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There were a lot of jobs
on a cattle drive a cowboy hated to draw, but crossing a river swollen
by spring rains, on the down current side of a herd of long horns,
pawing for anything dry, was about the worst and most dangerous. But if
a cowboy drew it, he gave it all he had, fore that’s just the way it was
with a cowboy.
He needed to keep the herd
moving at a rapid pace, just enough pressure not to spook ‘em as they
crossed, but push ‘em, so they wouldn’t drown each other, and so they
wouldn’t drift too far down stream of the crossing where the bank might
become steep and muddy slides the cattle can’t climb. If that happened
they would usually wad up on one another and drown in great numbers.
At the same time, he was
duty and honor bound to make sure he did all he could to save even one
cow in trouble, after all that was what he got paid for, and what he
gave his word to do.
In this sculpture I call,
“The Crossing”, a young drover finds himself in a very tight spot,
seeing a calf knocked down in the mud of the river bank, with a thousand
head pushing up behind. He instinctively ducks in to try and throw a
loop on him and drag him out of the way. He has only a few seconds to
react, and no time to think of his own safety, not that it would matter
anyway.
Many times on the long
drives north, young men bet their lives for another mans beef, and
sometimes they lost the bet. Many a crossing was made on those endless
trails north, some crossed rivers of torrent muddy water, but a few made
a different crossing, a crossing to that distant and shining shore.
Steve Miller |