a sleep at the switch

tom was a neighbor. a  nice guy but a bumbling boob. he needed help gathering a mountain pasture. me , my wife and a couple other cowgirls and toms dad went into this mountain pasture to gather a few cows. this pasture was rough , steep, rocky and cactus strewn. there was a small pond at the base of the main canyon that was spring fed. this is where the hold up would be. we left my wife and one of the other gals there to catch everything we threw  down to them. the plan was to be out of there by one p. m. it was a 5 mile drive to the corrals and that was bad enough.
      myself, toms dad, tom and a friend of his went up the canyon, two on each side of the stream. near the summit the streem channel was uncrossable. tom and his friend were on one side , toms dad and myself were on the other. the agreement was that no one would start down unless we were all together.
      we  had worked our side of the canyon and was waitting for tom and his friend carl. it was later than we had planned on and needed to get  going.  no tom.  soon carl came over to the canyon channel and hollered that tom took off a foot about 2 hours before and hadnt come back.  we drove our cattle down to the girls then went up toms side to meet carl. he had toms horse and said tom left his horse to go run some cows out of the canyon and hadnt come back. toms poor old dad was really worried. we all knew tom was accident prone and we could imagine him laying some where with a broke leg or worse. the old man and i looked, hollered climbed around until almost dark. finaly the old man said lets go look down at the pond.  we started down and the first person we see is my wife, her italian temper past boiling.
     ' THAT LAZY GOOD FOR NOTHING SOB IS ASLEEP UNDER A MESQUITE TREE BELOW THE POND, WHEN I WOKE HIM UP AND TOLD HIM YOU ALL WERE LOOKING FOR HIM SAID DONT WORRY, THEY WILL GIVE ME UP FOR DEAD SOON" she said
    tom didnt know how close to being dead he was!! his dad rimmed his fanny, the other cow girl chewed his but because she was supposed to be home hours earlier and my wife would have cut his throat right there if i had loaned her a knife.
      we put 90 head of cows in the corrals by moon light 3 hours later. our kids were home alone, thank god they were responsible kids. our horses were dinked, and we hadnt had a bite to eat since 4 that mornin.  we swore to never go back, but was softened up by the old man one more time. a few weeks later we went back to help again, but thats another story.