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Show ^3 0 got a bull Hereford calf. While Dad threw him and tied him, I brought up the dehorners, shears with handles four feet long. Dad fit them close to the base of the budding horn, closed the handles with a strong smooth motion and sheared it off so close to the skull that a ring of hair went with it. It left a small hole into the l( skull, which Henry filled with creosote dip so the flies wouldn't blow it. Then Dad opened his knife, the blade honed on his whetstone, and cut a notch in the top of the left ear, cut away the lower quarter of ti.e right ear. He took the calf's scrotum in his hand, pulling out on the tip of it, cutting the tip off. He slid out one testicle and held it firmly and carefully while he cut the cords. M Then the other one. Then I ran for the first iron. Our brand was XO and we had one X iron and two Os. If the X iron cooled we used one of the running irons with tips like thick, blunt spearheads. Dad brushed dirt off the hide, lined up the brand in his mind, then pressed down the X iron, moving it just enough to leave a good scar. The calf lurched and bawled, the smell of burnt hair filled the air. When we were finished and let him up, r.e walked with stiff hind legs and stood in a corner and wouldn't run, as if he figured nothing more could happen to him, nothing that bad anyhow. Dad told us to wash the testicles in the creek and then to put them into t.ie coals of the brjiding fire, and after we had roughed up a few more calves we took a break. We stood upwind of the fire, back from its heat, and Dad tilted his hat back and talked about the old days when he was riding and there was not a strand of barbed wire anywhere in that country and they rounded up the cattle for branding on the open range. They never stopped mid-day to eat, he said, just wnen they got hungry rolled a testicle out of the branding fire, ate it and drank water and got back in the saddle. They'd go twelve, thirteen hours a day, and in the evening's dusk would eat around the chuck wagon, sitting around the fire and telling stories, and then sleep on the ground in a bed roll. I tilted my hat back too. "Did you use your saddle for a pillow?" "Naw, a saddle's too hard. I'd just roll up my slicker and use that." |