On a Real Cattle Drive--and Paying for It!

You don’t have to be a real cowboy to go on a cattle drive, but it wouldn’t hurt if you were--or at least a believer in the spirit of John Wayne.

If your idea of fun is getting out of a sleeping bag before dawn, eating camp food, riding a horse for 10 to 12 hours daily, singing cowboy songs around a campfire and sleeping dead to the world in a tent under an incredibly big sky full of stars--and you don’t mind paying for it--this might be for you.

“It gets easier after the second day,” said a Connecticut truck driver along on a spring drive to high pasture at Two Creek Ranch, a 27,000-acre spread outside Douglas. “The first day hurts. Second day, too. If you can get back on the third day, you’re all right.”

“My knees are hurting me,” winced a female wrangler who spends most of her time, when she’s not punching cows for kicks, as a New York City nurse, “but it’s the ultimate in horse riding if you like to ride.”

“It’s different than riding a couple of hours, like most people are used to,” said Nancy Daly, owner of Two Creek along with her husband Dennis. Nancy drives the trailer that serves as a chuck wagon and storehouse on the drives, acts as a den mother to the troop of paying cowhands and cooks all the meals.

Ladles Out the Stew

As she speaks she ladles “cream-can stew” out of a washtub, serving 30 hands, friends and hangers-on. The stew is a Two Creek specialty that she cooked over an open fire in a five-gallon cream can. The can is layered with corn husks on the bottom, potatoes, Polish sausage, vegetables and corn on the cob. “This is real work, otherwise it’d just be riding a horse down the road. You’re here to drive cattle,” she said.

The Two Creek drive covers 75 miles, a not inconsiderable distance to move 1,100 head of cattle. It takes two to three days just to gather the herd, another six days, barring delays, to reach the high summer meadow on the Laramie plains.

The land is mostly scrub grass, rocks and sagebrush so dry that you just snap it off live and burn it for firewood. There are few trees and it takes 40 acres of grassland to sustain a single cow.

While gathering the herd, guests sleep in a bunkhouse along with the hired hands. On the trail you sleep in a tent. In the mornings you catch and saddle your own horse, ride four to five hours until lunch, herding cattle, keeping them on the trail, moving slowly.

Lunch is usually a two-hour break to rest the cattle and the horses, and it is not unusual to see cowboys stretched out in the grass after lunch, using their saddles as pillows to catch a quick nap with a wide-brimmed hat pulled over their eyes.

Afternoons are spent riding until dusk. Dust storms, rain, hail or snow do not stop the drive. You keep going through it all and in late May at Two Creek you can expect any of those weather conditions, although snow is unlikely. For snow, book the October winter drive back to the ranch.

Wyoming springtimes are infamous for sudden rain squalls, plummeting temperatures and hail. Nighttimes dropped to freezing on several occasions, then it would get hot during the day, and dusty dry. On the high plains the wind blew day and night, hard enough to bend tent poles.

Tall in the Saddle

There is no denying that it looks great to see cowboys tall in the saddle, loping after the herd on powerful mounts, hoofs clapping and kicking up dust.

Before you reach the plains you pass through rolling valleys. Hawks and eagles soar. Antelope race across a hillside. Elk stand on a distant ridge line.

It is unbelievably quiet in this mind-boggling empty space. There is nothing out here except grass and sky. Few ranches, fewer people.

It takes about an hour to figure out the intricacies of herding cattle. You have to outflank the cattle to push them in the right direction. Waving a coiled rope at the bovines, along with whooping and hollering “yee-haw” and “c’mon, git” usually does the trick.

Each rider takes a turn in the lead, off the flanks or riding the drags in the back, the least desirable place to be because it’s dirtiest and dustiest behind the herd.

After a while I found myself talking to the cows, not the brightest conversationalists.

“Move it, you hamburger!” I’d holler.

“Moo . . . ooo . . . “ they’d snort back, then turn tail.

One paying guest on a Two Creek drive did just that. She was rained on the first day, came back soaked, packed and left that night. “Another gal, she come back covered in mud head to foot,” says Nancy Daly. “She thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”

“I guess I would tell folks they need to be in shape,” says Dennis Daly. “Good shape. One guy was really hurting after the first day. It never occurred to me.”

Dennis is always the first one up and the last one to sleep. He worked the drive I was on with a broken rib, spending 10 days on horseback, riding herd on the cattle as well as on 10 rank amateur cowboys paying for the privilege of helping him out.

Stayed Up Singing

At night he stayed up singing “Red River Valley” and “Home on the Range” into the wee hours. He figures that it costs more to truck his cattle than to trail them. Nancy insists: “He does it because a cattle drive is a vacation he doesn’t want to miss.”

Some vacation.

“Some guests do mistake this for a dude ranch trip. Their riding may be poor, their experience limited,” Nancy said. “This is not much fun for them. You need to be a horseman to really enjoy this.”

It doesn’t hurt to be fixated on Clint Eastwood, either. One guest, a 44-year-old lawyer from Southern California, has cattle horns printed on his business cards. He showed up with his own saddle and enough fancy gear and duds, including chaps, several pairs of boots, rainwear, a shearling jacket, gloves and ropes to outfit the entire crew.

Real cowboys wear virtual rags. Their hats sport holes and hoof prints, jeans are torn, chaps frayed and stitched together, boots worn out. Paying guests show up with the latest gear, silver spurs, new $150 hats, shiny boots.

New or old gear gets equally well-used. You need a slicker, a hat, boots, and layered clothing that you can take on or off as conditions change.

I always thought that only Hollywood cowboys wore scarfs around their necks for fashion reasons. Not so. You’ll be glad to have one to cover your mouth and nose when you’re riding the drags and the wind won’t stop, the sun bearing down and drying you out. Dust keeping you close to blinded.

The cows and the horses pretty much know where they are going, so you don’t really need to see so well, but that scarf helps you breathe. A real cowboy even uses ChapStick. Without it your lips may crack and possibly blister.

For this, you get to hear people say to you: “How ya’ doin; cowboy?” as you ride the trail. You see no telephone poles (people use CBs), no TV antennas. Only a few dusty pickups bounce by, paced by miles of barbed wire fencing. Out here it’s the genuine thing, as wild as you are likely to find the West nowadays.

No special accommodations are made for paying guests because you pay to be treated the same as the help. From putting on your own saddle to relieving yourself among the trees, this is the life of a modern cowboy.

Glad It’s Over

“I’ve always loved horseback riding and I could never get enough,” said a 42-year-old female chiropractor at the end of the trail. “But this is the first time I’ve ever been glad it’s over. I thought it would be hard, but I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

“One thing about something like this is that after you come in from a day herding cattle, you really feel as if you’ve done something. It’s not like sitting in an office all day,” said the Los Angeles lawyer. “All your friends go to Club Med or Hawaii or Jamaica, and you’re here in the middle of 27 square miles of sagebrush.”

“This is the best vacation I ever had. You can talk about this to your friends for months,” the New York nurse said.

“Yeah, they think you’re nuts,” the lawyer answers.

Ride ‘em, cowboy!

-- -- --

Two Creek Ranch is about eight miles outside of Douglas, Wyo. You can drive here or Dennis and Nancy Daly will meet you at Casper’s airport about 60 miles away; it’s served by Continental and United Express (operated by Aspen Airways). The Dalys put you up in their house at the beginning and end of the cattle drive and provide all meals.

“Ladies come on a drive and tell me they’re on a diet,” said Nancy. “By the second day they’re eating everything.”

The Dalys host two yearly cattle drives, late May and October. Rates are $700 for 10 days, $350 for five days. Telephone (307) 358-3467 for additional information.

For information about other cattle drives that take paying guests in California, Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, contact Adventure Guides Inc., 36 East 57th St., New York 10022, phone (212) 355-6334.