Wild Cow Tales

by Ben K. Green

  I dropped my rope on this old cow’s horns and she was bawlin’ and lungin’ and shakin’ that row of stanchions with her 1,300 pounds that was well made out of two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, and at the rate that she was going I wasn’t sure that she wasn’t going to tear up the inside of the barn. I realized my fancy Mexican maguey wasn’t stout enough to hold this 1,200- to 1,300-pound cow and that she was sure to charge my horse and cause a lot of trouble if I didn’t outsmart her pretty fast.

  There is not much you can do to hurt the outside of a mean, mad cow and whippin’ and jerkin’ would sort of be a joke. I put a half hitch around her nose and threw the rope over the top of the stanchion and lifted her head about two feet in the air; then I took my pocketknife and punched a hole in the fine cartilage between the two nostrils and about as far up as I could reach in her nose with my hand, sort of like you would put a ring in a bull’s nose. I took the smooth end of the maguey rope and ran it into the cow’s nostril and through the hole in the middle cartilage and then back down through the other nostril. I worked the rope back against her neck and towards her shoulder and out of the stanchion and hollered at Mr. Dairyman to open the door at the back and bring me my mare. He came in with his mouth open and his eyes about the size of goose eggs and handed me the reins from as far as he could stand.

  These maguey ropes were about from forty-five to as much as sixty feet long and, to say the least, this was one of the longer ones. I got on my horse, took my rope, and dallied it around the saddle horn and ole Beauty snorted and looked at that concrete floor when I dallied it, which was as much as to tell me that she wouldn’t have a chance to keep from slipping on that concrete. I told Mr. Dairyman to ease up behind the stanchion where I had been and when that old cow would stand still to trip the little block at the end of the stanchion, and I would be on my way out with her. His nerve failed him some and he picked up a stick about three feet long and used it to trip the little block and free the swinging side of the stanchion. That wild, mean, mad cow caught on fast. She thought she was loose and when she backed out of the stanchion Beauty and I dived through the back door of the barn and turned against the barn; as this cow ran out, she headed for the milk cows that had been turned out during the commotion. When I jerked the end of the rope and that little hard rope burned that hole in the inside of her nostril, she suddenly had a rude awakening—she was still caught—and while she was still giving to the pain to the rope in that hole in her nose, ole Beauty lunged back and turned her a flip. She got up off the ground facing us and made a wild lunge towards my horse. I had lots of slack in my rope. I flipped the slack over her neck as Beauty dodged and jumped out of her way, and we busted her again. This time she got up and stood there quiverin’ and shakin’ and bawlin’, and slobber and a little blood was running out of her nose and mouth. I was between her and the corral gate, so somebody opened the gate and she began to lead as I started outside with her. She made a wild run as we went through the gate, not at me and Beauty, but just to get away into the open. This time I didn’t have to turn her, I just jiggled slack in that rope tied to her horns and through that hole in her nose and she began to take a little friendlier outlook on me and my horse’s acquaintance.

  I started down the road with her and when she would want to trot Beauty would move up enough to keep the slack out of the rope, and when she decided to slow down we would slow down with her, but I did keep my hold on the rope and jiggled it a little to keep her on notice that as far as she was concerned she was still caught by the end of her nose. I had by this time taken a double half hitch on my saddle horn with the rope so that I didn’t have to hold it so tight. This gave me a loose hand to play with the slack in case she got smart.

  I had gotten to the railroad tracks at the foot of the hill and was about to start up the hill to town when I wondered what I should do with this cow. I knew there was no use in trying to take her to the railroad stock pens because they would be locked. I thought Silas Kemp wouldn’t care for me bringing a fightin’ cow to the wagonyard, and I knew I would have her at a place where I could get a lot of help to do whatever Fred Smith decided he wanted to do with her later. Just as I got to the corner of the wholesale-grocery warehouse where I would turn to go to the wagonyard, I had another bright, teen-age-cowboy Sunday idea about what to do with a mad fightin’ cow that belonged to the bank. I led her on up the paved street early on Sunday morning with nobody in sight and rode around the telephone pole right in front of the bank door and made several wraps around the pole leaving the cow five or six feet of slack. I stepped off my mare and ran the rope around a concrete column at the bank door, then I threaded the end of the rope through the handle of the bank door and over to the concrete column on the other side of the door and tied the rope off to the last column.

  I did all this in a matter of seconds and stepped on old Beauty and rode down to the telephone pole on the east side of the drugstore, tied my horse, and went to the Texas Café for breakfast. Little Pat waited on me and there were very few people around, and I was leisurely eatin’ my breakfast when the phone rang and Pat answered it and I heard him say, “Yeah, he’s here. You want him?” and then Pat hung up. As he walked back towards me he had a puzzled kind of look on his face and said, “Why is Fred Smith hunting you?” Looking as innocent as I could with a mouthful of ham and eggs, I blubbered and said I had no idea. As Pat started on to the kitchen, he said, “Fred said he would be down here in a few minutes.”

  Fred was a short, red-complexioned, nice-looking sort of a fellow whose black hair was getting thin on top and a little gray in the temples. All of a sudden he busted through that front door a-wearin’ his house-shoes, a pair of regular britches, the top part of his pajamas, and no hat. When I looked up and saw him, before he had time to start on me, I said, “Fred, you must be confused. From the looks of your garb, you ain’t decided whether you are gettin’ up or goin’ to bed.”

  “Don’t be trying to start on my garb. That’s not what I’m down here for. My phone’s been ringing steady for the past ten minutes—people calling waking up the family telling me about a cow being tied to the bank door.” In a mad kind of voice he said, “Ben, what cow is that and why in the hell did you tie her up in front of the bank?”

  His remark didn’t cause me to lose any interest in my breakfast, and between mouthfuls I explained to him where the cow came from.

  By this time he was mad and nervous. Little Pat had set a cup of coffee out on the counter for him, but he didn’t even sit down. He was walking up and down the aisle beating on the counter and talking to me.

  “I’m glad you got her, but why didn’t you take her to the wagonyard or to the stock pens or any place besides the public sidewalk in front of the bank?”

  Little Pat was listening and by this time there were a few more people who had discovered the cow was tied to the bank door. I rared back and said, “Mr. Smith, ANYTHING THAT BELONGS TO THE BANK, TAKE IT TO THE BANK.”

  Pat blew coffee out of his mouth and took to the kitchen. Fred said, “Hell, I didn’t mean a cow!”

  By this time about everybody was laughing but Fred, and I wasn’t going to laugh because I was being plumb innocent. I just told him that I was tryin’ to learn the lesson that he was tryin’ to teach me, and just yesterday mornin’ he told me when I was tryin’ to pay a note and give him some money to deposit, I said, “You told me ‘ANYTHING THAT BELONGS TO THE BANK, TAKE IT TO THE BANK.’ ”

  He finally broke into a little chuckle and said, “You’ve took her to the bank, now we’ve got to take her away from there before people start to Sunday school and church.”

  I said, “Fred, I am goin’ to leave town in the mornin’ before daylight to go to the Denton place below Brock to look at some horses and maybe buy them. Now if you was carryin’ my money to pay the bank a note I owe for $40, and if you was goin’ to deposit $160 of my money for me to check against to buy them horses with, then if you was goin’ to put about $5 extra with it, we’ll say for wo
rkin’ stock, then I would need pretty bad to move that cow so you could get in the bank Monday mornin’ to tend to mine and the bank’s business.”

  He pounded his fat fist on the counter and said, “Hell, give me the money.”

  So I counted out $200 in tens and twenties and I said, in a humorous tone of voice, “Fred, when I work stock for people on Sunday, they usually buy my breakfast.”

  Pat busted out laughing again and said, “The breakfast is on the house.”

  I got my horse and went up and unwrapped this old cow from around the bank door and unwrapped her from the telephone pole and took her and put her in the wagonyard. Fred got a hold of Ike Simmons, who was the porter at the barbershop, and they began to clean up that green splashy aftermath that comes from a mad cow. By church-time few people knew that the bank’s cow business and my banking business had been tended to so early on Sunday morning.

  PEDDY

  I WAS SETTIN’ IN THE SADDLE SHOP while Bill, the saddle maker, put some new riggin’ in the front of my saddle. I’d roped a big four-year-old wild mule that morning; when I dallied the rope to the saddle horn, this big mule was stout enough that he tore the riggin’ out of my saddle. I had managed to give him slack and at the same time wind him around a tree and tie him before we got in a storm and I lost my whole saddle. Bill was an old-time saddle maker and he never stopped talkin’ while he worked, so I was hearin’ stories about the times that other cowboys had tore their saddles up when in walked Mr. Davidson, who ran a dry-goods and furniture store next door. He had been to the post office and comin’ back by came in to talk to me and Bill. He passed the time of day a few minutes talking about the weather and work and stuff. Then he turned to me and said, “Ben, I want to sell you eight two-year-old heifers worth the money.”

  I knew about his heifers, but I thought it might do him good to talk about ’em, so I didn’t butt in. He said that he had a string of yearling steers in his pasture, and when he shipped ’em out in the spring the man that bought ’em didn’t want these eight heifers that were in the bunch, so they had turned them back in the pasture.

  He wanted to stock this pasture in the late fall with another bunch of steer yearlings and would like to get these heifers out of the way. I listened to all this and I liked Mr. Davidson; he was a nice kind of ole country merchant that ever’body some time or another had owed money to, and after thirty years in the community there still wasn’t anybody that would say anything bad about Mr. Davidson. He took jokin’ pretty good too. I knew that I’d make a trade with him before we quit talkin’, but I felt like I ought to carry him on a little while, so after this explanation about his heifers I asked him how fat were they and how much would they weigh.

  He said they were big fat, and would weigh about 600 pounds apiece.

  I said, “Well, I guess they’d be worth about six cents a pound and that would be $36 a head; put them in the corral and I’ll come get ’em.”

  He said, “Now, that’s not quite the kind of a trade I want to make because these heifers’ll bring about eight cents a pound, and you know I’m no cowboy and don’t have anybody workin’ for me to pen heifers, so why don’t you just buy ’em and go gather ’em out of the pasture yourself?”

  I said, “Mr. Davidson, I didn’t know that you didn’t like me.”

  He said, “Why Ben, what do you mean? You’ve always been one of my favorite boys.”

  I said, “Well, I know for a fact that Ole Slim Cartwright rode in that pasture at $3 a day until he paid his dry-goods bill and never did see hair nor hide of them heifers. And now you wanta sell ’em to me just like they’as a-standin’ at the gate bawlin’ to get out.”

  We had a big laugh and he admitted I was a-tellin’ the truth.

  I started out by tellin’ him that it seemed to me like the circumstances would change the price of them heifers a whole lot and $36 apiece would be enough for ’em.

  He started out then by tellin’ me when I’d get the heifers out would have something to do with him sellin’ em to me. This was early August, and I asked him how the fifteenth of September would suit him. He said that’d be early enough if my price was good enough.

  I did some fast cowboy arithmetic in my head, and bid him $225 for the bunch. He hemmed and hawed around and looked at the mail that he had in his hand and ’lowed as how he ought to get $250 for ’em. That little remark as much as told me that I already had ’em bought.

  So after a little more jaw work he took me up and I paid him for the heifers.

  The weather was hot and I rode this pasture from daylight until about noon and then from about three o’clock in the afternoon till dark for five straight days without findin’ the heifers. This bunch of heifers hadn’t been run and they weren’t spoiled or outlawed; they were just by instinct wild, and too, the grazing was better in the thickets and valleys than it was out of the open mesas. The summer foliage was extremely dense, and standin’ out on the bluffs horseback tryin’ to spot brownish-red and brindle cattle in a thicket below was not easy.

  This particular afternoon I had ridden up on a high mesa that had a steep bluff lookin’ off to the east. The fence line ran so close under the bluff that you couldn’t see it from a standin’ position on top of the mesa. The mesa overlooked a small farm to the east that faced out on a country road at the other side of it. As I sat there on my horse wonderin’ where else to look for my heifers, I saw little Peddy ridin’ Queenie comin’ up across the field.

  Queenie was a small grey mare of mine that was about sixteen years old. She had taught half of the town kids how to ride horseback, and the fall before this I had taken her away from some kids in town that were runnin’ her up and down the streets and not takin’ very good care of her. She was gonna bring a colt in the spring, and I had started to the pasture that I had leased down the road in front of Peddy’s house.

  When Peddy came out to the road, as he often did when I passed, and stretched his hands up to me to pick him up and carry him in front of me on my horse. This time I had reached over from my saddle and picked Peddy up and set him on Queenie that I was leadin’, and let him ride her back to his house.

  Peddy had had a very serious sickness when he was only three or four years old and had always been frail and had lots of sick spells. He was a good little boy, but his older brothers and sisters never had bothered to play with him and his mother and daddy didn’t have much time to spend with him.

  Peddy laid around on the porch in the summertime and in front of the fire in the wintertime, and had taken very little exercise. His mother, Amy, had never been able to get him to eat very much.

  When we got to the house, he didn’t want to get off of Queenie. He didn’t make any fuss, nor cry, but he got around to askin’ me if Queenie could stay at his house a few days. Peddy couldn’t talk plain and his voice was weak, but his big eyes put forth a very convincing argument, and I had left Queenie there almost a year ago. Queenie had kept Peddy out in the sunshine and fresh air, and caused him to take exercise and he was growin’ into a healthy, chuffy little boy. Queenie had brought a colt in the spring, and it was nearly grown and was followin’ as he rode across the fields.

  I had watched him a few minutes when he looked up and saw me up on the bluff. He waved real big with his ragged straw hat for me to meet him at the north corner of the field. I rode down to the fence line as Peddy rode up, and in his broken dialect he asked me to crawl over the fence and we’d eat a watermelon. That sounded like a good proposition to me. We walked out among the watermelon vines and Peddy picked out one that looked a little overripe, and when I suggested that we get a different one, he said, he’d give this one first to Queenie and then we could have a better one.

  We got a good melon and got under the shade of a tree on the fence line of the pasture. Peddy asked me what I was doin’ in the Davidson pasture, and I told him about buyin’ the heifers and that I was lookin’ for ’em. Peddy was a serious little boy; I suppose because he had been sick so much in his li
fe. He didn’t hoorah and play much, and he seemed to have wisdom far beyond his years concerning pets and dumb animals. As we ate the watermelon I told him that I’ad put out some feed for the heifers, but they had never been fed and probably wouldn’t come to feed.

  Peddy had pulled some salt, wrapped up in wax paper, out of the pocket of his homemade shirt that we had been usin’ on the watermelon. He held the salt up in his hand and said, “Ben, hepers like sol.”

  I said, “Peddy, I know heifers like salt, but if I put a sack o’ salt out in the pasture, they’d eat as much as they wanted in a few-days, and I might not get a chance to drive ’em out when they came to salt.”

  Peddy looked very serious and said, “Don’t put out no sack, hepers lick sol outa yer han.”

  I didn’t laugh at Peddy unless he said something that he knew was funny because Peddy had been laughed at too much by people because he couldn’t talk. I studied about what Peddy had said as I flipped watermelon seeds off of the piece I was about to eat.

  I said, “Peddy, gentle heifers would lick salt out of your hand, but these heifers are wild.”

  Peddy looked over the fence to the other side at Queenie as though he was tryin’ to figure out a way to make me understand. He held the salt up again in the paper and said, “Hepers lick sol out of Peddy’s han. They no wil. I sol hepers when I sol Queenie when she under tree.”

  This was the only shade tree in the field and when Queenie was in the field loose Peddy would bring salt to catch Queenie with, and he said that he had been lettin the heifers lick salt out of his hand through the fence.

  This sounded too good to be true! But Peddy was a good little boy and was not jokin’ about the heifers lickin’ out of his hand, and he convinced me of it in broken sentences and the serious look on his face.