branded

 years ago i was workin on a contract branding crew to kinda fill in between riden jobs. cleve was the boss and a heck of a good guy to work for. he was quiet, fair and doin his best to keep body and soul together. he had a nice young family, a pretty wife and a couple little kids.  we were puttin in a lot of hours , a couple times i remember workin 30 hours straight through. there were a lot of cattle traded at that time and it wasnt unusual for us to process the same bunch of cattle 2 or 3 times as they changed hands on the same day!
      some owners had electric irons and some had propane heated stamp irons. workin around a branding chute is a nasty, bloody job and after you spend a day or so workin up to a 1000 head of cattle  through a chute your a mess!! i always wore my worst clothes and after a work shift would soak them in a tub of cold water over nite before washing them.  they were blood stained permanatly, the pockets tore or missing and big holes in the knees of the wranglers.
   one day it was a cold, raw day with a wind whippin in under the shed the chute sat in. we had a big roaring propane fed fire heating the irons. now cleve usualy sat in the bull hole casterating the bull calves as they came through the chute. the rest of us dehorned, vaccinated, ear tagged etc. one hand kept the cattle pushed up the lead up to the squeeze, we never ran out of cattle. periodicly i would have to mix vaccine in enough quanities to keep the crew movin.  one day i was a bit slow in reloading the vaccine guns, with my back to the chute i was concentrating on the chore at hand when i felt a warm localized source of heat. i jumped and looked back and cleve was grinnin at me with a red hot iron in his hand. the pocket on my wranglers was gone and only one thickness of fabric protected my posterior!! we all had a laugh and went back to work.
      a few days later i was presented the oppertunity  to repay the prank. well cleves pants had a pocket and i had to leave that number 6 iron there a little longer than he did mine. finally he squacked and jumped straight up, fannin his butt!!
       a few days later we all went dancin at a local bar and dance  hall , cleves wife and i were dancin and she got to laughin. i ask what was so funny. she told me thank you for permantly identifying her husband , i ask what she was talkin about, . she explained that number 6 i branded him with peeled and now she tell even in the dark he was hers!!!