Photo by Peg Britton

As taken from the book "Frontier Land" compiled by George Jelinek in 1973.

In order to subdue the savage, General Sheridan contended that the buffalo furnished everything required for the existence of the Indian and advocated destroying them as a means of getting rid of the peril of the savages. The idea soon became popular and with such license, the wonton destruction of the millions of animals that roamed the plains was in a very few years accomplished. It was at first not unusual for trains to stand for hours waiting for herds to cross the tracks. The railroad cut the buffalo into two large herds the northern and the southern. The railroad also made the hunting grounds more accessible to the hired butcher and offered greater facility in the traders' handling of the skins. The laborers laying the track for the new railroad were constantly interfered with by the herds of buffalo.

Col. Henry Inman has this to say: "An idea my be formed of how many buffalo were killed from 1868 to 1881, a period of only thirteen years, during which time they were indiscriminately slaughtered for their hides. In Kansas alone there was paid out, between the dates specified, two million five hundred thousand dollars for their bones gathered on the prairies, to be utilized by the various carbon works of the country, principally, St. Louis. It required about a hundred carcasses to make a ton of bones, the price paid averaging eight dollars a ton; so, the above quoted sum represented the skeletons of over thirty-one million buffalo. These figures may appear preposterous to readers not familiar with the Great Plains, but to those who have seen the prairies black from horizon to horizon with the shaggy monsters, they are not so. In the autumn of 1868, I rode with General Sheridan, Custer, Sully and others, for three consecutive days through one continuous herd. In the spring of 1869 the train on the Kansas Pacific railroad was delayed at a point between Fort Harker and Hays, from nine o'clock in the morning until five in the afternoon, in consequence of the passage of an immense herd of buffalo across the track."

In the commercial killing, the butchers were supplied with special outfits. A party consisted of one shooter, two skinners, and one man to cook, stretch hides, and take care of camp. After one of these expeditions, the plains for miles around were covered with mutilated, putrefying buffalo carcasses. In a season or so, the white bleached bones and skulls, so typical of the latter days of the Great Plains, were to be seen in immense quantities. Because of the wantonness of the slayers, it has been estimated that there were three to five buffalo killed to every hide marketed. A hide torn by careless rough handling was discarded. And millions of pound of rich, juicy meat enough to have fed well all the poor of the nation was wasted.

The terrible "still hunt" was usually used. A herd sighted, the hunter secreted himself and fired, killing the leader. The herd, confused and puzzled and lacking its accustomed general, stood still. Then it was an easy matter for the gunner, picking his animals and always killing those that would start to run, to soon exterminate a large band. Many a hunter killed in a season fifteen hundred to two thousand animals.

Photo by Peg Britton

At first the utmost wastefulness prevailed. Everyone wanted to kill and no one was willing to do the skinning and curing. Thousands upon thousands of buffalo were killed for their tongues alone and never skinned. Thousands more were wounded by unskilled marksmen and wandered off to die and become a total loss.

Skins were stretched, baled, and shipped like cordwood. Of the qualities of hides, one of the rarest was the "beaver-robe" a soft fur resembling the animal it was named for. These sold for $75.00 apiece. The rarest skin was the "buckskin" a freak of nature. It was dirty white in color, and because of its rarity, rather than its beauty, sold for two thousand dollars. The ordinary hide sold for about three and half-dollars.

By the end of 1875, the great southern herd was practically extinct. 1883 saw the last of the northern herd.

And so with the advance of the white man we have witnesses the passing of the Indian and the buffalo, and the assimilation of the Great Plains, yet they are fixed features in the romance of the early days. Passing time can never hide them, and so for all coming ages they are linked to the future to be enjoyed and relived.

There are many buffalo wallows in the county as hundreds of thousands of buffalo once roamed here. Some are several acres in diameter. Over many years the buffalo would congregate where there was some water, stand in the water and their thousands of hoofs carried the mud out to other parts of the land. After so many centuries of this, the wallows became huge indentations in the soil. In dry years, alkaline accumulated and the buffalo came to lick and wallow in it and they carried more soil out. Almost any local farmer can point these out to you. There are buffalo wallows on #6 fairway of the Ellsworth golf course.

Bison are wild animals. Although they are now raised commercially - the Kansas Buffalo Association currently has 107 members raising 8,600 animals- bison do not have the same temperament as their domesticated cattle relatives.

Bison, or buffalo, appear docile when grazing and ruminating, but the mind behind the massive forehead and curved horns still thinks the way its ancestors thought. It is an animal that prefers to run, but it is ready to fight when threatened.

Humans and bison have interacted for thousands of years in North America, but that interaction until recent times has been characterized by humans as predators and bison as the prey. The earliest evidence for bison hunting comes from distinctly made projectile points found in association with extinct forms of bison dating to around 8000 B.C. Further evidence is seen among bison bone refuse commonly found in archaeological sites of American Indian camps and villages in all subsequent time periods.

This long-term relationship ended suddenly and dramatically in the latter portion of the nineteenth century when the North American buffalo was hunted almost to extinction by commercial hide-hunters. In Kansas, the period from 1870 to 1874 saw the confluence of a number of factors contributing to the sudden disappearance of once numerous herds.

A demand from the eastern United States for bison products, both meat and hides, coupled with the arrival in western Kansas of railroad lines that provided the means for cheaply and efficiently transporting those products, led to a massive killing of bison. The killing was unregulated and thorough and was condoned by the U.S. and state governments, anxious to subdue free-roaming Indian tribes who depended upon buffalo for food, materials for shelter, and numerous other necessities, as well as for spiritual needs.

Small remnant herds of bison remained after the departure of the hide-hunters, surviving for a decade or so in the rough country drained by the Canadian River and its tributaries in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. By 1888, when C.J. "Buffalo" Jones went searching in this region for bison to capture alive, he found a total of 37 animals.

Ancient Bison on the Plains

Bison first came to North America during the middle Pleistocene (Ice Ages) and they have been resident here for hundreds of thousands of years. At approximately 8000 B.C., some Pleistocene animals, such as the mammoth, camel and horse became extinct. However, the bison survived beyond this time to become the largest land animal in North America. Larger than today's buffalo (Bison bison and Bison athabascae), skeletal remains of extinct forms (such as Bison latifrons, Bison alleni, and Bison antiquus) can be recognized primarily by their continued diminution in overall size and smaller horn cores, which also change in shape.

These characteristics seem to point to a relatively straightforward evolution of the animal from the larger Pleistocene forms to the smaller present-day animals, although the causes of this evolutionary change are debatable. For one thing, bison species continue to enter the New World over a lengthy period of time, as the ice-free corridor opened and closed in response to climactic changes. It is not certain whether the new arrivals were additions to the existing herds (and gene pools) or replacements for buffalo species that died. Perhaps the new arrivals coexisted with established species but did not breed with them.

Some scientists argue that the difference in skeletal remains that are used to distinguish species are, in some instances, only variations to be expected in a "normal" population. This would mean that instead of classifying two species from a skeletal population, there should be only one.

Others believe that prehistoric bison hunters were a contributing factor in the evolution of the smaller-size bison. Their argument is partly based upon the hunters' preference for prime animals versus older, ill, or injured animals that typically are eliminated by natural selection. They contend that some hunting methods, such as the bison drive - wherein herds or large segments of herds were trapped or driven over natural obstacles to their deaths - were a contributing factor to the development of faster maturing, but smaller animals.

In western Kansas, the Twelve Mile Creek site in Logan County yielded the remains of at least ten animals, killed around 8000 B.C. The Norton bone bed in Scott County contained the remains of eight or more bison deposited in an ancient gully approximately 9,000 years ago.

Another High Plains bison kill site that illustrates the potential human impact on ancient bison (Bison occidentalist) is the Olsen-Chubbuck site, located approximately 30 miles west of the Kansas state line near First View, Colorado. At this location, the remains of 190 animals were uncovered in a wide and deep gully that, ironically, had been formed by the erosion of a buffalo trail. A herd had been stampeded across the gully. Animals in front fell into and filled up the chasm, providing a bridge for those that followed. The excavated bones of the unfortunate animals killed in the gully came from both male and female adults, juveniles and calves. Animals in the upper part of the gully were butchered by the hunters, but those at the bottom were inaccessible, comprising 40 whole or almost complete skeletons.

This site also dates to approximately 8000 B.C. Archeology can contribute to an understanding of the natural history of the bison through the excavation of such sites. Although the hunters disarticulated the skeletons and modified some bones, they also left behind datable materials, such as charcoal from camp fires and projectile points or other artifacts representative of certain time periods. This chronological information can be valuable. Some sited, such as Olsen Chubbuck, also contain complete animal skeletons to provide study specimens.

Saved from Extinction

The natural history of the bison has many blank pages, but due to the efforts of a few individuals, the buffalo were saved from extinction and the bison book was not closed forever at the end of the nineteenth century.

C.J. "Buffalo" Jones of Garden City was one of those individuals. A flamboyant promoter, he captured (by roping) calves from the few remaining bison in the region for various schemes, including a buffalo-drawn streetcar system for Garden City. The herd that grew from this roundup provided ten animals for a private zoo at the turn of the century for a cost of $1000 each. This compares with the price of $2.50 for a bison robe scarcely ten years earlier.

Jones became warden at Yellowstone Park in 1902, overseeing the last remaining bison on public land, a small herd of 25 animals. In 1906, he started a ranch on the north rim of the Grand Canyon stocked by "cattelo," his term for a cross between buffalo and Galloway cattle. This attempt to combine the best attributes of both animals was not commercially successful.

Early in the twentieth century, most buffalo were found in private herds, as is true now at the beginning of the twenty-first. Publicity about the near extinction of the animal led to the founding of the American Bison Society with William Hornaday, chief taxidermist at the U.S. National Museum, as president. This organization spearheaded efforts to stock bison on public land, so that by 1915 bison herds had been established in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Oklahoma, Fort Niobrara NWR in Nebraska, and Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park in South Dakota.

Ernest Harold Baynes, a New England journalist, was instrumental in forming the American Bison Society and in publicizing the need to save the buffalo. Anxious to promote the usefulness of the animal, he advocated using buffalo wool (the hair that grows over the front part of the animal) in blankets and articles of clothing. He also recommended bison as strong draft animals.

Neither of these beneficial uses panned out; they floundered because of the nature of the buffalo. How does one shear a living bison? And although some individual animals took to a harness, the vast majority - even those raised from young calves by humans - were too unmanageable for the task.

The Nature of the Beast

Some bison characteristics have been constant for thousands of years. A bison herd's propensity to run in headlong flight at a perceived threat was used to advantage by those American Indian hunters responsible for creating the bone bed that filled the gully at the Olsen-Chubbuck site. The strategy also figured into the creation of the massive bison bone deposits at the famous buffalo jumps of the Northern Plains, such as the Head-Smashed-In jump in ALberta, Canada. At this site and similar sites in the northern United States, buffalo herds were gathered together and driven over high precipitous cliffs by the coordinated actions on the on-foot hunters, who used concealment and and then their sudden appearance to guide the running bison to the cliff; the resulting fall killed or injured the animals.

Hunters used the same locations over and over again for many thousands of years. With the reintroduction of the horse into North America by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, some tribes altered their buffalo-hunting tactics. Mounted hunters would chase the animals on fast and fearless horses, chosen especially for their ability to run close to the bison where their riders could shoot arrows or fire bullets into the selected animals.

Another less dramatic, but equally efficient, way of hunting bison relied on using a combination of the animal's poor eyesight and keen nose. By keeping downward of a herd and by using stealthy movements, hunters could sometimes approach quite closely. Indians, using wolf skins or blankets draped over their bodies, could get within arrow-shot range using this method.

Nineteenth-century hide-hunters could sometimes established a "stand" within rifle-range of a herd and be able to shoot bison after bison from one position.

The key to this hunting was to avoid spooking the herd with sudden movements - either by the hunter himself or by, for instance, only wounding an animal that caused its sudden movements to alert the herd to danger. Apparently the loud report from the rifle's discharge was not a factor. Such tactics as these, plus the number of hide-hunters operating in the field, caused an incredible number of bison to be killed.

Colonel Richard I. Dodge, a contemporary observer of the slaughter, obtained figures from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for three years of hide shipments from Dodge City. In 1872, hides shipped numbered 165,721; in 1873 there were 251,443; and in 1874 there was a reduction to 42,289 - a total of 459,453 bison hides. This figure does not include animals killed but not skinned or buffalo hide that spoiled in the field due to the inexperience of the hunters.

The rebound in the numbers of buffalo in the twentieth century can be attributed partly to their ability to reproduce and their adaptation to the Plains environment. A buffalo cow can breed at two years of age and have her first calf at age three. Under optimal conditions, a cow can have a calf each year of her 20- to 25- year life span.

Bison eat a wide range of grasses and plants, typically gaining weight during the spring and summer but losing weight during the winter months. Unlike cattle, bison can move away snow with their snouts to reach buried winter grasses, which allow them to be self-sufficient and to survive extreme weather events. Bulls in prime can weigh around 2,000 pounds, while a mature cow will weigh approximately 1,100 pounds.

Although bison have not rebounded to their former number, there are today approximately 350,000 located on private and public lands. Bison meat and bison products are generally available to the public, and bison can become part of an individual's diet if one so desires.

Bison research is carried on at several institutions in the Plains states, including the Konza Prairie unit of Kansas State University. In Kansas, public viewing of bison herds is available at the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge near Canton in McPherson County and at the Finney Game Refuge near Garden City. Surplus bison from the Finney and Maxwell herds are sold at auction at the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge during the first two weeks of November each year. Further increases in the bison population of North America will need to come through an increase in the number of privately owned herds.

This article first appeared in the March/April 2002 issue of Kansas Preservation Magazine. It was written by Martin Stein, an archeologist with the Cultural Resources Division of the Kansas State Historical Society.

Photo by Peg Britton

Hairy chest, bowlegs, shooting, irons - these are incidental. It's the cowboy hat that makes the cowboy. It's a tough hat, a rugged hat, a hat with a thousand uses. Here's how it works and here's how it all started.

Before the official cowboy hat was invented, the cowboy, gunslinger and budding rancher wore an absurd and motley array of headgear to keep his cobwebby mat of hair out of his eyes and the sun from baking his brains.

The toppers could range from derbies to high hats to Sherlock Holmes hats to Civil War caps, none of which made a Western man look like the tough man of action he was in a brand-new country. He desperately needed a hat that was symbolic of his new work and role.

In this nation of superb ingenuity someone in the 1860's was bound to devise the perfect headpiece that not only would protect a mans head and hair from sun, bird droppings, and spiders, but embellish the wearer with the badge of daring, jauntiness, adventure, and flamboyance that, anyone in the death-dealing country required.

Such a man was John B. Stetson, son a Philadelphia hat manufacturer, who went west to cure his tuberculosis, the occupational disease of hatters. While on a camping trip with a group of friends (some claim he was hunting gold) he found the need to build a shelter. They had suntanned animal skins which stunk to high heaven. Stetson, with a hatter's experience, mentioned that cloth could be made without weaving and leather without tanning. "Impossible," his companions insisted.

So, with his hatchet, Stetson shaved the fur from the hide. Then he cut a sapling and made a hunting bow. With this bow he agitated the fur, keeping it in a little cloud in the air. Filling his mouth with water, he blew a fine spray into the fur as it fell. Soon he had a mat of fur which could be lifted. He then dipped this sheet of matted fur into a kettle of boiling water. Stetson kept dipping it and squeezing it until he had a soft, smooth blanket.

As mystifying as the process seemed, it was quite reasonable. All the pieces have hooks or prongs and, when stimulated with hot water, cling to each other. As the felt shrinks, the fibers interlock, grabbing each other and drawing in closer.

His friends were delighted. They had never seen the process before. (In truth, however, felt-making was known from 1500 B.C.) To further amuse his companions, Stetson fashioned a big hat which he proposed to be the most practical bonnet for the West. It was big enough to protect a man from all the rigors of the open spaces - sun, rain, wind, flies, and foul jokes.

As a joke, Stetson wore the hat on his camping tour, mostly through mining towns, and attracted a good bit of good-natured ribbing. A rugged horseman of the plains (some say he was a Mexican bushwhacker) stopped Stetson and offered to buy the broad-rimmed umbrella of a hat. When Stetson let him try it on and viewed his creation perched jauntily on the head of the mounted horseman, he saw a picturesque sight of cavalier strength. He sold the hat for five dollars.

When Stetson regained his strength about a year later and returned to Philadelphia, he thought a lot about the silly hat that looked so gallant on the rider and was built so usefully for the West. The cattle business was just getting started at that time. Maybe the cattlemen would cotton to such a distinctive brand of hat which would give them the sort of status symbol to go with their new trade. Besides, it was just dang useful on the plains.

Stetson was barely getting along in his tiny shop on Seventh and Callohill Street in Philadelphia. But he decided to throw everything he owned and could borrow into such a venture. He made a number of big hats which he called "The Boss of The Plains" and sent out a dozen samples to dealers in the West and Southwest.

The Stetson attracted the attention of the cattleman immediately. It not only was useful against the weather, but it "looked a darn sight pretty." The overjoyed inventor was soon swamped with orders. In his small shop he couldn't keep up with the demand. Some dealers sent cash with their orders, hoping for preferred service.

The Texas Rangers just had to have the new lid to improve their prestige. How would it look if a raggedy Ranger with a coon skin cap arrested a crook who sported a jaunty, knightly "cowboy" hat? Cowboys on the trail went nuts over the giant hat and paid outlandish prices for the few that were available.

In a year, Stetson had to build a three story building 100 feet long. By 1906 he was making hundreds of thousands of hats a year. (In the 1950's it was estimated at four million a year.)

The cowboy hat, when it was first introduced into many sections of the country, was eagerly accepted by the cattleman as their very own, long delayed piece of natural raiment. Like a peacock needed feathers, John Q. Cowboy needed his headgear.

Nothing made a man look more like a cowboy than a cowboy hat. He might be waddling down the street without his pistol on his hip and still be considered kin to a cow if he had his Stetson on. But if he were seen without his cowboy hat, even though he had a dozen Colts strapped to his hairy torso and was bowlegged as a wet wishbone, he would be nothing more than just a nude rude dude. As one bucolic Western muse put it: "There among the bulls he sat, but I could tell him by his hat..."

Through the years the hat grew to accommodate a host of chores by the hardworking, hard playing cowboy. It had more uses than a movie director could imagine. It was used as a bucket to fill "ole Paint" with oats and water; as a sun shade to scan the hill for renegade Indians; as an umbrella to keep the neck-wrinkling sun away. You could help fan a fire with the billowy hat, and beat out a bush blaze; it could be used to whip a stubborn horse, a crazed cow, quell a stampede, and semaphore signals to distant range riders; and lend prestige to the smug brows of cattle and railroad barons.

In the winter a cowboy tied it down around his red ears with his handkerchief. It was a briefcase, a valise, a file, a flyswatter, or a decoy in a gunfight when he stuck it around a rock to draw a revealing shot. Without his Stetson a cowboy was somewhat naked; the first thing he put on in the morning and the last thing he took off at night - if he ever took it off since it made such a cozy pillow.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the Stetson has saved men's lives. One forest ranger who was caught in a forest fire buried himself in the ground leaving only his eyes, nose, and mouth exposed which he covered up with his trusty Stetson. He was still alive after the fire although his precious hat was considerably scorched. When a grim prospector's canteen was punctured by a bullet on the desert, he quickly emptied the remains into his trusty Stetson which served as a flask until he reached a distant water hole.

The Stetson was sometimes used by a scoundrel of a gunman on the screen by dropping the hat in front of a hand that streaked for a gun. A few suspicious fellows were plugged just for innocently dropping their hat in front of their gun belt on a hot day during a misunderstanding. No life-loving gunman ever wore a cowboy hat with a limber brim if he valued his life. When he pulled his shooting iron he didn't want a flapping hat brim to obscure his vision. Other gunmen insisted that the hat improved their draw by shielding their eyes and also inspiring awe in their opponents at such a smartly dressed killer who must surely double as an undertaker.

A cowboy invested a lot of money in his headpiece, and he never regretted it. When Stetson first made his hat it sold for $5.00. Later it went up to $10.00, and when made of fine beaver $30.00. Soon men were wearing $40.00 hats with a $4.00 suit, just as they would shortly put a fifty dollar saddle on a ten dollar horse. (The average wage in the 1800's was about forty dollars a month, with top hands getting as much as sixty dollars.)

The felt cowboy hat was both lightweight and durable. You just couldn't wear it out. It got stomped on in a barn dance, or sat on, or slept in; it would always come back to shape. Even a bullet hole couldn't detract from its quality; in fact, it added glamour. The Stetson was a thing you could depend on: the bad guys wore black ones and the good guys wore white, and there were no waffling shades of gray in between.

Remember when the ultimate of bravery was the icy disdain with which Tom Mix and other movie cowboys would stick a finger through a bullet hole in his freshly pressed Stetson, or when he used the same hat to fill his horse with water and a spout of water leaked off to the side?

You could put six holes in a hat and it wouldn't ravel. Many hats have been in service twenty to thirty years. It may gain weight and odors, but it is indestructible. A cowboy never bragged about how new his hat was, but how old it was. It was scrubbed "every time the Republicans swept the South."

A cowboy hat wasn't shaped to be worn the same way in all parts of the West. The Southwest used a wider level brim, high crowned hat, worn pinched in for protection against the sun. The Northwest used a smaller crown dented in all around and a narrow brim because of the high wind. A cowboy from the desert and plains country would probably wear a wider brim and a higher crown. Hatbands were made of leather, horsehair, silver conches, or snakeskin.

Some cowpokes, like the late "Hoss" Cartwright of TV's Bonanza, wore what was known as a "Carlsbad" with a high uncreased peak. Today, the latest trend in Western Wear is toward a total aesthetic look, which is flattering to each individual wearer. The main point is to look good ... real good in your very own cowboy hat.

The cowboy hat may have been born around the campfire in the 1860's, but this fireside baby's come a long way. The "Boss of the Plains" the cowboys used to sleep in and drink from is now the Delaware Valley's most outstanding fashion statement. Just think about it, Philadelphia is where it all got started.

Pushing wet noses against the pen, calves loudly moo their anxiety about this separation from their mothers.

The cows push back, and while free circle the enclosure, constantly lowing. It's a tornado of smell, sound and confusion that can be heard a half mile away.

Causing this dusty mix are whistling and hawing cowboys, smacking the backside of any cow they can reach.

Working to separate the final bunch of mothers, the cowboys herd them out of the pen. Left behind are 350 calves.

Standing in the calm of the storm are women and children, holding to one side of the pen. The children watch their cowboy fathers, wearing old chaps, well-worn cowboy hats, faded shirts and Wranglers and astride horses foamily wet. They already have been worked, these cowboys and horses, just returning from the early morning roundup of the 700 calves and cows over the 800-acre ranch.

This is one of the last old-time brandings left in Kansas, and this year's was especially sentimental because it is the last on this prairie of gentle hills, blowing grasses and burnt-red farmhouses.

This is Rolling Hills Ranch, owned by an old-timer. Even in 1999, as a successful businessman, he looks most comfortable not in a suit but in his jeans, leather chaps branded with the ranch's RHR and a cowboy hat pulled low over his forehead of snow-white hair. His face has the weathery look of a cowboy.

The cell phone in his front pocket is the only betrayer of his identity.

He is Charlie Walker.

He may have made his money with his national chain of truck washes and convenience stores, but it is the animals of the prairie, the freedom of the range, that is Walker's passion. That is evident in his investment into a collection of exotic animals that he has kept for years, now under the protection of the Rolling Hills Refuge that is to open to tourists in the fall. It also is evident in Walker's continuing interest in riding the range of his 16 pastures, along the border of Ellsworth and Saline counties, where he has 700 head of cattle, each with its own calf.

The romance of roaming, combined with good economic sense, again has seduced Walker, and Rolling Hills will sell its herd of Angus crossbreed cattle this fall. In their place will be the second largest herd of buffalo in the state.

This, then, is the ranch's last cattle drive, the last branding, the last time for cowboys to gather in their favorite of Old West ways. The cattle branding is, many of the cowboys gathered here say, their favorite day of the year.

Most of the cowboys have taken a day off work from their jobs to help brand calves. It is, after all, hard to make a living anymore as a full-time cowboy.

Mark Johnson, Bruce Miller and Sam Goddard are three lucky ones who have found full-time jobs as cowboys on the Rolling Hills Ranch. Sure, they have other titles-general manager, cow boss and general ranch hand - but they spend many days on horseback, riding the more than 12,000 acres of grass, learning the flow of the streams, the angle of the trees, the places snakes tend to rattle. They know most of these cows and the calves they are branding today, recognizing a funny-shaped spot, a difficult birth baby, a playful calf, one with pretty brown eyes.

"It's days like this that are the reasons why we became cowboys," Johnson said.

Their job, they know, is changing with the buffalo coming back.

But today is a day of celebration. Of whooping, hollering and wrestling with calves. Kissing a pretty wife with a dirt-stained face while she wrinkles her nose. Drinking a beer during breaks. Introducing sons to the feeling of bringing down a hundred-pound calf. Getting so dirty that taking off a hat highlights a line of sparkling skin next to a tarnished face.

It's a day for having fun.

"We're all gonna have bruises all over," groaned Joe Walker. "I'm gonna be sore for a week."

It is a perfect day for this kind of work, Johnson said: The wind blows low and refreshing, the sky arcs high and blue, the warm spring day means by lunchtime most of the cowboys will have shed their long-sleeved button-downs in favor of sweat-stained undershirts.

It is hard work bringing down calves.

"If you don't know how to get ahold of the calves, they will rassle you till you figure it out," Huey Counts said.

But with 350 calves to brand today and 350 more by the end of the week, there are plenty of chances to figure out the best way to bring down an angry, scared calf desperately scrambling for freedom.

Ideally, the calves are roped by their hind legs and dragged - flopping, tongues lolling, looking like toddlers refusing to move during a temper tantrum - to the edge of the pen.

There, they encounter six cowboys. One flips the calf unapologetically by its tail, sending it bawling to the ground.

The calf's eyes show its whites in fear, its black tongue lolls against white teeth. One cowboy holds down its neck and upper body by lying across the calf. Another cowboy stretches the calf's back leg out, rendering the other potentially painful hoof useless by pressing hard against its leg with a booted foot.

Chris Carlson scores the good takedowns before heading over with a branding iron.

"I give him a 9.6 on the fall," he said, after a cowboy launched one brown cow into the air, flipping it deftly back into the dirt and rendering it helpless. "That was cool."

For Brady Johnson, 13, this is a year of growing up.

It is the first time Brady's dad thinks he has the strength to take down a calf.

"He's tried before," Mark Johnson said.

It's a timeless battle between boy and bovine that a cowboy's ego demands he win. And Brady is the son of Mark Johnson. He is the son of a cowboy.

A roped calf is pulled to the edge of the arena, and Brady takes ahold, the calf struggles, pushing up, throwing Brady off-balance, but Brady stays with her. She tries to run, her escape hampered by the child almost on top of her. The other cowboys whoop at Brady's tenacity as he stays with her, finally, finally, with the help of Dale, bringing her to the ground.

"That's the funnest part, fighting 'em," Brady said later, sucking on Gatorade while taking a break.

A cowboy is waiting with a brand, sizzling hot from the fire, ready to press it into the trembling flesh. Because of its dirty hair, the smoke blows yellow and musty when the branding iron is squeezed deep into the calf. The cow bawls in pain and surprise, its legs twitching to escape the strong hold.

Another man has ready a modern-day holster and gun, cocked to administer immunizations and, for the males, a growth stimulant. If the calf is male, it quickly is castrated by a cowboy with blood-stained hands, holding the small, sharp razor between his teeth while preparing to make the cut.

This warm April day was chosen not because of the pleasant weather but because of the phase of the moon.

"It's a belief that is handed down through the generations," Johnson said. "And it seems to hold true."

The male calves recover faster from their castrations if the moon is right.

It seems to hold true again this year: Few calves need additional medical attention in the days following their surgery.

The cowboys all work at once on the calves before them, spending just seconds with each. The flipped calf can resume its search for mother in as few as 25 seconds, and rarely more than a minute.

Two teams of cowboys dance around the calves, and the constant sound of angry mothers and nervous calves soon becomes background noise much like humming crickets on a summer night.

Cowboys rotate positions, between takedowns, roping, branding, shooting and castrating. Always moving, always working.

And then it's lunchtime.

Up at the barn, there're Sloppy Joes, potato salad and beans prepared by Walker's wife, Caroline, to complement the cans of cheap beer. They kid each other, these cowboys, most of whom have known each other for years.

Sitting on backs of pickups, around a picnic table and against the wall of the barn, they remember rodeo mistakes and old times - before families - of getting thrown out of local taverns and picking up women.

"You have a butt like a Limousine bull," Monte West told a woman as a compliment one night.

That was a mistake, not only because he was rebuffed by the woman but because he made the comment within earshot of John Dautel, who revels in telling the tale again and again. West blushes.

"I really did mean it as a compliment," he said.

The guys laugh harder, because West is sincere.

After chocolate brownies, and half-hearted attempts at getting Mark Johnson to agree to a group nap before going back to work, it's back to branding.

The cowboys' work continues into the late afternoon, the excitement of the morning slowly giving way to exhaustion. Redness from a day in the early spring sun is starting to peek through the skin's deepening layer of dust and dirt.

The cows, reunited with their youngsters after searching by smell, begin their meandering tramp back to the pastures in the late afternoon. The mothers sniff their babies, who seem to have recovered from their ordeal quickly.

Mark Johnson pauses for a second to look over the loosening herd. He turns to his son Brady and puts his big arm around his son's thin shoulders.

"You did real good," Johnson said, still looking over the field. "Real good."

The two turn back to the remaining calves and cows, lingering just a moment before moving back to the storm of noise and organized chaos, looking, maybe, for the last time together, at the calves pushing wet noses against the pen.

The Salina Journal, May 9, 1999