THE MACHINE AGE HAS REACHED A high state of development and the Atomic Age was mentioned for a few years and now this era of human existence is referred to as the Space Age In view of the changes in transportation methods brought on by these various developments and by paved streets and fine residential districts, one-way traffic and all the other unnatural means of movement other than walking, cattle are no longer driven in herds through cities or even through small-size towns because of traffic problems. With the almost deathlike danger of running horses on pavement, and most all cattle, horses and other kinds of livestock being transported to the railroads, central markets, between ranches, feed lots, and other locations by trucks, it seems fitting that some historical record should be made concerning the incidents both humorous and dangerous that occurred during the period when cattle were driven by cowboys horseback through towns and cities of any and all sizes. The real reason that this phase of cowboyin’ was necessary was because shipping stock pens at railroad points were built close to the town depot, which by necessity or custom was usually near the business district. The more that business districts developed and the more that the residential part of town grew, the worse located the old original shipping stock pens were insofar as getting cattle from the country through town to the stockyards, and the harder it was, when the cattle were shipped in by rail, to drive them from the stock pens through town out to the country.
One summer morning early, Roy Young, who was foreman of the Lanius Ranch south of Weatherford, and his cowboys had turned out some good fat Hereford two-year-olds that had been fattened in the feed lot at the ranch. They, of course, were frisky and full of steam and Roy started them to town as early as a rider could distinguish the form of a cow brute, hopin’ to take advantage of the coolness of the early morning hours.
There were four carloads of these cattle, which would be in rough figures about a hundred and twenty head. Roy had made the trip to town without too much trouble.
In handling fat young cattle, a rider has to ride point, which means in front of the cattle, and hold them back to keep them from traveling too fast. Then two riders ride wing behind the point and on each side of the herd. Usually there are two more riders bringing up the end of the herd and taking time apart riding back point of the herd when it’s necessary to move up to keep cattle from turning down crossroads, lanes, and so forth.
All cowboys and ranchers movin’ cattle were glad to get extra help to meet the herd at the edge of town to help them through town to the stock pens at the railroad tracks. For a good many of my growin’-up years, I met several herds of cattle a week during shippin’ time the days and nights that I happened to be in town. Of course, we cowboys learned and dreaded concrete sidewalks, clotheslines, bicycles, open doors to storm houses and cellars, unprotected water hydrants stickin’ up in the yard, and one hundred and one other things too numerous to mention, such as tricycles, little red wagons, squealin’ kids, high-tone screamin’ old women and damned old grouchy men that lived along the streets where it was necessary to move herds of cattle back and forth to the railroad.
That day me and some more boys met Roy’s cattle about early mid-morning at the south edge of town and eased up South Main Street, which at that time was wide and unpaved. When we came to Weatherford College, we turned the cattle east a block and then north onto the street that would run into the railroad tracks close to the stock pens.
Nothing eventful happened until we were over on this street and hardly a mile from the stock pens. Then old Judge Irving, who was settin’ on the porch readin’ the morning paper, saw the cattle comin’ up the street. For fear that there might be a cow track put on his lawn, he walked up to the edge of the porch and shook that morning newspaper unfurled and hollered “Houey” a couple of times.
Roy turned in his saddle and saw the stampede started and he knew that the run was on and that we would have cattle scattered for the rest of the day. But before he left Judge Irving’s, he rode over in the yard horseback, jerked the paper out of Judge Irving’s hand, folded it and handed it back to him and said, “Judge, these cattle don’t want to read the damn paper, they want to go to the stock pens, so take it in the house with you and stay there.”
One morning we had turned out three hundred and twenty long yearling Angus heifers and started out of town with them to what was known as the Black Ranch. We were about even with the college campus in that narrow street and were ready to turn and get onto South Main Street, which was much wider and easier to work up and down the side of a herd of cattle to keep them out of the yards and from goin’ down cross streets.
As we swung the leaders on the point and were about halfway around the corner with the herd, some college girls came runnin’ out of the dormitory squealin’ and hollerin’ and takin’ on about the cattle and they sounded like a cross between a glee club and a pep rally. All this sudden commotion and high female voices had a nerve-rackin’ effect on this bunch of black heifers that had been shipped four or five days and were thirsty, hungry, and nervous and unused to such commotion, and so the stampede was on. I’m sure the college girls thought it was most colorful.
It looked like a big bunch of these big black heifers were about to ’tend class when I cut them off and only two topped the college steps and started through the hall. I jerked my feet out of the stirrups and sat deep in my saddle, in case ole Beauty might fall on that slick oiled floor, and went through the college hallway.
There was a one-armed, narrow-eyed preacher that was a teacher in the college and he had some other things about him that was empty besides that sleeve on his shirt. As me and Beauty made the intersection of the two hallways and turned this heifer toward an open door on the other end of the hallway, this preacher waved that empty sleeve at me and screamed in a high, sanctimonious tone of voice that I didn’t have to ride that horse in there. I hollered back at him as we went back into the sunlight that the reason I did it was that I was afraid that the heifer might get in the wrong class.
One morning Jack Hart, who was a good cowman and village banker and had a feed lot two or three miles north of town, turned out a bunch of steers at the stock pens to go to the feed lot. There were several good cowhands helpin’ on this quick, short drive and the north side of Weatherford wasn’t as hard to get through with a herd as the south side was. However, this bunch of big steers decided to make a pretty wild run.
They weren’t gettin’ away. We were managin’ to hold ’em up the road we wanted them on, but ever’body was jumpin’ sidewalks and curbs—which was dangerous horseback and runnin’ through yards—and one cowboy made a wild dash around through the back yard. He dodged a loaded clothesline almost, but his horse had broke into and begun to buck because, when he raised his head up comin’ out from under the clothesline, he had fitted himself with a beautiful lacy, frilled petticoat right around his neck, and I guess this old pony didn’t like petticoats. He bucked into that herd of steers and we had the damnest runaway that a bunch of cowboys ever had.
This cowboy was sorta known as a ladies’ man, and after he had shed his petticoat and we had got the herd sort of herded back together about even with the oil mill, Jack rode by him and said, “I never thought that you would get trapped by an empty petticoat.”
We were movin’ three hundred head of big steers through Denton one time and I was ridin’ point. These cattle were travelin’ in kind of a long, sweepin’ trot. They weren’t exactly wild, but they were a little excited and travelin’ pretty fast and I saw that they were goin’ to turn on a side street where we didn’t want them to go. It was on a corner and I took a short cut around through the back yard of a home to head them off.
This back yard had a big rosebush hedge around it about four feet tall. I was ridin’ a good fast horse and he came to that hedge and rose and jumped it and then I saw that near where we were landin’ on the other side there was a cute little bitty cotton-headed kid playin’ in a sandbox.
The sandbox was built up a foot or so and made it easy for me to bend down and take a hold of him. I knew some cattle or more cowboys might have to come that way, and just as my horse’s forefeet hit the ground real close to this little fellow, I reached down and picked him up by one arm. A young woman screamed and came runnin’ out the back door.
I don’t know how old this kid was, but he wasn’t much heavier than a feed of oats. I’d be no judge of young stock and I don’t know whether he was weaned or still a-suckin’, but, anyway, I just picked him up by one arm, and as I rode by and handed him to his mother he was likin’ the ride through the air and gave me a big smile.
I said, “Mama, grow him up some more and I’ll take him with me next time.” I never knew whether she fainted or got in the house with him.
During the worst days of the now historical depression, I bought one hundred and twenty-seven cows. These were good-quality cattle and they had about sixty-two calves on ’em. They were a little old, they had some horns and wrinkles on their horns, but they weren’t bad cattle at all, and I gave $12.50 a head for them and the calves throwed in for nothin’. I kept this herd of cattle way late in the fall and finally sold them without makin’ much money, but that’s not the story. We were drivin’ this herd of cows through Mineral Wells on horseback down one of the main residential streets started south toward the Brazos River.
There was kind of a snobbish fellow that had a real nice home with a big lawn and rosebushes; it was a well-kept place. Cowboys didn’t have a whole lot of use for him. He was sort of a small loanshark, and as far as we were concerned he wasn’t one of God’s most noble children; but, nevertheless, we were tryin’ to get the cattle through town with the least possible trouble. I was ridin’ point and wing on the side by his house, and I was doin’ my best to keep the cattle out of his yard.
We had nearly passed his yard when he came from around the corner of the house with a big, bold, fuzzy black dog followin’; he got right up close and, with a big grin on his face, said in a loud tone of voice, “Sic ’em!”
Well, these old cattle didn’t sic ’em too good. They weren’t wild. They were a gentle kind of cattle, but this dog nipped the heels of a calf that let out a little hurt kind of bawl, and the old cow turned around and, with that duly amount of horn she had grown in her lifetime, she hooked and knocked a chunk of black hair off the dog. With him out of the way, she took after this old man, and the calf was runnin’ after them too. They ran round the house.
The man had a little outbuilding with his yard tools and stuff in it and the door was open, and that old cow was crowdin’ him so fast that he just kinda climbed up that door and got on top of the little building. It was about six-by-six and maybe six or seven feet tall, and there he was on top of it and this old cow was a-runnin’ around it by the time I got back there.
Well, the little calf was bewildered and dived into that opened door and was standin’ in there in the dark a-bawlin’; the old cow could hear it bawl but she didn’t know what happened to it, so she was just goin’ round and round that little shed shakin’ her horns and pawin’ dirt and throwin’ it over her back. I knew that when the calf turned around and saw daylight and listened to that old cow a minute she would come back out.
So I was just a-sittin’ there on my horse a-watchin’ the show. Mr. Loanshark was on top of his little building and turned white as a sheet and he finally realized I was sittin’ out there on my horse and he asked, “What are you goin’ to do to get this cow away from here?”
I was really waitin’ for the little calf to make up his mind to come out of the shed, but I just said to the cow, “Sic ’em!”
The Fort Worth Stock Packers were out of beef in the winter of 1929 and 1930 because of the extreme cold weather, and cattle feeders weren’t shipping anything to Forth Worth. Swift and Company, buyer for big steers, called Fred Smith long-distance in Weatherford and offered him a two-cents-a-pound premium if he could send them some heavy finished beef.
Fred came down to the wagonyard to the old camp house. All wagonyards in those days had a good, tight camp house, generally with two rooms in it and a fireplace in each room for people who were travelin’ in wagons to camp in during bad weather. On bad days the cowboys, traders, and loafers would gather in the camp house and keep up a big fire and a lot of big conversation and maybe play some dominoes, so Fred knew where to find the cowboys at that time of day in that kind of weather.
He told us his troubles and he thought he could get seventy-two cattle cut out, which would be three carloads of twenty-four to the car, if we thought we could get them to town. Fred had one man at the feed lot and there were four of us there that thought we could go, so we told him we didn’t know whether we could get to town with them or not because the streets were solid ice. Anywhere a horse had to travel, you were subject to slip and fall. There was some fine sleet in the air while we were talking.
We put on all the clothes we had and heavy chaps and big leather coats. Most of us had a horse or two in the wagonyard, so we saddled our favorite horses and went out to the feed lot, which was about three miles from the stock pens in town. These cattle were all fat, so Fred just opened the gate and counted out seventy-two head that he hoped we could drive to town.
As he turned them out of the small feed lot that these cattle had been kept in, he turned them into a little trap pasture. Cattle as fat as that can get out on hard ground and fresh air and feel good, so these cattle romped and bucked and played and we didn’t try to hold them up. We thought we would kinda let them get their play out because they weren’t scared. They were just doin’ it for fun and they would quit in a few minutes without hurtin’ anything. When they began to blow a lot of steam out and slow up a little bit, we opened the gate out onto the road. A couple of boys went out to ride point and hold them down the best they could goin’ up the lane, and me and another cowboy brought up the herd. Nearly all the streets were solid ice and there was no traffic. Nobody was in the way but it was an awful hard way to try to move cattle, especially fat cattle that were rollicky and feelin’ good.
All of us either stood in our stirrups or rode with our feet out of the stirrups for fear our horse would fall with us. When you are ridin’ standin’ in your stirrups and you have one hand on your reins and another on your saddle horn, if a horse starts to fallin’ you can kinda stiff-arm yourself out of the saddle with one hand, and if you are ridin’ with that hand on the saddle you are ready all the time. The other way, ridin’ settin’ down in your saddle with both feet out of the stirrups, you are countin’ on goin’ down with the horse. By having your feet loose, you won’t get caught with a leg under your horse and you will be free to roll on the ground away from him to safety. When I rode on ice and slick pavement, this was the way that I did it, and in spite of my many injuries, I have never had my foot caught in the stirrup under a horse.
We came down Elm Street headed north to the stock yards. Fort Worth Street ran east and west and the Weatherford Post Office was on the corner where Fort Worth Street took a sudden drop at the point we were crossin’ these cattle. This herd of big cattle began to slip and slide and fall. The seventy-two head had piled up in the middle of Fort Worth Street, not tryin’ to get away but because they just couldn’t stand up.
We cowboys didn’t dare try to hurry our horses as they were scotchin’ to try to keep from fallin’. We stood there all around these cattle a-cussin’, cryin’, and hollerin’ and wavin’ our hands at them but wonderin’ how we were even goin’ to get them up on their feet.
These big stout cattle would scuffle and struggle and then give up because they couldn’t get a footing to stand up. We managed to ride closer to them and holler louder at ’em. The fine sleet in the air was freezin’ on our clothes and freezin’ on the manes and tails of our horses, but these big steers were so hot and full of rich feed that the sleet would melt as it would hit them.
Now here is the historical part of the story, something that I never saw happen before in my lifetime and I doubt seriously if it will ever happen again, at least in Texas, because we never drive cattle this way any more : the body heat of those seventy-two steers piled up on that solid frozen pavement began to soften the surface of the ice enough that, when they began to try to get up again, their feet held in the soft ice. They melted the ice with their own bodies enough to be able to get back up on their feet, and we rode our horses across a sort of a mush that was a lot better than being on solid ice.
It was about three fourths of a mile on down to the stock pens and these cattle then were so scared of their footing that none of them ever tried to run or get away, and we drove them down to the stock pens without any more trouble. The railroad spotted the cars and we loaded the cattle just at dark and sealed the car doors and went to town.
We went into the Texas Cafe and back to the stove in the back side of the dining part. We pulled off our horse-hide coats and our chaps and there was so much ice on them that they stood up on the floor after we were out of ’em. It made a loblolly, but Florent Patrick and Little Pat and all was glad to see us get warm and glad to know that we got the steers shipped and nobody got any chousin’ about gettin’ water on the floor from thawin’ out the clothes. Somebody just got a mop and cleaned it up and was glad that we were back in town and nobody hurt.
