a headache! It was definitely stuff for the PTSD file, but unfortunately it had to be done.  That was life on a ranch.

 From then on, I always carried a gun in the truck.