Free Wild Cow Tales by Ben K. Green

for shippin’ my horses from Texas and had agreed that when the job was finished they would pay for shippin’ my horses back to Texas.
    The nights had begun to get cold and Indian summer had past, meaning that I was ridin’ against weather aswell as time because when winter set in I wouldn’t be able to ride and accomplish very much in deep snow. This meant that I had to gather the cattle in a much shorter time than the contract between the bank and Scotty Perth specified, which was the first of January.
    It was time for me to make a trip into town to get some horseshoes, grub, and some feed for my horses. On these trips I would take three pack horses and tie each one’s halter rope to the next one’s tail and lead ’em single file behind my saddle horse. I’d pack these three horses with two hundred-pound sacks of oats, swingin’ one each side to the packsaddle. This would be about almost twenty bushels that I’d take back to my camp to feed my saddle horses.
    I rode in behind the country mercantile and tied my saddle horse and untied the pack horses from each other and let them drag their halter ropes and graze on the vacant land behind the mercantile until I was ready to load them. It was early afternoon when I got to town and I went about buyin’ my list of supplies, and when I came to horseshoes and horseshoe nails, Dr. Turner had walked into the store and said to me, “I see you are buying some horseshoes. I noticed the horse you left in my stable one night had a good overreach when he walked. One of my horses travels that way, but I can’t get him shod to where he won’t forge and strike the heels of his front feet with the toes of his back feet.”
    I was glad to show off a little as the doctor was the only friend I had in town, so I told him I’d be glad to shoe his horse where it wouldn’t forge.
    I gave my list to the clerk at the mercantile to fill andgot in a model-T Ford with Dr. Turner and went down to his barn. He had plenty of horseshoeing tools and his horse was real gentle. Some of his kids rode the horse, and he kept him to drive in the winter when the roads were too bad to make calls in his model-T.
    He sat in the doorway of the saddle room while I dressed his horse’s feet and shod him. We led the horse around the corral after he was shod and one of the doctor’s little girls rode him enough that Dr. Turner was convinced I’d shod him properly and that his front and back feet weren’t goin’ to interfere.
    We were visitin’ while the girl rode the horse, and he said, “If you are not in too big a hurry I’ve another horse in Town Trap [Town Trap was the little pasture down on the creek that nearly ever’body used to keep town horses in] that I wish you would shoe for me.”
    I told him I was sure I had enough time if it wouldn’t take too long to catch the horse. His daughter spoke up and said it wouldn’t be any trouble to catch the horse. She got a little feed out of the barn in a sack and an extra catch rope and jumped on the horse bareback and said she’d be back in a little while. In the meantime her daddy had been tellin’ her which horse to catch.
    We went to the house and Dr. Turner’s wife fixed us some cake and coffee, and I took on a little hospitality while we were waitin’ on the girl to bring the horse back. The conversation was light; he hadn’t mentioned Scotty Perth and neither had I. The little girl was back in a few minutes and I went out to the barn to shoe the horse.
    As we left the house, Mrs. Turner insisted that I come to town to church next Sunday. The church had a newpreacher who was coming to preach every other Sunday, and she was havin’ a church party after the meetin’ for him this comin’ Sunday and for me to be sure to come.
    Both the horses were big bays of mixed blood, and you could tell that they were bound to be kinfolks. I said somethin’ about how much they were alike, and Dr. Turner told me the horses were full brothers. I shod