Wild Cow Tales
TALES TO DELIGHT THE WESTERN FAN
“For anyone who loves a good story well told, or has a hankering for the vigorous pleasures of taking a good, long look at the real thing when it comes to action or adventure … Wild Cow Tales is a classic gem. Ben Green’s accounts have the flavor of sage, saddle leather, sweat and dust mixed up with sharp, dry humor.”
—Andy Russell
“Ben K. Green is perhaps the most gifted of all Texas story tellers. He had been cowboy, horse trader, and veterinarian over most of the State. In the last flicker of the golden age of the range, Green drove the last herd of steers through Dallas. Yet it is a pretty safe bet that a century hence readers will still delight in his writings.”
—Dallas, Times-Herald
“With unprofessional simplicity and a lack of pretentiousness, and without much concern for sentence structure, these stories have a wonderful touch of genuineness and pungent reality. Mighty good readin’.”
—Waco, News-Tribune
“… shows that Texas is still cattle country. Best of all, it reveals a salty character who can laugh at himself while providing a string of stories bound to entertain the reader.”
—Dallas News
If you’ve enjoyed this book, look for other Ballantine Book true tales of the West:
HOOFBEATS OF DESTINY Robert West Howard
THE SAGA OF BILLY THE KID Walter Noble Burns
WESTERN BADMEN Dorothy M. Johnson
THE GREAT BUFFALO HUNT Wayne Gard
Copyright © 1969 by Ben K. Green
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-23940
eISBN: 978-0-307-77239-8
This edition published by arrangement with
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC.
201 East 50th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
COUNTRY COW BUYER
BEEF
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
COWBOY BANKIN’
PEDDY
SCOTCH HIGHLAND CATTLE IN THE ROCKIES
BRUSH COWBOYS
THE MARION PASTURE
STEERS
WILD, WIDE-EYED CATTLE
BLACK HEIFERS CROWHOP
FRIENDLY—? COW TRADE
PICTURESQUE STEERS
WILD COWS IN DRIPPIN’ SPRINGS SOCIETY
INCIDENTS OF TOWN COWBOYIN’
STEERS THAT STOOD WATCH
A Note About the Author
INTRODUCTION
THERE WAS A TIME IN THE LATE 1920’S and early 1930’s when very few teen-age boys or young men had any aspirations to be cowboys. The Machine Age was fast taking the day and young men were learning trades in keeping with progress and changing times. There was little or no glamour attached to the cattle business during this period and cowboys were looked upon either as ruffians or individuals with less mentality than it took to adjust to the Machine Age.
After the crash in 1929 cattle were of very little value and many ranchers, both large and small, went out of business and there was no way for a day-labor cowboy to make a living. Men with families and responsibilities had to learn some other trade, and the only young men that would still ride for a living, handle cattle, and break horses were those that had no desire to do anything else regardless of what they might be paid because of their love of cowboyin’.
Bankers hated to see a cowboy come in the bank for a loan, and if you were a cowboy, your best friends would have rather waved at you than to have been caught talking to you. As far as I was personally concerned, being a horseman and a cowboy was a disease and no treatment would have done any good. If they had a vaccine for it, it wouldn’t have taken on me. My high-school classmates referred to me as being backward and nonprogressive, and for the most part may have felt a little sorry for me. In spite of all this, I preferred to stay in the cow business, live horseback, and be independent of any source of income that would deprive me of my time and personal liberties.
I started out being a cowboy when I crawled out of the cradle, and I had never gotten used to very many of the luxuries that most people considered necessities. Camping out in rough country under a bluff or close to a windmill had never occurred to me as being anything but normal living, and I didn’t understand what most people referred to as hardships in camp living.
Cattle were cheap and wild cattle were worth about half as much as cattle that could be handled horseback. This being true, one of the ways that I had of surviving the financial strains of the times and staying in the cattle business was to buy or handle for other people outlaw cattle that, if and when I could catch them, would make me more money than the meager amount that could be made in the handling of ordinary cattle at the prices they were bringing.
All Western cattle might have been referred to by farmers or Midwestern cattle feeders as being wild, and it’s true that cattle were far from being gentle from the standpoint of allowing a man to work among them horseback or on foot. Cattle that would booger at the sight of a man or any of the common mechanical sounds of modern civilization and break to run for cover would be the kind of cattle that cowboys referred to as being wild.
Outlaw cattle are those that have gotten away from main herds on roundups, one or several times, and have learned to hide in dense brush, river bottoms or mountainous country. Such cattle learn how to get away from a rider and if they are eornered will try to fight their way out and it seems that it becomes their purpose to stay in whatever particular part of a range where they have the most protection and are least likely to be roped or driven.
The reader will understand that all of the accounts in Wild Cow Tales will have some similarities since each account of trapping wild cattle has its setting in some type of rough country where cattle can hide or can get away because a rider cannot follow or head them at top speed over rough terrain, brush, logs, or some other obstacles.
I have gathered thousands of cattle that represented no more than tired horses and torn clothes. The accounts in this book are the unusual circumstances and the original tricks that I had to use to outsmart outlaw cattle and keep my reputation as a top cowhand.
COUNTRY
COW
BUYER
COUNTRY COW BUYERS, IT COULD BE said, were a product of the times in which they flourished. In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, trucks and trailers were not in common use by farmers and small ranchers. In the livestock-farming regions of Texas (especially along the rivers where the farms had been put in valleys and the ridges and hills were still left in grasslands), the livestock farmer would be running a few head of cattle and raising some calves to sell. He’d also have some cull cows to get rid of occasionally, and now and then a mean fightin’ bull that wouldn’t stay at home, or other breechy cattle (“breechy” meaning cattle that wouldn’t stay inside of a fence) that he’d need to sell. It took about forty head of mixed cattle to make a carload, which would necessitate a number of small stockmen puttin’ their cattle together for a shipment, which never was a very satisfactory arrangement. This situation developed country cow buyers.
I started by hirin’ out horseback, helpin’ country cow buyers when they’d go out and throw cattle together from several different owners until they had enough for a carload. Then we’d drive ’em into town and ship ’em by rail to Fort Worth, Texas. I was a young cowboy, high-school age, when I started buyin’ cattle for myself, especially durin’ the summer months. It was mid-July and all the country cattle had gotten fat on summer grass; and now was the time to start ridin’ the rivers and the ridges to buy what was
commonly referred to as “jackpot” cattle. I saddled my horse late that Sunday afternoon, tied a small bedroll and a little grub on the back of my saddle, and headed south to the Brazos River to see if I could put together a load of cattle.
On trips a country cow buyer never planned on campin’ out much. I usually spent the night with people that I was doin’ business with or old friends, and many of the families would have boys and girls about my age. Country cow buyers were always welcome to spend the night, stop by to eat, and were generally well respected because they were the means of the small stock farmer sellin’ his odd lots of cattle—and, then too, we carried the news. Radios were scarce, telephones were not too common, and about the only newspapers were brought by the mail carrier once a week. This made ever’body glad to see you and want to find out what was goin’ on in town and from communities you had last ridden through.
The first night out I spent with the Weaver family. They had a boy, Mike, who was a little bit younger than I, and his sister, Pam, was about my age. We all knew each other, but Mike and Pam went to school in the country and I went to school in town. They were just sort of passing acquaintances of mine.
When I rode up just before dark, Mike and ever’body hollered get down and come in and that kind of welcome stuff. But Mr. Weaver, lookin’ to the practical side of things, said, “Ben, unsaddle your horse and put him in the barn and feed him. You know we are not goin’ to let you ride on any further—you’ve got to spend the night with us.”
Mr. Weaver and I got my horse put away and went back to the house. Mrs. Weaver and Pam were puttin’ supper on the table. Country gardens were in their flush of production and spring chickens had had time to get fryin’-size; and this bein’ Sunday night, we had a big supper—it looked like without anybody half tryin’ to fix it so. We set out on the porch awhile after dark and visited, talked about ever’thing in general, and, of course, our own business in particular. Mr. Weaver told me that he had five yearlings and a fat, dry cow that he wanted to sell me the next mornin’. However, it was the custom of good country people not to discuss business much on Sunday, even if it was after dark. Mike had chimed in and said if I was goin’ to be gone down the road a few days that he might have a steer or two caught for me when I got back. This all made interestin’ conversation and pretty soon we went to bed.
It was hot summertime and I slept out in the yard on a pallet with Mike. We got up about daylight; ever’body was gonna have lots to do durin’ the day. Mike and his daddy wanted to get to the field, and Pam and her mother were gonna start cannin’, and I needed to get on down the road and hunt cattle to buy. We looked at the yearlings and the fat cow when I went to the barn with ’em to do the morning feedin’; and, of course, I didn’t have much trouble buyin’ these cattle. It was the custom of the country to ride by and buy cattle and leave them until you had bought enough for a carload and then you turned back and threw ’em together and started drivin’ ’em towards town.
Cattle were plentiful, but they were all doin’ real good and nearly ever’body wanted to keep their calves until they were bigger and sell ’em to me that fall. So it took me all week to buy a load of the odd head here and yonder that were ready to be sold. It was late Saturday afternoon before I got back across the Brazos River and up to the Weavers.
Other members of the family were still out in the field, but Mike was in the shade of the trees in the front yard settin’ in the swing with his right leg in a cast. I pushed my cattle on up the road past the house where they could graze. It was late in the afternoon and it wasn’t any trouble to get ’em to stop and graze.
I rode up in the yard and stepped off my horse and said, “Mike, what happened to you?”
He said, “Well, I don’t guess I’ll have you any extra steers because I roped one of ’em, he jerked my horse down on me and broke my leg, and the rope came off the saddle horn after my horse fell and the steer got away.”
I said, “Mike, you’re graduatin’ from a farm boy to a cowboy ’cause you don’t make a cowboy until you get a leg or two or sumpin’ broke, either by wild cattle or bad horses.”
This didn’t seem to console him much, and he just put on a weak grin and said, “Maybe so.”
While he was explainin’ to me how it all happened, the rest of the family came in from the field, and after we all had our howdies, Pam spoke up and said, “Mike, have you remembered your manners enough to tell Ben that we want him to spend the night with us?”
And, of course, he hadn’t, so his remark was, “Ben don’t have to be told. He knows he can spend the night here.”
I said, “Well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with my cattle unless I just let ’em bed down in the grass along the side of the road.” This wasn’t too uncommon a practice to let cattle bed along the road; and if you’d driven em pretty hard all day, they wouldn’t drift too far before mornin’.
Mr. Weaver again spoke up and told me that I could drive ’em up the road to the first field and turn ’em in the gate where he had already finished threshing his oats and that there’d be enough pickin’s around the edges of the oat stubble for the cattle to fill up durin’ the night. And the next mornin’ we could put the cattle that I bought from him with them.
This all sounded good and didn’t take but a little while to tend to. We had a nice supper and a good visit and I gave ’em the news of several families on down below the river that they knew. One girl had sent a new pattern book by me to Pam. And another item of news was that there was gonna be an all-day singin’ at their church next Sunday, and ever’body I saw had told me to be sure and tell the Weavers to come. This was the sort of thing that made country cow buyers worth their keep to country people.
While we were settin’ on the porch that night, Mike’s daddy explained how come Mike to rope the big steer and break his own leg. There had been some Fort Worth cowmen that were in the livestock commission business on the Fort Worth stockyards, and one of ’em was a cattle buyer for a packin’ company on the Fort Worth stockyards that had leased some pasture land on the old Kuteman Ranch. When they moved their cattle out they lost five big steers that had gotten out into the Brazos River bottom; several cowboys had tried to catch ’em. Mike wanted to make some extra money and had gone over into the river bottom and jumped one of these big steers, and got into the storm, and after dark Mr. Weaver and a neighbor had gotten uneasy when Mike didn’t return and had gone over there and found him layin’ under a tree on the riverbank with a leg broke, waitin’ for somebody to come hunt him.
The story was that the Fort Worth cowmen were offerin’ $10 a head for anybody that’ould catch these steers and had offered to sell ’em, range delivery, but hadn’t any takers on their range-delivery proposition. Mike didn’t have much idea about what these cattle would weigh, but Mr. Weaver had seen one or two of ’em at a distance and said they were about three- to four-year-old steers and might weigh as much as 900 to 1,000 pounds per head.
Pam and her mother gave me some messages for people farther up the road and also a small list of thread and stuff for me to take to a store in town and they’d send it out on the mail hack. I got my cattle throwed together and started up the road with ’em the next mornin’ a little after sunup.
When a man’s buyin’ cattle and puttin’ ’em in a herd and they’re all strange to each other, ever’time he puts in a fresh one there’s a few fights. They don’t drive good together, they don’t follow a leader, and they’re always lookin’ for a break in the fences along the road or a chance to turn down a blind lane. When you come to a country plank bridge with a few holes in it or maybe a whole plank out, you’ve got a real batch of cow work to do. There’s never been any ranch work or rodeo performances that would ever teach a horse what he will have to know if you’re gonna use him for a jackpot cow horse.
A country cow buyer’s horse has to be good. First, he must have a nice way of travelin’ to get you down the road and over the country, then he needs to have a good rein, lots
of cow sense, and endowed with more than a common amount of patience, together with an unbelievable amount of real stamina, for a cow buyer to ever get back to town on him with a roadful of mixed cattle.
As I drove my cattle up the road, I kept thinkin’ about those five big steers. The Kuteman Ranch was not leased to anybody and the five wild steers were in there away from any other cattle. As I drove along I decided that I would turn into the first gate on the Kuteman Ranch and drift my cattle down through the river-bottom pasture and came out on the Balch Road, which ran north and south on the east side of the Kuteman pasture. I could still turn north and go into town, and it wouldn’t be much more than another half-day drive. Wild steers just might come bawlin’ and pawin’ dirt over their back and fight with these strange cattle of mine while I just drove ’em on out into the road.
I knew I’d be takin’ a pretty big chance of gettin’ out on the other side of the ranch with all my cattle because they weren’t stayin’ together too good anyway. This didn’t bother me too much; I was ridin’ the best horse I ever owned—mare named Beauty—and she could tell what a cow was thinkin’ about, with the cow on the other side of the pasture. I turned the cattle into the Kuteman pasture and drove about halfway across the ranch without seein’ or hearin’ any kind of cattle. There was a creek ran out of the pasture and down into the Brazos River at the east side of the ranch that was covered with plenty of good grass and shade. I was lettin’ these cattle graze and driftin’ ’em about as slow as I could for two reasons: lettin’ them fill up would keep them quiet and easier to drive, and it’d give these wild steers more time to locate them.
As the cattle grazed into the glade on the creek bank, two big red steers bounced out of the bush, threw their heads up, and wrung their tails and bawled real loud like wild, bad cattle will do when they’re surprised but not scared. I stopped and let ’em mill into my cattle, and sure ’nuff they started a bawlin’, dirt-throwin’ cow fight! It was just a matter of seconds until the other three steers came out of the brush and joined ’em. I didn’t holler or whistle or make any smart cowboy noises. I rode up slow enough to keep the cow fight and the cow grazin’ movin’ towards the other side of the pasture without makin’ any show that I was interested in breakin’ up the fight or hurryin’ up the drive.