Read Wild Cow Tales Online

Authors: Ben K. Green

Wild Cow Tales (9 page)

BOOK: Wild Cow Tales
6.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

This took a long time, and it was way past dinnertime. So I rode away and left the bull in a valley tied to a log and thought I would see what happened by tomorrow mornin’.

After I ate a little late dinner, I changed horses and rode back to see about my bull. He had drug that log down into the valley and almost to Scotty Perth’s headquarters fence. As it was gettin’ late in the afternoon I didn’t go close to him I turned and went back to the camp for the night.

The moon came up about three or four o’clock in the mornin’ and bawlin’ cattle waked me. A cowboy layin’ out in camp durin’ the night handlin’ wild cattle or bad horses don’t take off too many clothes when he goes to bed in cold weather. All I had to do was pull on my boots, buckle my belt, and reach for my jacket and hat and I was what some people would have called dressed.

I saddled a horse called Mustang. He had no mustang blood in him, but he was one of the best horses that ever lived if you were in a tight with wild cattle or needed a good horse under you for any kind of a hard ride. When I
came in sight of the valley, it was still a little while to daylight, but it was a bright night and I could see what was goin’ on.

This mad, bawlin’ bull had called his bunch of cows back to him, and the other bull that he was havin’ the fight with when I caught him. I couldn’t quite count the exact number but I knew there would be enough for a carload. I rode quiet and circled wide to the big double gates on the road. I opened them back and tied them to the fence where there would be no danger of them blowin’ to in case a wind came up.

Today’s modern cowboys probably don’t know this, but cattle will drive better in bright moonlight than they will in the daytime because their vision at a distance lacks a little bit bein’ good enough to judge a rider’s position. And as long as they are movin’ from you and you don’t try to head ’em, they’ll bunch and drive together good.

I circled around and came up on the east side of ’em. The gate was on the west. I didn’t make too much wild cowboy noises. I carried a bull whip tied on my saddle for just such occasions as this. I uncoiled the whip and cracked it in dull tones in the still night air. This was a noise that these cattle didn’t quite know about, and I stayed far enough away from ’em that they were movin’ west little by little as the two bulls fought and about as fast as the bull could drag his log.

Just before sunup I had them bunched in a corner of the fence right in front of the double gate. As they began to drift out into the road without seemin’ to know it, I counted thirty-seven head. I shut the gates and had my cattle in the road, but I had to untie that bull from the
log if I was goin’ to drive him with the herd of cattle twenty miles to town.

These cattle milled around in the road, and it was gettin’ good daylight. I got off my horse and eased up the side of the road fence where my log-draggin’ bull had stopped. He was on the other end of a forty-foot lariat rope and was pretty well worn out from draggin’ the log and bein’ horned by a bull that he couldn’t very well defend himself against. I crawled under the fence and eased up toward the log, feelin’ that the fence would give me a little protection. I laid down on my belly on the ground and wiggled through far enough on the back side of the log, took my pocketknife, and cut the rope.

I scooted back under the fence, walked back down to where my horse was, got back out in the road, and got on my horse, and started a cow drive to town with thirty-seven head of wild cattle. This was the best stunt I had pulled in several weeks and I was really proud of myself.

The drive to town was kinda easy. This was a mixed bunch of cattle, all ages and sizes—and there was a mahogany-brown long-haired one that I believed to be a pure-blooded Scotch Highland cow. I had heard it said that these pure-blooded cows were probably twenty years old if any of ’em were still alive. (It had been about that long since Scotty Perth had imported them.) This cow looked to be that old; however, she apparently had not had a calf in recent years and was in good flesh and led the herd to town.

The railroad stock pens were at the edge of town and not too hard to get to from the road that I had brought
these cattle on. It was late afternoon when me and Mustang pushed this bunch of cows into the railroad stock pens. I had just gotten the gate fastened and wired to and started to the depot to order a stockcar to ship these cattle in when up drove Scotty Perth in a one-horse gig. (He referred to this gig as his shay, which he had resorted to as a means of gettin’ around since he had lost his leg.)

As Scotty got out of his shay you could tell at a glance that his face was flushed with anger. He raised his heavy voice to a loud pitch, and I am sure that people could hear him all the way to the mercantile. He waved his hands and arms in the air as he threw a pure-blooded Scottish rage. It seemed that the thing that helped to provoke him most to this state of anger was the presence of the old pure-blooded Scotch cow in the herd that he referred to as one of his “lassies.”

Scotty was an old man in my eyes, crippled for life, and having some share of trouble. Although I was barely a grown man, he must have seen me as a smart-aleck kid, which made him all the madder.

I had ridden all day without any breakfast or dinner, and it was midafternoon and me and my horse were tired, thirsty, and hungry. I didn’t know what to say to Scotty, so I just reined my horse toward the depot and didn’t say anything. But as I passed his shay I was stunned when I realized that Scotty Perth was drivin’ one of the horses to his shay that I had shod for the doctor. I didn’t think he would have the nerve to unfasten the stockyard gates, and if he did he couldn’t do anything about that bunch of cattle in his shay, so I rode on about my business.

One of the things that he repeated several times in his broken Scottish brogue was, “I could gather the rest of them in me shay.”

The railroad agent, like everybody else, wasn’t very friendly and seemed to begrudge the opportunity for the railroad to move another carload of Scotty Perth’s cattle. He told me that he would have a car spotted the next mornin’ at the stock-pen chute, but he advised me not to load it with the cattle until after noon because the train wouldn’t pick up the car until about three o’clock.

I saw Scotty Perth goin’ back towards town in his shay as I rode toward the stock pens. The railroad had a stack of alfalfa hay just outside the stock pens for feedin purposes, so I broke several bales and gave it to the cattle, unsaddled my horse, put him in a separate pen where there was water, and gave him a lot of alfalfa and left my saddle and riggin’ laying in the corner of my horse’s pen. I covered it with some loose alfalfa I guess out of habit of hidin’ it, because I didn’t think anybody would bother it.

As I walked to town I felt betrayed over Dr. Turner havin’ me shoe Scotty Perth’s horse so I didn’t go to the drugstore where his office was, and I didn’t have any intention of spendin’ the night with him. So I went to the country hotel. It wasn’t much of a hotel—just an old frame buildin’ with eight or ten rooms upstairs and the dining room and lobby and a small pressin’ parlor at the back of the buildin’ on the ground floor. A cowboy never goes to his room in the daytime.

That cold mornin’ ride had caused me to believe I needed a pair of gloves, so I walked over to the mercantile.
News had traveled fast and it seemed that ever’body knew there was another load of Scotty Perth’s cattle in the stock pens. It was noticeable that the people I saw ignored me or gave me some kind of a distrustin’ look.

I asked the clerk in the mercantile for a pair of gloves. He looked in his glove counter and looked at my hands, that are very small, and with a sneer on his face said, “We don’t have any gloves for kids.”

I put my hands in my pockets and turned and walked out of the store. I started across the street to the hotel, where I intended to eat up half a cow and a bushel of potatoes if they had ’em. I felt that I was that hungry.

Dr. Turner hollered at me when I was about in the middle of the street. I turned and looked at him and walked on across the street. He hollered again to “wait a minute!” adding that he wanted to talk to me.

We stood in the middle of the street, and he said in a rather strained voice, “Why are you stayin’ at the hotel? Why don’t you come down to the house? You know you are welcome there when you are in town, and I’ll have a hard time explainin’ to my wife why you would prefer to stay in that old hotel than in her guest bedroom.”

I looked him in the eye and cleared my voice and said. “You might tell her that I don’t want to shoe any more horses for Scotty Perth.”

He said, “Now wait a minute! The horses are full brothers, and Scotty Perth gave my horse to me, and until he lost his leg he had always shod both of ’em. He’s so awkward with his peg leg that he can’t shoe a horse, and you’re the first man that has come along since that could put shoes on them that they didn’t interfere with in travelin’.
I thought that it might help to ease Scotty’s anger if he knew you could shoe a horse.”

I said, “So far as I’m concerned, shoein’ horses would be a damn poor way of winnin’ an argument, and I don’t care what Scotty Perth thinks. This stunt has begun to make me wonder whose side you are on.”

He looked at me rather painfully as he started to walk back across the street, and in a somewhat bewildered tone of voice he said, “We’ll be lookin’ for you to come to church Sunday and stay for the party my wife is givin’ for the preacher after the services.”

I didn’t answer him. I turned and walked across to the hotel. I ate up a big batch of grub and went to bed by dark.

The next mornin’ I killed time the best I could in a town where nobody spoke to me until the railroad spotted the car at the loadin’ chute about eleven o’clock. The cattle had watered good and were full of alfalfa, and I thought they could stand in the car to wait for the train just about as good as they could stand on the ground. There was a ruling by the railroad that all bulls that were shipped in cars of mixed cattle had to be tied with a rope in the car. So I went to the mercantile and bought some big, soft rope to tie these two bulls. I spent part of the mornin’ gettin’ these bulls in the chute and gettin’ the ropes on their horns. They were rank, mean, and bad to fight, but havin’ a chute to put them in and then gettin’ up on the fence over them was partly play to a cowboy that was used to catchin’ ’em outside and havin’ to tie them down before he could do anything with ’em. I loaded the cattle about eleven thirty, billed them out, and
sealed the car and got on my horse and went back to the mountains.

I didn’t do much cowboyin’ the rest of that week, and I didn’t have any smart ideas about what I was goin’ to try next to catch a few of these cattle.

I laid in my bedroll kinda late until the sun came up and it began to get warm. I fed my horses and fixed breakfast, straightened up my camp a little bit, and fooled around until I cooked my dinner. Then I put on my best clothes and saddled old Charlie, my “road” horse, and rode into town just in time for church.

I stood outside under a tree where I tied my horse until the singin’ started, then I slipped in and sat down in the back row. Very few people saw me come in, and I don’t believe that my presence contaminated the meetin’ too much.

At the end of the service, as soon as the preacher said “Amen,” I reached down and picked my hat off the floor and started out the door. Dr. Turner’s wife was sittin’ in the choir where she could see me, and she took a short cut and headed me off before I could get to my horse and gave me a gentle kind of talkin’ to and told me in a kind but firm manner to ride on down and put my horse in the barn at her house and stay for the party. I didn’t give her much backtalk—just said, “Thank you, ma’m.”

It seemed that the whole church came to the doctor’s wife’s party, and people were visitin’ and braggin’ on the new preacher. He was a nice kind of young fellow, and I kinda felt sorry for him—just wonderin’ if some of those good people might wind up treatin’ him like they had me.

Scotty Perth’s wife and teen-age daughter were in the
crowd, and you could tell by her talk that she had pure Irish blood. (I learned later Scotty’s wife was the daughter of an Irish miner.) Several people asked her about Scotty and why he never came to church any more, and one old man commented on what a beautiful voice Scotty had and how he loved to hear him sing in the choir. I noticed that she was wearin’ a beautiful gold watch on a chain around her neck.

I stood around to one side and there were a few of the men who spoke to me in a rather hypocritical tone of voice, I thought. Dr. Turner took time out from his guests to visit with me some, and I tried to be nice (after all, up to a few days ago he was the only friend I had in town besides his wife).

Mrs. Turner opened the door to the dinin’ room and the table was loaded with sandwiches, coffee, some kind of sweet punch, and cake. Of course, most of the kids skipped the sandwiches and went on to the cake and punch, and I thought the kids around here are more like people than the grown folks are.

When I went back to the table for seconds, I met Scotty Perth’s daughter at the punch bowl. She was a very nice-lookin’ young girl and spoke very correct English in a beautiful feminine voice. She glanced at me with a quick eye and said, “You are Ben Green.”

I smiled and said yes, and she hastened to tell me that she was Scotty Perth’s daughter. As she poured the punch she said, “Father said when you give up or the weather drives you out ‘he will gather the rest of the cattle with his shay.’ ” She said this in a rather arrogant, smart tone of voice; Mrs. Turner heard her and I
saw her look at me with an expression of concern.

I set my glass on the table and reached into my vest pocket and handed the young girl a mate to the watch that her mother was wearin’ and said, “Give this to your father and tell him that I rode my Texas pony past where his mountain horse fell with a big man and found his watch.”

Her voice broke, and she called to her mother, “He has found Daddy’s watch.”

As her mother looked at it, she said, “Thank heavens! These are the two watches that our daughters gave us on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary!”

BOOK: Wild Cow Tales
6.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Forgotten by Sarah J Pepper
My Heart Says Yes by Ashley Blake
Nursery Crimes by Ayelet Waldman
One Heart to Win by Johanna Lindsey