Wild Cow Tales (5 page)

The reason there was so many hands out at the milk barn was that milking in those days was done by hand and it usually took a good-size family or several hired hands to run a dairy. It seemed they all got their breath at once and began to tell me about a bad fightin’ cow had
got in with their dairy cattle down in the pasture and that morning had horned her way into the barn to eat with the milk cows and when she realized there was people mixed up with the milk cows, this big yellow-brindle longhorn fat cow decided to clean the place out. The man spoke up to explain to me that the cow was one that had gotten away when a truckload of cattle had turned over on that hill a few days before.

I said, “Yeah, that’s just another one of them cases that people are goin’ to have to learn: cows or horses aren’t made to haul in trucks. They get four or five of them in a big truck and they make it top-heavy, and comes around a curve or goin’ down a hill it gets to swingin’ and turns over. Cattle and horses weren’t never intended to be hauled anyway. If the good Lord hadn’t aimed for them to walk, he wouldn’t have given them four feet and legs. Them trucks are all right, I guess, for corn, watermelons, or other stuff that can’t move around.”

While I was giving off my expert opinion on how to move stock, Mr. Dairyman spoke up and said that these cattle that were in the truck when it turned over belonged to the bank, and Fred Smith had told him when he got this one in a pen to call him and he would send me to get her. I told him that this was the first I had heard about this, but to have a bad cow fastened up in a barn would be taking advantage of her since I was used to having to catch them out in the brush, and I sure would be glad to get her now instead of having to come back after her when she was turned back out.

We were figuring on how to get in there and how to catch her, and I decided I didn’t want to go in there on
horseback on that concrete floor to get my horse horned and maybe slip down in as small a place as a dairy barn. I had a hard, long maguey rope tied on my saddle, and I took it in my hand and stepped inside the front door. They had lights all over the barn and that old cow would run at a shadow if it would move. She was standing in the middle of the barn pawing like a bull, blowing her nostrils and shaking her horns. I stood real still and watched her a minute.

The milk stanchions had been built out of two-by-four and two-by-six lumber where the cows stuck their heads through to eat while they were being milked. The plank on one side of these old-fashioned milking stanchions was solid The other side had a bolt run through it at the bottom and was swinging between the two-by-four frames at the top, and after the cow had stuck her head through the stanchion you pushed that one closed at the top and latched it by swinging a little wood block against it that was hinged on the other end. I decided that I would go behind these stanchions against the wall, which was about two feet of space, and let this old cow run at me and when she got her head through I was going to fasten the stanchion. Then I would have her caught and that would give me plenty of time to put my rope on her.

Well, I got back behind the stanchion and it wasn’t any trouble to get her to run at me, but it took a lunge or two for her to get her head turned to where her horns would go through this milk-cow-size stanchion. When she had her head just right, I reached over and pushed the stanchion up and tripped the little block against it at the top. After I had this done, the milk crew came in the front door and Mr. Dairyman had gone around back to open
the back door when I said I was ready, and he had led ole Beauty around back for me to let her in when I had the cow ready to let out.

A maguey rope is hand-woven in Old Mexico out of long, fine, stout cactus fiber and each rope is woven and platted individually. The end of a maguey rope where it is started is smooth and does not have a knot like the end of a common rope that has been cut and tied, and the other end has a platted hondo that you slip the knot end through to form your loop.

I dropped my rope on this old cow’s horns and she was bawlin’ and lungin’ and shakin’ that row of stanchions with her 1,300 pounds that was well made out of two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, and at the rate that she was going I wasn’t sure that she wasn’t going to tear up the inside of the barn. I realized my fancy Mexican maguey wasn’t stout enough to hold this 1,200- to 1,300-pound cow and that she was sure to charge my horse and cause a lot of trouble if I didn’t outsmart her pretty fast.

There is not much you can do to hurt the outside of a mean, mad cow and whippin’ and jerkin’ would sort of be a joke. I put a half hitch around her nose and threw the rope over the top of the stanchion and lifted her head about two feet in the air; then I took my pocketknife and punched a hole in the fine cartilage between the two nostrils and about as far up as I could reach in her nose with my hand, sort of like you would put a ring in a bull’s nose. I took the smooth end of the maguey rope and ran it into the cow’s nostril and through the hole in the middle cartilage and then back down through the other nostril. I worked the rope back against her neck and towards her
shoulder and out of the stanchion and hollered at Mr. Dairyman to open the door at the back and bring me my mare. He came in with his mouth open and his eyes about the size of goose eggs and handed me the reins from as far as he could stand.

These maguey ropes were about from forty-five to as much as sixty feet long and, to say the least, this was one of the longer ones. I got on my horse, took my rope, and dallied it around the saddle horn and ole Beauty snorted and looked at that concrete floor when I dallied it, which was as much as to tell me that she wouldn’t have a chance to keep from slipping on that concrete. I told Mr. Dairyman to ease up behind the stanchion where I had been and when that old cow would stand still to trip the little block at the end of the stanchion, and I would be on my way out with her. His nerve failed him some and he picked up a stick about three feet long and used it to trip the little block and free the swinging side of the stanchion. That wild, mean, mad cow caught on fast. She thought she was loose and when she backed out of the stanchion Beauty and I dived through the back door of the barn and turned against the barn; as this cow ran out, she headed for the milk cows that had been turned out during the commotion. When I jerked the end of the rope and that little hard rope burned that hole in the inside of her nostril, she suddenly had a rude awakening—she was still caught—and while she was still giving to the pain to the rope in that hole in her nose, ole Beauty lunged back and turned her a flip. She got up off the ground facing us and made a wild lunge towards my horse. I had lots of slack in my rope. I flipped the slack over her neck as
Beauty dodged and jumped out of her way, and we busted her again. This time she got up and stood there quiverin’ and shakin’ and bawlin’, and slobber and a little blood was running out of her nose and mouth. I was between her and the corral gate, so somebody opened the gate and she began to lead as I started outside with her. She made a wild run as we went through the gate, not at me and Beauty, but just to get away into the open. This time I didn’t have to turn her, I just jiggled slack in that rope tied to her horns and through that hole in her nose and she began to take a little friendlier outlook on me and my horse’s acquaintance.

I started down the road with her and when she would want to trot Beauty would move up enough to keep the slack out of the rope, and when she decided to slow down we would slow down with her, but I did keep my hold on the rope and jiggled it a little to keep her on notice that as far as she was concerned she was still caught by the end of her nose. I had by this time taken a double half hitch on my saddle horn with the rope so that I didn’t have to hold it so tight. This gave me a loose hand to play with the slack in case she got smart.

I had gotten to the railroad tracks at the foot of the hill and was about to start up the hill to town when I wondered what I should do with this cow. I knew there was no use in trying to take her to the railroad stock pens because they would be locked. I thought Silas Kemp wouldn’t care for me bringing a fightin’ cow to the wagonyard, and I knew I would have her at a place where I could get a lot of help to do whatever Fred Smith decided he wanted to do with her later. Just as I got to the corner
of the wholesale-grocery warehouse where I would turn to go to the wagonyard, I had another bright, teen-age-cowboy Sunday idea about what to do with a mad fightin’ cow that belonged to the bank. I led her on up the paved street early on Sunday morning with nobody in sight and rode around the telephone pole right in front of the bank door and made several wraps around the pole leaving the cow five or six feet of slack. I stepped off my mare and ran the rope around a concrete column at the bank door, then I threaded the end of the rope through the handle of the bank door and over to the concrete column on the other side of the door and tied the rope off to the last column.

I did all this in a matter of seconds and stepped on old Beauty and rode down to the telephone pole on the east side of the drugstore, tied my horse, and went to the Texas Café for breakfast. Little Pat waited on me and there were very few people around, and I was leisurely eatin’ my breakfast when the phone rang and Pat answered it and I heard him say, “Yeah, he’s here. You want him?” and then Pat hung up. As he walked back towards me he had a puzzled kind of look on his face and said, “Why is Fred Smith hunting you?” Looking as innocent as I could with a mouthful of ham and eggs, I blubbered and said I had no idea. As Pat started on to the kitchen, he said, “Fred said he would be down here in a few minutes.”

Fred was a short, red-complexioned, nice-looking sort of a fellow whose black hair was getting thin on top and a little gray in the temples. All of a sudden he busted through that front door a-wearin’ his house-shoes, a pair of regular britches, the top part of his pajamas, and no hat. When I looked up and saw him, before he had time to
start on me, I said, “Fred, you must be confused. From the looks of your garb, you ain’t decided whether you are gettin’ up or goin’ to bed.”

“Don’t be trying to start on my garb. That’s not what I’m down here for. My phone’s been ringing steady for the past ten minutes—people calling waking up the family telling me about a cow being tied to the bank door.” In a mad kind of voice he said, “Ben, what cow is that and why in the hell did you tie her up in front of the bank?”

His remark didn’t cause me to lose any interest in my breakfast, and between mouthfuls I explained to him where the cow came from.

By this time he was mad and nervous. Little Pat had set a cup of coffee out on the counter for him, but he didn’t even sit down. He was walking up and down the aisle beating on the counter and talking to me.

“I’m glad you got her, but why didn’t you take her to the wagonyard or to the stock pens or any place besides the public sidewalk in front of the bank?”

Little Pat was listening and by this time there were a few more people who had discovered the cow was tied to the bank door. I rared back and said, “Mr. Smith,
ANYTHING THAT BELONGS TO THE BANK, TAKE IT TO THE BANK.”

Pat blew coffee out of his mouth and took to the kitchen. Fred said, “Hell, I didn’t mean a cow!”

By this time about everybody was laughing but Fred, and I wasn’t going to laugh because I was being plumb innocent. I just told him that I was tryin’ to learn the lesson that he was tryin’ to teach me, and just yesterday mornin’ he told me when I was tryin’ to pay a note and give him some money to deposit, I said, “You told me
‘ANYTHING THAT BELONGS TO THE BANK, TAKE IT TO THE BANK.’ ”

He finally broke into a little chuckle and said, “You’ve took her to the bank, now we’ve got to take her away from there before people start to Sunday school and church.”

I said, “Fred, I am goin’ to leave town in the mornin’ before daylight to go to the Denton place below Brock to look at some horses and maybe buy them. Now if you was carryin’ my money to pay the bank a note I owe for $40, and if you was goin’ to deposit $160 of my money for me to check against to buy them horses with, then if you was goin’ to put about $5 extra with it, we’ll say for workin’ stock, then I would need pretty bad to move that cow so you could get in the bank Monday mornin’ to tend to mine and the bank’s business.”

He pounded his fat fist on the counter and said, “Hell, give me the money.”

So I counted out $200 in tens and twenties and I said, in a humorous tone of voice, “Fred, when I work stock for people on Sunday, they usually buy my breakfast.”

Pat busted out laughing again and said, “The breakfast is on the house.”

I got my horse and went up and unwrapped this old cow from around the bank door and unwrapped her from the telephone pole and took her and put her in the wagonyard. Fred got a hold of Ike Simmons, who was the porter at the barbershop, and they began to clean up that green splashy aftermath that comes from a mad cow. By church-time few people knew that the bank’s cow business and my banking business had been tended to so early on Sunday morning.