Wild Cow Tales (15 page)

Early one morning I boiled some water on the fire, shaved with a pocketknife, and went down in my bedroll and brought out my Sunday-best pair of britches and my last clean shirt. I got dressed up as best I could and rode into town, left my horse in a little pasture behind the feed store, and caught the Red Ball stage to Austin. I had decided that I needed to have a talk with Mrs. Marion.

About middle of the mornin’ I walked into the Driskill Hotel. I stood around a little bit. I sort of got up my nerve and walked up to the desk and asked if Mrs. Marion lived there. The old gentleman at the desk said, “Yes, her suite is 312.” I said, “Thank you.”

I walked back out in the center of the lobby and stood
around until I found the stairway. Now I have seen a few stairways in cow-country hotels, and the most of ’em run up the side of the wall about the same angle as a loadin’ chute and not much wider, and it didn’t seem that that hotel had one. As I stumbled around and looked around, though, I found a stairway that I wasn’t quite used to. It was about as wide as a country road and was curved up the side of the wall sort of like a trail going around a mountain, and it was covered with a rug that looked like dead curly mesquite grass when it beds down on the ground for the winter. People may not stop to think about it, but a cowboy always dreads a stairway. If he’s actually spent his days in the saddle and his nights on the ground, his legs are awful stiff, his ankles just bend front and back and his knees just bend sideways and his hips are about solid.

I eased over to the rail side of the stairs and started pullin’ with one hand and lettin’ my legs follow. I found number 312—I took my hat off and had the brim rolled up in a tight grip when I knocked on the door. A kind of plain-lookin’ youngish lady came to the door. I asked for Mrs. Marion. She didn’t say anything to me but turned and said, “There’s some boy wants to see you.”

Mrs. Marion said, “Well, show him in.”

You could tell by the tone of her voice she was a little impatient with this woman that answered the door. When I walked in you could tell at a glance that Mrs. Marion was all that old Eness had said she was and more too. She stuck out her hand and introduced herself, and I told her who I was. She made a motion to one of those flimsy kind
of chairs that I wasn’t too sure it would do to sit on, but anyway I took my chances. She didn’t offer to “take my hat.” That is an awful mistake that nice people make when they are tryin’ to make a cowboy feel at home. He hates to give up his hat. He might want to leave in a hurry, or fight a fly, or hit a man, or scare a horse, and he never likes to turn loose of his hat. But in a few minutes she had me so much at ease that I had throwed that hat on the floor beside my chair. In our conversation I had gotten the news over to her about the trade on the steers and about the bad luck I was havin’, and I told her about my horses bein’ crippled, which was the reason I had come to see her to get more time on the pasture. She was a very attentive listener, and you could tell she was an old ranchwoman and was sympathetic with my plight.

She had asked me where I was from, and I told her Weatherford, Texas. Then she asked me did I know Barto Hood. Barto Hood was the town’s gruffest character and most prominent lawyer, and was a friend of mine on the occasions that he chose to get after me about something that I was doin’ or that he thought I should do. I was sorry to learn that she knew him. I told her that I knew him, but that I wasn’t braggin’ about it, and she thought this was rather funny. She said that she had gone to college with him at the old Veal Station College and from what I said, he must still be his normal self. Once in a while I guess I said something funny, and when she threw her head back and laughed, you could tell it did her good. It didn’t sound like a man but she didn’t try to snuff it out like a woman sometimes does, either. It was
hard to guess whether she was middle-aged or an old woman. She gave off lots of sunshine, and if there had been any frost or shadows in her life, she kept ’em brushed away.

The girl, Eloise, was a niece of hers and hadn’t entered into the conversation but had just sat there and listened. It was gettin’ about dinnertime by now and Mrs. Marion suggested that Eloise take me down to the dining room for dinner. I went to alibi-in’ a little bit, and this old ranchwoman said, “Well, if you came by my ranch you’d stay for dinner and you’ve got to eat somewhere, so you two go on down to the dining room and come back when you’re finished.”

This didn’t suit me too much, but I didn’t know of anything I could do about it, so we went down to the dining room.

This Eloise was pretty dull company. I have seen horses like her, no speed and no sparkle, that go through life walking with their heads down. If they ever look off or strike a trot they stumble or do something wrong. If the grub hadn’t of been better than her conversation, I couldn’t have stood neither one of ’em.

Well, I finished up this little batch of town chuck, and we went back upstairs. Mrs. Marion carried on a little light conversation for a few minutes, and I glanced at her and saw that she was lookin’ me over. My best Sunday britches that I had on, of course, were saddle-marked inside, my boot heels were spur-marked, and both my hands were rope-burned. I had spent the summer outside and my hair and my face was pretty well burned up by
the sun, and I am sure that to that gracious lady I must have been a pitiful picture.

She broke the silence by sayin’ that she had called Barto Hood on the phone.

I said, “Well, I guess I just as well get my hat and go if you’re gonna abide by what Barto said, because if he ever knew anything good to say about me, he’s still got it—he never said it to me.”

She thought that was funny, and told me that Barto had been very complimentary and had assured her that if the cattle could be caught that I would catch them, and to give me time. She explained to me that it was hard to lease a ranch with the reputation that had built up around the wild cattle that different people had failed to get out when they gave up the lease. She told me that if I would give her my word that I would stay there until I got all the cattle out, she wouldn’t charge me anything for the pasture; but I was to come to Austin after I had shipped out and give her a detailed report about the conditions of the grass and the fences and so on.

This sure was a relief to me, and I told her how much I appreciated it and that she could tell Barto Hood that I was capable of making trades without him. She laughed again and told me not to feel hard towards Barto, that he was a friend of both of us.

I wound up my visit pretty soon and was sayin’ my good-byes when she handed me an envelope that was sealed and told me to give it to Eness when I got back to the ranch. I promised her I’d ride down and give it to him when I got back to the pasture.

Knowing I had plenty of time, I laid in a little more feed for my horses and a little more grub for myself and didn’t work too hard at these cattle until Mustang’s legs were about well and Beauty’s withers had gone down to where a saddle didn’t hurt her back. I had choused these cattle so much that they didn’t run from me as bad in the thick brush, but they would hide and lay down and many times I guess I’d ride by them and never know they were there. Beauty could smell a steer and would stop or turn her head or ride toward them, which was a lot of help, and many an old-time brush cowboy will tell you that a brush cow horse sees and hears and smells more than the man riding it.

I had nineteen cattle in the small pasture the tenth day of December and got an old, wore-out cowboy to help me drive them to town and ship them. These were big cattle, but they weren’t quite a carload. They brought $963 net after the freight and the commission was paid, which meant that if I could gather some more cattle out of that canyon, I’d begin to get paid for my work.

I’d learned all the cutoffs and bad trails and big rocks and logs by now, and was doin’ a better job headin’ these cattle off when they tried to get away. I was worryin’ ’em more, but I wasn’t catchin’ ’em very fast! I rode by often and visited with Eness, and he didn’t seem to be worried about my steers or about me and he often told me that everything was goin’ to be “muy bueno,” and I decided that his ideas of “muy bueno” and my ideas of “good” might be different.

Late in the afternoon on December 16 I rode by the
shack and took him a few little things that he had asked me to buy in town for him. There was a high northeast wind blowin’. There hadn’t been any rain, the timber was dry, and these wild cattle, when you did see a few of ’em, you could tell they had begun to shrink ’cause the grass was gettin’ short. This high windy afternoon Eness seemed to be in good spirits. He told me that if I was a good cowboy, like he thought I was, I would be up by daylight the next mornin’ when the “norther” struck, that my wild cattle would drift from the wind and I would be able to get them out on the prairie. I told him that I didn’t know how he knew so much about the weather and about the “norther” and that he might be able to read those steers’ minds, but that I didn’t think they had told him that they were goin’ to go out on the prairie just because the wind blew.

He said, “My young friend, you have not much patience and have much to learn about wind and cattle.”

I went back to camp, ate a big supper of beans, beef, and taters, and sour-dough bread. I left a horse in the small corral and just thought that I would take Eness’s advice the next mornin’. Sure enough, along about midnight a norther struck. The wind was cold and I scuffled around and pulled some more saddle blankets on top of my bedroll. About four o’clock ole Beauty woke me up snortin’ and whinnyin’ and runnin’ around the corral, and the other horses had run up to the corral and they were makin’ a lot of horse noise. I rolled out of my bed and jerked my boots on and started dressin’ as I walked out from under the shed. There was a big fire bein’ fanned by
a high wind comin’ up the canyon from Eness’s house towards the prairie, and cattle were bawlin’ and runnin’ ahead of the fire. The canyon was full of old wood and dead timber and cedar and other wood that would burn good since it was so very dry.

I saddled Beauty as fast as I could and rode into the clearing on the south side of the pasture and hazed and hollered and scared these cattle towards the corner where I had let the fence down two months before. By daylight all the cattle were out of the pasture and in the road driftin’ and grazin’ and bawlin’ and startin’ towards town. I turned my saddle horses out into the road with the cattle ’cause I knew that I might have to change horses several times before the drive was over that day.

By late afternoon I drove thirty-eight head of steers and two cows and calves and an old Mexican bull into the stock pens at the railroad, ready to ship. When I had the gates locked, I went up to the depot to order the cars to ship the cattle the next day. Then I rode uptown to the mercantile where I had been buyin’ horse feed and supplies.

It was late afternoon and the old mercantile keeper said, “Would you like to see a note I have here?”

And at first it didn’t make sense to me, and I said, “I don’t remember signin’ you a note.”

“Oh Ben,” he said, “Mrs. Marion signed this note and sent it to Eness by you.”

Eness had been to town one time since I had been camped at the Marion pasture, and now I knew why—he had brought Mrs. Marion’s letter to the old storekeeper so he could read it for him.

I picked the letter up off the counter; it read :

“Dear Friend Eness: I ask that you do a great favor for me and our young friend, Ben. When the wind and weather is right, fire the pasture as you did for Mr. Marion almost forty years ago. I know that Ben will do the rest and the Marion pasture will be free of wild cattle one more time.”

S
TEERS ARE A PRINCIPAL CLASS OF
cattle that have long been referred to in livestock market quotations, various cattle operations, in song, stories, and legend. To my knowledge no writer has ever written the reason that bull calves are castrated and hence afterward known as steers, and due explanation has never been made as to their special purposes in the cattle industry.

In the early days of the cattle business in the Southwest there was little or no market for calves at weaning age except for the few ranchers who would buy them to keep on open range until they were older and bigger. The demand for “light” beef had not developed in the early-day consumer’s trade as it has in modern times.

As bull calves develop into maturity, their shoulders and neck become thick and masculine with lots of cartilage
and tissue developing in their muscle structure that is never palatable as human food unless it has gone through some grinding and other packer’s processing. To keep a bunch of bull calves to develop into grown cattle running on one range amounted to a constant bullfight and not a profitable growth and flesh gain. By this brief explanation, the reader can readily understand that keeping a great herd of bulls was impractical and unprofitable.

When these bull calves are castrated, their growth pattern is changed and they do not produce coarse shoulders, thick necks, and other fleshing patterns that are undesirable for beef after they have reached a mature age. Great herds of steers can be run on open range or in fenced pasture in order that they may be grown into larger cattle without any particular difficulty of handling. This would show why it is most desirable from a cowman’s standpoint to be raising steers.

It is common knowledge among stockmen that certain regions of semi-arid pasture land that is commonly referred to as rough—meaning mountains, rimrock, canyons that produce sparse, scattered vegetation—are more adaptable to beef production by the use of steers to graze such lands because steers can cover more ground to rustle for a living and gain weight than cows can and at the same time nurse a calf. This explains why there are vast semi-arid regions of the Western and Southwestern United States that are far more adaptable to steer beef-cattle operations than to those for cows and calves. At times of drouth or other adversity it is much easier to drive, ship, and relocate herds of steers than it is to move cows and calves.