Free Wild Cow Tales by Ben K. Green Page A

this horse very much like the first one, and sure ’nuff he traveled good too.
    This must have taken about an hour and a half, and it was gettin’ along past middle afternoon, so we went back to town and I finished gettin’ groceries and horse feed tied on to my pack horses while Dr. Turner stood around and visited with me. A few people went in and out the back door of the mercantile. Most of ’em spoke to the doctor, but none of ’em bothered to nod or even notice that I was there. I couldn’t quite get used to this kind of treatment. I was by nature loud-mouthed and friendly with ever’body, but the whole town seemed to resent me because I was roundin’ up Scotty Perth’s cattle for the bank.
    I rode out of town rather late and put my pack horses in front of me so I could drive ’em a little faster than they’d normally lead in order to get back to my camp before night. I stayed around camp the next day, shod my saddle horses, did a little more extra cookin’ than common. The weather was sort of cloudy and disagreeable, and I didn’t try to work any cattle that day.
    The next mornin’ I saddled a horse called Charlie that was a nice saddle horse and good to make wild cattle runs on, but he was not too trustworthy a horse to rope from. Irode out on the side of the mountain and looked through the valley as I had done a number of times and sat there and gazed at Scotty Perth’s headquarters with all its big corrals and barns that he had refused to let anybody use to hold cattle while they were workin’ the canyon pastures.
    I noticed a small bunch of cattle graze out into a clearin’ at the foot of the mountain. I’d tried lots of times to push little bunches of cattle down into the valley and out at the gate by myself. These cattle were so wild and the rocks so rough and slick under your horse that it seemed impossible for one man to ever get any number of cattle through the gate and out into the road. An extra bull grazed out from the timber and joined this bunch of cattle and the bull that was with them started a fight.
    For the moment I forgot I was ridin’ Charlie who wasn’t a good ropin’ horse and I hurried down the mountain and charged these fightin’ cattle before they had time to realize I was there. I roped a big crossbred brownish-red bull; judgin’ from the length and size of his horns he must have been about five years old. Charlie didn’t get too excited, and I managed to drag and jerk the bull around while the other cattle bawled and ran off.
    Then it dawned on me that wild cattle, the climate, and the anger of Scotty Perth must be affecting my judgment. What was I gonna do with one big bull on the end of a lariat rope? Situations like this cause you to make up your mind pretty fast.
    He charged my horse a time or two, and I managed to rein Charlie out of the way and whirl him and stop the bull. Durin’ this wild bull play, the bull ran around agood-size tree, with the lariat rope wrapped around the tree, which took the strain off of Charlie and stopped the bull from being able to run back at us.
    When you’re not doin’ much of your own thinkin’, it’s nice to get a wild bull to help you out. I had him roped around the horns, and there was no danger of him choking, so I untied the lariat from my saddle horn and jumped off my horse and tied the other end of the rope to another tree that was about the right distance from the tree he was wrapped to. This got Charlie and me away from the bull, but he was still a long ways from the railroad stock pens.
    I stood on the ground beside my horse and looked at the bull and decided that I ought to tie him to somethin’ light enough that he could drag, but heavy enough that he couldn’t run away with it. I knew where there was some dead logs up the canyon a piece that I had been jumpin’ my horse over. Any good cowboy that thinks he’s goin’ to get in trouble has more than one rope, so I rode up there and picked out a log that I thought