Wild Cow Tales

by Ben K. Green

  By the early 1950’s this clamor for baby beef, short, compact breeding stock, and from using the advice of educated specialists, cattle were so greatly improved that during winter feeding time or during drought they would meet you in the flat part of the pasture between the windmill and the feed trough and, needless to say, the struggle to try to make money off of such unproductive cattle with the constantly climbing overhead put the cattle industry as a whole in the category of a poor business that for the most part had to be subsidized by oil wells or some other source of income derived from outside the livestock industry. Cattlemen that through their stubbornness had stayed with crossbreed cattle still had cows that produced milk and raised big calves. This sort of operator was ofttimes condemned by the brilliant, educated specialists of the animal kingdom because of his cattle’s lack of uniformity in color or some other characteristic that would not affect the weight of the cattle and would have no effect on the beef and, in fact, would be some criticism of no material consequence.

  By the beginning of the 1940’s the American way of life had been modified by modern conveniences, easy modes of travel and air conditioning, to where the human appetite rebelled at the taste of excessive tallow or other fats. The modern housewife began to demand lighter cuts of beef with enough finish to ensure flavor and easy preparation in cooking and at the same time that the meat be trimmed of all excessive tallow and other waste materials such as cartilage, excessive bone, and so forth.

  Tallow that is being trimmed from beef that sells for as much as a dollar a pound or more must be sold as waste for as little as seven cents a pound. This situation has caused packers to heavily penalize overfinished, over-fat cattle that carry too much tallow, and today’s trend in breeding cattle is to try to select breeding stock that will have a good growth factor and produce cattle that will gain economically to a point of light finish and will dress out with a minimum amount of waste with the maximum amount of red meat.

  Lightweight young beef will be softer, which in a sense may be considered more tender, and it is true that this kind of meat is juicier than some of the best beef from heavy cattle. This juice cooks out very fast and beef from young cattle shrinks extremely much in cooking as compared to beef from aged cattle. To those who know, the flavor and food value of meat from young lightweight cattle is far inferior to the high quality of beef from older cattle. However, it will be hard for people of this generation and generations to come to miss something they have never had.

  The next twenty years will be marked by numerous mistakes and failures before the ideal beef-type animal that is acceptable to the breeder, feeder, packer, and the housewife will be produced.

  THE ONE

  THAT

  GOT AWAY

  IT WAS LATE SUMMER AND I HAD BEGUN to put some lightweight heifers in the feed lot to feed during the fall and winter months before and after school. This feed-lot deal of mine was not very big. I would feed forty or fifty head and send them to fort Worth in small truckloads as these certain individuals got fat enough to send to market. (About five cattle would fill a truck.)

  This was sort of a new trick in the cattle-feeding business. Anybody that had a feed lot close to the Fort Worth market could take advantage of using this trucking way of gettin’ cattle to town. By being able to send just a few head at a time, it was not necessary to overfeed the fattest ones waiting for the others to get fat enough to make up a full carload, and too, the same trucks could haul a few back from Fort Worth to go into the feed lot. It made the feeder’s operation a more continuous kind of turnover in the cattle-feeding business and gave a small feeder like me a chance to make a little more money.

  I had the east half of the old Lovelady Wagonyard in Weatherford leased for a feed lot. There was a short-haired cherry-red heifer in the last truckload of cattle that I had brought from Fort Worth. This little heifer refused to get up to the feed trough and eat, and she walked the fence and bawled two straight days and nights. The third morning when I came down to feed, things were noticeably quiet, and when I glanced over the lot, I realized that the little dark-red heifer was gone. The gates were still fastened and there were no breaks in the plank fence and no sign of how she got out. I made a few inquiries around the Silas Kemp Wagonyard and over at Dorsey Grain Company behind the feed lot, but nobody had seen my heifer.

  The way you hunt stray cattle or stray horses if you know the lay of the land is to go to the spot that you think you would go if you were a stray heifer.

  When I finished feedin’, I started ridin’ out Town Creek up the railroad right of way that ran parallel to the creek and out through the west end of town. There was always plenty of fresh spring water in the creek and green grass up and down the banks and this by late summer would be an ideal place for a stray heifer. My hunch wasn’t too bad wrong because I picked up her track where she had drank, but she wasn’t stoppin’ to graze—she was travelin’ west, and when she hit the fence line in the west end of town where there wasn’t any more open land, she had drifted along the fence south to a public road that went west to the town of Garner.

  I met Henry Clark comin’ to town in a wagon. We visited a few minutes, and he told me that the heifer passed his house about daylight, when he was out at the barn by the road tendin’ to his stock. This was the first man that had seen my heifer and the distance he lived from town meant that she had gotten out about three or four o’clock in the morning.

  I picked up her track along the side of the road and her tracks showed she was steppin’ out pretty fast and still not stoppin’ to graze. Public country roads many times followed fence lines with the curve of a pasture or a field, and this road made a big, wide curve about three quarters of a mile and then turned back to the same generally westerly direction. The red heifer was goin’ west and had her mind made up about it. Her tracks showed very plainly where she had come to the curve in the road and jumped the fence.

  I took the staples a-loose and pushed the wire down and stepped my horse over the wire. I let the wire back up and tied it to the post—no real damage done—and followed her tracks, thinkin’ that she might be turnin’ back towards a creek that ran back towards the north. As I followed her tracks up to the road on the other side of the wide curve she had jumped back over the fence where the road had turned due west, and I let the fence down in the same manner as the first one and picked up her tracks in the soft dirt of the gravel road.

  A little before noon I rode in to Mr. Vance’s store at Garner. I knew Mr. Vance well; he was a fine old country merchant and a gentleman of the old school who was interested in his community and the welfare of his neighbors.

  I got a cold Coke out of the icebox, bought a box of cookies, and was talkin’ to Mr. Vance and tellin’ him about my heifer when a cute little cotton-headed girl maybe five years old came runnin’ in at the back door of the store. She didn’t talk plain enough to say “Mr. Vance” but she said something that sounded like it, and her face was all a-beam and her bright blue eyes were wide and joyful as she blared out, “Mr. Bance, Reddy Calf com’d home!”

  Mr. Vance shot a quick glance at me and went to talking to the little girl and pattin’ her on the head and tellin’ her very gently that he was sure glad that her Reddy Calf had come home. With this she dashed out the back door and ran across the lot to a rather run-down little old house that the front porch was almost level with the ground.

  Another cotton-headed girl maybe ten years old was feedin’ Reddy Calf cornbread out of a pan and a baby girl maybe two years old was sittin’ on top of Reddy Calf, and the one that had spread the news had run back and was combing the switch of Reddy Calf’s tail. I watched a few minutes and my cookies tasted like sand and my Coke turned sour. I must have had a bewildered look on my face when Mr. Vance began to explain that these were motherless little girls that their father was trying to raise and make a living for; someone had given them Reddy Calf as a baby and they had raised it for a pet. Mr. Vance looked away from me and out towards the por
ch and the calf and said, “I know now where the father got the money to pay up the grocery bill with last week.”

  He had his arms folded, as was his custom, and as he walked up through the store and I followed him, he said, “Ben, I’ve got a milk-pen calf about that size and the cow is nearly dry and she’s fat too. I’ll sell you the cow and calf for $50 and whatever interest you’ve got in any other livestock in the community.”

  We went out to the barn close to the store to look at the cow and calf. The fat cow would bring probably $60 and the fat calf was worth more than the one I had lost, so we turned them into the road. I paid him the $50 and started driving my new stock back to town, and neither of us ever mentioned that Reddy Calf was the one that got away or that the calf he was givin’ me, virtually speakin’, had anything to do with money that he had got for the grocery bill.

  COWBOY

  BANKIN’

  HOT JULY DAYS WILL CAUSE A COWBOY to start long rides way before daylight so he can shade up in the heat of the day and save his horse and still get in a full day’s ride. Shultz Bros. had leased the Coleman pasture, about twelve miles north of Weatherford, and I was going out there to check around on the cattle and come back that night or the next morning. I had tied my horse to the telephone pole on the east side of Huddleston’s Drugstore, which was next door to the old Texas Café. The old Texas Café was a landmark in Weatherford that they had lost the key to. It had stood open day and night to all comers for more than thirty years. It was operated by Mr. Patrick and his son, Byron Patrick, and twenty-four hours of the day one or the other of them was there on duty. This was the meeting place for everybody, whether they were leaving early or coming in late, and I had stopped by for an early breakfast. Little Pat had turned in my order for ham and eggs and hot biscuits. Nobody could ever have rightfully complained about the hospitality, the grub, or the atmosphere of the Texas Café. They had big stoves in the back corner and the front corner in the wintertime for their paying and nonpaying customers alike, and in the summertime there were big fans blowing outside from the kitchen and big fans blowing up in the front and ceiling fans swinging in the door and from the ceiling. It was the coolest place in town with a fifty-gallon barrel of ice water set on the counter with clean glasses for all comers. Many a businessman in town slipped out of bed early and didn’t disturb his wife and came down to the Texas Café to get away from burned homemade toast and get hot biscuits for breakfast.

  Fred Smith was the up-and-coming banker of the town that did lots of business with the cattlemen, traders, and farmers who were customers of the Citizens National Bank. He came in and sat down next to me and ordered hot cakes. Fred was a good banker and a good judge of cattle, but I told him right fast that whatever he was up early for wasn’t going to take much hard work or he wouldn’t be tanking up on them hot cakes. We had a lot of smart conversation during breakfast and when I was about to leave, I said, “Fred, I’m riding out early and won’t be in town when the bank opens. (Bankers worked on Saturday just like everybody else in those days.) That note for $40 that I’ve got at the bank ain’t due, but I’ve got the $40 in my pocket to pay it, and I’ve $160 in my pocket that I want you to deposit for me. I’ll give you the money and you tend to it when you get to the bank.”

  Fred was my friend and even though I was a high-school kid he loaned me money on my signature just like I was a grown man. When I suggested that I give him this money out of my pocket and he put it in his pocket when it really belonged in the bank, he started in to give me a bringin’-up lecture on how to tend to my bank business.

  He said, “Now Ben, you are a grown boy buying and selling horses and cattle and you’re doing it in a grown-up, business-like manner and right now you just as well learn to do your banking business likewise. A bank is an institution that maintains a big headquarters with people to wait on you and money to loan you and a safe to keep all valuables, and what I’m trying to tell you is that anything that belongs to the bank, bring it or take it to the bank. I’m not going to be taking your deposits before daylight in the café or after dark down at the wagonyard or at the stock pens. You just as well learn now to bring it to the bank and do your banking business at the bank.”

  I looked across the counter at Little Pat and said. “Ain’t he gettin’ highfalutin. The next thing I know he’ll be wantin’ me to call him Mr. Smith.” Pat just sort of chuckled and didn’t get in on the conversation. As I got off the stool and started to leave, Fred started telling me that I shouldn’t be giving my money to other people to do my banking for me and if I had ANYTHING THAT BELONGED TO THE BANK, BRING IT TO THE BANK.

  It was still early and cool, and I rode to the Coleman pasture by the middle of the morning. After I had counted all the steers in the pasture and saw that there was plenty of salt in the trough and the windmill was running and there was plenty of water, I headed my horse on over to Springtown, which was only four or five miles. Late in the afternoon I rode back to the Coleman pasture, fed Beauty, and went to bed early on a saddle blanket spread out in tall sage grass.

  I waked up before daylight, and it was a nice cool Sunday morning and I thought I would ride into town early. I started Beauty out at a nice flat walk to let her warm up slow and didn’t intend to put a very hard ride on her since I had nothing to do that I knew of when I got to town. I topped the ridge about two miles north of town at Couch’s barn. This was a big old rock barn that had been built by Mr. Couch, who was an early-day developer of the West, horse breeder, and founder of the Citizens National Bank. It had later been turned into a dairy barn.

  Just as I topped the rise about even with the Couch barn, I heard an awful commotion, screamin’, hollerin’, and carryin’ on over at the barn. A half-grown boy dived through the window about halfway up the barn wall and two screaming young girls came runnin’ through the front door, followed by a grown man that was about to run over them. I could hear a lot of hollerin’ and bawlin’ and going on in the barn. I reined up my horse and rode over to the barn. It was barely daylight and I asked what the trouble was.

  The reason there was so many hands out at the milk barn was that milking in those days was done by hand and it usually took a good-size family or several hired hands to run a dairy. It seemed they all got their breath at once and began to tell me about a bad fightin’ cow had got in with their dairy cattle down in the pasture and that morning had horned her way into the barn to eat with the milk cows and when she realized there was people mixed up with the milk cows, this big yellow-brindle longhorn fat cow decided to clean the place out. The man spoke up to explain to me that the cow was one that had gotten away when a truckload of cattle had turned over on that hill a few days before.

  I said, “Yeah, that’s just another one of them cases that people are goin’ to have to learn: cows or horses aren’t made to haul in trucks. They get four or five of them in a big truck and they make it top-heavy, and comes around a curve or goin’ down a hill it gets to swingin’ and turns over. Cattle and horses weren’t never intended to be hauled anyway. If the good Lord hadn’t aimed for them to walk, he wouldn’t have given them four feet and legs. Them trucks are all right, I guess, for corn, watermelons, or other stuff that can’t move around.”

  While I was giving off my expert opinion on how to move stock, Mr. Dairyman spoke up and said that these cattle that were in the truck when it turned over belonged to the bank, and Fred Smith had told him when he got this one in a pen to call him and he would send me to get her. I told him that this was the first I had heard about this, but to have a bad cow fastened up in a barn would be taking advantage of her since I was used to having to catch them out in the brush, and I sure would be glad to get her now instead of having to come back after her when she was turned back out.

  We were figuring on how to get in there and how to catch her, and I decided I didn’t want to go in there on horseback on that concrete floor to get my horse horned and maybe slip down in as small a place as a dairy barn. I had a hard, long maguey r
ope tied on my saddle, and I took it in my hand and stepped inside the front door. They had lights all over the barn and that old cow would run at a shadow if it would move. She was standing in the middle of the barn pawing like a bull, blowing her nostrils and shaking her horns. I stood real still and watched her a minute.

  The milk stanchions had been built out of two-by-four and two-by-six lumber where the cows stuck their heads through to eat while they were being milked. The plank on one side of these old-fashioned milking stanchions was solid The other side had a bolt run through it at the bottom and was swinging between the two-by-four frames at the top, and after the cow had stuck her head through the stanchion you pushed that one closed at the top and latched it by swinging a little wood block against it that was hinged on the other end. I decided that I would go behind these stanchions against the wall, which was about two feet of space, and let this old cow run at me and when she got her head through I was going to fasten the stanchion. Then I would have her caught and that would give me plenty of time to put my rope on her.

  Well, I got back behind the stanchion and it wasn’t any trouble to get her to run at me, but it took a lunge or two for her to get her head turned to where her horns would go through this milk-cow-size stanchion. When she had her head just right, I reached over and pushed the stanchion up and tripped the little block against it at the top. After I had this done, the milk crew came in the front door and Mr. Dairyman had gone around back to open the back door when I said I was ready, and he had led ole Beauty around back for me to let her in when I had the cow ready to let out.

  A maguey rope is hand-woven in Old Mexico out of long, fine, stout cactus fiber and each rope is woven and platted individually. The end of a maguey rope where it is started is smooth and does not have a knot like the end of a common rope that has been cut and tied, and the other end has a platted hondo that you slip the knot end through to form your loop.