Journal of a Cowboy
No one had anticipated ‘ The Great Die Out’
The French cowboys had been trudging through precarious terrain for many months. They had always anticipated that, as they were stumbling ever westward, they could always count on meeting up with warm, dry areas, as they receded from the grasslands and proceeded to the desert. One evening, though, there was an abrupt skyline rising from a brilliant, orange horizon that foretold upcoming windy weather. They also noticed that there was a ruddy ring around the moon that marked a change in the weather.
No sooner had Jean-Luc Duval and his companion, Jacques Duvalier, pulled up near a rocky cavern, when both their horses hunkered down with their legs and tails tucked away neatly underneath their haunches. Animals could always sense the changes in weather, faster than human beings. They huddled next to each other. The wind had started howling through the grotto, causing it to sound as if they were holed up in the Yukon. A light snow that had started falling, suddenly turned into ice crystals that prickled their arms like broken glass.
Jean-Luc and Jacques crept as near to the rock face as near as they could, trying to shield themselves from the bitter wind. Little did they realize at that time, that not since the great ice ages, 25,000 years prior, had such an unfriendly weather devastated the area. The fenceless expanse of land was not only covered with ice, but much of the scorching, summer that year had left the area in a severe drought. Everywhere, cattle started dying of exposure and of starvation; their frozen carcasses littered the plains.
By 1862, the Civil War had escalated, dividing the American dream, but the bitter time just kept on coming. The blizzard, with its galeforce winds, made the temperatures plummet down to 50 degrees below zero and even lower. The falling rain added to the deep freeze, sealing the withered foliage beneath a thick layer of impenetrable ice. Owing to the imbalance in moisture, Stradivarius violins made in Europe from the very dense wood at that time, had 25 percent less water and, along with the decomposition of the wood component called hemicellulose, they produced a much finer tone in the violins. It seemed that the intense cold had affected not only the politics of the American nation, but the musical sensibilities of Europe as well.
Thousands of cattle died when temperatures reached well below freezing in parts of the West. Some cowboys referred to that devastating winter as “The Great Die Out.” It was thought to be the beginning of the end for the cowboy era. Jean-Luc and Jacques moved as little as possible, preferring to ride out the long nightmare by themselves. The few remaining cattle were in poor health. They were emaciated and suffering from frostbite. The result of this severe weather was that cattle were being sold for much less than usual.
The idea that they might flee farther south, to warmer climes, had crossed many of the minds of would-be cowboys. Perhaps the problem here, however, was a law called “The Monroe Doctrine,” which forbade any European influence in lands belonging to Mexico.