Wild Cow Tales (29 page)

The last week in April I shipped two hundred and seventy-eight head of three- and four-year-old steers and unloaded them at Pawhuska, Oklahoma. We drove northeast from Pawhuska to near the headwaters of Bird Creek and Buck Creek, where I had made arrangements to graze these cattle through the summer. Four hundred miles north from South Texas was still a little chilly in late April but there had been plenty of real good rain and bluestem sage grass had begun to put out for spring.

My stompin’ ground to loaf and buy chuck supply for my camp was the little town of Foraker. I had a good camp under a big old shed that was once built to store hay in and was boxed in on the north and open on three sides. This was one of the best summers that I ever spent out in a camp summerin’ a bunch of steers. It rained every time it should to make the grass grow, the sun came out right behind the rains, and we didn’t have any weather that would have been termed “bad” all through the summer.

Big steers will get fat on bluestem or other good grazin’ in the summertime because they have enough growth that their frame is mature and what they graze will turn into good, firm beef. The market was steady and even went up a little and I began to ship these cattle and I would cut out three or four carloads of the fattest ones. We shipped cattle every week in September and had about finished when we had a hard killin’ frost in October. Cattle will not put on any more flesh after frost and the grass dries up and loses a lot of its food value.

I had a remnant of twenty-one steers not fattened as good as the rest of the herd. There were a few big fat steers in the bunch that every time we rounded up and cut some to ship, these few big cattle had managed to get away. There were two big yellow steers with a little brindle along their sides that had been hard to hold in the roundup when I had shipped out of South Texas, and these two were still the ringleaders of the ones that had been gettin’ away. The pasture was mostly open in high rollin’ hills and valleys. However, there was a considerable amount of brush along the headwaters of Bird Creek and these cattle had begun to hide out over there on water and in that thicket. I had a good Okie farm boy that was makin’ a cowhand helpin’ me, and after we had shipped the last several cars of steers, we started out in dead earnest to get this remnant, which would be about a carload.

The first morning we saw a big yellow steer high on the ridge, and I said to Okie, “The rest of them will be just over that ridge grazin’ on the slope.”

We dropped down below them, which would be
south, and we intended to drive them north to the corral of this pasture. We were half a mile from that big yellow steer, and he was lookin’ west and we were ridin’ south and acted like we didn’t see him, but that didn’t fool him none. He bawled real loud, shook his head, and wrung his tail and ran down the slope to signal, and the whole herd dived in the brush just about the time we got in sight of them.

We worked and hollered and rode through the brush across the creek and back and forth, and it was just rough enough for us and our horses that cattle could turn back and get by us. We made about three hard drives at them with no luck. I hollered at Okie to meet me at the head of the draw and we worked our way out of the brush. By this time the morning was gone, so we went back to camp to fix a batch of grub for dinner. It was not hot weather and it didn’t hurt to try to work these cattle anytime during the day. However, they were fat and I wanted to get them to the stock pens fat and I wasn’t interested in makin’ a week’s or ten days’ long, hard chousin’ cow-workin’ on this last carload of steers.

That afternoon we found these cattle way over on the east fence line in the open and we were ridin’ up behind them from the valley through the slope when that other big yellow steer came out of the creek bottom from behind the water and in front of us, runnin’ at top tilt and ran into the herd that was grazin’, and the race was on. Of course, they got back in the thicket on us and we were no better off than before we had started early that morning.

Big, grass-fed, fat, crossbred, motley-faced brindle
steers are wise and fresh and discourage a cowboy from droppin’ a loose rope around everything he sees movin’. I sure didn’t feel like it would be smart to rope these steers one at a time and jerk and pull my horses the way they would have to to handle them, and worse than that it would cause lots of shrink and loss of weight on these cattle; but these big aged steers had learned to like that blue grass and didn’t intend to give up easy. I realize now that during the other times that we rounded up this pasture and shipped fat steers that these two yellow steers and that little herd they were with had worked themselves out a signal system, and they stood watch either from front or back or from side to side of the rest of the herd against the chance of any cowboys sneakin’ up on them. Before we went to sleep I rustled through my personal belongin’s and found a big, half-circle horse doctor’s needle that I usually carried to sew up a cut horse with. You might not need it but once a year, and you hoped that you never would when you were camped out workin’ stock.

Next morning early we could see high on the ridge one of these big yellow steers standing watch, and I said to Okie, “let’s catch him before he gets to the herd.”

When we really took after this old steer it sort of surprised him. I guess he was used to cowboys tryin’ to head him and he didn’t think about one followin’ and ropin’ him. I was ridin’ a good fast grey horse that could sure put me up for a loop at this big set of horns. I pitched a big blocker loop on him and caught him around the head and over one horn, and the rope took up right over his windpipe. The best way in the world to catch a sure-enough
fat steer is to rope and choke him at the windpipe right at the point of the throat and put the rope between the horns so it won’t slip down his neck to where there is a lot of hide and flesh wadded up between his windpipe and your rope. This big stout grey horse couldn’t throw the steer, but he was doin’ a good job of shuttin’ off his wind.

I had put Okie on a horse called Charlie and he was workin’ fast, doing his best to pick up this old steer’s hind feet with a rope, and I drug this big steer around and got him choked and as he moved his back legs, sure enough, Okie finally
got
his rope high up about even with his hocks and we pulled him down on the ground. Both these horses had experience in headin’ and heelin’ big steers.

I rubbed old Charlie on the hip and talked to him and pulled a hair out of his tail about eighteen inches long. I had stuck my crooked needle in the flap of my shirt pocket. I threaded this needle with that stout black horsehair and Okie got a death grip on this old steer’s horns and turned his nose up like a cowboy bulldoggin’ a steer. I proceeded to sew his eyelids together with the horsehair. Of course, he offered a more than reasonable amount of objection, but I had a horse holdin’ on each end of him and a stout farmboy that was fast becomin’ a cowboy holdin’ his head. It took about thirty minutes to shut out the daylight to where his watch duty was gonna be about over. We took our rope off and let him up and he stood there, wrung his tail, shook his head, and bawled. There was hardly any blood made by this needle and he had no reason to complain on the grounds of pain, but it was the fact that he couldn’t
see all
and
know all
that was
makin’ him mad. He very cautiously eased off down the draw, smellin’ and bawlin’ and hopin’ to find the rest of the herd, but he didn’t run into them and scatter them. As we rode closer, that other big yellow steer came from across the creek on the other slope and ran into the middle and, by himself, led them into the thicket. We just rode back to camp and rested until after dinner and waited for them to come out.

We had ridden to the other low side of the creek where it ran under the fence and worked our way around until we could see the color of cattle in the thicket. We stayed there a long time and talked and visited in a low tone of voice and drew pictures of various kinds of brands in the dirt with the end of a broomweed and passed the time like cowboys generally do when waitin’ out stock.

It was late afternoon when this other big yellow steer eased out ahead of the herd to take watch on the ridge and he was surprised when we cut him off from the herd and ran him uphill and paid no attention to the rest of the herd. He was a little faster—maybe I was a little slower—and we ran him a little farther, but this time Okie got a throw at his head and I got his hind feet and we stretched him out quick. I pulled another horsehair and threaded my needle and made a nice little hemstitchin’ job on both of his eyelids. We took the rope off and rode away and left him here. It was almost dusk.

Next morning after good sunup we managed to get in behind this bunch of cattle and cut them off from the brush. This pair of big yellow steers were by far the biggest and walkin’ the nicest behind the herd, which was the only way they had figured they could drift. They could
smell and hear the cattle in front of them. The rest of these cattle really weren’t very wild. These old big steers had been leadin’ them astray.

When we got them in the stock pens, which were big and high and stout, with the shipping gates fastened, I put these two big steers in a branding chute, put a rope on their horns, and pulled their heads up tight to a post. With a small pocketknife I cut the horsehair and let their eyes loose and knew that they were glad to see daylight, but I am sure they didn’t exactly appreciate their surroundings.

Ben K. Green, whose
Horse Tradin
’ is already a minor classic at the very least in a rich assemblage of Western Americana, is the kind of a Westerner who almost crawled out of the cradle and into a saddle, spending his childhood, adolescence, and young manhood on horseback. He studied veterinary medicine in the United States and abroad and practiced in the Far Southwest in one of the last big horse counties in North America. When he eventually gave up his practice and research, he returned to Cumby, Texas, where he now lives, raising good horses and cattle.