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

Peddy picked out one that looked a little overripe, and when I suggested that we get a different one, he said, he’d give this one first to Queenie and then we could have a better one.
    We got a good melon and got under the shade of a tree on the fence line of the pasture. Peddy asked me what I was doin’ in the Davidson pasture, and I told him about buyin’ the heifers and that I was lookin’ for ’em. Peddy was a serious little boy; I suppose because he had been sick so much in his life. He didn’t hoorah and play much, and he seemed to have wisdom far beyond his years concerning pets and dumb animals. As we ate the watermelon I told him that I’ad put out some feed for the heifers, but they had never been fed and probably wouldn’t come to feed.
    Peddy had pulled some salt, wrapped up in wax paper, out of the pocket of his homemade shirt that we had been usin’ on the watermelon. He held the salt up in his hand and said, “Ben, hepers like sol.”
    I said, “Peddy, I know heifers like salt, but if I put a sack o’ salt out in the pasture, they’d eat as much as theywanted in a few-days, and I might not get a chance to drive ’em out when they came to salt.”
    Peddy looked very serious and said, “Don’t put out no sack, hepers lick sol outa yer han.”
    I didn’t laugh at Peddy unless he said something that he knew was funny because Peddy had been laughed at too much by people because he couldn’t talk. I studied about what Peddy had said as I flipped watermelon seeds off of the piece I was about to eat.
    I said, “Peddy, gentle heifers would lick salt out of your hand, but these heifers are wild.”
    Peddy looked over the fence to the other side at Queenie as though he was tryin’ to figure out a way to make me understand. He held the salt up again in the paper and said, “Hepers lick sol out of Peddy’s han. They no wil. I sol hepers when I sol Queenie when she under tree.”
    This was the only shade tree in the field and when Queenie was in the field loose Peddy would bring salt to catch Queenie with, and he said that he had been lettin the heifers lick salt out of his hand through the fence.
    This sounded too good to be true! But Peddy was a good little boy and was not jokin’ about the heifers lickin’ out of his hand, and he convinced me of it in broken sentences and the serious look on his face.
    We were about finished with the watermelon, and I said, “Peddy, what’s Queenie’s colt’s name?”
    He said, “Queenie hav’ Princ, what do you think?” and then smiled real big.
    I told Peddy that I would take the fence down, andthe next time the heifers came to the fence he could give ’em some salt and after they were cut in the field I’d put the fence back up.
    Peddy said that these heifers came to that thicket under the bluff by the tree about every third day. I pondered this and knew that that would be so true because cattle range over a big pasture, and make it back to certain spots at intervals. It was evident that Peddy had watched for ’em and fed ’em salt out of his hand and knew what he was talkin’ about.
    He said that “they’d no be there tomorro’, but would be there the nex’ day,” which I knew would be Friday.
    I asked Peddy why he didn’t have a saddle on Queenie. He told me it hurt her sides when he tightened it up, and he didn’t mind ridin’ bareback. He got a hold of Queenie’s mane and crawled up her foreleg with his bare toes as I crawled over the fence and got on my horse, and we waved at each other and rode away.
    I studied about the heifers having been in the pasture all summer without any salt. Hot weather and green pasture cause cattle to crave salt, and when they smelled Queenie licking from Peddy’s hand, they came to the smell by instinct.
    The next day I took a ten-pound sack of table salt and tied it on my saddle and rode out to Peddy’s house. Ace, his father, was home and I told him about mine and Peddy’s conversation and watermelon