Wild Cow Tales

by Ben K. Green

  He said, “Now, Ben, you are bein’ mean!” and I said, “What did you expect after four months of lessons in bein’ mean?” He didn’t answer that.

  I went into the mercantile for something, and Mr. Morrow, who owned the mercantile, came over and offered to wait on me. (He had never offered to wait on me before.)

  He said, “By the way, I heard you asking for a pair of gloves a few days ago, and I have found a pair that will just fit you.” He was holdin’ a pair of beautiful fur-lined gloves in his hands.

  I said, “If you heard me the other day why didn’t you look for them then.” My hands were cracked and sore from holdin’ a pair of bridle reins in the weather, but I just stuck them in my pocket and said, “I’m goin’ back to Texas where I won’t need gloves in the wintertime.” As I gave the gloves a quick glance, I said, “Besides, those look like seconds to me.”

  Back at the stock pens I rounded up my blankets inside of the wagon sheet and stuffed it all under some hay and started to ride out of town. About five or six miles out in the country, Dr. Turner overtook me and had Scotty Perth in the car with him. It was cold but the wind wasn’t blowing and I didn’t offer to get down off my horse. Scotty got out of the car with his peg leg and came around on the side where I was. He blowed his nose and wiped his chin and looked around. He finally looked up at me and said that he would take it kindly if I would move down to his headquarters and stay a few days and not rush back to Texas. Dr. Turner had rolled the glass down on his car and was listenin’.

  He said, “Ben, it’s awful cold up there in that camp, and you can’t get packed up and out of there in one day, so take Scotty up and stay down at his headquarters.”

  All the time Scotty was puttin’ in how good the beds was, there was plenty of wood, plenty of grub, etc., while the doctor was talkin’.

  I said, “It took a wire from the bank to cause him to notice the weather!” I just reined my horse up and rode off.

  I didn’t make very good time, and it was way late in the afternoon before I got to camp on old Mustang. But he was limbered up by then and seemed to be gettin’ over the wild ride I had put him through the rain and the mud with the wild cattle.

  I had all my camp tied up and packed on the horses that were saddled with packsaddles and had halters on my other horses. I tied each halter rope to the tail of the horse in front of him, and I just had a lead rope on the front horse and we came down out of the mountains. We made the trip to town single file.

  It was late afternoon when I began to unload my camp and other riggin’ into the boxcar that was set at the loadin’ dock. It was goin’ to be a cold night, and I brought my horses inside and tied five at one end and four at the other end of the boxcar. I kept ole Beauty out to ride until I finally loaded up the next mornin’ to leave. I had already watered them so I fed them some oats and gave them plenty of hay to eat and bed down on if they wanted to lay down. I went to the stock pens and got my other blankets and wagon sheet. Scotty’s cattle were still there, and somebody had fed them some hay.

  The train was supposed to pick up my immigrant car about nine o’clock the next mornin’, but I thought I would finish up my chores that afternoon. I knew I was goin’ to be in that boxcar with those ten horses for four or five days or maybe a week while we were switched around on different railroad lines until we got back to Fort Worth, Texas.

  I rode uptown and laid in a good supply of cheese, crackers, boiled ham, baloney, and the kind of canned grub that you could open and eat without building a fire. I packed all this stuff on Beauty and rode back and put it on the stockcar.

  When it was good dark I unsaddled Beauty and put her in with the rest of the horses and was pullin’ the stockcar door to when Dr. Turner drove up and said his wife had sent him to bring me to supper.

  Ever’body was real friendly and nice, and she was fixin’ a big supper. I was playin’ with Dr. Turner’s younger kids by the fire in the livin’ room when in came a bunch of people from around town that had been invited to supper too, including the Scotty Perths.

  I kinda bristled up at the sight of him, and I started out of the livin’ room to the hall. Dr. Turner dashed out in front of me and here came his wife out of the kitchen, and it looked like they had planned an attack. Dr. Turner said, “Ben, what is the matter?”

  I said, “I like most ever’body here, but I was taught not to break bread with people that had misused me or with people that I didn’t actually like. In spite of all the good people here I am not fixing to go against my raisin’ to get to eat supper with that damn Scotchman.” I put on my hat and walked out the door, and walked back to the stock pens and went to bed in good company with my horses.

  The next mornin’ before the train pulled out, or just about the time the train pulled out, Mrs. Turner, Mrs. Perth, and Dr. Turner came down in the doctor’s car and brought a big boxful of food that the women had fixed up for me to eat on my trip back home. I took this and thanked them very much. About that time the train whistle blew, and I waved ’em all good-bye and shut the boxcar door and eat and slept and brushed and curried my horses all the way back to Texas.

  BRUSH COWBOYS

  BRUSH COWBOYS IN MANY RESPECTS are a different breed from open-country cowboys. They need to think faster, act quicker, be mounted on different kinds of horses, and have a lot more and different rigging than open-country prairie cowboys. Listening to old hands discussing cowboys in the brush country you will hear them talking about different cowhands that they have worked with, and such remarks will crop out as, “He is a good hand with a rope but his skin is thin.” This means that if everything is open and favorable, he is a good roper, but his skin being thin indicates that he can’t take the abuse of the brush on his body without complaining or flinching to the extent that it interferes with how many cattle he can catch. You will hear other such remarks as, “He’s drunk on chimney smoke.” This means that he likes to stay at home and enjoys the comforts of a house instead of laying out in camp long enough to wear down and catch outlaw cattle. Then you’ll hear some old cowboy speak up and say, “He’s a stocker, damn the weather and damn the country. If he ever sees the color of a cow’s hide she’s caught.” This would be a favorable comment on a brush cowhand.

  Brush cowboys learn to rope with a very small loop that will just fit over a cow brute’s head and horns, and he knows to throw this rope in one swift motion from along the side of his horse since limbs are in his way. The distance across little glades that he will have a chance to rope in are short and there is no time to wind up a loop by throwing it over his head, and there is no distance to waste, and he knows to throw that loop at the one first, last, and only chance he is going to have before the steer dives in the brush on the other side of the small glade.

  A brush cowboys rigs his horse some different from other cowboys because he is going to hang from the saddle and stand in one stirrup from one side to the other to dodge low-hanging limbs that are too big to stiff-arm out of his way, and there are times that his feet will be in the oddest positions and his cinch rigging front and back must always be tight. However, many brush cowboys do not want breast-harness rigging on a saddle to get in the way.

  Winter or summer a brush cowboy will wear a heavy ducking jacket that does not fit tight and most of the time it will be buttoned loose in the front. The old jackets used to have reinforced sleeves from the wrist to the elbow. These heavy ducking jackets are not worn for warmth; they are worn for protection against limbs of all kinds but especially against mesquite, catclaw, and other growth that are abundantly supplied with thorns or stickers.

  Leather chaps or leggings were the common rigging for a man horseback even though he had heavy ducking britches on. The legs actually need more protection in a thicket than the body because a rider can swing his body many different ways to dodge but his legs are pressed against a horse and have very little leeway to get away from thorns and such, which is the reason you see leather on a man’s legs in the brush. Various attempt
s have been made by cowboys to drape and fasten loose-hanging leather over the shoulders and forelegs of a horse but none have been very satisfactory. I have seen and have ridden many a horse out of the thicket after a hard day’s work with much of the hair gone from the forelegs and shoulders and sometimes a little blood oozing from the many scratches.

  I have known and seen brush cowboys work that had lived in the big thickets so long and were stove up so bad that some of them have to lead their horse to a ditch or a stump or a rock in order to reach their stirrup to get in their saddle, but they get limber and more alert with every limb they dodge. Song and stories have been written about cowboys but little tribute has ever been paid to the toughness of a man that has lived horseback in the big thorny brush thickets of the Far Southwest.

  Brush horses have greater instinct about smelling and trailing wild cattle than open-country horses have. I have ridden horses that were bred and born and native to the brush countries that could take a man to a cow the man could neither see nor hear but the horse could smell. I have ridden around a big thicket and been ready to give up that there was anything in the thicket when my horse would refuse to rein away and leave because he could smell a cow or calf that had a wound and a case of screw-worms and was lying down and well concealed in that thicket. When an old brush horse refuses to rein away from a dense thicket, you had better listen to him because he can smell better what is in that thicket than you can see; and cattle can hide and be so motionless that they can make no noise that can be picked up by the human ear.

  Big horses are not desirable in the brush country because they put the rider up tight against the limbs and the heat of the brush and they also experience more difficulty getting their own bodies through and between closely growing trees.

  Brush cowboys use many different kinds of rope in trapping wild cattle and bringing them to a corral or out into the open. The first ropes used by brush cowboys were platted from rawhide or from horsehair. Rawhide ropes are never as stout or as tough as we usually would think of anything that is made out of rawhide because it has to be split and spliced together so often that there are “thick” places in the rope and the thin parts of a hide will naturally plat into a weak spot in the rope. The very best rawhide ropes have to be used carefully and be left loose at one end where you can give slack to keep them from breaking rather than to be tied hard to the saddle horn or to a tree or whatever you are tying to. Horsehair ropes of the same size are a lot stouter than rawhide. Horsehair plats smoother and makes a prettier rope; however, it is hard on the human hand when you are trying to use it and does not have the right weight to have a good feel and throw to it.

  The early-day standard of perfection for all ropes has been and still is the Silk Manila rope, and the first one that I ever saw was made by the Plymouth Rope and Cordage Company and was known as Plymouth Silk Manila. These ropes came in three or four strands. The three-strand rope was the most used and the best handling size. Silk Manila is an extremely hard rope and very stiff when it is new and cowboys have resorted to a number of different ways of breaking in a Manila lariat rope. Tying one end to a tree and pulling the other end with a saddle horn; or tying one end to a tree and the other end to a tree and wetting the rope and letting it dry stretched was another means of breaking in the Silk Manila. Probably the most common method was to tie one end of the rope to a saddle horn when you were riding down the road or going across pasture and not driving any livestock, and the constant bouncing and jerking over the ground would limber up a rope. After a cowboy gets a Silk Manila properly broke in where it has the right feel and is limber enough to throw but stiff enough for the rope to stand open until it catches on a cow, he gets very particular about what else he does with that rope. He doesn’t let it get wet unless he has to and is careful about tying knots anywhere up and down the rope that might cause it to form a kink that would make it throw or do up bad. Certain ropes become favorites in the hands of a cowboy just like certain tools or instruments become favorites in the hands of mechanics or engineers.

  Many new materials have been made into ropes in recent years. Linens have been woven into stock ropes and dipped into various wax and oil preparations in order to give them weight and keep them from absorbing moisture. Cotton ropes have been tested with various treatments but have never been satisfactory as a throwing rope to catch livestock. There have been other materials that attempts have been made to use for ropes, and the latest near-success in a new rope material is Nylon. The strength of Nylon rope is without question, but the feel, handle, and the throwability of Nylon will never compare to the good touch of a well-broke-in Silk Manila rope.

  When a brush cowboy sets a snare over a trail, he takes lots of time and wraps wild vines around the rope for disguise and hangs the rope over the trail in such a manner that it is held open by limbs. This needs to be a big soft rope that would not be easily pitched over to one side, so when it is touched it will fall loosely around a steer’s head, whereas with a hard Manila rope the loop would stand open and a cow brute would throw it or cause the loop to pitch over to one side like a hoop would. Brush cowboys use big heavy ropes that are also soft, and when I say big I mean an inch or more in diameter. This rope is used, after a cow has been snared or roped in the brush, to tie around her neck and tie to a lead oxen around his neck and shoulders or sometimes to a burro. This lead oxen or burro has been trained to take an outlaw cow brute to the headquarters or to a certain set of holding pens maybe several miles from where the cow brute has been caught. This big soft rope won’t hurt the outlaw cow and won’t hurt the lead oxen that is dragging the outlaw cow. It will be big enough that any unusual wear or pull on a tree or across rocks could not break or wear into it easily. It will take patience on the part of the lead oxen and patience on the part of the brush cowboy, but in a course of time, maybe two or three days, the lead oxen will finally show up at the place where he has been fed good feed and clean water and properly cared for, and he will be dragging some part of what’s left of that wild cow brute.

  Maguey ropes made from long dry fibers out of cactus plants are small ropes that were referred to by cowboys as being “hot” because if one slips through your hand the rope burn is more severe than from any other kind of rope. These little maguey ropes are hand-made individually in Mexico and vary in length from forty to as much as sixty feet and are platted from a starting point and will have no knot in it. The finishing end will be finished into a hondo for the unfinished end to be passed through the small loop which gives you a swinging loop to be used. These ropes have a good feel and throw with a remarkable degree of accuracy. Because of the fact that they are usually platted small in diameter, a brush cowboy seldom ever ties one hard and fast in a double half hitch to his saddle horn. Instead, when he ropes, he dallies as much as two rounds on his saddle horn and leaves a lot of rope behind the dally that he can feed out when a cow hits the end of the rope in order to reduce the sudden snap that will break a maguey rope. This is one of the reasons that they are made so much longer than Silk Manila ropes.

  Pages more could be written about the various processing of ropes made from different kinds of material and lengthy discussions could be gone into about the rawhide and horsehair ropes of Mexico and the Southwest to the camel-hide ropes of the desert, but the long, hard, flexible fibers of the grass families still make the most desirable ropes for all purposes and can be woven hard or soft and then platted to as many strands as is necessary for strength.

  THE MARION

  PASTURE

  I HAD GATHERED A BUNCH OF OUTLAW steers out of the Kiamichi Mountains for Old Man Buck Hurd of Fort Worth, Texas. I wired him the day before that I was loading out for Forth Worth.

  I loaded my saddle horses in one end of a car by building a partition between my horses and the steers. The train pulled into the Fort Worth stockyards about four thirty in the morning. I was riding in the caboose, so I waked up and helped unload the cattle and my horses. I took my five saddle horses across
Exchange Avenue from the cattle stockyards to the horse and mule barns where I could feed and water and leave them in a good pen. When I had finished taking care of my horses, I went back to the Livestock Exchange Building to wait for Old Man Hurd to come to his office. In those days the Fort Worth stockyards were a great central market for the entire Southwest, and the blackboard in the lobby that morning showed 22,000 cattle, 7,000 calves, and other numbers for sheep and hogs that I do not remember. This was the day’s run and by daylight all the stockyards’ helpers and all the livestock commission men were busy. Then later in the morning the office help would show up around eight o’clock.

  Old Man Buck Hurd had graduated to the status of office, but he showed up about seven o’clock. Buck Hurd was a product of the old West. Hardships had been the pattern of his way of life for the first fifty or sixty years, and now he wore the best of store-bought clothes, but even that could not hide the fact that he was a tall, skinny, rough, old, bowlegged, buck-kneed cowboy who had spent more of his life in the saddle than he had out of it and more of his nights sleeping on the ground than in a bed. His eyes were small, black, and beady and set so far back under his forehead that he could have rode in the brush without having to bat his eyes, as a limb could never have reached them. His face was bony and his nose had been broken when a horse fell with him, and had grown back about the shape of a quarter circle brand, which made him look like he had just smelled something that he was turning the end of his nose away from. He seldom smiled, but when he did the corners of his mouth turned down instead of up. He had been mad most of his life about something or at somebody and until recent years was bad to fight. However, he had said that he had learned to argue more and fight less as he grew older. He was known to be fair in his dealings and his judgment in the steer business was well respected by cattlemen all over the Southwest. He looked up at me as though he were surprised that I had gotten back alive. But instead of saying something nice about being glad to see me or any of that sort of pleasant conversation, his raspy ole voice blared out, “Where’s my steers?”