Wild Cow Tales by Ben K. Green

piled up in a wad some of ’em found the road gate that I had opened the several nights before and the race was on.
    I didn’t lose a cow gettin’ through the gates, but they did knock some of the fence down. I squalled, hollered, and waved my jacket at them until I ran ’em for about five miles. When they had begun to “wind” and slow up, I dropped back to give my horse a breather and let them slow down for the drive to town. Any time you can wind a bunch of wild cattle, it makes ’em easier to handle for the rest of the day.
    The cloud had developed into a cold drizzle, and by the time we were halfway to town the roads were gettin’ muddy. I had gotten pretty well soaked by now and kind of chilly, and my horse was wringin’ wet with sweat and steam boilin’ out of his flanks from all the ridin’ that I was havin’ to do in that heavy, wet dirt.
    At the edge of town about two thirty that afternoon, somethin’ boogered these cattle, and they made a wild run back up the road toward the ranch. I rode at full speed about three miles in front of ’em, hopin’ that nothin’ could happen that would cause my horse to fall. The herd finally quit runnin’, and after they stopped they milled around in the road awhile and started driftin’ back towards town.
    In about an hour and a half after the run started, Ihad them up close to where they first stampeded and wondered what caused the first run and was hopin’ whatever it was would be gone or else that they wouldn’t run from it again.
    When a bunch of wild cattle go to findin’ buggers and runnin’, you needn’t expect anything but trouble until you get ’em where you started.
    I knew Mustang was pretty well spent by now, and I hoped that I wouldn’t have to call on him for too much more. I managed to wing the cattle into the railroad right of way and towards the stockyards. I knew that if a train came along or some old woman hung out her washin’ or just any damn thing happened, these cattle would run again. But I took my chances and rode just as far away from them on the other side of the railroad as I could. I didn’t dare strike a run, so I trotted on to the stock-pen gates and propped them back with some bales of alfalfa hay. The cattle were still comin’ and bawlin’ as they had been doin’ all that day.
    The misty rain had turned into a pretty hard rain, which I guess slowed ’em down a little and gave me time to set the stock-pen gates. There wasn’t a soul drivin’ these cattle from behind, and I was afraid to go around them because I might turn them back. I thought my best chance was to take a few more minutes and break several bales of that alfalfa and scatter it around on the ground in front of the stock pens. I did this, and got on my horse and rode away from the stock pens, and away from the cattle towards the depot and hoped that wet alfalfa would smell enough to stop a bunch of wild cattle thathad been on the run all day in the mud and the rain. Sure ’nuff, when the herd began to get into that hay they stopped and went to eatin’. Then I rode way back around them to a pen on the north side of the loadin’ chute and pens, crawled over the fence, and went to breakin’ alfalfa hay off another stack inside the stock pens.
    I knew the hay I broke in front of the stock pens wouldn’t last long between what they had eat and what they had tromped into the mud. I broke about twenty-five bales and scattered it, and crawled back over the fence to my horse and then rode back away from them in a walk. I got around them, not to push them, but to wait for them to drift themselves into the stock pens as the hay ran out on the outside. It took a good while, it seemed to me sittin’ in that cold rain on a hot horse, waitin’ on a bunch of wild Scotch crossbred cows to pen themselves.
    When the last cow was in the gates, I rode up as slow as I could and stopped my horse sideways from the gates. I slipped a lariat rope around the first plank of one