Cowboy Spur Maker: The Story of Ed Blanchard

Chapter 5 Cowboy Ways

Cowboy Ways [ 89 ] C H A P T E R 5 Cowboy Ways d Blanchard worked at various ranches during the early 1930s, but he would go back to the Cooks every so often. One time, Ed and the Cooks were gathering cattle up in the San Mateo Mountains. They had their camp set up at a corral near San Mateo Peak. One morning they were riding near camp when they spotted a wild cow. They roped her and dragged her into camp, where they tied her to a tree. When they got up the next morning, one of the boys handed Ed a cup. “Ed, you go milk that cow, and we’ll have cream for our coffee.” This made Ed mad, so he said he’d just pull the damned thing out of the way and tie her somewhere else. That led to a wreck! Ed’s horse, Cherry, was bad about rearing up and falling over backward. Ed stepped up on Cherry and rode over to where the cow was tied. He reached down and untied the rope from the tree and took a turn around his saddle horn and started to ride off. Well, of course, Cherry reared up and fell over backward. Off ran the cow, dragging the rope. The Cook boys chased her down and caught her again. This time they tied her farther away from the camp. No one needed milk for his coffee after all. E E As Tom Kelly Remembers [ 90 ] When Ed made coffee at any outfit’s camp, no one could drink it but him. He always got up about 4:00 in the morning. Since he was the first one up, he’d make the coffee. He put a half pound of coffee in a half gallon of water, and he boiled it all day long. Next morning, he poured the other half pound in it. It was so stout that no one could drink it. After he did that a time or two, one of the cowboys would get up at 3:30 ahead of Ed and make the coffee before he could. They finally cured that problem. Everyone Ed worked for bought him his own pot. “You drink your coffee,” the boys told him, “and we’ll drink ours.” Ed called them a bunch of sissies. Needless to say, Ed had his own way of doing things—the old-time way—and it was always the hard way, but many of those old-timers were like that. My dad was. Part of it was that he was hard-headed. I was home on furlough one time back in 1944. Pop and I were up on Baldy one day, and we caught a horse. My dad put a packsaddle on him and was going to lead him home. We had to come down into Dead Cow Gulch, and it was steep. Pop had put the horn loop of his rope over his saddle horn. We had just dropped off the hill when I noticed it. “Hey, you’d better take the loop off of your horn,” I called to him. He just ignored me. We got about halfway down the side of the canyon when that packhorse threw a fit. Pop was a little deaf, and he didn’t realize what was happening until I hollered at him. The horse had started around him and went below him. Pop was turning his horse around when the packhorse hit the end of the rope and both horses were jerked off-balance. The whole works rolled end over end downhill for three hundred feet. When they came to a stop, Pop just sat there. “Didn’t you hear me holler at you?” I asked. “Aw, hell!” he said. “You’re always hollering about something!” He just didn’t pay any attention. Ed was just like that. Tell him not to do something, and that was just what he did. Every summer Ed liked to work for the Forest Service, because he could do what he wanted. Usually he worked as a fire guard or he had a trail job. It didn’t make any difference if he had a thousand Cowboy Ways [ 91 ] dollars’ worth of cattle gathered; when the Forest Service wrote him a letter, he dropped what he was doing and let the cows go to hell. He was off to his Forest Service...