Wild Cow Tales (27 page)

Late that afternoon I rode into town and went to Alph’s house and told him what I had done. He said, “I’ll have the boys bring some gentle cattle to the corrals in the morning and we’ll drive those wild cows with ’em to my ranch headquarters, where we can keep ’em until you
catch the rest of ’em, and that way you and bulls can open the trap gate again.”

In less than a week I had trapped all these cows and Alph had ’em all in the corral at his ranch. We’d kinda kept this business a secret between us.

On Saturday mornin’ he and I met at the coffee ground, and he informed all the natives that the wild cows were no longer in Drippin’ Springs pasture, but there was two fat yearlings left in the pasture and all the would-be cowboys in the community were invited to be out after dinner that day to help catch and butcher these two yearlings so that on Sunday we could have a big barbecue and reopen Drippin’ Springs Canyon for the summer social activities.

This all worked out just like he and I had planned, and the whole community turned out on a beautiful spring Sunday afternoon for a big barbecue. The ladies brought bread and potato salad ’n’ stuff, and Ole Spendthrift made a big crock of lemonade with about a small sackful of lemons, but he stirred it and served it and that brought the acid content up to where it was enjoyed by all. And Miss Effie broke over far enough to invite me to the spring recital.

Miss Effie, no doubt about it, exerted a bad influence on the community … Just, for instance, there were more people at that barbecue that were paying more attention to the way they held their little finger than to the meat they were sticking the fork in. I was afraid she was about to start “culturizing” cowboys so I rolled the barbecue over to one side of my mouth and said, “Shore I’ll come … what you goin’ to serve?”

T
HE MACHINE AGE HAS REACHED A
high state of development and the Atomic Age was mentioned for a few years and now this era of human
existence is referred to as the Space Age In view of the changes in transportation methods brought on by these various developments and by paved streets and fine residential districts, one-way traffic and all the other unnatural means of movement other than walking, cattle are no longer driven in herds through cities or even through small-size towns because of traffic problems. With the almost deathlike danger of running horses on pavement, and most all cattle, horses and other kinds of livestock being transported to the railroads, central markets, between ranches, feed lots, and other locations by trucks, it seems fitting that some historical record should be made concerning the incidents both humorous and dangerous that occurred during the period when cattle were driven by cowboys horseback through towns and cities of any and all sizes. The real reason that this phase of cowboyin’ was necessary was because shipping stock pens at railroad points were built close to the town depot, which by necessity or custom was usually near the business district. The more that business districts developed and the more that the residential part of town grew, the worse located the old original shipping stock pens were insofar as getting cattle from the country through town to the stockyards, and the harder it was, when the cattle were shipped in by rail, to drive them from the stock pens through town out to the country.

One summer morning early, Roy Young, who was foreman of the Lanius Ranch south of Weatherford, and his cowboys had turned out some good fat Hereford two-year-olds that had been fattened in the feed lot at the ranch. They, of course, were frisky and full of steam and Roy started them to town as early as a rider could distinguish the form of a cow brute, hopin’ to take advantage of the coolness of the early morning hours.

There were four carloads of these cattle, which would be in rough figures about a hundred and twenty head. Roy had made the trip to town without too much trouble.

In handling fat young cattle, a rider has to ride point, which means in front of the cattle, and hold them back to keep them from traveling too fast. Then two riders ride wing behind the point and on each side of the herd. Usually there are two more riders bringing up the end of the herd and taking time apart riding back point of the herd when it’s necessary to move up to keep cattle from turning down crossroads, lanes, and so forth.

All cowboys and ranchers movin’ cattle were glad to get extra help to meet the herd at the edge of town to help them through town to the stock pens at the railroad tracks. For a good many of my growin’-up years, I met several herds of cattle a week during shippin’ time the days and nights that I happened to be in town. Of course, we cowboys learned and dreaded concrete sidewalks, clotheslines, bicycles, open doors to storm houses and cellars, unprotected water hydrants stickin’ up in the yard, and one hundred and one other things too numerous to mention, such as tricycles, little red wagons, squealin’ kids, high-tone screamin’ old women and damned old
grouchy men that lived along the streets where it was necessary to move herds of cattle back and forth to the railroad.

That day me and some more boys met Roy’s cattle about early mid-morning at the south edge of town and eased up South Main Street, which at that time was wide and unpaved. When we came to Weatherford College, we turned the cattle east a block and then north onto the street that would run into the railroad tracks close to the stock pens.

Nothing eventful happened until we were over on this street and hardly a mile from the stock pens. Then old Judge Irving, who was settin’ on the porch readin’ the morning paper, saw the cattle comin’ up the street. For fear that there might be a cow track put on his lawn, he walked up to the edge of the porch and shook that morning newspaper unfurled and hollered “Houey” a couple of times.

Roy turned in his saddle and saw the stampede started and he knew that the run was on and that we would have cattle scattered for the rest of the day. But before he left Judge Irving’s, he rode over in the yard horseback, jerked the paper out of Judge Irving’s hand, folded it and handed it back to him and said, “Judge, these cattle don’t want to read the damn paper, they want to go to the stock pens, so take it in the house with you and stay there.”

One morning we had turned out three hundred and twenty long yearling Angus heifers and started out of town with them to what was known as the Black Ranch. We were about even with the college campus in that narrow street and were ready to turn and get onto South
Main Street, which was much wider and easier to work up and down the side of a herd of cattle to keep them out of the yards and from goin’ down cross streets.

As we swung the leaders on the point and were about halfway around the corner with the herd, some college girls came runnin’ out of the dormitory squealin’ and hollerin’ and takin’ on about the cattle and they sounded like a cross between a glee club and a pep rally. All this sudden commotion and high female voices had a nerve-rackin’ effect on this bunch of black heifers that had been shipped four or five days and were thirsty, hungry, and nervous and unused to such commotion, and so the stampede was on. I’m sure the college girls thought it was most colorful.

It looked like a big bunch of these big black heifers were about to ’tend class when I cut them off and only two topped the college steps and started through the hall. I jerked my feet out of the stirrups and sat deep in my saddle, in case ole Beauty might fall on that slick oiled floor, and went through the college hallway.

There was a one-armed, narrow-eyed preacher that was a teacher in the college and he had some other things about him that was empty besides that sleeve on his shirt. As me and Beauty made the intersection of the two hallways and turned this heifer toward an open door on the other end of the hallway, this preacher waved that empty sleeve at me and screamed in a high, sanctimonious tone of voice that I didn’t have to ride that horse in there. I hollered back at him as we went back into the sunlight that the reason I did it was that I was afraid that the heifer might get in the wrong class.

One morning Jack Hart, who was a good cowman and village banker and had a feed lot two or three miles north of town, turned out a bunch of steers at the stock pens to go to the feed lot. There were several good cowhands helpin’ on this quick, short drive and the north side of Weatherford wasn’t as hard to get through with a herd as the south side was. However, this bunch of big steers decided to make a pretty wild run.

They weren’t gettin’ away. We were managin’ to hold ’em up the road we wanted them on, but ever’body was jumpin’ sidewalks and curbs—which was dangerous horseback and runnin’ through yards—and one cowboy made a wild dash around through the back yard. He dodged a loaded clothesline almost, but his horse had broke into and begun to buck because, when he raised his head up comin’ out from under the clothesline, he had fitted himself with a beautiful lacy, frilled petticoat right around his neck, and I guess this old pony didn’t like petticoats. He bucked into that herd of steers and we had the damnest runaway that a bunch of cowboys ever had.

This cowboy was sorta known as a ladies’ man, and after he had shed his petticoat and we had got the herd sort of herded back together about even with the oil mill, Jack rode by him and said, “I never thought that you would get trapped by an
empty
petticoat.”