by Ben K. Green
We walked out through the Exchange Building into the stockyards and looked at the cattle that I had shipped in from Oklahoma. There was forty head of big, rough, aged, plain-quality steers that had gone wild and gotten away in the spring when all the other cattle were shipped out to the Flint Hills country of Kansas to be fattened for fall market. I had taken the job of gathering these wild cattle for $5 per head, which was at that time an extremely high price, and you might well know when an old cowman would pay such a price that the cattle had almost been a lost cause and he had given up being able to gather them by reasonable means. Of course, he counted the steers at a glance and said there ought to be forty-three. I told him that I had found the carcasses of two other steers that had died, but that I didn’t believe the third steer had ever been in the Kiamichi Mountains. We went back to the office of the Evans-Snyder-Buell Commission Company where Old Man Buck headquartered. We were sitting in the outer office at a table, and he was writing me out a check and finally confessing that he hadn’t believed that I would gather even as many as forty head.
About that time a Mr. Girard from Kansas came into the office, and Buck said, “Here’s another job for you,” as he called Mr. Girard by name and motioned for him to come over to the table. He introduced me to Mr. Girard and explained to him that I was the boy that would gather his wild cattle. In the conversation it developed that Mr. Girard had leased a pasture for several years in far southwestern Texas where he wintered big, aged steers in the mild climate of the Southwest with little expense; then shipped them in the spring to the bluestem grass country of northern Oklahoma and Kansas to be fattened. This was a common livestock operation in those days and was carried on extensively by cattlemen that were commonly referred to as “steer cattlemen.”
Mr. Girard was giving up the pasture that he had leased for several years. During that time each year he had failed to gather the wildest of the cattle out of each bunch until he had an accumulation of wild cattle as the only ones remaining.
This was late September, and he said that his lease ran out the first of November and that he would not be as much interested in paying to have these cattle gathered as he would be in selling them real cheap, range delivery. Buying wild steers in rough country, range delivery, was risky business, and it was seldom that you could find a cowboy wild enough or foolish enough to make such a trade. We talked on about these cattle and Old Buck Hurd told me how big the oldest ones would be and some of them could weigh 1,500 pounds. It was anybody’s guess as to how many steers were actually in this big pasture, but Mr. Girard said that he was short more than seventy steers from what he had turned in the pasture over a period of four years and what he had gathered out. Assuming that some of them may have died, he believed that there would be at least fifty steers and could be more.
He offered to take $1,000 for fifty head or more, range delivery. This didn’t sound too interesting to me, so Old Man Buck made a big speech saying he would grab the proposition if he was my age. I always got along with Old Man Buck probably because I talked back to him. I told him that if it was going to make me look like him at his age that I didn’t want the cattle. Of course, I laughed when I said it, and he grinned barely enough to let me know that the remark didn’t make him mad. I told Girard and Old Buck that I didn’t have $1,000 to buy the cattle with, and Old Buck blared out that I had $200 because he had just given me the check. Well, he didn’t know it but that was the only $200 I had, and I had worked a month gathering his cattle with five head of horses for that money. He told Mr. Girard that I would be in town all day (he didn’t know whether I would be or not) and that he thought he would make me take the steers and I could get the $1,000 to pay for them if I wanted to buy them. Well, that was news to me, and after Mr. Girard left the office I asked Old Buck, “Where do you think I would get $1,000?”
He said, “Well, Ben, you don’t need but $800 and that bunch of steers could make a lot of money and you just as well be gathering that bunch of cattle for yourself as some other bunch that you’d just be getting paid for by the head. So we’re going down to the North Fort Worth Bank and I’m going to sign your note for the money.”
This little gesture was further proof that he was neither as tough as he looked nor as mean as he sounded, and even though he would never say so, he must have appreciated me getting his wild cattle or he would not have been trying to make this trade for me.
We walked down to the North Fort Worth Bank, which was in the next block on Exchange Avenue. He introduced me to a bald-headed, good-natured banker and explained to him that I needed $800 and told him why and what I was going to do with the money. I put in my argument that I needed $900 because I needed $100 to use as expense money. Old Buck had been an old starved-out cowboy and said that $25 was enough expense money. So he and I had a big argument, well punctuated with profanity and expressions that were peculiar to the cattle business. The banker went to writing out a note for $900. Old Man Buck glanced over with his Indian-like eyes, and just in defiance of losing the argument said, “Damned if I’ll sign it!”
The banker smiled and said, “Buck, you don’t have to sign it; Ben’s going to get a bill of sale when he pays for the steers and I’m going to attach it to this note, and you’ve lost the argument because the boy will need $100 to feed his horses and himself while he catches that bunch of wild cattle.”
We walked back up to the stockyards and Old Man Buck pretended that he had something else to do and I thanked him for the check and introducing me to the banker and walked out on the livestock exchange to watch the usual course of business, see how cattle were selling, what classes were in most demand, and maybe run on to an old friend or two to pass the time of day with. After all, I had been camped in the brush several weeks and needed to do a little jaw work with some more cowboys.
The North Fort Worth Stockyards were built with the railroad tracks running through the lower third of the yards, cutting it off from the north part, which was the main part of the stockyards. There was a high footbridge built over the railroad tracks from the south side to the north side of the yards, and anytime you were lookin’ for somebody on the stockyards, you made it to the high bridge; from there you could see the entire yards and spot whoever you were lookin’ for. It was a little like climbin’ a windmill to look over the pasture. The stock pens had walkways built around over the top of ’em and the business and visiting of the day took place on these walks.
I was standin’ on the high bridge lookin’ over the yards and DeWitt Kerr came along. I had cowboyed for DeWitt and he and I always had some pleasant conversation for each other. This morning I was glad to see him ’cause I wasn’t too certain about this big steer deal that Old Man Buck was ‘aggin’ me into.
I told DeWitt about gatherin’ the steers for Old Man Buck in Oklahoma and about the proposition that I had been bannered with that morning. DeWitt was always my friend, and he knew I needed to make the money and he told me he thought it would be all right if I could get enough time on the contract to gather the steers. He cautioned me that that might be rougher country than I had been used to workin’. I told him about the visit down to the bank and he said that if he were me, when he started to pay the man he would just take him down and let the banker pay him and get the bill of sale drawn up to suit the banker. Well, this was a good lesson in business, one that I hadn’t thought of, so I thanked him as he ambled down the other side of the stairs, off the bridge; he waved at me as he left and wished me good luck.
About noon I was standing around in the livestock exchange lobby when Mr. Girard walked up; I guess he knew I was lookin’ for him. He walked right straight over to me and asked me if I was ready to buy the steers and emphasized the phrase “range delivery.” I explained to him that I thought it would be best if the banker closed the trade, so “let’s go down to the bank.” He and the banker had a short visit. The banker drew up a good bill of sale for all the cattle in the Marion pasture that were wearing the brands that Mr. Girard had
turned in the pasture through the years that he had leased it. This was a great long list of brands, since he was a trader and had bought all the steers that he turned in from all over the cow country.
I got on the Red Ball bus that afternoon and went to Weatherford and spent the night with my folks and told them that I was headed for South Texas to gather another bunch of steers.
I went back to the stockyards the next day, and was eatin’ dinner in the old Stockyards Hotel. As I started to leave, a man spoke to me that was wearin’ a railroader’s outfit. They didn’t dress like cowboys or other workin’ people; they had their own kind of riggin’ and it was easy to tell a railroad man without askin’ him where he worked. This fellow had been an old schoolmate of mine. We visited a few minutes, and I told him that I was about to start out of town with my saddle horses to go to South Texas to gather wild steers that I had bought “range delivery.” He said that his crew was fixin’ to pull a bunch of livestock cars out of the stockyards that were being fresh-bedded to be deadheaded to Brownwood, Texas, and that if I jumped my horses into one of those empty cars, he didn’t believe that he would find them before we got to Brownwood.
I said, “I don’t know whether my horses will jump or not, but you might look for me when you go to cut loose in the stockyards in Brownwood.”
’Course I got the hint real fast that he wouldn’t mind haulin’ my saddle horses one hundred fifty miles. It would save me about six days’ ride. I shuffled across to the horse and mule barns. My horses were rested and full and ready to do something, so I throwed my saddle on one horse and my pack rig on another horse, and led the other three across North Exchange Avenue into the railroad part of the stockyards. Sure enough, my horses jumped in one of those empty cars without half tryin’. I shoved the stockcar door almost to, and set around on a fence and waited to see the train come in. It wasn’t but a few minutes until it bumped the cars and hooked on. I hopped up in with my horses, and by the middle of the afternoon we unloaded in Brownwood. That was about the fastest six-day ride I ever made by horseback!
It took me another week to drift down into the far southwestern part of the hill country to the Marion pasture. This pasture had about 9,000 acres in it laying east and west the long way. The east end of the pasture joined the river. More than 7,000 acres of this trace was in two long, deep, rough canyons that joined at the river and ran back up into the pasture toward the prairie. About 300 acres on the west end of the tract was cut off from the main body of the land by a country road. It was up on a high prairie and had a windmill and an old shed-type barn about twenty feet long and twelve feet deep facing south that was built out of rock with a tin roof on it. There were some small corrals there around the windmill, and this shed was where I made my camp.
This old rock shed hadn’t been used in a long time, and I could tell at a glance that there was several wasp nests and maybe some other kind of varmints in those old rock walls. The rock walls had been laid in wall fashion and were about two feet thick, but they weren’t put together with any cement. I had had experience in campin’ in old barns, and knew that I might have some company there, so first thing I did was to gather some loose dry lumber and take my ax and cut some green live-oak limbs and small bushes and build up a smoke fire on the south side, which was the front of this old shed. There was a little breeze blowin’ and I fanned the smoke back up in under the shed. I drove out a wad of wasps and bees about as big as a full toe sack. I went around on the back side and killed two rattlesnakes as they crawled out of this rock wall; I saw a coon leaving off at the east side. With this little job of house-cleanin’ finished, I made my camp in under the shed, scraped the coals up from this first fire, fed and watered my horses and cooked some supper, and went to bed a little after dark. I needed to get some rest and get myself located ’cause tomorrow I intended to see that $1,000 worth of cattle that I owed for.
Next mornin’ I saddled a horse and decided to ride the outside fences of the big pasture and get the lay of the land before I begun to outsmart this bunch of outlaw cattle. De Witt was right when he told me it was rougher country than I was used to workin’. The canyons had a rimrock around the top of ’em where they broke off from the prairie, and then a deep sloping wall that disappeared under a dense growth of live oak, mesquite, and cedar. As I rode down the canyon wall on the south side and started around the east side, I ran into an awful lot of dead timber, some standin’ and some that had fallen. This was goin’ to add to the roughness of the rock and canyons that I was going to have to ride over to catch wild cattle.
I saw the brush shake in front of me a few times during the mornin’ and just caught a glimpse of some great big cattle. They were sure wild and stayed out of sight in the dense underbrush of those great big canyons. This was going to be a rough job ’cause these cattle didn’t have to leave the canyons to come to water. Water was plentiful up and down the river and there were springs up and down the canyons, so there was going to be no central point that I could wait for and trap or rope these cattle. It seemed that they had been run and hunted a lot and were allergic to the sight of a man on horseback.
I topped out on the northwest corner of the prairie and rode back to my camp to fix dinner and try to get some bright idea about how to catch these wild cattle.
That afternoon I went down in the pasture and made lariat-rope snares over the most common traveled trails. I took time to wrap grapevines and other leaves around the lariat ropes and hang the loop open over the trails with limbs and string, then run the main rope back to the trunk of a tree and took a big double half hitch on the trunk of a tree. That would be a knot that I could undo and it would be one that the steers couldn’t get away with the rope on. I made seven of these snares before sundown and went back to camp. Of course the cowboy is subject to wishful thinking, and I just thought that I could nearly catch enough cattle out of this pasture in a few days, with snares, to pay back the money and the rest of them would be profit.
I rode out on the edge of the rimrock by sunup the next morning and studied the brush in the canyon below. I did see the color of hair mingled among the trees on some different bunches of cattle, but by the time I could ride to them they would have heard me and would be long gone. I saw some bushes moving where one of my snares were, so I kicked my horse off the edge of the rimrock and started to that particular spot. I heard some bawlin’ and carryin’ on before I got to my snare and I could just imagine that I had a big one. I rode up a little cautiously to find a fat suckin’ calf that weighed about 350 pounds. This discovery messed up my plans. I had a bill of sale on steer cattle; nobody up to now had mentioned any cows or any calves or anything else in that pasture besides steers.
It was plain to see at a glance that this calf had never been branded, and I had caught him in my snare and it had bawled and bellered and spread the alarm and put the wild cattle on notice that there was something up.
There was a cow standing back down the canyon about two hundred yards with her head stuck out of the thicket. She hadn’t called to the calf, but she was watchin’. I stepped down off my horse to untie the calf from the tree and try to lead it down out of the thicket. After all, I didn’t see much point in turnin’ it loose; it belonged to somebody and it didn’t belong to my steers. I thought it would be smart to at least take it up and put it in that little pasture across the road.
This little pasture across the road had a high net-wire fence around it and was going to be a place to hold whatever I caught to put in it. About the time I stepped off my horse, this old cow came out of the brush and bawled and started after me. I got the rope untied and dallied around my saddle horn just as she horned my horse in the side.
This old horse was named Mustang. He was a well-bred horse and had no mustang blood in him, I am reasonably sure. I had caught him as a two-year-old in northern Arizona out of a bunch of mustang horses, which accounts for his name. He was a blood bay, 15 hands 2 inches tall, and would weigh about 1,150 in hard-usin’ condition.
He was one of the most willing horses that I ever owned, and he knew that calf was tied to him and he had determined not to get in a storm by flinchin’ from that old cow. She raked him across the side with her horns and knocked a little hair and cut a little hide, but didn’t really do him any serious damage. The calf began to bawl and run when we pulled ’im and drove ’im and jerked ’im over little brush, medium-size rocks, and drug ’im around a few big ones. By the middle of the morning I pulled him across the road and took the rope off of ’im in the little pasture. The old brindle nondescript common kind of a cow didn’t follow us out of the timber. When she hit the opening she turned back.
I rode the rest of the day. I could see a few cattle in front of me, but I never could get them in the proper angle to force them out of that canyon. I had thought if I could push some against the fence that maybe I could booger them into comin’ out to the top of the prairie. About all I got out of that day’s ride was somebody else’s calf and more than a common amount of discouragement from these brush-wise steers.
In about two days this old cow began to bawl and came to the fence and begin to try to get across the road to her calf. When I rode out to pull her through the gate, she would go back to the canyon. I wasn’t hankerin’ to put a rope on this old cow because she had long, sharp horns; the calf hadn’t sucked in two days and her bag was pretty sore and she was beginning to get real mad. I just got to thinking that I was tryin’ to get cattle out of that pasture and keepin’ that fence up by the road wasn’t too smart, so I put in about half a day takin’ the fence down along the road from the north corner about a quarter of a mile and from the south corner about a quarter of a mile. After all, if I ever did drive some cattle up that fence line, I ought to make it handy for ’em to get out of the pasture. But I didn’t take down the fence that was parallel to the gate to the little pasture. If I ever got anything in that lane I wanted the gate on the other side of the little pasture to be the only thing open.