Riding For The Brand

I just finished reading a Zane Grey novel a few days ago. For those of you not acquainted with Zane Grey, he was the Louie L'Amour of the 50's. He wrote some great western novels, many about Utah and the southwest. Like L'Amour, his novels always seem to have a hero and a moral to be learned. One of the moral lessons of this novel is to "ride for the brand".

To "ride for the brand" is a cowboy saying that means you are loyal to your employer. It means that if a man is paying you to do a job, you do it. You give him a good day's work for a day's pay. You protect and defend the cattle with his brand on them at all cost. This is a lesson I think many today have failed to learn.
I couldn't help but think about this as I was working on a service project Saturday. A cousin of mine has been the prime mover in getting a new shed for the cemetery. She isn't physically capable of doing much of the work herself, so she relies on other volunteers to do the hard stuff. I have been one of the objects of her prodding and as such have been involved in several stages of construction of the new shed.

Saturday my brother Brent and I burned brands into the wood on the front of the shed. I know it sounds like a very simple operation but it isn't. Brent has done some research and found the brands of many of the old livestock men in the New Harmony area. He then made branding irons that could be used just as they were in days gone by, and in fact are still used in the livestock business today.

First you heat the branding iron until it is hot enough and then you press it on the wood until you get sufficient burning to leave the brand permanently on the wood. Sounds simple doesn't it? Well first of all it is no simple matter to heat about 36 branding irons. We used a propane weed burner at first and that worked well for the smaller brands. It just wouldn't heat the larger ones, and anyhow we ran out of propane. So then we made a fire in a 50 gallon barrel that had been cut in half. That's how the cowboys did it, they just built a fire. As it worked for them, it worked for us. If you left the branding irons in the fire long enough, they got hot.

A hot branding iron is a fearsome thing. I had a glove on my right hand, but burned my left hand when I automatically used it to try to steady the hot iron as it tried to move out of place. Just try holding a hot branding iron that weighs upwards of 20 pounds at eye level or higher. If I had forgotten, I again learned why they throw those doggies on the ground and hold them down. It's a lot easier to let gravity help.
Another problem is branding irons that aren't quite level. The larger a branding iron the harder it is to make it's face level. When pressing such a thing into hair and flesh it isn't a big problem. When pressing it onto a hard flat piece of wood, the high places hit first and the low places don't get hot enough. So we had to bend and straighten, and follow up using a hot flat section like a wood burning set. Anyhow, we got the job done. What we thought we would finish in a couple of hours took nearly five, but I think it looks okay.

So, who is going to finish this project? Sometimes I think I have done my share, especially considering the town charged me $600 each for a couple of 4 x 10 foot plots where my wife and I will eventually be laid to rest. But, do I "ride for the brand" or not? I guess we'll find out when the next call comes.