Wild Cow Tales

by Ben K. Green

  I don’t know how old this kid was, but he wasn’t much heavier than a feed of oats. I’d be no judge of young stock and I don’t know whether he was weaned or still a-suckin’, but, anyway, I just picked him up by one arm, and as I rode by and handed him to his mother he was likin’ the ride through the air and gave me a big smile.

  I said, “Mama, grow him up some more and I’ll take him with me next time.” I never knew whether she fainted or got in the house with him.

  “SIC’EM”

  During the worst days of the now historical depression, I bought one hundred and twenty-seven cows. These were good-quality cattle and they had about sixty-two calves on ’em. They were a little old, they had some horns and wrinkles on their horns, but they weren’t bad cattle at all, and I gave $12.50 a head for them and the calves throwed in for nothin’. I kept this herd of cattle way late in the fall and finally sold them without makin’ much money, but that’s not the story. We were drivin’ this herd of cows through Mineral Wells on horseback down one of the main residential streets started south toward the Brazos River.

  There was kind of a snobbish fellow that had a real nice home with a big lawn and rosebushes; it was a well-kept place. Cowboys didn’t have a whole lot of use for him. He was sort of a small loanshark, and as far as we were concerned he wasn’t one of God’s most noble children; but, nevertheless, we were tryin’ to get the cattle through town with the least possible trouble. I was ridin’ point and wing on the side by his house, and I was doin’ my best to keep the cattle out of his yard.

  We had nearly passed his yard when he came from around the corner of the house with a big, bold, fuzzy black dog followin’; he got right up close and, with a big grin on his face, said in a loud tone of voice, “Sic ’em!”

  Well, these old cattle didn’t sic ’em too good. They weren’t wild. They were a gentle kind of cattle, but this dog nipped the heels of a calf that let out a little hurt kind of bawl, and the old cow turned around and, with that duly amount of horn she had grown in her lifetime, she hooked and knocked a chunk of black hair off the dog. With him out of the way, she took after this old man, and the calf was runnin’ after them too. They ran round the house.

  The man had a little outbuilding with his yard tools and stuff in it and the door was open, and that old cow was crowdin’ him so fast that he just kinda climbed up that door and got on top of the little building. It was about six-by-six and maybe six or seven feet tall, and there he was on top of it and this old cow was a-runnin’ around it by the time I got back there.

  Well, the little calf was bewildered and dived into that opened door and was standin’ in there in the dark a-bawlin’; the old cow could hear it bawl but she didn’t know what happened to it, so she was just goin’ round and round that little shed shakin’ her horns and pawin’ dirt and throwin’ it over her back. I knew that when the calf turned around and saw daylight and listened to that old cow a minute she would come back out.

  So I was just a-sittin’ there on my horse a-watchin’ the show. Mr. Loanshark was on top of his little building and turned white as a sheet and he finally realized I was sittin’ out there on my horse and he asked, “What are you goin’ to do to get this cow away from here?”

  I was really waitin’ for the little calf to make up his mind to come out of the shed, but I just said to the cow, “Sic ’em!”

  WHEN BIG STEERS

  CLEARED THE WAY

  The Fort Worth Stock Packers were out of beef in the winter of 1929 and 1930 because of the extreme cold weather, and cattle feeders weren’t shipping anything to Forth Worth. Swift and Company, buyer for big steers, called Fred Smith long-distance in Weatherford and offered him a two-cents-a-pound premium if he could send them some heavy finished beef.

  Fred came down to the wagonyard to the old camp house. All wagonyards in those days had a good, tight camp house, generally with two rooms in it and a fireplace in each room for people who were travelin’ in wagons to camp in during bad weather. On bad days the cowboys, traders, and loafers would gather in the camp house and keep up a big fire and a lot of big conversation and maybe play some dominoes, so Fred knew where to find the cowboys at that time of day in that kind of weather.

  He told us his troubles and he thought he could get seventy-two cattle cut out, which would be three carloads of twenty-four to the car, if we thought we could get them to town. Fred had one man at the feed lot and there were four of us there that thought we could go, so we told him we didn’t know whether we could get to town with them or not because the streets were solid ice. Anywhere a horse had to travel, you were subject to slip and fall. There was some fine sleet in the air while we were talking.

  We put on all the clothes we had and heavy chaps and big leather coats. Most of us had a horse or two in the wagonyard, so we saddled our favorite horses and went out to the feed lot, which was about three miles from the stock pens in town. These cattle were all fat, so Fred just opened the gate and counted out seventy-two head that he hoped we could drive to town.

  As he turned them out of the small feed lot that these cattle had been kept in, he turned them into a little trap pasture. Cattle as fat as that can get out on hard ground and fresh air and feel good, so these cattle romped and bucked and played and we didn’t try to hold them up. We thought we would kinda let them get their play out because they weren’t scared. They were just doin’ it for fun and they would quit in a few minutes without hurtin’ anything. When they began to blow a lot of steam out and slow up a little bit, we opened the gate out onto the road. A couple of boys went out to ride point and hold them down the best they could goin’ up the lane, and me and another cowboy brought up the herd. Nearly all the streets were solid ice and there was no traffic. Nobody was in the way but it was an awful hard way to try to move cattle, especially fat cattle that were rollicky and feelin’ good.

  All of us either stood in our stirrups or rode with our feet out of the stirrups for fear our horse would fall with us. When you are ridin’ standin’ in your stirrups and you have one hand on your reins and another on your saddle horn, if a horse starts to fallin’ you can kinda stiff-arm yourself out of the saddle with one hand, and if you are ridin’ with that hand on the saddle you are ready all the time. The other way, ridin’ settin’ down in your saddle with both feet out of the stirrups, you are countin’ on goin’ down with the horse. By having your feet loose, you won’t get caught with a leg under your horse and you will be free to roll on the ground away from him to safety. When I rode on ice and slick pavement, this was the way that I did it, and in spite of my many injuries, I have never had my foot caught in the stirrup under a horse.

  We came down Elm Street headed north to the stock yards. Fort Worth Street ran east and west and the Weatherford Post Office was on the corner where Fort Worth Street took a sudden drop at the point we were crossin’ these cattle. This herd of big cattle began to slip and slide and fall. The seventy-two head had piled up in the middle of Fort Worth Street, not tryin’ to get away but because they just couldn’t stand up.

  We cowboys didn’t dare try to hurry our horses as they were scotchin’ to try to keep from fallin’. We stood there all around these cattle a-cussin’, cryin’, and hollerin’ and wavin’ our hands at them but wonderin’ how we were even goin’ to get them up on their feet.

  These big stout cattle would scuffle and struggle and then give up because they couldn’t get a footing to stand up. We managed to ride closer to them and holler louder at ’em. The fine sleet in the air was freezin’ on our clothes and freezin’ on the manes and tails of our horses, but these big steers were so hot and full of rich feed that the sleet would melt as it would hit them.

  Now here is the historical part of the story, something that I never saw happen before in my lifetime and I doubt seriously if it will ever happen again, at least in Texas, because we never drive cattle this way any more : the body heat of those seventy-two steers piled up on that solid frozen pavement began to soften the surface o
f the ice enough that, when they began to try to get up again, their feet held in the soft ice. They melted the ice with their own bodies enough to be able to get back up on their feet, and we rode our horses across a sort of a mush that was a lot better than being on solid ice.

  It was about three fourths of a mile on down to the stock pens and these cattle then were so scared of their footing that none of them ever tried to run or get away, and we drove them down to the stock pens without any more trouble. The railroad spotted the cars and we loaded the cattle just at dark and sealed the car doors and went to town.

  We went into the Texas Cafe and back to the stove in the back side of the dining part. We pulled off our horse-hide coats and our chaps and there was so much ice on them that they stood up on the floor after we were out of ’em. It made a loblolly, but Florent Patrick and Little Pat and all was glad to see us get warm and glad to know that we got the steers shipped and nobody got any chousin’ about gettin’ water on the floor from thawin’ out the clothes. Somebody just got a mop and cleaned it up and was glad that we were back in town and nobody hurt.

  STEERS THAT

  STOOD WATCH

  IN THE SPRING OF 1937 THE CATTLE business had showed considerable recovery from the days of the depression. However, cattle prices still weren’t very high, but there was a marginal difference in the price of feeder and stocker cattle and fat cattle. Steermen that hadn’t found any cure for it were goin’ back into big steers and it was time to ship big steers from South Texas to the Osage grass country of northern Oklahoma and the Flint Hills of Kansas. The economic recovery and the American taste for beef had changed the demand some for big, heavy grass-fed cattle, but “steermen” were an old and diehard part of the cowboy game and were trying to hang on to the only way that some of them knew to handle cattle. I was a young man but had the same feeling about the steer business that many of the old-timers did. It was still the easiest and most enjoyable way to handle and sell finished cattle.

  The last week in April I shipped two hundred and seventy-eight head of three- and four-year-old steers and unloaded them at Pawhuska, Oklahoma. We drove northeast from Pawhuska to near the headwaters of Bird Creek and Buck Creek, where I had made arrangements to graze these cattle through the summer. Four hundred miles north from South Texas was still a little chilly in late April but there had been plenty of real good rain and bluestem sage grass had begun to put out for spring.

  My stompin’ ground to loaf and buy chuck supply for my camp was the little town of Foraker. I had a good camp under a big old shed that was once built to store hay in and was boxed in on the north and open on three sides. This was one of the best summers that I ever spent out in a camp summerin’ a bunch of steers. It rained every time it should to make the grass grow, the sun came out right behind the rains, and we didn’t have any weather that would have been termed “bad” all through the summer.

  Big steers will get fat on bluestem or other good grazin’ in the summertime because they have enough growth that their frame is mature and what they graze will turn into good, firm beef. The market was steady and even went up a little and I began to ship these cattle and I would cut out three or four carloads of the fattest ones. We shipped cattle every week in September and had about finished when we had a hard killin’ frost in October. Cattle will not put on any more flesh after frost and the grass dries up and loses a lot of its food value.

  I had a remnant of twenty-one steers not fattened as good as the rest of the herd. There were a few big fat steers in the bunch that every time we rounded up and cut some to ship, these few big cattle had managed to get away. There were two big yellow steers with a little brindle along their sides that had been hard to hold in the roundup when I had shipped out of South Texas, and these two were still the ringleaders of the ones that had been gettin’ away. The pasture was mostly open in high rollin’ hills and valleys. However, there was a considerable amount of brush along the headwaters of Bird Creek and these cattle had begun to hide out over there on water and in that thicket. I had a good Okie farm boy that was makin’ a cowhand helpin’ me, and after we had shipped the last several cars of steers, we started out in dead earnest to get this remnant, which would be about a carload.

  The first morning we saw a big yellow steer high on the ridge, and I said to Okie, “The rest of them will be just over that ridge grazin’ on the slope.”

  We dropped down below them, which would be south, and we intended to drive them north to the corral of this pasture. We were half a mile from that big yellow steer, and he was lookin’ west and we were ridin’ south and acted like we didn’t see him, but that didn’t fool him none. He bawled real loud, shook his head, and wrung his tail and ran down the slope to signal, and the whole herd dived in the brush just about the time we got in sight of them.

  We worked and hollered and rode through the brush across the creek and back and forth, and it was just rough enough for us and our horses that cattle could turn back and get by us. We made about three hard drives at them with no luck. I hollered at Okie to meet me at the head of the draw and we worked our way out of the brush. By this time the morning was gone, so we went back to camp to fix a batch of grub for dinner. It was not hot weather and it didn’t hurt to try to work these cattle anytime during the day. However, they were fat and I wanted to get them to the stock pens fat and I wasn’t interested in makin’ a week’s or ten days’ long, hard chousin’ cow-workin’ on this last carload of steers.

  That afternoon we found these cattle way over on the east fence line in the open and we were ridin’ up behind them from the valley through the slope when that other big yellow steer came out of the creek bottom from behind the water and in front of us, runnin’ at top tilt and ran into the herd that was grazin’, and the race was on. Of course, they got back in the thicket on us and we were no better off than before we had started early that morning.

  Big, grass-fed, fat, crossbred, motley-faced brindle steers are wise and fresh and discourage a cowboy from droppin’ a loose rope around everything he sees movin’. I sure didn’t feel like it would be smart to rope these steers one at a time and jerk and pull my horses the way they would have to to handle them, and worse than that it would cause lots of shrink and loss of weight on these cattle; but these big aged steers had learned to like that blue grass and didn’t intend to give up easy. I realize now that during the other times that we rounded up this pasture and shipped fat steers that these two yellow steers and that little herd they were with had worked themselves out a signal system, and they stood watch either from front or back or from side to side of the rest of the herd against the chance of any cowboys sneakin’ up on them. Before we went to sleep I rustled through my personal belongin’s and found a big, half-circle horse doctor’s needle that I usually carried to sew up a cut horse with. You might not need it but once a year, and you hoped that you never would when you were camped out workin’ stock.

  Next morning early we could see high on the ridge one of these big yellow steers standing watch, and I said to Okie, “let’s catch him before he gets to the herd.”

  When we really took after this old steer it sort of surprised him. I guess he was used to cowboys tryin’ to head him and he didn’t think about one followin’ and ropin’ him. I was ridin’ a good fast grey horse that could sure put me up for a loop at this big set of horns. I pitched a big blocker loop on him and caught him around the head and over one horn, and the rope took up right over his windpipe. The best way in the world to catch a sure-enough fat steer is to rope and choke him at the windpipe right at the point of the throat and put the rope between the horns so it won’t slip down his neck to where there is a lot of hide and flesh wadded up between his windpipe and your rope. This big stout grey horse couldn’t throw the steer, but he was doin’ a good job of shuttin’ off his wind.

  I had put Okie on a horse called Charlie and he was workin’ fast, doing his best to pick up this old steer’s hind feet with a rope, and I drug this big steer around an
d got him choked and as he moved his back legs, sure enough, Okie finally got his rope high up about even with his hocks and we pulled him down on the ground. Both these horses had experience in headin’ and heelin’ big steers.

  I rubbed old Charlie on the hip and talked to him and pulled a hair out of his tail about eighteen inches long. I had stuck my crooked needle in the flap of my shirt pocket. I threaded this needle with that stout black horsehair and Okie got a death grip on this old steer’s horns and turned his nose up like a cowboy bulldoggin’ a steer. I proceeded to sew his eyelids together with the horsehair. Of course, he offered a more than reasonable amount of objection, but I had a horse holdin’ on each end of him and a stout farmboy that was fast becomin’ a cowboy holdin’ his head. It took about thirty minutes to shut out the daylight to where his watch duty was gonna be about over. We took our rope off and let him up and he stood there, wrung his tail, shook his head, and bawled. There was hardly any blood made by this needle and he had no reason to complain on the grounds of pain, but it was the fact that he couldn’t see all and know all that was makin’ him mad. He very cautiously eased off down the draw, smellin’ and bawlin’ and hopin’ to find the rest of the herd, but he didn’t run into them and scatter them. As we rode closer, that other big yellow steer came from across the creek on the other slope and ran into the middle and, by himself, led them into the thicket. We just rode back to camp and rested until after dinner and waited for them to come out.

  We had ridden to the other low side of the creek where it ran under the fence and worked our way around until we could see the color of cattle in the thicket. We stayed there a long time and talked and visited in a low tone of voice and drew pictures of various kinds of brands in the dirt with the end of a broomweed and passed the time like cowboys generally do when waitin’ out stock.