Wild Cow Tales by Ben K. Green Read Free Book Online Page A

the circumstances would change the price of them heifers a whole lot and $36 apiece would be enough for ’em.
    He started out then by tellin’ me when I’d get the heifers out would have something to do with him sellin’ em to me. This was early August, and I asked him howthe fifteenth of September would suit him. He said that’d be early enough if my price was good enough.
    I did some fast cowboy arithmetic in my head, and bid him $225 for the bunch. He hemmed and hawed around and looked at the mail that he had in his hand and ’lowed as how he ought to get $250 for ’em. That little remark as much as told me that I already had ’em bought.
    So after a little more jaw work he took me up and I paid him for the heifers.
    The weather was hot and I rode this pasture from daylight until about noon and then from about three o’clock in the afternoon till dark for five straight days without findin’ the heifers. This bunch of heifers hadn’t been run and they weren’t spoiled or outlawed; they were just by instinct wild, and too, the grazing was better in the thickets and valleys than it was out of the open mesas. The summer foliage was extremely dense, and standin’ out on the bluffs horseback tryin’ to spot brownish-red and brindle cattle in a thicket below was not easy.
    This particular afternoon I had ridden up on a high mesa that had a steep bluff lookin’ off to the east. The fence line ran so close under the bluff that you couldn’t see it from a standin’ position on top of the mesa. The mesa overlooked a small farm to the east that faced out on a country road at the other side of it. As I sat there on my horse wonderin’ where else to look for my heifers, I saw little Peddy ridin’ Queenie comin’ up across the field.
    Queenie was a small grey mare of mine that was about sixteen years old. She had taught half of the townkids how to ride horseback, and the fall before this I had taken her away from some kids in town that were runnin’ her up and down the streets and not takin’ very good care of her. She was gonna bring a colt in the spring, and I had started to the pasture that I had leased down the road in front of Peddy’s house.
    When Peddy came out to the road, as he often did when I passed, and stretched his hands up to me to pick him up and carry him in front of me on my horse. This time I had reached over from my saddle and picked Peddy up and set him on Queenie that I was leadin’, and let him ride her back to his house.
    Peddy had had a very serious sickness when he was only three or four years old and had always been frail and had lots of sick spells. He was a good little boy, but his older brothers and sisters never had bothered to play with him and his mother and daddy didn’t have much time to spend with him.
    Peddy laid around on the porch in the summertime and in front of the fire in the wintertime, and had taken very little exercise. His mother, Amy, had never been able to get him to eat very much.
    When we got to the house, he didn’t want to get off of Queenie. He didn’t make any fuss, nor cry, but he got around to askin’ me if Queenie could stay at his house a few days. Peddy couldn’t talk plain and his voice was weak, but his big eyes put forth a very convincing argument, and I had left Queenie there almost a year ago. Queenie had kept Peddy out in the sunshine and fresh air, and caused him to take exercise and he was growin’ into a healthy, chuffy little boy. Queenie had brought acolt in the spring, and it was nearly grown and was followin’ as he rode across the fields.
    I had watched him a few minutes when he looked up and saw me up on the bluff. He waved real big with his ragged straw hat for me to meet him at the north corner of the field. I rode down to the fence line as Peddy rode up, and in his broken dialect he asked me to crawl over the fence and we’d eat a watermelon. That sounded like a good proposition to me. We walked out among the watermelon vines and