Throughout the trip I did not hear one of them utter the beautiful love
song in which they sometimes indulge at night.
The country was all under wire fence, unlike the northern regions, the
pastures however being sometimes many miles across. When we reached the
Frio ranch a herd of a thousand cattle had just been gathered, and two
or three hundred beeves and young stock were being cut out to be driven
northward over the trail. The cattle were worked in pens much more than
in the North, and on all the ranches there were chutes with steering
gates, by means of which individuals of a herd could be dexterously
shifted into various corrals. The branding of the calves was done
ordinarily in one of these corrals and on foot, the calf being always
roped by both forelegs; otherwise the work of the cowpunchers was much
like that of their brothers in the North. As a whole, however, they were
distinctly more proficient with the rope, and at least half of them were
Mexicans.
There were some bands of wild cattle living only in the densest timber
of the river bottoms which were literally as wild as deer, and moreover
very fierce and dangerous.
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