toms big round up

tom had pastured a couple hundred cows for a friend of mine. my friend asked that i would go there and help gather these cows even tho i wasnt crazy about workin with tom. the mrs. and i went. for 3 days we worked this great big pasture, putting our gather in a holding trap every evening.  by my count we were only short about 20 cows when we started work on the fourth day. my wife swore up and down that we had gathered a lot of these cows twice. i wasnt sure of that but she always had a better memory for individuals than me. once again we scattered at the back of a long, retangular pasture and started working back toward the trap . once again we were picking up large  bunches of cows. something was wrong. these cows were getting almost impossible to drive. instead of west to east the would run north to south. i had left mrs. jefe on the south edge of the drive on a damn good mount so i knew there wouldnt be a screw up.
    about half way through the drive i saw a pickup boiling toward me from the south. a fellow was in the back waving at me and yelling. damn hunters i thought. when they got there they told me the mrs. had had a wreck and was hurt. it was two miles down to where she was so i tied my  horse and rode down to where she was with the hunters. her horse was tied close and the horn and forks of her saddle were packed in dirt and grease wood.  she was sitting propped up against a mesquite tree in the shade, obviosly in great pain.  she had been trying to turn a goofy ole cow and hadnt seen a low mesquite tree. her horse had seen it and tried to jump it hanging his front feet in the top of the little tree. this caused a cartwheel with the mrs. underneath the wheel!!  we loaded her in the truck, drove to  our truck , change rides and i headed to the hospital 30 miles away. 
     while there the hunters gathered up my horses and took them to the corrals for us. i never even got their name or saw them again. not all hunters are stinkers.  
    at the hospital we found out she had a  broken coller bone. a wrap , a sling and some pain pills and we headed home.  that night was a booger, the kids didnt like my cookin, the mrs. couldnt get comfortable , every move hurt.  all the while she kept telling me that the cow she was driving at the time of the wreck was a cow she had gathered 2 times before.
    tom came to the house and said we had all the cows gathered and we would ship the next morning. the mrs. assured me she would be ok, for me to go and quit fussin over her.
   the next mornin 5 of us set about gathering the trap as the trucks were to be there at noon. there were lots of tracks of the cattle, but the farther we rode it was evident there wasnt any cattle in the trap! soon i heard a yell over to my right so i loped over there. one of the other riders was sitting his horse looking at about a hundred yards of laid over fence with a trail a foot deep and a yard wide goin over it!! tom rode up and looked at it and in a whipped voice explained the fence had been up the last time he checked it. his dad asked when was that.   last year he whimpered. tom looked at his 75 year old dad, with one arm and a cancer groin in his back and ask him to go get some posts and fix the fence!! the rest of us turned our horses and headed  back to the trailers. i heard toms dad say in a firm voice for tom to fix the fence. he would call off the trucks and call the cows owners. i dont know what would have been worse, makin excuses for a pitiful excuse of a son or fixen the fence.