Wild Cow Tales (13 page)

I
HAD GATHERED A BUNCH OF OUTLAW
steers out of the Kiamichi Mountains for Old Man Buck Hurd of Fort Worth, Texas. I wired him the day before that I was loading out for Forth Worth.

I loaded my saddle horses in one end of a car by building a partition between my horses and the steers. The train pulled into the Fort Worth stockyards about four thirty in the morning. I was riding in the caboose, so I waked up and helped unload the cattle and my horses. I took my five saddle horses across Exchange Avenue from the cattle stockyards to the horse and mule barns where I could feed and water and leave them in a good pen. When I had finished taking care of my horses, I went back to the Livestock Exchange Building to wait for Old Man Hurd to come to his office. In those days the Fort Worth stockyards were a great central market for the entire Southwest, and the blackboard in the lobby that morning showed 22,000 cattle, 7,000 calves, and other numbers for sheep and hogs that I do not remember. This was the day’s run and by daylight all the stockyards’ helpers and all the livestock commission men were busy. Then later in the morning the office help would show up around eight o’clock.

Old Man Buck Hurd had graduated to the status of office, but he showed up about seven o’clock. Buck Hurd was a product of the old West. Hardships had been the pattern of his way of life for the first fifty or sixty years, and now he wore the best of store-bought clothes, but even that could not hide the fact that he was a tall, skinny, rough, old, bowlegged, buck-kneed cowboy who had spent more of his life in the saddle than he had out of it and more of his nights sleeping on the ground than in a bed. His eyes were small, black, and beady and set so far back under his forehead that he could have rode in the
brush without having to bat his eyes, as a limb could never have reached them. His face was bony and his nose had been broken when a horse fell with him, and had grown back about the shape of a quarter circle brand, which made him look like he had just smelled something that he was turning the end of his nose away from. He seldom smiled, but when he did the corners of his mouth turned down instead of up. He had been mad most of his life about something or at somebody and until recent years was bad to fight. However, he had said that he had learned to argue more and fight less as he grew older. He was known to be fair in his dealings and his judgment in the steer business was well respected by cattlemen all over the Southwest. He looked up at me as though he were surprised that I had gotten back alive. But instead of saying something nice about being glad to see me or any of that sort of pleasant conversation, his raspy ole voice blared out, “Where’s my steers?”

We walked out through the Exchange Building into the stockyards and looked at the cattle that I had shipped in from Oklahoma. There was forty head of big, rough, aged, plain-quality steers that had gone wild and gotten away in the spring when all the other cattle were shipped out to the Flint Hills country of Kansas to be fattened for fall market. I had taken the job of gathering these wild cattle for $5 per head, which was at that time an extremely high price, and you might well know when an old cowman would pay such a price that the cattle had almost been a lost cause and he had given up being able to gather them by reasonable means. Of course, he counted
the steers at a glance and said there ought to be forty-three. I told him that I had found the carcasses of two other steers that had died, but that I didn’t believe the third steer had ever been in the Kiamichi Mountains. We went back to the office of the Evans-Snyder-Buell Commission Company where Old Man Buck headquartered. We were sitting in the outer office at a table, and he was writing me out a check and finally confessing that he hadn’t believed that I would gather even as many as forty head.

About that time a Mr. Girard from Kansas came into the office, and Buck said, “Here’s another job for you,” as he called Mr. Girard by name and motioned for him to come over to the table. He introduced me to Mr. Girard and explained to him that I was the boy that would gather his wild cattle. In the conversation it developed that Mr. Girard had leased a pasture for several years in far southwestern Texas where he wintered big, aged steers in the mild climate of the Southwest with little expense; then shipped them in the spring to the bluestem grass country of northern Oklahoma and Kansas to be fattened. This was a common livestock operation in those days and was carried on extensively by cattlemen that were commonly referred to as “steer cattlemen.”

Mr. Girard was giving up the pasture that he had leased for several years. During that time each year he had failed to gather the wildest of the cattle out of each bunch until he had an accumulation of wild cattle as the only ones remaining.

This was late September, and he said that his lease ran out the first of November and that he would not be as
much interested in paying to have these cattle gathered as he would be in selling them real cheap, range delivery. Buying wild steers in rough country, range delivery, was risky business, and it was seldom that you could find a cowboy wild enough or foolish enough to make such a trade. We talked on about these cattle and Old Buck Hurd told me how big the oldest ones would be and some of them could weigh 1,500 pounds. It was anybody’s guess as to how many steers were actually in this big pasture, but Mr. Girard said that he was short more than seventy steers from what he had turned in the pasture over a period of four years and what he had gathered out. Assuming that some of them may have died, he believed that there would be at least fifty steers and could be more.

He offered to take $1,000 for fifty head or more, range delivery. This didn’t sound too interesting to me, so Old Man Buck made a big speech saying he would grab the proposition if he was my age. I always got along with Old Man Buck probably because I talked back to him. I told him that if it was going to make me look like him at his age that I didn’t want the cattle. Of course, I laughed when I said it, and he grinned barely enough to let me know that the remark didn’t make him mad. I told Girard and Old Buck that I didn’t have $1,000 to buy the cattle with, and Old Buck blared out that I had $200 because he had just given me the check. Well, he didn’t know it but that was the only $200 I had, and I had worked a month gathering his cattle with five head of horses for that money. He told Mr. Girard that I would be in town all day (he didn’t know whether I would be or not) and
that he thought he would make me take the steers and I could get the $1,000 to pay for them if I wanted to buy them. Well, that was news to me, and after Mr. Girard left the office I asked Old Buck, “Where do you think I would get $1,000?”

He said, “Well, Ben, you don’t need but $800 and that bunch of steers could make a lot of money and you just as well be gathering that bunch of cattle for yourself as some other bunch that you’d just be getting paid for by the head. So we’re going down to the North Fort Worth Bank and I’m going to sign your note for the money.”

This little gesture was further proof that he was neither as tough as he looked nor as mean as he sounded, and even though he would never say so, he must have appreciated me getting his wild cattle or he would not have been trying to make this trade for me.

We walked down to the North Fort Worth Bank, which was in the next block on Exchange Avenue. He introduced me to a bald-headed, good-natured banker and explained to him that I needed $800 and told him why and what I was going to do with the money. I put in my argument that I needed $900 because I needed $100 to use as expense money. Old Buck had been an old starved-out cowboy and said that $25 was enough expense money. So he and I had a big argument, well punctuated with profanity and expressions that were peculiar to the cattle business. The banker went to writing out a note for $900. Old Man Buck glanced over with his Indian-like eyes, and just in defiance of losing the argument said, “Damned if I’ll sign it!”

The banker smiled and said, “Buck, you don’t have to sign it; Ben’s going to get a bill of sale when he pays for the steers and I’m going to attach it to this note, and you’ve lost the argument because the boy will need $100 to feed his horses and himself while he catches that bunch of wild cattle.”

We walked back up to the stockyards and Old Man Buck pretended that he had something else to do and I thanked him for the check and introducing me to the banker and walked out on the livestock exchange to watch the usual course of business, see how cattle were selling, what classes were in most demand, and maybe run on to an old friend or two to pass the time of day with. After all, I had been camped in the brush several weeks and needed to do a little jaw work with some more cowboys.

The North Fort Worth Stockyards were built with the railroad tracks running through the lower third of the yards, cutting it off from the north part, which was the main part of the stockyards. There was a high footbridge built over the railroad tracks from the south side to the north side of the yards, and anytime you were lookin’ for somebody on the stockyards, you made it to the high bridge; from there you could see the entire yards and spot whoever you were lookin’ for. It was a little like climbin’ a windmill to look over the pasture. The stock pens had walkways built around over the top of ’em and the business and visiting of the day took place on these walks.

I was standin’ on the high bridge lookin’ over the yards and DeWitt Kerr came along. I had cowboyed for
DeWitt and he and I always had some pleasant conversation for each other. This morning I was glad to see him ’cause I wasn’t too certain about this big steer deal that Old Man Buck was ‘aggin’ me into.

I told DeWitt about gatherin’ the steers for Old Man Buck in Oklahoma and about the proposition that I had been bannered with that morning. DeWitt was always my friend, and he knew I needed to make the money and he told me he thought it would be all right if I could get enough time on the contract to gather the steers. He cautioned me that that might be rougher country than I had been used to workin’. I told him about the visit down to the bank and he said that if he were me, when he started to pay the man he would just take him down and let the banker pay him and get the bill of sale drawn up to suit the banker. Well, this was a good lesson in business, one that I hadn’t thought of, so I thanked him as he ambled down the other side of the stairs, off the bridge; he waved at me as he left and wished me good luck.

About noon I was standing around in the livestock exchange lobby when Mr. Girard walked up; I guess he knew I was lookin’ for him. He walked right straight over to me and asked me if I was ready to buy the steers and emphasized the phrase “range delivery.” I explained to him that I thought it would be best if the banker closed the trade, so “let’s go down to the bank.” He and the banker had a short visit. The banker drew up a good bill of sale for all the cattle in the Marion pasture that were wearing the brands that Mr. Girard had turned in the pasture through the years that he had leased it. This was
a great long list of brands, since he was a trader and had bought all the steers that he turned in from all over the cow country.

I got on the Red Ball bus that afternoon and went to Weatherford and spent the night with my folks and told them that I was headed for South Texas to gather another bunch of steers.

I went back to the stockyards the next day, and was eatin’ dinner in the old Stockyards Hotel. As I started to leave, a man spoke to me that was wearin’ a railroader’s outfit. They didn’t dress like cowboys or other workin’ people; they had their own kind of riggin’ and it was easy to tell a railroad man without askin’ him where he worked. This fellow had been an old schoolmate of mine. We visited a few minutes, and I told him that I was about to start out of town with my saddle horses to go to South Texas to gather wild steers that I had bought “range delivery.” He said that his crew was fixin’ to pull a bunch of livestock cars out of the stockyards that were being fresh-bedded to be deadheaded to Brownwood, Texas, and that if I jumped my horses into one of those empty cars, he didn’t believe that he would find them before we got to Brownwood.

I said, “I don’t know whether my horses will jump or not, but you might look for me when you go to cut loose in the stockyards in Brownwood.”

’Course I got the hint real fast that he wouldn’t mind haulin’ my saddle horses one hundred fifty miles. It would save me about six days’ ride. I shuffled across to the horse and mule barns. My horses were rested and full and ready
to do something, so I throwed my saddle on one horse and my pack rig on another horse, and led the other three across North Exchange Avenue into the railroad part of the stockyards. Sure enough, my horses jumped in one of those empty cars without half tryin’. I shoved the stockcar door almost to, and set around on a fence and waited to see the train come in. It wasn’t but a few minutes until it bumped the cars and hooked on. I hopped up in with my horses, and by the middle of the afternoon we unloaded in Brownwood. That was about the fastest six-day ride I ever made by horseback!