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Updated: May 17, 2025
The big cleanskins were driven out of the branding yard into an adjoining one, and admitted back again one by one. As soon as a beast rushed through the gate a green-hide lasso was thrown. The loop fell over its horns or neck. Four or five strong niggers were holding the end of the lasso outside the yard, and they pulled the captured animal up to the rails.
Now, you boys, look alive," he shouted to the blacks who were crowding round Yarloo. "You can yabber all you want when we've rounded up that tribe of black cleanskins." The native stockmen laughed. Everybody was eager for the task.
Most of these were calves which were still running with their mothers, though there was a sprinkling of larger stock which had been missed the year before. The first job was to separate the cows and calves and other cleanskins from the main herd, thus dividing it into two mobs. The mounted stockmen put the cattle together tightly and held them.
It is called "cutting out". Man and horse have to be of the very best to perform this feat properly or else the whole operation results in confusion. Mick was mustering the north of Sidcotinga run in order to brand all cleanskins, and there were probably not more than a hundred unbranded cattle in that mob of nearly half a thousand.
Breakfast and "Smoke-o" were got over quickly, and everybody was again at the yards as soon as possible. A fire was lit outside the rails, and a half-dozen T.D.3 brands, and as many number brands, were put in the blaze to get hot. Green-hide ropes were coiled ready and knives sharpened. The cleanskins were attended to first.
It is far easier to keep a hundred cattle in one place than it is to do the same to a single beast, but Mick and Hermes were now cutting out cleanskins one after another without any pause, thus increasing the second mob very quickly. It is a splendid sight to see cattle being cut out by a good man on a good horse.
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