9L Cattle

One summer we shot 9L cows. Not fatally. We used a 4-10.

The 9L was Alexander Rudnik's brand. He ran his cattle up on Paiute. Nobody liked them because they overgrazed. Years and years before there had been certain kinds of flowers, but they disappeared with the overgrazing.

This one summer too many 9L cattle were hanging around the cabin. We’d dust their hides, but because we were by a creek, it was hard to get rid of them. We tried to hit their flanks. We didn’t want to blind anybody. There was one old bull who came around every day. I guess when we shot him we put a little shot into his scrotum because he really jumped and took off.

The 9L rounded up this big herd of cows and calves. They missed a little two-year-old steer. The steer, I guess, was lonesome because he kept hanging around the cabin. We knew the roundup had been held and we said, “Mom, can we kill that steer?”

She said, “Absolutely not. That’s criminal. That’s not like poaching, that’s thievery." But we nagged her and nagged her and nagged her for over two weeks until she finally said, “Oh, all right, go kill the goddamned thing, but do it a long ways from the cabin.”

The day that decision was made, he didn’t show up. We tracked him, and that dumb little animal had left the cabin, headed over the ridge, down Kelso Creek and off the mountain. Smart, smart. I wonder if we were sending out bad vibes?