When the snow goes off the winter range the prairie dogs start popping out, and Coyotes are everywhere. Cowboys start riding the hollers and the hidey holes listening for the bell mare with the mules, and to look for the horses. They find some with new foals, and they learn which ones had not survived the winter. The new grass has them in the open pastures gettin fat as winter leaves the range, and the morning sun glows on their new summer hair.

As they rode out from the home ranch the sun rising in the east cast long shadows behind them, and their cold horses left glowing trails in the morning dew. Everybody was hunched over peeking out under hat brims trying to stay warm, muttering about cowboy life, and watching their horse’s breath puff out like steam from a locomotive.

This was when they collected the livestock and got ready for the summer pack trips. Every horse had to be given new shoes and they got cleaned up and sorted out into groups based on how ready to ride they might be. The bell mare would get a new strap for her bell and she and the mules were moved to a holding pasture. A group of about 50 horses was selected from the herd to be used that summer and the rest were either sold off or put back on pasture.

All the horses were ridden and topped off and then each cowboy was assigned between 5 and 7 horses. One would be an old veteran you could count on. Two would be horses that had been ridden and you could “mostly” count on them, but don’t get too confident, and they would need some reeducation. And then he got a few young horses that just ranged from “who knew” to potentially rank and dangerous. The really bad ones were eliminated because these horses would eventually carry dudes, and their kids, and they needed to be dependable.

The home ranch was outside of Rock Springs Wyoming and the horses, and the mules were turned out each year in late September and then they were gathered up again in April. As soon as they were ready with new shoes and had their health checked, a herd was prepared for a trail drive from Rock Springs to Jackson Hole to the summer ranch. This was quite a site as about 30 horses and 15 mules started out strung along the road headed North.

The bell mare and her mules led the way, and they knew where they were going, so they would get into a slow trot and just hold that pace until they ran into a fence, or somebody got in front and stopped them. They could cover 20 to 25 miles a day at that pace.

The horses needed some “coaching” and there would be straglers, ones that decided to stop for some grass, and then some that just decided not to participate. Typically, if a horse dropped out, they would see they were being left behind and then gallop to catch up. The cowboys had to keep track of all this and keep the whole machine headed North, at a trot, to Jackson hole.

Along the way there were places the herd was stopped, usually at a fence corner or a pasture that had been “arranged” for these stop overs. These stops allowed cowboys to eat lunch and take “Nature breaks” that were not possible from a trotting horse. The horses and mules got water and a breather to graze.

I have had people ask me why the herd was pushed so hard keeping them in a trot? Well, pushing wasn’t the problem! The mules did this every year, and they knew where they were going. They preferred to move at a trot and that set the pace for everything else. The herd would keep that pace for miles and miles and stop when they got to places, they knew they would normally stop to graze for the night. This was hard on cowboys, and they would pick out horses they had ridden in the gather they knew had smooth traveling gaits.

This whole remuda would arrive in Kelly Wyoming and then be prepared for the summer riders and campers. In later years I was told there were too many regulations, new fence lines and other procedural roadblocks so they started using trucks to transport the livestock and eventually they sold off the herds and began renting horses and mule packers.

I am not aware of any place a drive like that happens now. There are drives in California and Colorado I am aware of, but they are catered to tourists and as much as they are as “real” as can be, they are not the same thing.