Village Horse Doctor (35 page)

After ten years of drouth the ingenuity of man made a very small shadow under the scorching sun, and any weeds that were colored green would have been welcome whether they were poison or sweet.

Ben K. Green, whose
Horse Tradin’, Some More Horse Tradin’,
and
Wild Cow Tales
are already minor classics, at the very least, in a rich assemblage of Western Americana, was the kind of Westerner who almost crawled out of the cradle and into a saddle, spending his childhood, adolescence, and young manhood on horseback. He studied veterinary medicine in the United States and abroad and practiced in the Far Southwest in one of the last big horse countries in North America. When he eventually gave up his practice and research, he returned to his home town, Cumby, Texas, where, until his death in 1974, he raised good horses and cattle
.