Village Horse Doctor (34 page)

Some form of hay or ground bundles of feed were being used as roughage, but true to their nature sheep and cattle constantly walked the range and tore up the ground with their sharp hooves hunting a bite of something green. Whenever I posted a cow or a sheep, there was always an unusual amount of indigestible sticks that were small enough to be bitten off a bush, and sometimes an entire impaction would be black brush or mesquite bark that had been gnawed from the lower limbs of the trees. Medicines and medical science were of little benefit in these sorts of cases.

When the spring winds started and the earth that had been mulched by trampling hooves on the trails to and from the water troughs and feed grounds began to blow, I began to get another kind of practice. I was called out to Burnt House Draw, about thirty miles west of Fort Stockton near the railroad switch of Hoovey, to see some poor-grade Mexican steers that were dying.

It was generally thought among cowmen that these native Mexican cattle could live longer and do better under bad range conditions than any other class of livestock, but when they started dying, it about wiped out any doubt in the rancher’s mind about having enough feed on the range to keep a few livestock.

These Mexican cattle were about three years old and maybe weighed six hundred pounds, and their appearance gave a very pronounced impression of heads, horns, pot bellies with little frame and no flesh. In fact, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference in the appearance of a live one and a dead one. I got down on my knees in the dirt and
went to cutting open a Mexican steer, more for the want of something to do than any idea that I would discover any different causes for these cattle dying.

The Mexican steer was still holding his reputation for being able to digest anything that he could chew because there was no impaction in this steer, but as a matter of routine examination, I dissected his lungs and laid them out on top of the carcass. I made a cross-section cut and took one lobe of the lung about half in two. I reached over and put my hand on the lung to shift a little weight from standing on my knees while I did the post-mortem, and the pressure of my hand caused thin mud to secrete from the tissues of the lung. Then as I began to make further study of the lung, I even found deposits of solid earth in some of the tissue. In most cases these deposits would be surrounded by pus, and the supposedly toughest of all breeds of livestock were dying from dust pneumonia.

As long as the late-winter and early-spring winds blew and sheep and cattle followed one another in the dust-filled trails back and forth across the range, we continued to lose livestock. Sheep died much worse than cattle, perhaps because of their lack of resistance, but principally because their heads were closer to the ground, where the density of the dust was the greatest from the stock that were traveling in front of them stirring it up.

Cactus had come into its own as a range feed and thousands of acres of it had been fed by burning the stickers off with butane flame-throwers that were by now in common everyday use. After sheep and cattle learned to enjoy the juicy leaves of pear cactus, sometimes they wouldn’t wait for mankind to burn off the stickers and “pear mouths” became another malady in the stock business.

The mouths and throats of livestock would become lined with broken-off stickers and this could counteract any good
effects to be had from the juices and the food value of the cactus. However, driving hunger seemed to reduce the pain and pear-mouthed cattle and sheep seemed to ignore the stickers in their effort to survive.

The seasons changed by the months on the calendar and the winds settled some, but the only greenery that was proof of spring was the pale, thin leaves that came out on what was left of the mesquite brush. This siege of drouth had developed more ulcers in people and untimely deaths from heart conditions and the usual infirmities of age were hastened by the living conditions of drouth in a rugged breed of people. Most ranchers had begun to know that they and their families would show the effects of drouth even after the country was lush and with green feed in some future years to come.

Rainmakers made their appearance in the spring and there were various promotional ideas brought about in the theory of seeding clouds that would occasionally form and float around over the desert. Aviators moved into the country with rain-promotion experts and money was raised by various groups of ranchers. These aviators would fly into cloud formations and seed them with dry ice and a short cloud burst over a small area would be produced from this procedure.

Since there were not enough clouds to go around and not enough moisture in the sky, ranchers and farmers then began to take envious views of the way that this possible artificial rainfall was being distributed and bitter arguments arose among friends. The possibility that such procedures might be preventing enough cloud formations to really produce a beneficial rain for the country was even discussed. Cloud seeding finally amounted to nothing more than a man-made agitation to be borne by a rugged breed that nature had not been able to conquer.

When
a region is referred to as desert, with few exceptions it will arouse all the civic-minded people at the Chamber of Commerce, and all the one-man Chamber of Commerces in hearing distance will rear up to explain that the desert is some other region and this country that you have so rudely referred to as being desert is semi-arid. Now, “semi,” hell! “Semi” would be the real good years in which enough rain falls and it would be on rare occasions that such reagions could be referred to as “semi.”

The West has many stories and legends that are built on the lack of rain. When a newcomer first hears some of these old tales, his reaction is that they are sure stretchin’ it. Then after he’s been there a few years, he will come up with a story of his own that’s worse than the ones the natives originated.

In a year when a desert region does get rain, vegetation will be lush. Weeds, cactus, and bushes will be ornamented with blooms of various hews of yellow and a few varieties will have white and pale-red blooms. Not all plants bearing a yellow bloom are toxic, but it can be safely stated that the majority of toxic plants do have yellow blooms the years that there is enough moisture for them to produce a bloom and thereafter seed.

The seeds of the desert plants and especially those of toxic desert plants will lay on the ground for a minimum of ten years or until time unknown, and the theory or thought that drouth could ever be long enough to kill the weed seedbed in a desert is folly of the human mind.

Before the desert was stocked with the human race, much of these remote regions were never grazed by many of the wild species of animal life. The grazing animals of the desert were principally deer and antelope and the lowly burro.

Deer and antelope could do without water for longer
periods of time and then travel great distances for an occasional fill. The digestive tract of the burro is so constructed that he thrives best on coarse forage of low food content and can smell water from one mountain range to another. It might be well to note that the buffalo or any other animal that requires huge amounts of forage never inhabited the Trans-Pecos and regions west of there.

The sheepherders that came to the desert following the years of rain thought they had found a shepherd’s paradise. It was true that it was a good herder’s country for a while since they were uninhibited by fences, definite ownerships, and landmarks and could follow the rains and reduce the heat of the summer by drifting into the higher mountainous regions and then cheat the winters by herding back into the desert’s sunbathed flats.

This form of range operation did not last for a long period since mankind is probably the most destructive of all the animal species. He began to build fences and confine flocks and herds to tromp out the better grasses that were not too resistant to abuse, and capably made way for the less desirable and more worthless varieties of vegetation to take over as the good grazing plants disappeared.

This process has been described by the great thinkers as progress, and in a sense this might be right since it was progressively worse for the preservation of the natural and desirable vegetation of the Far Southwest. From my experience and observation I think that the deserts have been mined, so to speak, by the reckless misuse of earlier generations and because of the fact that the good grasses and other plants that have been destroyed will not re-cover the thin soils and rocky surfaces that it had taken nature millions of years to provide a sparse range for a few wild grazing species of animals.

The desert region affects all animal life that is forced to
survive in such areas. The walls of the hooves of horses become thicker and tougher to withstand the wear of pebbly rocks, hard ground, and the rimrock of the canyon regions as well as the rocky surfaces of the mountains. As this occurs through several generations of horses, the hoof becomes much smaller in width and the sole of the hoof becomes much more concave, which enables the walls to better protect the sole of the hoof, and the receded frog in the hoof is less susceptible to stone bruise and blisters.

After a few generations, the hoof on a horse of such regions is referred to by horsemen as a desert hoof, rock hoof, or sometimes a mountain hoof. The natives of the region consider it a compliment when a horse is referred to as mule-footed.

Deer are lightweight and fleet of foot with great maneuverability, which enables them to better protect their feet, but the cloven hoof of deer, antelope, or domestic cattle and sheep becomes tighter, so to speak, since the hoof does not spread from sand pressure between the toes. Many times points from on the inside of the cleft region of the toe are harder than they would be in terrain that was soft and where there was more moisture to enable the walls of the hoof to soften and spread.

The teeth of all animals, domestic or wild, through several generations of survival on desert forage become tighter set in the gums and closer together at the table of the tooth and will endure without as much as breaking when grazing on native desert plants than those from regions of lush grass and tender browse.

The impoundment of water by earthen dams and drilled wells, and other improvements such as fences, corrals, and ranch headquarters did not make the desert region any better grassland nor increase the rainfall or ward off the hot sunshine. The underground supply of water continues
to diminish and the constant robbing of the original source of that water before it ever reaches the underground levels in the desert dooms the region to more and worse of the same.

The skin of the desert man becomes dry and hard and is more like the hide of an animal, with more wrinkles around the eyes caused by squinting at the sun and watching light-floating desert clouds.

Those of the human race who are natives of the desert and don’t know any better expect less from it and suffer less from disappointments. Those who have migrated to the desert and have become trapped by its mystery and the splendors of its sunrises and the fascinating beauty of the desert sunsets ofttimes convince themselves that the desert offers great promise. Since there is well-established transportation across the semi-arid and desert regions of the Southwest, there will always be people, communications and mineral industries that will hold and support populations, but the man who intends to earn a living from the surfaces of the desert should bring himself to realize that the desert has never promised man nor animal anything but isolation and solitude, and all the rest of the brain-storms that the human race may have nurtured about promise should be evaluated rather in the light of challenge than promise, and the desert challenges man every morning when the blistering sun moves beyond that early morning grandeur.