Wild Cow Tales (22 page)

The night the steers boogered they didn’t see me and I didn’t think that they had quite figured out where I was, so I didn’t move my hidin’ place where I intended to lay until the cattle came through the gate and I could pull my rope to pull the gate closed. They first came to the dry water trough at the storage tank and stood around there bawlin’. Of course, they could smell the water in the water trough in the corral and they would walk back and forth between the corral fence and the storage tank, but it seemed that none of them were interested in takin’ any chance on walkin’ down the fence a few steps to try that open gate that would be an easy way in to water. I watched through a crack in the pole fence. It seemed to me like for half the night, but I am sure it wasn’t for more than an hour or so. Every now and then a steer would lick or smell the bottom of that dry water trough and accidentally hit that tin float with a horn but this noise must have been familiar to them and it didn’t cause any disturbance, but pretty soon I heard a worse noise and knew that it wasn’t caused by just hittin’ the tin float. Some big
steer had hung both horns under the mesquite limb that I had tied the float up to with baling wire. This was a smart bunch of cattle about not being caught, but I didn’t think that steer was smart enough to know what he was doing. I think that catchin’ both horns was an accident, and it was causin’ a certain amount of fright. When this big steer thought his horns were hung on something, he made a powerful lunge with his head and broke the baling wire and threw the mesquite limb over his back, and I heard the check valve in the float spewin’ clear fresh water for a bunch of thirsty steers.

I raised up and saw them all scramblin’ tryin’ to drink at the same time and I thought that this might be my chance. I opened the gate and stepped on my horse and rode out into the opening and started hollerin’ and hazin’ these cattle, thinkin’ I might crowd some of them into the big corral while they were still wantin’ to turn back to that fresh water that they had only gotten a sip of. I was ridin’ a big stout chestnut horse called Bob that had lots of cow savvy and was fast on his feet. When I rode into the cattle and squalled at them, it seemed to kill their thirst. Instead of showin’ any interest in the water, they began to try to get away.

A horse has a reflector built into his eye that enables him to see better at night than cattle or men, and Bob was sure doing his part at trying to head them and hold them against that corral fence in an effort to push them in through the gate. In the flash of a second one of the big older steers came out of the black wad of cattle and charged me and Bob. Bob first set in to hold him and then saw that he was to be gored if he did and dodged as fast
as he could and one horn opened the skin on the left shoulder on the point back to the cinch and ripped my britches leg open as he went by headin’ for the thicket. The other cattle had taken the signal and were already out of sight. These old wild steers valued freedom more than water and just a short dry spell of two or three days hadn’t caused them to think in terms of domesticity.

The next day I got up with the intentions of havin’ me at least one steer roped, tied, run to death, or in a corral before night. After all, this was eleven days in a pasture without catchin’ a single cow brute and if it was to get out it would damage my reputation as a wild cow hunter.

I started early and I boogered these steers in the brush, and I thought I would play it different. I turned them away from the water, rode and hazed and hollered and pushed them all morning. I didn’t stop for dinner but about two thirty or three o’clock in the afternoon these cattle had scattered so bad that they had laid down and hid themselves in dense thicket and tall grass to where I couldn’t even see a steer to holler at much less rope.

I was ridin’ a tired horse from the south fence lines toward the corral and the windmill. We had both been wringin’ wet with sweat several times, and the combination of dirt and salt caused from sweatin’ had dried all over the back and arms of my shirt and in the hot sun it had begun to itch. I rode up to the water trough at the storage tank and as my horse drank and I drank a little from the trough, I just raised up and pulled off my shirt and was going to rinse the sweat and dirt out of it and put it back on wet. A shirt sure is cool in the heat of summer after you have rinsed it in a water trough.

This big storage tank made a little shade at this time of day on the north side of it. My horse snorted and took a few quick steps back away from the water trough on one side of me and I looked on the other side and there was this big chocolate-colored steer there. He had been shaded up on the other side of the water tank when I rode up and that was where he had gone when the bunch scattered.

He snuffed his nose and charged me fast and my only hope was to reach the windmill tower. As I turned to jump about two steps and get hold of the wooden cross braces on the windmill tower, he caught my left leg with one horn just along the shin and almost gave me what amounted to a foot lift as I grabbed the cross brace of the windmill tower and pulled myself barely out of his reach. He bawled and shook his head and jumped in an effort to reach me. Well, I had one boot heel hung over a cross-piece and clingin’ with one hand and arm to the other crosspiece and fightin’ at that steer with my shirt with the other hand. If a steer was about to get you cornered, it wouldn’t make any difference what you had in your hand, even if it wasn’t anything but a feather, you’d wave it at him.

Of course, I was squallin’ at him at the top of my voice, but it didn’t seem to put much fear in him. This everyday shirt was heavy cotton and drippin’ wet. About the second or third lick I made at him, one wet sleeve wrapped around his horn, and I guess he thought that he had a piece of me because he made a kind of low, laughin’-like bawl and tossed his head so violently that he jerked the whole shirt out of my hand and the lashlike
motion wrapped the other sleeve around the other horn. All of a sudden he stood still and I realized that steer looked better in a shirt than anybody that I had ever seen wearin’ one because he was blindfolded completely and that wet shirt was stickin’ close to his head.

I got a heap braver and the tone of my voice was a heap stronger, and when I bellered back at him he took a few steps backward. I eased to the ground as quiet as I could and went about one fourth of the way to the corral gate afoot. I whistled and hollered in not too unfriendly a tone and he turned and faced my direction but didn’t make any move towards comin’ at me. I took a little more chance and came a little closer and took some small rocks and hit him on the end of his nose, and when I did this he charged in my direction.

About that time a summer whirlwind passed me goin’ toward him and I don’t know what whirlwinds know about handlin’ cattle but that steer came on full drive. I ran through the corral gate with him and closed it behind me and turned and slammed the gate and fastened it. The other steer had run off about one half mile and turned and watched the show and he bawled a time or two, just a lowlike call, and my blindfolded friend as yet hadn’t offered to answer him.

By this time there was enough blood runnin’ from the gash that the steer had made in the calf of my leg that it was sloshin’ in my boot when I walked. My horse durin’ all of this had gone over by the corral fence and was standin’ easy, and I had no reason to try to catch him because he wouldn’t leave me now.

There were some rocks built into the side of the storage
tank that stuck out enough for a foothold, so that a man could climb up the side of the rock wall to see about the water in the big tank. And so I climbed up this rock, set up on the edge of the tank, and pulled my boot off my left foot. The windmill was runnin’ just a little and there was a small stream of water runnin’ out of the pipe into the tank, which was about the only clean water, so I sat there on the edge of the tank and let the cold well water run over the gash in my leg until it began to get cold enough to quit bleedin’ and while I sat up there without my shirt on, I got a mild sunburn to add to my discomfort.

It had all happened pretty fast up until the time I crawled on the side of the water tank. I sat there and rested up some and rinsed the blood out of my boot and rinsed my sock and wrung it out while I was waitin’ for that cold water to stop my leg from bleedin’.

By now, it was gettin’ to be late afternoon so I crawled down carrying my boot and sock and crowhoppin’ over to my horse and rode up to camp feelin’ like I had had a pretty good day. I had one steer in the corral a-wearin’ a good shirt and a slight gash about three inches long in my left leg that I didn’t consider to be serious. I washed ole Bob’s shoulder off with soap and water and greased it with a salty bacon rind and unsaddled ole Beauty and fed the both of them. Peanut, my other horse, was runnin’ loose in the pasture because I hadn’t been usin’ him.

While I had my boot off and my britches leg rolled up, I decided I had better do something to protect that open gash in my leg. A cowboy when he’s out in camp
rarely ever has any kind of medicine with him. If he bothered to think about how dangerous some of the things were that he did and make preparation to take medicines with him, he never would hunt bad cattle to start with.

I had used sugar to pour on open sores on horses sometimes, so I got my little cookin’ outfit and poured this gash full of sugar. It would dissolve and form a hard scab and a little syrup would form under the scab and protect the sore from gettin’ dirt and stuff in it.

I had a big supper of meat, beans, and taters and didn’t have much trouble dozin’ off to sleep. Up in the night about the time I had begun to get kinda rested, I woke up with that old leg givin’ me a fit and when I got around and chunked up the fire a little to where I could see what the trouble was—sleepin’ on the ground, the ants had moved in and was a-feastin’ on that sugar scab. I had to sleep on the ground so I decided I had better wash that sugar scab off my leg. This took a little doin’ to loosen and soften it up to pick the scabby pieces that had the sugar in them out of the deep part of the gash. I thought then that what I had done for Bob was probably what I should have done for myself, so I greased around it with that salty meat rind and managed to get back to sleep after a while.

I woke up about daylight and crawled off my pallet over against a big tree and propped up and watched the sun come up. My leg by this time was real sore and throbbin’ pretty bad. Every once in a while that big brown-colored steer in the corral would let out a lonesome bawl and his runnin’ mate would answer him up the draw a piece in the thicket. When the sun got up to
where I could see good, I could tell that my leg was gettin’ in pretty bad shape. There were big red streaks runnin’ away from the gash and the edges of the gash had begun to open up and curl back and when I started to bend my knee, the hide was gettin’ tight over my knee from the swellin’ and I knew I had to do something for my leg before I tormented them big steers any more.

I wore long straight shank-spoke rowel spurs. The spokes were long but blunt at the ends and wouldn’t cut a horse and it seemed that that was about the only thing in the way of a piece of iron that I had in camp that would do to sear out that sore. So I took the spur leathers off one spur and pushed the shank part into the coals of my campfire. I was a pretty tough young cowboy but I was beginnin’ to wonder if there wasn’t a limit to how tough I was when I got to thinkin’ about that red-hot spur. I had a pair of horse-hoof nippers with me that I used to take that spur out of the fire and I took a good tight hold on it and drawed that leg up to where I could see what I was doin’ and just set me a trail down through that sore with the rowel and shank of that spur. When I got through bitin’ my lip and beatin’ the ground with my fist and began to get my breath and tears quit runnin’ out of my eyes, it sort of quit burnin’.

I laid around camp and pampered myself till after I had a batch of dinner, and you would be surprised how the red had faded out of that leg, and it just looked like I had a bad burn. It wasn’t real sore as it had been that mornin’ when I waked up. I got my sock and boot back on my foot and stuffed a little piece of scrap sheepskin in my boot top below the gash, which held my boot top out
away from my leg, and I began to walk around and study about what I was going to do with my one big steer in the corral.

I rode down to the corral and opened the gate from horseback and started in, which was a big mistake. By this time the shirt had dried and was layin’ over by the fence where the steer had rubbed it off. I didn’t much more than crack the gate open when that steer started comin’ at me and I backed my horse up real fast and slammed the gate. This gave me another bright idea. It wasn’t goin’ to be any trouble to rope over the fence because you could just ride up to the outside of the fence and shake it and he would charge and hit the fence.

I rode around to the back side of the corral and booed and boogered at him and caught his attention and here he came. When he was real close to the fence I pitched a rope over him and caught him around those great big long horns. I threaded the rope through a crack right next to one of the big heavy posts that were set deep in the ground that the rest of the fence was tied to and stepped off my horse in order to take the rope down low on the post before I took up the slack to tie the steer. I would just stick my hand through the fence and wave at him, and when he would charge the fence I would pull my hand back real fast and take up some more slack. I had him drawn to where he could touch the post by stickin’ his nose out and the pole of his head between his horns was maybe eighteen inches from the post. I managed my rope back through the fence and took two extra wraps around his horns and back around the post to where he would have much less chance of breakin’ the rope.

In handlin’ real fightin’ cattle, you learn to get their heads sore as soon as you can, then if you have to pull on them to do anything with them, they will give to that rope around their head without you putting forth too much force. I thought now that since I had him tied good and snug that I might open the gate and prop it back to see if his runnin’ mate that had been standin’ around just inside the thicket bawlin’ and answerin’ would show up.