Wednesday, October 26, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
The Last Gather
The last time I gathered
cattle for my grandfather —
the last time anyone did — he
assembled a crew of grizzled
old brush-poppers and young
buckaroos and promised
to put on a big feed for the
help. Times were changing,
and he was bowing out of the
cattle business. The bucka-
roos came dragging in from
eastern California and the
Nevada desert to help bring
in the herd one last time.
He didn’t have much
room, and so we bunked
wherever there was space
to throw a bedroll, and in
the morning we trotted out
in the flat cold before sun-
rise. We rode large circles
and gathered the cattle up
bawling out of the miles of
empty sagebrush country,
and then began the long push
back to the home ranch. We
drove the herd off the desert,
then along Highway 6 to the
top of Montgomery Pass,
Nevada, elevation 7,167 feet,
where there was a truck-stop
and casino called Soper’s.
Soper’s was a dump, and
like many desert jukes had
started falling down the day
they called it built, but they
had a blackjack table and a
decent cook, and it was the
only thing going for 60 miles
in either direction.
At the top of the pass we
let the cattle rest and mother-
up in the generous gravel
parking lot, sitting our horses
in the spitting snow, hands
going numb, the temperature
diving rapidly. Occasionally
a car would drive slowly up
from the east, the occupants
wide-eyed at the milling
Western spectacle they had
suddenly encountered in the
middle of nowhere. They
stared at us through the glass,
driving slowly through the
herd with their mouths open,
as though we were exotics in
a living history museum.
When the cattle had set-
tled down the ladies who
worked at Soper’s — and
most held second jobs far-
ther up the road at Janey’s
Ranch, say, or at the Shady
Lady — brought out trays of
margaritas. My grandfather,
who wasn’t riding much by
then, and followed the drive
in his ruined truck, cut lime
wedges with his pocket-
knife and lined them up on
the tailgate. One by one we
would leave the cows, ride
over, pick up a wedge of
lime, and then down a strong
margarita offered up by the
girls. It was heat enough for
the final push down the west
side of the pass and onto the
great alluvial valley, where
the corral gates were open,
and stew was waiting on the
stove.
I don’t remember much
about the second half of
the gather. Wind and snow.
Frozen feet and hands. My
horsehair mecate hard as a
steel cable in the cold and
wet.
I couldn’t know it then,
but I certainly do now, that
I was learning something on
that last gather, about endur-
ance, about grace, about the
passage of time. I would give
most that I have to ride that
circle again.
By dark we had assem-
bled again at the house, cow-
boys old and new, bachelors
or widowers all, hot stew and
French bread in a tight, warm
kitchen, the smell of wet
horse-hair and wet leather
and denim, creaky chairs on
a ruined floor, and the sat-
isfaction of a well-earned
fatigue.
We ate. The weather out-
side got worse. The storm
set in for real and nobody
said much as the windows
fogged up, the quiet energy
of the snowstorm pressing
down from Boundary Peak.
A sudden gust of wind blew
a confetti of snow at the win-
dows, and something scooted
noisily off the porch outside.
Everyone turned and looked
at the door but nobody
moved.
My grandfather sat in
the living room with one
old cowboy or another, in
the buttery light, all of them
mostly deaf, pretending they
understood each other.
Finally, in the kitchen,
one of the old guys broke the
silence. He said, apropros of
nothing at all, or maybe it
was everything: “One time,
years ago, I was down in
Bracketville, Texas.” We all
looked up from our food. “It
was hotter than the hinges
of hell, I can tell you. I was
driving along, minding my
business, when I looked
over in the bar ditch and
saw a coyote chasing a rab-
bit through the brush.” He
paused long enough to swab
some portion of his plate
with a piece of bread. “Thing
is,” he said, “It was so damn
hot they were both walking.”
21
It’s the only thing I
remember anyone saying that
evening. An era was ending.
We were tired. Maybe that’s
just all there was to say.
My grandfather has
passed on, and the ranch is
now somebody else’s hard-
scrabble dream. Soper’s
isn’t there anymore either,
but I have a $2 chip from the
blackjack table, my lucky
starter, nailed to a post in our
barn. Scoured by wind and
weather, and at least one fire,
the old casino sits at the top
of the pass in shambles, tum-
bleweeds skating around the
lot and piling up in the lee of
the old front door.
But the way my mind
works, I think about that
last gather, about the ladies
and the cows and my grand-
dad slicing limes, and how
the ruin of Soper’s sits there
like the remains of some
glorious outpost on the old
Silk Road, sacked when the
golden horde of time sud-
denly appeared on the hori-
zon, storming its way to the
promised lands.
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