Tío Cowboy: Juan Salinas, Rodeo Roper and Horseman

3 Life on the Rancho Las Blancas

3 Life on the Rancho Las Blancas Being Antonio Salinas’s son, and living on his ranch, Juan always had the best of horses, equipment, and help. Juan rode as soon as he was old enough to stay on a horse. He learned to rope as soon as he had the strength to swing the loop. He had so many animals around him that his entire day consisted of practicing his riding and roping skills. Juan was fortunate to have the best horseflesh around. Papá Antonio loved horses and always had none but the best. This was very important in helping Tío Juan become an expert calf roper—a calf roper without a good horse is just a roper. A roper with a good horse is potentially a champion calf roper. It was at this stage of his life that Tío Juan developed an eye for good mounts. Tío Juan talked about being on horseback while he worked cattle from the time he was about eight years old until the time he was eighty-five years old. He talked about working cattle the old way when he was a boy. That meant gathering all the cattle and circling them with men on horses and holding them at bay, and working each head, one by one. Working meant branding, ear notching , doctoring, or simply separating an animal that was ready for market. After encircling a large number of cattle, young Juan rode into the bunch with his horse and rope, to rope whichever animal the ground crew wanted. As I talked to Tío Juan one evening when he was ninety-two years old, he spoke with longing and sentiment about the hundreds of calves he went in and got with his rope. He 28 Tío Cowboy roped the calf and dragged it out to the cowboys on foot. He quoted one of his old cowboy mentors, “Tú los lazas, y yo los barbeo” (“You rope ’em and I’ll dog them [wrestle them to the ground]”). Juan rode his horse into the herd slowly, picked out the calf or heifer that neededroping,ropedtheanimal,dalliedtheropearoundhissaddle horn, and pulled or dragged the animal out to the cowboys working afoot, on the ground. Once the animal was among the cowboys, one either grabbed the animal by a front leg and flank; picked up the animal slightly and dropped it to the ground; or grabbed the animal by the jaw, twisted it quickly to one side, causing the animal to fall to the ground for the necessary work—branding, castration, or doctoring, the latter being barbeando, or dogging to the ground. This was a necessity, as the cattle were too far from the hacienda to utilize the corrales de leña: there were no squeeze chutes at the time, there were no pick-up trucks either, and there were no freeze brands. The animals had to be dragged out to the burning fires for branding. Tío Juan related that in the early 1900s, from oral history passed to him, the Hacienda Las Blancas was very similar to a hacienda of the 1800s established by the Spaniards. The passage of time brought little change from the ranches of old. There was still very little barbed wire, there was no electricity, and there was no indoor plumbing and no running water. The techniques and technology used on the ranch were the same. Tío Juan told me that they survived on beef, goats, chickens, guineas and their eggs, milk from cows and goats, butter from the same, and cheese from these. Flour and beans came from Laredo. My mother, Mamá Mucia, talked about inviting a sharecropper in for a meal, and after he ate the main course, he sat and talked to them while he helped himself to spoonful after spoonful of butter—apparently a rare item for him. While the cowboys and their families usually had plenty to eat on the ranch, every roundup one or two head were slaughtered to provide beef for the families. The way it usually went was that toward the end of the roundup one of the old cowboys would insist that one or two steers had gone into shock, ese becerro se acalambró (that calf has gone into shock), and once going into shock was go- Life on the Rancho Las Blancas 29 ing to die, and therefore should be slaughtered...