Wild Cow Tales (2 page)

Cattle were plentiful, but they were all doin’ real good and nearly ever’body wanted to keep their calves until they were bigger and sell ’em to me that fall. So it took me all week to buy a load of the odd head here and yonder that were ready to be sold. It was late Saturday afternoon before I got back across the Brazos River and up to the Weavers.

Other members of the family were still out in the field, but Mike was in the shade of the trees in the front yard settin’ in the swing with his right leg in a cast. I
pushed my cattle on up the road past the house where they could graze. It was late in the afternoon and it wasn’t any trouble to get ’em to stop and graze.

I rode up in the yard and stepped off my horse and said, “Mike, what happened to you?”

He said, “Well, I don’t guess I’ll have you any extra steers because I roped one of ’em, he jerked my horse down on me and broke my leg, and the rope came off the saddle horn after my horse fell and the steer got away.”

I said, “Mike, you’re graduatin’ from a farm boy to a cowboy ’cause you don’t make a cowboy until you get a leg or two or sumpin’ broke, either by wild cattle or bad horses.”

This didn’t seem to console him much, and he just put on a weak grin and said, “Maybe so.”

While he was explainin’ to me how it all happened, the rest of the family came in from the field, and after we all had our howdies, Pam spoke up and said, “Mike, have you remembered your manners enough to tell Ben that we want him to spend the night with us?”

And, of course, he hadn’t, so his remark was, “Ben don’t have to be told. He knows he can spend the night here.”

I said, “Well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with my cattle unless I just let ’em bed down in the grass along the side of the road.” This wasn’t too uncommon a practice to let cattle bed along the road; and if you’d driven em pretty hard all day, they wouldn’t drift too far before mornin’.

Mr. Weaver again spoke up and told me that I could drive ’em up the road to the first field and turn ’em in the
gate where he had already finished threshing his oats and that there’d be enough pickin’s around the edges of the oat stubble for the cattle to fill up durin’ the night. And the next mornin’ we could put the cattle that I bought from him with them.

This all sounded good and didn’t take but a little while to tend to. We had a nice supper and a good visit and I gave ’em the news of several families on down below the river that they knew. One girl had sent a new pattern book by me to Pam. And another item of news was that there was gonna be an all-day singin’ at their church next Sunday, and ever’body I saw had told me to be sure and tell the Weavers to come. This was the sort of thing that made country cow buyers worth their keep to country people.

While we were settin’ on the porch that night, Mike’s daddy explained how come Mike to rope the big steer and break his own leg. There had been some Fort Worth cowmen that were in the livestock commission business on the Fort Worth stockyards, and one of ’em was a cattle buyer for a packin’ company on the Fort Worth stockyards that had leased some pasture land on the old Kuteman Ranch. When they moved their cattle out they lost five big steers that had gotten out into the Brazos River bottom; several cowboys had tried to catch ’em. Mike wanted to make some extra money and had gone over into the river bottom and jumped one of these big steers, and got into the storm, and after dark Mr. Weaver and a neighbor had gotten uneasy when Mike didn’t return and had gone over there and found him layin’ under
a tree on the riverbank with a leg broke, waitin’ for somebody to come hunt him.

The story was that the Fort Worth cowmen were offerin’ $10 a head for anybody that’ould catch these steers and had offered to sell ’em, range delivery, but hadn’t any takers on their range-delivery proposition. Mike didn’t have much idea about what these cattle would weigh, but Mr. Weaver had seen one or two of ’em at a distance and said they were about three- to four-year-old steers and might weigh as much as 900 to 1,000 pounds per head.

Pam and her mother gave me some messages for people farther up the road and also a small list of thread and stuff for me to take to a store in town and they’d send it out on the mail hack. I got my cattle throwed together and started up the road with ’em the next mornin’ a little after sunup.

When a man’s buyin’ cattle and puttin’ ’em in a herd and they’re all strange to each other, ever’time he puts in a fresh one there’s a few fights. They don’t drive good together, they don’t follow a leader, and they’re always lookin’ for a break in the fences along the road or a chance to turn down a blind lane. When you come to a country plank bridge with a few holes in it or maybe a whole plank out, you’ve got a real batch of cow work to do. There’s never been any ranch work or rodeo performances that would ever teach a horse what he will have to know if you’re gonna use him for a jackpot cow horse.

A country cow buyer’s horse has to be good. First, he must have a nice way of travelin’ to get you down the
road and over the country, then he needs to have a good rein, lots of cow sense, and endowed with more than a common amount of patience, together with an unbelievable amount of real stamina, for a cow buyer to ever get back to town on him with a roadful of mixed cattle.

As I drove my cattle up the road, I kept thinkin’ about those five big steers. The Kuteman Ranch was not leased to anybody and the five wild steers were in there away from any other cattle. As I drove along I decided that I would turn into the first gate on the Kuteman Ranch and drift my cattle down through the river-bottom pasture and came out on the Balch Road, which ran north and south on the east side of the Kuteman pasture. I could still turn north and go into town, and it wouldn’t be much more than another half-day drive. Wild steers just might come bawlin’ and pawin’ dirt over their back and fight with these strange cattle of mine while I just drove ’em on out into the road.

I knew I’d be takin’ a pretty big chance of gettin’ out on the other side of the ranch with all my cattle because they weren’t stayin’ together too good anyway. This didn’t bother me too much; I was ridin’ the best horse I ever owned—mare named Beauty—and she could tell what a cow was thinkin’ about, with the cow on the other side of the pasture. I turned the cattle into the Kuteman pasture and drove about halfway across the ranch without seein’ or hearin’ any kind of cattle. There was a creek ran out of the pasture and down into the Brazos River at the east side of the ranch that was covered with plenty of good grass and shade. I was lettin’ these cattle graze and driftin’ ’em about as slow as I could for two reasons:
lettin’ them fill up would keep them quiet and easier to drive, and it’d give these wild steers more time to locate them.

As the cattle grazed into the glade on the creek bank, two big red steers bounced out of the bush, threw their heads up, and wrung their tails and bawled real loud like wild, bad cattle will do when they’re surprised but not scared. I stopped and let ’em mill into my cattle, and sure ’nuff they started a bawlin’, dirt-throwin’ cow fight! It was just a matter of seconds until the other three steers came out of the brush and joined ’em. I didn’t holler or whistle or make any smart cowboy noises. I rode up slow enough to keep the cow fight and the cow grazin’ movin’ towards the other side of the pasture without makin’ any show that I was interested in breakin’ up the fight or hurryin’ up the drive.

In about a half an hour these cattle were all grazin’ along slow together and just occasionally one of ’em would make a run at the other one. I took a long way around and stayed in the brush, got out in front of ’em, and opened the gate into the road. Then I dropped back in the thicket and waited for the cattle to work themselves out into the open, which must have been about another hour or so. As they got up close to the gate, some old, fat, dry milk cows (that I had bought from farmers) that are always inquisitive about an open gate started out into the road. They turned the wrong direction down the road back towards the river, but I wasn’t gonna let that unnerve me until they all went through that gate; then I could shut the gate and have a little race with ’em down that road a mile or two if I had to go that far
to turn ’em back. A lone cowboy with a bunch of cattle always welcomes the possibility of gettin’ his herd between two fences down a lane. But I did better’n this. I shut the gate and ran down the inside of the fence horseback until I got past the herd, then I got down afoot, crawled through fence, and drove the cattle back up the road afoot. Ole Beauty followed the fence line and me and the cattle back up to the gate where I let her out and got back on her and started to drive to town with five more big steers that I hadn’t paid for yet. I didn’t even know whether I could buy ’em or not, and if I didn’t get to the Fort Worth owners before someone else did I might be accused of stealing them.

It was a little after high noon Sunday, and I was about ten miles from town. With good luck I figured I might make it to the railroad stock pens a little before dark, and if there was a car available (sometimes you had to order stockcars several days in advance) I could load these cattle out that night and they’d be on the Fort Worth market Monday morning.

The day wasn’t much too hot and these cattle traveled pretty good. I sent word to town by a fellow that passed in a car to a coupla cowboys to meet me in the edge of town and help me through town to the stock pens. And sure ’nuff about five o’clock they rode into sight, and we had just begun to go up South Main, where there were people and yards and flowerbeds and clotheslines and sidewalks and kids playin’, and lots of other stuff that didn’t help cow drivin’ none. But with a minor amount of chousing the cattle and it bein’ Sunday we didn’t get too much cussin’ for crossin’ people’s yards, and we made it to the stock pens about an hour before dark.

Railroad agents in those days, so far
as cowboys were concerned, weren’t exactly God’s most noble chillun. They were independent and hateful and wore long black sleeves to keep their shirts clean and green-billed eye shades that made ’em look more yellow than they already were. They carried big watches on long chains to look at often instead of answering you when you asked ’em what time the next cow train would be in. Along the Texas-Pacific Railroad, they kept the stock pens locked until you rode up to the depot and took your hat off and begged ’em for a key.

Well, I’d gone through all this lotsa times. So I went up to argue with whoever and ever’body that was there about gettin’ a car to load that night. And I heard all kinds of reasons and excuses why they couldn’t spot a car on such short notice. So me and my cowboy friends tied our saddle horses onto an empty stockcar and took pinch bars and pulled and worked it down the railroad track even with the loadin’ chute. It’s little stunts like this that could be cited to railroad stockholders to explain to them what happened to a lot of their cow business.

I caught a passenger train to Fort Worth about midnight, and my cowboy friends loaded my cattle about three o’clock in the morning on a train that would get the cattle to Fort Worth in time for the Monday-morning market. When I got off the train in Fort Worth I took a streetcar out North Main to Exchange Avenue where I sat around the old Stockyards Hotel dining room and ate and drank and visited with the boys that drifted in and out until about daylight. I went up to the Livestock Exchange Building, and there were a few people showin’ up for the day’s business and the stockyards had about filled
up with cattle. In a little while comes the commission man that owned the five steers, and I saw him go upstairs to open his office. I had always shipped my cattle to Daggett and Keene Commission Company, but I had billed out the car to this man’s commission company before I got on the train. I followed him into his office and there were a few other people that came in at the same time, and the day’s work was about to start.

Then he turned and looked at me and said, “Do you want to see me?”

I said, “Yes, sir. I wondered if you wanted to sell me the five steers, range delivery, in the Kuteman pasture.”

Well this sure broke the ice on that ole boy. He reached up and opened the swingin’ door that separated the loafin’ part of the office from the business part of the office and shook hands with me and went to playin’ like he thought he knew me. While we were talkin’ about the big steers, a man walked down the hall that he hollered at to come in; he was the packer buyer that was his partner on the cattle. He told him what my mission was, and they’as in a hurry to explain to me that they could catch the cattle. That it wouldn’t be any trouble, but that they just hadn’t had time. And that they was awful busy so they guessed they’d sell ’em to me. They wanted to lead me to believe that it wasn’t because the cattle was wild, it was just because they was such big operators that they didn’t have time to go catch ’em.

I listened to all of this and waited for ’em to tell me how much they’d take for ’em. They said they hadn’t seen ’em in a year, but that they thought they ought to be worth $40 a head.

This Mr. Packer Buyer spoke up and said, “Well, if my partner will take that for ’em, I will, but it sounds awful cheap to me.” He went on to say that the demand for big steers was real good and if they were on the stockyards that mornin’ they’d be worth eight cents a pound!