Wild Cow Tales (18 page)

I was ridin’ a big light chestnut horse called Dan. We cut about the biggest and rankest brindle-colored steer into the pen where the snubbin’ post was and I roped him around the horns. (If a steer is roped around the neck he will choke and that will make him fight a lot more.) He turned and charged Dan, and as Dan dodged the steer we made a jump toward the snubbin’ post, and I took a wrap around the snubbin’ post and drew this steer up to it until his head was solid against the post with a horn on each side. Dan was a big stout horse and I intended for him to hold the steer while I worked on him.

The last time I was in town a bunch of us cowboys was sittin’ around talkin’ about wild steers and one smart-aleck old cowboy jokingly said that if there’s some way to prop a steer’s eyes open, he wouldn’t run into the brush if he couldn’t close his eyes. Since I had been wondering how I was going to get these cattle out of that brush canyon, that bright batch of conversation had worried me considerably. It’s common knowledge that the reason bullfighters stay alive is that the bull shuts his eyes when he makes that last lunge off the ground to charge a bullfighter. Even a man won’t run into brush without turning his arm up to protect his head and eyes.

I had spent the night before cuttin’ and sharpenin’ some green live-oak pegs about as big around as a pencil and about two to three inches long and some even longer. I had never done this and I didn’t know what length peg it would take to hold a steer’s eyelids open. I stepped off of Dan, and he knew how to set back on that rope with his head to the steer to keep the steer’s head pulled up against that post. I took my pocketknife and lifted the upper lid of one eye and punctured a hole through to the outside, and I intended to puncture a hole in the lower eyelid and put the sharpened ends of the live-oak pegs in the holes that I was cuttin’, which would “prop” the steer’s eyes open. I had really forgotten that old Dan was a little bit “flanky.” When that steer went to bawlin’ and pullin’ as hard as he could with just one wrap of that rope around that snubbin’ post, the pressure got pretty bad on that back cinch and Dan, instead of pullin’, humped up and jumped forward, which gave the steer plenty of slack to rake me with his horns as I barely
got out of the way. The last jump Dan made gave the steer enough slack so that he had more length of rope from the post than Dan had. He raked old Dan down the side with one horn and got the blood in a place or two, then hit him in the chest and punctured a hole that brought Dan back to his senses. It was common horse sense that that cinch wasn’t as ticklish as the damage that steer was giving him, so he snorted, backed his ears, turned, and pulled that steer’s head back up to the snubbin’ post.

While Dan was takin’ lessons from that steer I took some too. I knew that this snubbin’-post business was going to be too risky for me to get all those steers’ eyes propped open. Cowboys don’t like footwork, post-hole diggin’, or using an ax, but it looked like I had my business in such a shape that I was going to have to think about doing some hard common labor. I cut a lot of good cedar poles, straight and about eight feet long, built me a small crowding pen in the corner of the big corral with a short chute that would hold two big steers at a time. I built the front of the chute solid, with no chute gate to let them out at, and the back of the chute was where you could block them with cedar poles crosswise and then back them out of the chute when you were through with them. Between cuttin’ poles and draggin’ them out of the canyon horseback, all this took me little over a week. The cattle weren’t getting any gentler in that time but they were gettin’ more used to seein’ a man and weren’t spooking quite as bad when I rode past the fence draggin’ a few poles with a saddle horn.

Early one morning I worked around as slow and quiet
as I could and got this nine head in the corral. I threw a slicker over the gate I brought them in at, so that they would be scared enough that they wouldn’t try to go back out that gate. These old steers were sure rank. They would fight a man afoot and they would fight you horseback, and it took a lot of dodgin’, jumpin’, and climbin’ fences to keep your good health. I finally got two of them in the crowding pen in the chute and blocked to where they couldn’t get out, and then I started the work of preparing these cattle’s attitude for driving without trying to get away and run into the brush.

I put a rope on the first steer and pulled it up against the post and corral fence on the fence side of the crowding chute. He bawled, fought, bellowed, and let out the alarm. I slit a small place from inside on his upper eyelid and then inside on the lower eyelid. I took one of those green live-oak pegs that I had sharpened on each end and stuck the ends through each slit I had made with my pocketknife and propped the steer’s eyelids open. The pegs had to be long enough to stretch the eyelids to where the pressure would hold them in place. The pegs didn’t touch the eyeball, and I wasn’t worried too much about the little dab of blood or the pain caused the steers ’cause any one of them would have horned me and my horse and killed us in a minute if he had gotten the chance. It was almost dark when I finished pegging the eyelids of the last steer, but it was a sight how gentle it made them. They looked at me and looked at my horse, but they never made another run at either of us.

The next morning I turned these cattle out by myself and rode along behind them and winged them from one
side to the other and drove them up a trail past my shack and turned them toward the trail that finally would lead out to the public road. I have drifted milk cows and pet horses and mules and all other classes of livestock across all kinds of country, but no animals have ever walked in the middle of a trail as far away from a swinging limb or bush as these steers did. I guess the pegs that crossed their eyeballs looked about the size of telephone poles, and after they had been in there overnight, I am sure their eyelids might have been a little sore.

I drove my nine head of cattle out of the brush up the road past Cresson and on to Weatherford in two days, and after I had them in a good set of loading chutes I flipped the pegs out of their eyelids and put the steers in trucks and sent them to the Fort Worth market. By now they weighed less than 800 pounds apiece and after the hauling and commission was paid netted me $21 a head, which came to $189. I had paid Newlywed and White Lightnin’ $16 each, which left me with $57 more than Mr. Banker would have owed me if he had paid me the $100, and at this time this was a big lot of money for a month’s work.

J
OE BARWISE IN FORT WORTH WAS ATTORNEY
for the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad and a few other major operators in Texas but his clientele was very limited. I was just a wild rough young cowboy, but Judge Barwise and I had had several livestock deals and our
dealings had always been pleasant and profitable and I suppose this was the reason that he was callin’ me long-distance. Along about this time you only got a long-distance call when it was a sure-enough must.

Charlie Sharp stepped out of his grocery store on the corner of the square to holler at me that Fort Worth was callin’ me long-distance. I rode up and dropped the reins on my horse (which is tyin’ a horse Texas-fashion) and went into the grocery. This was one of my several loafin’ spots and the local telephone operator knew that it would be one of the places where she might find me. Pretty soon Charlie got the operator and Judge Barwise asked me how soon I could come to Fort Worth. I knew that there would be a Red Ball bus just about noon and he told me to be on it if I wanted to make a good cow deal with him and the railroad.

I went to his office in Fort Worth and he was walkin’ the floor and a-waitin’ for me. There had been a small train accident up close to Bowie on the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad and a carload of forty head of black two-year-old heifers had been crippled or killed or turned loose. The best count that he had from the claim agent was that there was twenty-three alive and runnin’ loose on the vegetable farms, orchards, cornfields, and oat patches somewhere a few miles east of Bowie.

After he had painted the picture and told me his trouble, he asked me what I would give, range delivery, for twenty-three head of two-year-old Black Angus-and-Brahma-crossed heifers. I told him that I needed to use his phone and talk to the stockyards. According to his and the claim agent’s information, Gib Wright had bought
and sold the heifers. Gib already knew about the train wreck and he told me that the heifers would bring $26 and a few cents at the rate of five cents a pound. I hung up the phone and told Judge Barwise that it was a two and a half or three days’ ride on horseback from Weatherford to the place where the heifers were supposed to be and they would probably have to be caught one in a bunch, and I painted the story about as bad as I guess it really was and offered him $10 a head.

The Judge gave me a nice gentleman’s argument that would have sounded good before a jury about how little trouble it would be to catch these heifers, and how the railroad couldn’t afford to lose that much money, and how to take the price that I had offered him would be ridiculous.

I said, “Judge, in view of your analysis of the heifer situation, why don’t you just have the section crew catch ’em by hand and lead ’em back to town.”

He bowed up at me and looked over his glasses, cleared his throat, and said, “Ben, that’s ridiculous!”

I answered, “I was just tryin’ to even up the ridiculous score in this conversation.”

I got up about like I was about to leave and he said, “Where have you started for?”

I said, “Well, nowhere in particular, but anywhere that I would be goin’ I’d be doin’ more good than I’d be doin’ here arguin’ with you about a bunch of wild heifers three counties away that you never even saw, and I never even saw, and you suggestin’ that I pay money for them!”

“Well,” he said, “I’m just trying to represent the interest of the railroad, and I didn’t intend to be trying to take
advantage of you.” And, as an afterthought, he added, “I don’t think I need to worry about that, so maybe you better pay me for the heifers.”

I said, “I’ll give you a check for fifteen head and then pay you by the head for any more that I gather above that number.”

He said that would be all right because he knew I would finally catch them all.

With this batch of business tended to, I caught a bus later in the afternoon and went back home and rode off next morning with four good horses and a pack to go gather my black heifers out of the orchards and fields of the farmers that were pasturin’ ’em involuntarily.

The third day I found the place on the railroad right of way where the car had turned over and the cattle had gotten away. Of course, the railroad had been repaired in a matter of hours and the only signs were a few dead cattle and some new ties and rails. I found a creek with water in it close to the spot and lots of tall grass up and down the railroad right of way. It was late and I made camp and studied about my heifers till morning.

I rode toward Bowie the next morning and asked along the way about the heifers and everybody had something to tell me. Some of the folks were real nice and hoped I could catch them and told me to ride through their fields and pastures and do whatever I had to to get the heifers off of their land. Of course, there were a few that were hateful and wanted to know who they could sue for the watermelon or whatever else had been damaged and hoped that the railroad price for the stuff might be better than the town price.

I was fast to catch on, and that I had better explain that I wasn’t in any position to be doin’ any settlin’ or payin’ off for the railroad and the most help that I could be would be to get the stock off the land to where they wouldn’t do any more damage. I had gathered all kinds of wild stock and strays and I knew the Texas Stray Law. It had been written in the days of big ranches and was phrased to discourage farmers and nesters from unnecessarily penning livestock for damages.

In my conversation with those people that were a little huffy, I always explain that the one way that they could get some money for their damages was to pen the heifers that were runnin’ on them and have the sheriff or constable advertise them as strays.
I knew
that the law required that the animals strayed be confined in a pen, fed, watered, and properly cared for for a full twenty days before the sheriff or constable could sell them at auction. Then the man holding the strays could bid his amount of damages and was allowed ten cents per head per day for care for the number of days that he had them penned up. So I encouraged these farmers who were mad to pen all these heifers they could and “stray” them, since the owner, under the law, could claim them and pay the ten cents per head per day as soon as they were posted by law as strayed and didn’t have to wait the full twenty days.

Of course I could have argued with them about the damages and I sure would have been glad to pay the thirty or forty cents per head due for these heifers penned and kept a few days instead of me havin’ to ride after them, but none of these “pumpkin rollers” fell for that
story because they knew they couldn’t catch them and, besides, none of them had a pen or corral of any sort that would hold these little jumpin’ crow-lookin’ black heifers.