tennis shoe and old jello

our friend and neighbor lyman needed help gathering a herd of barzona cows off the 90 section DG ranch. it was rough and steep and the canyons were deep and brushy. it was late august and help was non existant. so i brought my horses and our 2 pre teenage boys to the works.
  lyman had a full time cowboy and a couple latin american types who could ride a horse. in thoses days any mexican from mexico could set a horse.  the youngest mexican boy had a unpronouncable name so lyman just called him tennis shoe. he turned out to be a pretty good hand and willing to turn a hand at just about any chore that came along he could build a rock wall that was as pretty as you could ask for with out a speck of morter.   well we started this gather, it was hot and in the afternoons we got wet from monsoon rains. in what we hoped for a 1 week gather was turning into 3. cattle were scattered, puddles of water every where so they didnt congregate at the windmills , it was tough. some days if we worked 10 sections and got 20 cows we figgured we were doing good.
  now ime not real high on barzona cows, but in this instance they were sure the right deal. that old ranch had a lot of little flat top mesas on it. and those red cows would get right up under the cap rock where no other critter would dare to crawl. of course it made it a booger to get to them, steep and shaley, you had to be care ful.
    one mornin lymon ask me to tack a shoe on the horse that tennis shoe rode. we all called him yellow but tennis shoes english was a little sparse, he called that dun pony jello.  well when ole jello lost his shoe he lost some of his quarter  hoof wall. so i built a shoe with a extra long trailer  in the heel to cover the broken out spot. when i got through we struck a trott to the back side of the circle, out beyond a couple of those little steep walled mesas.
    lymom scattered the crew  and as he rode along was telling me about this one little mesa we were headed for. the walls and slope were steep and covered with palo verde, mesquite and other noxious brush with big long thornes.  tennis shoe was the next to last rider who lymon dropped off , only i was left as we encircled the mesa. lymon pointed up high and i could just barely make out a cows hind quarters behind a tree.  that was where i was headed, and it took a little figguren. big drainages came down off that mesa, many with steep , uncrossable walls. i kept rimmin around climmin higher and higher trying to get to where that cow was. the cow tracks became thicker and it was plain there were a lot more cows here than the one we saw.  as we climmed and rimmed higher and higher it became almost impossible for my horse to stand or walk. finaly i was within a hundred feet or so of where i thought that cow was. i hobbled my horse on a kinda flat place and set off a foot toward where that cow was. when i got to where she shoulda been there was nothin but deep tracks and thin manuare!! and one of those deep tracks was a new horse shoe with a extra long trailer on it! down below i could see a string of red cows winding down a trail with a dunn horse following, and a skinney little mexican kid whoopin it up on him!!