Wild Cow Tales

by Ben K. Green

  T.Z. said, “Let’s go over here away from these other traders where we can talk.” When we got back off in a corner of a steer pen, he said, “Ben, McCloud has skipped the country and don’t nobody know where he is. I’m turning the money from these cattle over to the bank and if anybody’s going to pay you, it will have to be the bank. You better go talk to them while you’re in town.”

  He gave me the name of the man to see in the bank, which was back over in the main part of Fort Worth. I went in the bank and sat around in one of them cold, hard-back mahogany chairs until somebody finally noticed me and asked me what I wanted. I told them who I wanted to see and pretty soon he came over to where I was sittin’. I got up and shook hands with him, and you could tell he wasn’t very much of a banker. He was a little bitty fellow, narrow-eyed with a pair of thick glasses on and a little tight drawed mouth and with big ears and a squeaky voice. I told him what my business was and about the trade that I had made with Mr. McCloud to gather his cattle for $100. He was quick to tell me that the money for the forty head had been turned in and that Mr. Ham had called him that morning and told him about the twenty-five being on the day’s market. We talked a few minutes, and I explained about the twelve head that would have to be got one at a time and tied and drug and fought to get to a corral and that it would take longer to get the twelve head than it had taken to get all the rest of them. He was quick to tell me how bad the cow market was and how little the steers was bringing and how much the bank was going to lose, and he guessed that the cattle that were left would be in awful bad shape by the time they would be hauled to the stockyards. I wasn’t listening too careful and wasn’t too much worried and thought I should still be entitled to draw $50 or $60 of the money. He explained to me further that the bank wasn’t “bound” to live up the trades made by the defunct and now-missing Mr. McCloud and that he had just decided while we were talking that he would settle whatever was coming to me for my work by giving me the eleven head (one was dead) of cattle that were left in the pasture. If there was anything I didn’t need it was some more cattle, but the way this Mr. “Narrow-eyed” Banker summed things up, it seemed like that was all I was going to wind up with for my work.

  The steers that I didn’t kill or cripple getting them out of that pasture were going to bring about three cents a pound and by the time they had been fought and drawed and drugged and hauled, they weren’t going to weigh more than about 800 pounds, which would add up to more than $100 if and when I finally got them to where somebody could see them stand still long enough to bid on them.

  When I got back to the ranch I packed in a good deal of grub, knowing that the moon might change several times before I caught eleven wild steers by myself. Up to now, I had been real lucky with my horses as none of them had gotten crippled or bad cut up or blemished by the brush in that river bottom. I had torn off a good many old clothes and lost a little hide myself, but my horses had been lucky and were standing the steer hunt maybe better than I was, and they didn’t have to worry about whether I was going to get any money out of the trade.

  A lone rider has to study the wind and try to ride with the wind against him to keep the cattle from knowing where he is, and the element of surprise every now and then pays off by helping you to sneak up close enough to get a throw with your rope at a wild steer. I played nearly all the tricks I knew and had caught five in eight days. When I did manage to tie on to one of these big wild steers, it was a good half day’s work and sometimes longer to get him to the holding trap pasture that I had next to my camp. This little trap pasture had a seven-strand barbed-wire fence around it that had been built by somebody before me to be used to wean calves in after they had been cut off from the cows. I was putting it to good use but there was a small amount of land in the little pasture and if I didn’t get the rest of the steers caught pretty soon, the steers that were in there were going to eat the grass up, which would make them more restless and they might try to break out.

  These last four steers had worn me and my horses down and I thought I would ride over to Cleburne, which was about twenty-five miles away, just to take a little time to try to get some smart ideas. I was loafing around Scott’s General Mercantile downtown close to the trade square when I heard a bunch of fellas talking about they’re having considerable trouble finding a place to have a hound-dog trail. Well, I had never had time to try many hound dogs, so I stretched an ear out and listened real careful and it seemed their problem was that nobody wanted all the noise and commotion of the gathering of the men and dogs before they started a wolf hunt, and none of the ranchers felt like they caught enough wolves to go to the trouble of rebuilding the fences they tore down and cleaning up the camp and finding all the dogs they lost.

  That wasn’t really what they were saying, but that was what it added up to to me. I spoke up and kinda made myself known and said I would like to see a good two- or three-day wolf hunt, and I felt like there were plenty of wolves in the pasture that I had in mind. Seemed like the ringleader was an old man with a pair of suspenders and a big chew of tobacco, and he got to quizzing me as to where I was talking about for this wolf hunt. I explained to him that some of them could camp on the river and others could camp on the prairie when the moon and weather was just right. They could turn one big pack of dogs loose to run down the canyon and another big big pack of dogs loose to run the river and that they were sure to flush out enough wolves to try their dogs and make the hunt worth-while. It was late summer and getting a little fallish at night and these fellas set a time about four days from then as when they would all gather. I drew them some maps on a brown-paper sack and explained to them how to come and where to camp and said that I’d sure be looking for them.

  I got a shave and a haircut, ate some town grub, bought a few little things I needed, and headed back to the ranch pretty early in the afternoon. I just tried to remember—it didn’t seem like I’d ever seen a wolf in that part of the country or any wolf signs, but it sure was going to be interesting to see if fifty or sixty dogs and that many hunters would have any nerve-rackin’ effect on them big steers that was so snug in that underbrush along that river bottom and hidden in those cedar breaks up and down the canyon in that pasture. I felt like the old boys would have a nice camping place and a big visit and exercise their dogs and my steers whether they exercised any wolves or not.

  Sure enough, along middle of the evening on the day they were supposed to be there, they began to gather with all colors and shapes and sizes of hounds. They set up their two different camping places and built fires and laughed and hollered and talked and carried on the kind of commotion that would carry good on the wind and make them big steers turn restless. I rode up to each camp a little before dark and explained to them the way I felt they would do the most good with the hounds, and I told them that I wouldn’t be able to be with them but to have a good time and leave the next day when they got ready. There had been a light shower a day or two before where it was just right for a dog to be able to trail, and the moon was full and came up early. In the early part of the night I heard them turning their dogs loose. I could hear them barkin’, bayin’, bawlin’, yippin’, and carryin’ on, making all kinds of dog noise. They were starting their hunt just the opposite direction from which I had been trying to hunt cattle, and if my strategy worked they were going to booger those big steers right along down the canyon against the fence line, which was a fair-size pasture that joined the little holding trap.

  I had already spent the afternoon taking wire loose and tying it to the bottom of the post at four different places on the fence line and had opened the plank gate that joined the two pastures, and at the far-northwest end I had let the fence down in the corner. When I left the last dog camp just at dark, I had turned my horse and rode to a high ridge farthest from where the hunters would start and at a point where I could see the fence line in three or four places if the moon was right. The dogs had been running and circling and tryin’ to pick up a scent for a good
while. About midnight I saw the brush rattle down on the flat below me and three big steers broke out of the cedar breaks, wringing their tails, their heads up, looking for new country.

  During all the hard ridin’ that I had done I had found the carcasses of two more steers, which meant that there were only nine in all, and this was cuttin’ down on the amount of money that I might finally get. So according to this count there was just one more steer in the pasture that the dogs hadn’t flushed out. I watched these three steers as they headed towards the fence on the west side of the pasture; they were looking for a hole to go through. They went behind a clump of trees and out of sight. I heard one of them bawl. The next time I saw them they were about a quarter of a mile over in my pasture and you could see their outlines in the moonlight; they acted like they had smelled the cattle in the trap and were moving that way. I waited a little while to see the other steer but my nerves couldn’t stand it any more, so I rode the fence line and let the wire back up in the places I had tied it down and tied it back to the post and started to my camp. I thought these old steers were boogered pretty good, and even though wild cattle drive a little better in the moonlight because they don’t quite see a rider so good, I didn’t dare push my luck. I eased on to camp and let my horse stay in the yard and eat off the porch, and I had my saddle and rigging laying handy ’cause I would want to use it about daylight.

  I never knew how many wolves those fellas caught, but that other steer had managed to come in during the night and was with those three steers, hanging along the fence where I had the other steers. I opened the gate to the trap pasture knowing that I might spill the ones I had caught, but it was a chance I had to take. I rode way wide around these last four and it seemed to me like it took them a long time to drift up close to that gate, but they finally did go through the gate and I rode up right easy and closed it behind them. I knew all the time that Mr. Banker never thought that I would gather enough of those cattle to barely pay me for my trouble, and I felt pretty smart about having them in that small trap pasture.

  Trucks weren’t very big in those days and a bobtail truck would hold about five head of cattle, but there was no road that a truck could come in on down to this little pasture, and if you could get a truck in there was a good corral but no loadin’ chutes or crowding pens. My troubles weren’t over because I still had to drive those cattle out of that canyon and through another man’s pasture out to the public road. I let my horses rest and worried about this for two or three days.

  I didn’t want to take the chance of having some loudmouthed cowboy come help me that might holler at the wrong time and scatter these steers back to the brush. The grass was shorter in the little trap and pretty soon all I was going to have there would be plenty of water and too many steers. There were two corrals that I could put these cattle in. I could put the steers in one corral and cut one at a time into the other corral that had a big, heavy bois d’arc snubbin’ post in the center of the corral which was set about five feet in the ground and had been there a long time. (A snubbin’ post is used when you rope bronc horses or bad cattle and need to draw them up tight in order to do something to them.)

  I was ridin’ a big light chestnut horse called Dan. We cut about the biggest and rankest brindle-colored steer into the pen where the snubbin’ post was and I roped him around the horns. (If a steer is roped around the neck he will choke and that will make him fight a lot more.) He turned and charged Dan, and as Dan dodged the steer we made a jump toward the snubbin’ post, and I took a wrap around the snubbin’ post and drew this steer up to it until his head was solid against the post with a horn on each side. Dan was a big stout horse and I intended for him to hold the steer while I worked on him.

  The last time I was in town a bunch of us cowboys was sittin’ around talkin’ about wild steers and one smart-aleck old cowboy jokingly said that if there’s some way to prop a steer’s eyes open, he wouldn’t run into the brush if he couldn’t close his eyes. Since I had been wondering how I was going to get these cattle out of that brush canyon, that bright batch of conversation had worried me considerably. It’s common knowledge that the reason bullfighters stay alive is that the bull shuts his eyes when he makes that last lunge off the ground to charge a bullfighter. Even a man won’t run into brush without turning his arm up to protect his head and eyes.

  I had spent the night before cuttin’ and sharpenin’ some green live-oak pegs about as big around as a pencil and about two to three inches long and some even longer. I had never done this and I didn’t know what length peg it would take to hold a steer’s eyelids open. I stepped off of Dan, and he knew how to set back on that rope with his head to the steer to keep the steer’s head pulled up against that post. I took my pocketknife and lifted the upper lid of one eye and punctured a hole through to the outside, and I intended to puncture a hole in the lower eyelid and put the sharpened ends of the live-oak pegs in the holes that I was cuttin’, which would “prop” the steer’s eyes open. I had really forgotten that old Dan was a little bit “flanky.” When that steer went to bawlin’ and pullin’ as hard as he could with just one wrap of that rope around that snubbin’ post, the pressure got pretty bad on that back cinch and Dan, instead of pullin’, humped up and jumped forward, which gave the steer plenty of slack to rake me with his horns as I barely got out of the way. The last jump Dan made gave the steer enough slack so that he had more length of rope from the post than Dan had. He raked old Dan down the side with one horn and got the blood in a place or two, then hit him in the chest and punctured a hole that brought Dan back to his senses. It was common horse sense that that cinch wasn’t as ticklish as the damage that steer was giving him, so he snorted, backed his ears, turned, and pulled that steer’s head back up to the snubbin’ post.

  While Dan was takin’ lessons from that steer I took some too. I knew that this snubbin’-post business was going to be too risky for me to get all those steers’ eyes propped open. Cowboys don’t like footwork, post-hole diggin’, or using an ax, but it looked like I had my business in such a shape that I was going to have to think about doing some hard common labor. I cut a lot of good cedar poles, straight and about eight feet long, built me a small crowding pen in the corner of the big corral with a short chute that would hold two big steers at a time. I built the front of the chute solid, with no chute gate to let them out at, and the back of the chute was where you could block them with cedar poles crosswise and then back them out of the chute when you were through with them. Between cuttin’ poles and draggin’ them out of the canyon horseback, all this took me little over a week. The cattle weren’t getting any gentler in that time but they were gettin’ more used to seein’ a man and weren’t spooking quite as bad when I rode past the fence draggin’ a few poles with a saddle horn.

  Early one morning I worked around as slow and quiet as I could and got this nine head in the corral. I threw a slicker over the gate I brought them in at, so that they would be scared enough that they wouldn’t try to go back out that gate. These old steers were sure rank. They would fight a man afoot and they would fight you horseback, and it took a lot of dodgin’, jumpin’, and climbin’ fences to keep your good health. I finally got two of them in the crowding pen in the chute and blocked to where they couldn’t get out, and then I started the work of preparing these cattle’s attitude for driving without trying to get away and run into the brush.

  I put a rope on the first steer and pulled it up against the post and corral fence on the fence side of the crowding chute. He bawled, fought, bellowed, and let out the alarm. I slit a small place from inside on his upper eyelid and then inside on the lower eyelid. I took one of those green live-oak pegs that I had sharpened on each end and stuck the ends through each slit I had made with my pocketknife and propped the steer’s eyelids open. The pegs had to be long enough to stretch the eyelids to where the pressure would hold them in place. The pegs didn’t touch the eyeball, and I wasn’t worried too much about the little dab of blood or the pain
caused the steers ’cause any one of them would have horned me and my horse and killed us in a minute if he had gotten the chance. It was almost dark when I finished pegging the eyelids of the last steer, but it was a sight how gentle it made them. They looked at me and looked at my horse, but they never made another run at either of us.

  The next morning I turned these cattle out by myself and rode along behind them and winged them from one side to the other and drove them up a trail past my shack and turned them toward the trail that finally would lead out to the public road. I have drifted milk cows and pet horses and mules and all other classes of livestock across all kinds of country, but no animals have ever walked in the middle of a trail as far away from a swinging limb or bush as these steers did. I guess the pegs that crossed their eyeballs looked about the size of telephone poles, and after they had been in there overnight, I am sure their eyelids might have been a little sore.

  I drove my nine head of cattle out of the brush up the road past Cresson and on to Weatherford in two days, and after I had them in a good set of loading chutes I flipped the pegs out of their eyelids and put the steers in trucks and sent them to the Fort Worth market. By now they weighed less than 800 pounds apiece and after the hauling and commission was paid netted me $21 a head, which came to $189. I had paid Newlywed and White Lightnin’ $16 each, which left me with $57 more than Mr. Banker would have owed me if he had paid me the $100, and at this time this was a big lot of money for a month’s work.

  BLACK HEIFERS

  CROWHOP