The Crossing

There were a lot of jobs on a cattle drive a cowboy hated to draw, but crossing a river swollen by spring rains, on the down current side of a herd of long horns, pawing for anything dry, was about the worst and most dangerous.  But if a cowboy drew it, he gave it all he had, fore that’s just the way it was with a cowboy.

He needed to keep the herd moving at a rapid pace, just enough pressure not to spook ‘em as they crossed, but push ‘em, so they wouldn’t drown each other, and so they wouldn’t drift too far down stream of the crossing where the bank might become steep and muddy slides the cattle can’t climb.  If that happened they would usually wad up on one another and drown in great numbers.

At the same time, he was duty and honor bound to make sure he did all he could to save even one cow in trouble, after all that was what he got paid for, and what he gave his word to do.

In this sculpture I call, “The Crossing”, a young drover finds himself in a very tight spot, seeing a calf knocked down in the mud of the river bank, with a thousand head pushing up behind. He instinctively ducks in to try and throw a loop on him and drag him out of the way. He has only a few seconds to react, and no time to think of his own safety, not that it would matter anyway.

Many times on the long drives north, young men bet their lives for another mans beef, and sometimes they lost the bet.  Many a crossing was made on those endless trails north, some crossed rivers of torrent muddy water, but a few made a different crossing, a crossing to that distant and shining shore.

Steve Miller