Wild Cow Tales (20 page)

Me and Beauty took the two heifers back to the school grounds and I rested that afternoon and never did unyoke this last pair of heifers. The next morning I broke camp, put my pack on one of my horses, and turned the other two in the road with my crowhoppin’, head-down black heifers and drove them into Bowie and waved goodbye to my farmer friends that lived along the road. I loaded my cattle late that afternoon at Bowie, put my saddle horses in the other end of the car (there was plenty of room), and rode the caboose into Fort Worth.

The next morning we put my heifers in a chute in the stockyards and took all the ropes off and drove them down to the commission firm’s sellin’ yards to be sold that day. I got on the streetcar and went over to big-town Fort Worth and paid Judge Barwise for the other eight heifers.

When I finished the deal and started home with my horses, I wasn’t much richer or much older, but I was wiser in that I knew how to tie a cow brute’s head to her forefoot after I had a tree between her and my horse.

O
NE NICE, BALMY SPRING DAY LESTER
Lewis, who was a jackpot cow trader and a good friend of mine, came up the road followin’ a small bunch of mixed farmer-type of cattle, Jerseys and crossbreeds. He was grazin’ them along the road. When he got even
with the ranch gate, he rode inside and I looked out and hollered at him to get down and come in. We would have dinner ready in a little bit. Me and some more boys were batchin’ takin’ care of a bunch of steers and we all took time about cookin’ and this happened to be one of the days I wasn’t cookin’.

Lester came in and we had our howdy’s around and sat on the edge of the porch just outside of the kitchen visitin’, when Dave asked Lester if he had any milk cows in that bunch that was givin’ milk. Lester said he had a good cow that was givin’ plenty of milk. So Dave up and says, “Ben, why don’t you trade for us a milk cow?” Well, I never drink milk and hadn’t felt like I had been doin’ without anything good, and I sure wasn’t goin’ to milk a cow—I felt like that was “woman’s work.” Me and the boys jawed back and forth and they agreed that they would milk the cow and take care of the milk if I would trade for a milk cow.

Dinner wasn’t quite ready so Lester and I walked out among his cows, that had stopped along the road and were grazin’. The cow he showed me was a nice, dish-faced, crumpled-horn, beautiful small Jersey cow with a great big udder. Lester said he didn’t get the calf with her and didn’t know how long she had been milking, but said she gave so much milk that he had to milk her out this morning on the road. I asked him why would a man trade off that good a milk cow. He said the fellow that he got her from told him that she was suckin’ a cow of his, and he said, “I know it’s so because since I’ve had her she has sucked a cow of mine.”

I let out a big horse laugh and said that wouldn’t be
no problem on this ranch because I didn’t have anything but steers and he thought that was kinda funny and laughed too.

I traded him a good two-year-old halter-broke young horse even for the cow, which wasn’t a bad trade for either one of us. We turned the cow into a small trap pasture by the house and tied the young horse to the gatepost so Lester could lead him when he started to drive his cows up the road.

We was all sittin’ around the table eatin’ a big batchin’ dinner of beef, beans, and taters, and I was sittin’ on the side facin’ out the window. Everybody was nearly finished eatin’ when I looked out the window and said, “That damn cow is suckin’ herself.”

Lester said, “Yep, she’s suckin’ your cow now.”

O
NE JULY MORNING I WAS IN THE
Fort Worth Stockyards upon “the high bridge,” which was an overpass over the railroad tracks that went through the stockyards for footbackers, and when you wanted to find somebody you got upon the high bridge and looked
for them. I wasn’t exactly huntin’ anybody, I was just killin’ time, when a nicely dressed uncowman-lookin’ fellow stopped and said, “I hear you buy cattle, range delivery, and catch them yourself.”

I said, “I have been known to do that foolish a stunt, but I’m not as anxious now for that kind of trade as I used to be.”

Well, he introduced himself by that time, and he was from some land and cattle company in Chicago and they had foreclosed a ranch on some poor cowboy out in Borden County. He thought he had eight big steers in a three-section pasture that he would like to sell me, and he talked on to tell who all had seen these steers, and he was sure there were eight of them and didn’t suppose they would be any trouble to get. It was just that he was from Chicago and didn’t have much of any way to get to these cattle himself.

Of course, I could tell by the way he was dressed, the tone of voice he was usin’, and the way his fingernails was manicured that he could have done just as much about these cattle in Chicago as he would be-able to in the pasture with them.

He talked on a little and I got a good idea of the direction where this pasture was, and I knew that it was a good two hundred miles or more from Fort Worth, and it would be a good deal of trouble to get me and my horses out there, and after I got eight head of steers, what I would do with them? There wouldn’t be enough to ship and I would have to sell them at Snyder or Sweetwater or somewhere to another cow buyer, and I told him all this and told him that maybe he ought to get him somebody
closer to the cattle to buy ’em. He countered this proposition by tellin’ me that he was on his way back to Chicago and that he wasn’t going to make a trip back out to Borden County to sell eight head of steers.

By now, I had made it pretty plain that it wasn’t a very good proposition for me, so I finally asked him what he would take for these steers. I didn’t think it was any use in askin’ him how big they were or what they would weigh or how old they were, ’cause I didn’t figure he would have enough sense to know anyway. He asked me if I would give $400 for all of them, and I said, “No, much obliged. That might be all they are worth when they are in the stockyards.”

He talked roundabout what stock were bringin’—six and seven cents a pound—and that these cattle would surely be worth twice that much, so I said, “To show you how far apart we are, I figure I would give you half that much, which would be $200.”

He had a pair of fancy gloves in his hand and he twisted them up in a tight wad and looked over the stockyard, kinda bit his lip like a nervous woman, and said, “Well, if that’s as much as you will give for them, I think I will sell them to you, range delivery.”

I started to pay him out of my pocket and he said, “No, let’s go to the office of John Clay Commission Company, and I will give you a bill of sale for them and then you can pay me.”

Well, that was gettin’ proper for just a common trade of eight head of steers, but I didn’t exactly know how they done cow business in Chicago, so we went to John Clay Commission office in the Exchange Building and finished
the deal. After I had handed him the money and he had handed me the bill of sale that I didn’t ask for, he sets in with a long legal rigamarole about these being my cattle and from here on I would be responsible for anybody they injured or any damage they did, and he went on and on, and from what he said, you would have thought these cattle was in the middle of a flower garden surrounded by little children in downtown Fort Worth. I knew there were so few people in Borden County in those days that all that conversation that he put out forewarnin’ me was wasted.

I spent the rest of the day up and down the stockyards for no particular reason except to stay in the shade of the different commission offices and stand around the Exchange Building where them big ceiling fans was a-stirrin’ up the hot air.

That night I went over to the main part of Fort Worth and was eatin’ supper in the Texas Hotel. Of course, cowboy-like, I was sittin’ at the counter with my hat on. Cowboys never considered it impolite to sit at the counter with their hat on, but if they sit down at one of them tables they are supposed to take their hat off.

There was a bunch of town ranchers sittin’ at a table behind me and they had been out to Dr. Harris’s ranch and bought some registered cattle that day. I wasn’t exactly eavesdropping but it was easy to follow by their conversation that they were going to ship these cattle to Sweetwater to a ranch that one of them had just bought. I could tell by the conversation that some oil wells had bought the ranch and that this town rancher didn’t know too much about what he was doing and the men were
worried about shipping the registered cattle in stockcars without a caretaker with them.

When I had finished my steak, I turned around to get up off my stool and I mentioned to them that I couldn’t help overhearin’ their conversation and wondered how many registered cattle they were shippin’ in this stockcar. Well, Mr. Oilman Rancher spoke up and said they had eight bulls and four cows, and of course, he could tell quick by looking at me I would very well come in the category of caretaker and he quickly asked me if I wanted the job of riding in the stockcar to Sweetwater, Texas, with these cattle. Of course, the first dang thing that I asked him was how much he was goin’ to pay and when was he goin’ to load out.

This was Thursday and they were going to load out Saturday, and he would pay $50 for a good man to ride with them. He went on to tell me what all kinds of care he wanted them to have, and I told him that I would sure take the job with one understanding. I explained that a stockcar would carry about twenty-five cattle like he was talking about and there would be plenty of room left in the car to load three horses to take with me; I would unload them at Sweetwater after we had unloaded the cattle. Him and his “yes” men discussed this a little and didn’t see that there would be anything wrong with it because he was having to pay a minimum charge for the car anyway and it wouldn’t cost anything extra for my three horses.

We worked out the details and I got on the bus that night and went to Weatherford to get my horses and make my arrangements to be gone awhile and rode the
horses back to Aledo, where the bulls were to be loaded, which was only about a fifteen-mile ride.

Everything went off fine. I took good care of their cattle on the trip and took good care of my horses by feedin’ ’em some of the bulls’ feed, unloaded them at Sweetwater, turned the cattle over to the man there that had been waitin’ for them, and saddled up and started towards Snyder with my horses about Monday morning.

I camped at Hermleigh the first night. Next morning I rode through Snyder and turned west and camped on Bull Creek the next night. Then I turned north up Bull Creek about fifteen miles and found the pasture where my eight head of steers were supposed to be.

I rode the pasture out and it wasn’t too big, maybe two thousand acres, but it was covered with real dense mesquite thicket with few open glades or high ridges in the pasture. I found the windmill, which was the only water in the pasture, and about a hundred yards from the windmill was a good set of corrals that had been built out of mesquite poles stuck in the ground maybe a foot deep with a cable running around the bottom of them about a foot from the ground and a cable running around the top about a foot from the top of the poles with a heavy post set about every ten feet with a cable tied to each big post. There was one big corral and two small ones fenced off of the west end of the big corral. And there was a water trough piped from the windmill built about in the middle of the big corral, and the fence that divided the two small corrals divided the water trough, so there would be water in all three corrals from one trough.

I had left my extra horses in one of the small corrals
while I rode out the pasture and got acquainted with it. When you start to make a camp in the pasture where you are
tryin’
to trap wild cattle, you need to make your camp out away from the water and the corrals where you are going to try to pen your cattle and where the prevailing winds won’t carry your scent too bad. Since it seemed that most of the prevailing winds in that country would be from the south-southeast, I decided to go over to the west fence line about a quarter mile from the windmill on a high knoll where there were a few live-oak trees and make camp and wait till morning to start my hunt for my sight-unseen steer buy.