Village Horse Doctor

by Ben K. Green

  Also by Ben K. Green

  Horse Tradin’

  Wild Cow Tales

  Some More Horse Tradin’

  These are Borzoi Books

  Published in New York by

  Alfred A. Knopf

  This is a Borzoi Book

  Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  Copyright © 1971 by Ben K. Green

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-83189-7

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-118716

  v3.1

  Howdy

  The Village Horse Doctor is an accurate account of my true experiences during my years of practice in the Far Southwest as the first veterinary doctor at Fort Stockton, Texas.

  I offer no apologies for having written the true facts about the conditions in this desert country, and I have the highest regard for a rugged breed of people who were ever grateful for my efforts and so charitable of my many mistakes.

  My life has been rough but it has never been dull and the time covered by these chapters is probably the roughest and the furtherest from being dull as any years that I have so far spent on this earth.

  You will find no bibliographies or other list of references in this book since all the material is that of the Village Horse Doctor himself.

  Ben K. Green

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Smart? Horse Doctor

  Lechuguilla

  Alkali

  Sleeping Sickness

  Yellowweed Territory

  Banditos

  Mrs. Rose, Mr. Rose—Poison Hay

  Strong Medicine

  Drouth

  Common Practice

  Yellowweed Fever

  Yellowweed Cure

  Pinguey, Fever, and the Queen

  Trouble in the Mountains

  Rabies

  Hormones

  Plows and Propellers

  Corn, Cob, Shuck and All

  The Desert

  A Note About the Author

  SMART? HORSE DOCTOR

  On January 4, 1944, I crossed the Pecos River between McCamey and Girvin headed for Old Mexico to practice veterinary medicine. It was midafternoon and a “blue norther” was blowin’ down from the Rockies, and I could see heavy black clouds come rollin’ down the Pecos River draw that were comin’ off the Panhandle of Texas.

  A few months earlier I had loaned a good two-door Dodge to some friends of mine. They got drunk and drove it under a truckload of wheat. My car was demolished and one of the boys was killed in the wreck. The Second World War was in full swing and buying a new car was next to impossible, so I got a used-car dealer to let me have the best he had.

  It was a 1937 two-door Chevrolet with the usual story about havin’ belonged to an old-maid schoolteacher who had never driven it over 20 mph and had never been off the pavement with it. A whole lot of this might have been so because the old car was in an excellent state of preservation, but I had it loaded with a year’s supply of veterinary drugs and instruments and it wasn’t eatin’ up that desert road towards Mexico very fast.

  It was dark when I pulled into Fort Stockton, Texas. The blizzard had struck and the temperature was falling fast. A day or two before, I had slammed the door on the right side of the car a little hard tryin’ to push the overload back into it and had broken out about a fourth of the top of the glass in the door. This little opening was makin’ me very much aware of the change in the weather, and I decided to check in at Fort Stockton for the night.

  I registered at the Springhurst Hotel. It was too cold to loaf around and get acquainted with the town, so I ate a big supper in the dining room and sat around awhile in the lobby, which was quiet and peaceful. I visited with Benny Walker, who was the porter and after ten p.m. the porter and night clerk combined. We had a little light conversation. Benny was very well mannered and didn’t pry into my business, and I didn’t volunteer any information. After a while I walked upstairs and went to bed.

  Early next morning I discovered that the Springhurst Hotel was the early-morning coffee shop for all the ranchers who lived in town and went to their ranches in the morning. They had begun to gather in the dining room, and, of course, the weather was the main topic of conversation. The temperature was down to 16 degrees above, and I gathered that this was an unusual spell for the dry Trans-Pecos Region of Texas.

  Since I had been a cowboy all my life, nobody would have suspicioned from my appearance that I was a veterinary doctor, and nothing in their lingo seemed strange or unusual to me since I spoke their language too. During this early-morning session that I was stretchin’ an ear out for, I heard the argument that the wind was puttin’ up as it blew down the main street, which ran north and south, so I decided I would hole up here for a few days until the weather broke.

  The next morning I was sittin’ in the lobby watchin’ the natives for pastime when a man walked over and introduced himself as Russell Payne. He was tall, light complexioned, and had a cigar that grew between his fingers and, when he stuck it in his mouth, gave off lots of smoke signals. He was a cowboy who had graduated to the livestock commission business and evidently was doing better at it than cowboy’n’.

  After he learned that I was a veterinary doctor, he called to Alf TenyCke, Pat Cooper, Doug Adams, and several others who belonged in the coffee crowd as they came from the dining room into the lobby. As he introduced me to them, it seemed that it was the sudden thought of everybody that I should settle in the community.

  The weather was bad and nobody was in a hurry, so we sat around the lobby stove, and they all put up a good talk about how much stock there was in the country and that it was a hundred and fifty miles or more in any direction to a vet. Of course, they all thought I would do real well there. I didn’t discourage them too much and didn’t make any sudden remarks about stayin’, as I pretty well had my head set for Chihuahua City, Mexico.

  The weather didn’t break and ice stayed on the ground for sixteen days, which according to the natives was supposed to be some kind of record for freezing weather. During this time I had visited around the two drugstores. One, owned by Roger Gallemore, was on the west side of the main street on the north end of the block close to the bank. He and his wife, Ida, who everybody commonly referred to as Mrs. G, had been exceptionally nice to me and insisted that I settle in Fort Stockton.

  Joe Henson operated the Stockton Pharmacy on the south corner of the same block. He, too, had offered much encouragement. Since the town was crowded because of the airfield and office space was next to impossible, both he and Gallemore had offered to take my calls and stock any kind of drugs that I would use.

  Othro Adams was in the livestock commission and irrigation farming business. His office was in the Springhurst Hotel and opened off the back side of the lobby and onto a side street. Othro was a good operator and wanted me to stay in Fort Stockton and offered to share his office space with me. His particular interest was sheep and this was a big sheep country, and he asked in a very respectful manner, “Doctor, what do you know about sheep?”

  “Well,” I said, “I kept a thousand head of sheep for about five years in one of my ranching operations.”

  He kept a straight face, but his eyes laughed when he said, “If a man caught on slowly, he wouldn’t learn much from just a thousand sheep in five years.”

  I had gotten acquainted with a lot of people in the sixte
en days that the weather was bad but hadn’t made any decision until I struck up a conversation in front of the Stockton Pharmacy with an old rancher who was not particularly interested in the development of the country or the welfare of the livestock and had no concern for the success or well-being of his fellow man. His voice was toned pretty close to that of a bullfrog, his eyes were squinted, and from his dress, you would have assumed that his world’s gatherings didn’t amount to very much.

  He said, “I seen you round here several days. What’s yore business here?”

  I told him that I was just passin’ through and had stopped for the weather to fair up, that I had been headed for Chihuahua City to practice veterinary medicine. I said, however, that several people had suggested I set up practice in Fort Stockton.

  He gave off a little mournful kind of sneerin’ laugh and said, “This is healthy stock country and there’s no business here for no horse doctor. What few times the country’s had a die-out, there’s always been enough cattle and sheep and horses left to restock in a few years. It’s a pretty good place to live, if you can stand the people in it; and if you want to stay round, it wouldn’t hurt nothin’, but you might have to do some day-work on a chuck wagon durin’ workin’ times to make a livin’ ’cause there ain’t nobody in this country silly enough to pay somebody else to doctor a horse when they can do it themselves just as good as a horse doctor.”

  I thanked him for his advice and told him that he had made up my mind. As I walked off, he said, “I’m shore glad you listened and that yore goin’ to move on. Us ranchers don’t need nobody else to be livin’ offn’em.”

  He didn’t understand what I meant when I said he had made up my mind.

  I moved to a motel up on the highway where I had more room to store my drugs and supplies and get them out of my car. In the sixteen days that I had been there, I had vaccinated one dog for rabies, and the going price for a small dog that didn’t take much vaccine was $1.50. Up to now this had been my total practice.

  For the next few days I put out the word that I had decided to stay, and I began to get a small amount of practice that I think could be termed “test practice.” I took out a horse’s tooth for Boyd Clayton and floated some horses’ teeth for Fred Montgomery. For the rest of the month of January, I did some small chores for Alf TenyCke, Guy Rochell, John Bennett, and others that were just little things they had done in order to give me some practice and get me to stay. I knew this, however, and it showed a good attitude on the part of those who didn’t need anything done on their livestock.

  I hadn’t gotten any kind of emergency call that would give me a chance to demonstrate my professional ability. However, during this same period, I had made some awful professional and conversational busts about the poisonous plants that were and had been killing off sheep during the winter ever since man had stocked this country with sheep, cattle, and goats.

  One morning in the Stockton Pharmacy J. C. “Con” Cunningham was introduced to me and he immediately brought up the subject of yellowweed, and I told him frankly that I had never heard of it. Some other ranchers joined in the conversation and gave me a run-down on the history of yellowweed.

  It is a grayish-green weed with lush, meaty-type leaves that comes in the dead of winter when there is nothing else green. As it matures, it has a large daisy-type bloom with a great excess of yellow pollen that will stain the wool on the face and legs of sheep that are grazing on the plant. Sheep by nature are weed-eaters and green-feeders and start eating yellowweed as soon as it is big enough to graze in the late fall and early winter. It was explained to me that the first sheep would die about ten to eleven days after they were put on yellowweed pasture, and unless you moved them, if the yellowweed was abundant enough, practically all would be dead in less than thirty days.

  Mr. Cunningham stayed longer than the rest, and I, in spite of all my ignorance of these desert plants, immediately said, “It sounds simple to me, and I’ll just give Mr. Henson back here a prescription for enough to treat a few sheep if you’re interested.”

  His eyes brightened and a big smile crossed his face and he said, “Doctor, I’ll be glad to try anything that you would prescribe.”

  We walked back to the prescription department and Mr. Cunningham briefed Joe Henson, the druggist, on what had transpired up at the fountain, and I said, “Yes, hand me a prescription blank.”

  I wrote out a prescription for enough medication to fill fifty sheep-size capsules and felt real smart. Mr. Cunningham said, “What do I owe you?”

  I said, “Why don’t you wait to see how much good we do the sheep?”

  Joe looked the other way—I know now to hide his amusement, but at the time I didn’t think about it. Mr. Cunningham said, “That’s fair enough. I’m glad you’re here.”

  As I walked away, I remarked, “If this don’t do the job, I’ll take a closer look at the sheep.”

  Little did I know how serious the death loss from yellowweed had been for the many years that sheep had been in the Trans-Pecos Region of Texas, and I had no idea how many people—doctors and others—had tried to treat yellowweed without success.

  In a few days I saw Mr. Cunningham and asked about the sheep, and he said they seemed to be doing very well. I felt pretty good about this, so the next time I was in the drugstore, I asked Joe Henson, “Has Mr. Cunningham had the sheep prescription refilled?”

  Nobody was around to listen and Joe, embarrassed for me as he was, endeavored to explain to me in a courteous manner that he told Mr. Cunningham that the prescription was too damn simple to do yellowweed any good and that they never had filled it the first time. This came as quite a blow to me; it was the first big, loud-mouthed mistake I had made in my first month in the Trans-Pecos Region.

  During this same period of time, M. R. Gonzalez, who was a good citizen, with a grocery store, livestock, and other interests, had a bunch of sick hogs. M. R. had a contract with the airfield to haul the garbage, and he had a hog-feeding operation where he was feeding this garbage. He had gone to Roger Gallemore at the other drugstore for advice, and Roger hastened to inform him that they had a first-rate veterinary doctor who had just moved to Fort Stockton. M. R. was delighted when Roger called me to the back of the drugstore and introduced us.

  He was glad to have my services, so we went to the south edge of town to look at his hogs. There were dead ones and some that were dying and some at the stage at which they were almost fat. There must have been about ninety head. The garbage for these hogs was being collected in iron barrels and the acid reaction was causing ferric poisoning; however, at the time I didn’t know about the iron barrels, and in the last stages, all symptoms indicated that they were dying of swine erysipelas.

  I did a post-mortem on several of these hogs that were dying and showed M. R. the indication of poisoning in the spleen and kidney, as well as the digestive tract. M. R. was a very pleasant heavy-set fellow, and he patted me on the back and said, “Doc-tor, you’re sure smart. Now what do you want to do to save my hogs?”

  I explained to him that I had the medicine to counteract the poisoning and we would go back to the drugstore and Gallemore would order the vaccine for erysipelas. This suited him fine and that afternoon we caught each one of the hogs and I gave them medicine by mouth.

  The next day about the usual number had died, and I gave them more medicine.

  The next day I had the vaccine that we had ordered, so we vaccinated them, and I gave more medicine by mouth. In about a week the number that were dying had slowed down, but the percentage was about the same—there were just fewer hogs.

  M. R. was a good fellow and a real stayer and never complained, and we treated his hogs until they all died. This was my second bad case in my early practice in Fort Stockton.

  One day later, M. R. told me, “Doc-tor, I sure like you and hope you come by to visit even if I don’t have any hogs for you to kill.”

  An old man out in the edge of town on the irrigation ditch had a pet monkey
that had a rash breaking out all over his body, and I really fixed him up. I gave him some medication and all his hair came off.

  It seemed that I had done nothing right—my diagnoses were bad, my treatments were worse, and it was getting a little harder for the druggist to tell the people that there was a veterinary doctor in town. Well, I didn’t feel too bad about the damn monkey because I didn’t think I would have any large monkey practice in the Trans-Pecos Region of Texas.

  Frank Smith, the druggist who worked for Roger Gallemore, had a little mixed-breed pet dog that had recovered from distemper before I got there (otherwise he might not have recovered), but was seriously afflicted with chorea, which is a nervous disorder that is sometimes the aftermath of distemper in dogs and is generally considered incurable. The afflicted dog flinched, jerked, and twitched whether he was awake or asleep, so Frank asked me if I would “do away” with the dog. Well, this wasn’t the kind of practice I had in mind either, but small-animal practice was going to be something that I couldn’t avoid, so I consented to take care of this chore.

  I took the little fellow in my car out in a pasture and gave him an extremely large intravenous injection of phenobarbitol, enough to have put a horse to sleep and left him layin’ out in the weeds. In about three days he showed up at home very hungry and for some unexplainable reason, cured of his jerkin’, twitchin’ chorea. This little incident wasn’t interpreted by the dog lovers of the community as a recommendation for me as a small-animal practitioner.

  The cases that I have cited are by no means all the professional mistakes that I made, but it will show that I wasn’t making a favorable impression on the region as an outstanding veterinary practitioner. By now I had begun to ponder the reasons for stopping in Fort Stockton, and I was thinkin’ wistfully of Chihuahua, Mexico.

  LECHUGUILLA

  Early one morning I met Guy Rochell on the main block of town. He was a very pleasant and sociable kind of fellow who ranched about thirty-five miles south of Fort Stockton on the Sanderson road. He stopped me and we started a conversation.