Authors: Ben K. Green
It was gettin’ late in the afternoon and this had taken longer than I thought it would, which didn’t matter ’cause I wasn’t goin’ anywhere anyhow, so I rode off out to the pasture and thought I would give the rest of the cattle that I had chased so much a chance to water. Just about sundown, the same bunch (six head) eased out into the open and looked around awhile before they came up to water. The lone steer followed them and along about dusk the cattle drifted back out into the pasture except this lone steer that had been chummin’ with the one I had tied in the big corral, and he went into the gate.
I was sittin’ on my horse hid back in the brush about a quarter of a mile from the gate, but I had to cross the glade from the brush to the corral. The big water storage tank was between me and the gate so I rode out of the brush straight toward the big water tank hopin’ the steer that was loose in the corral wouldn’t see me until I got an even break to come from behind the water tank and beat him to the gate when he did discover me. This worked just right, and I had the gate slammed before he knew I was around. Now I had two steers. It was almost dark so I fastened the gate and rode back to my camp well satisfied with my day’s work.
I was takin’ time about ridin’ Bob and Beauty, and since they were both gentle and would come to call, I would let one run out with Peanut at night, and I would keep one up in case I would have to have a horse in the night. Since all cowboys have the horror of being afoot, this is a habit they have that lay out in camp by their-selves. So I called my horses and fed them and had some supper and sat around camp and bathed my leg until the night began to get cool enough to go to sleep.
I was up early the next morning. I needed to rope this last steer and draw him up to one of the big heavy solid posts in the fence line and tie him close up to the post and let him work at gettin’ his head sore the same as I had the other steer doin’. After this first steer I kinda had my system figured out about ropin’ these steers from over the fence and drawin’ them up without too much work on me or my horse and with a minimum amount of danger of gettin’ horned. This was a lighter-colored steer and smaller than the first one, but in spite of his lack of size he had as much length of horn and they were just as sharp as the first one’s. It stood to reason that the more cattle tied in that corral the better the chances were that the other cattle might come visitin’, but since I had been giving them so much trouble, they seldom came to water until late in the afternoon.
As I looked at these steers’ horns sticking through the fence, I thought how much better it would be for me and my horses—after all, I had one leg gashed and one horse’s shoulder opened by horns—if these horns were tipped back about two or three inches to where they would be
blunt in case I had any more trouble with them. And, it would be a good idea if I could tip the horns when I caught ’em. (I didn’t let myself think, ‘If I caught them.’)
I hadn’t been to anybody’s town since I set up camp and had begun to run a little short of grub. I thought that Fluvanna would be about the closest place to where I was camped so I took a general direction, let down a few fences and tied them back on the way until sure enough, I came upon a ridge about middle of the morning, and Fluvanna was on the other side of the draw. I had struck a dim road and I saw that it led on down to a wire gate that opened out into the public road, and it was only a couple of miles further on over to the town of Fluvanna.
This town wasn’t too hustlin’ and bustlin’, but there was a good mercantile, Fluvanna Mercantile Company, and some other stores. I tied my horse to a mesquite tree across the road west from the mercantile and decided to take in the whole town.
I started in by eatin’ some cookies and a can of peaches and the other kinds of sweet stuff that a cowboy don’t get campin’ out, and visitin’ with the storekeeper. He was kinda polite but he sorta figured it part of his business to find out who I was and what I was doing and didn’t consider it a matter of buttin’ in. When I told him where I was camped and about the cattle, he held a rather poker-like face and didn’t show any particular interest in what I had told him.
I bought a small batch of grub about what I could put in a toe sack and tie on the back of my saddle. I knew he wouldn’t have a dehorning saw so I asked to buy just a
regular carpenter’s hand saw. He said, “You got a hammer and some nails?” and I answered, “No, but I’m not goin’ to need any.”
He said, “Well, I thought you might from what I hear’d about them steers. I supposed you might be aimin’ to build you a house to winter in.”
I said, “Don’t let that bother you none.” As long as I had trapped and fought bad cattle, I didn’t aim to let no remarks of a mild-mannered, quiet-livin’ country storekeeper unnerve me, so for a quick answer I said, “I’m goin’ to saw every one of that bunch of steers feet off to the quick and they’ll be so tender that they drive easy.”
This kinda set him back because I could tell by lookin’ at him that he couldn’t tell how I was going to saw their feet off if I couldn’t catch them. Of course, I was lyin’ a little, but it was a ready answer, and I didn’t have to give my plans away. In that it would matter only when cowboys are trying a fresh trick on something; if it didn’t work you didn’t have to face any music for any previous notice you had put out.
He told me a little better way to get back to the pasture than the one I had come by and I rode into camp a little before dark, and I guess the wild cattle had already watered judgin’ by the signs around the water trough.
The next morning I knew that I was going to have to water these steers that I had tied up so I took a water bucket and tied a rope on the bucket handle and dipped some water and let it down over the fence to the first steer. He smelled of it and bawled and hooked it right back in my face. I said to myself that if he wasn’t thirsty enough to improve his manners any more than that, I
wouldn’t bother about him for another day or two; I didn’t offer the other one a drink at all.
Just in case these two steers might by some foul means get loose, I thought I just as well saw the tip ends of their horns off this morning. They had their heads up close to the post and their horns naturally stuck through the fence and I figured I could push against a horn hard enough to hold the steer with one hand and use the saw with the other hand. I was countin’ on cuttin’ these keen points back to where the blunt ends of the horn would be about an inch across where I sawed it off. That part of a steer’s horn is solid with no feeling in it but would keep him from being able to do much damage, like maybe opening my other leg.
I got hold of a horn and started sawing, and I guess the vibrations and sound wasn’t too soothin’ to that old outlaw steer. He began to bawl and fight the post and push his horn around through the fence and offer considerable objection to whatever he thought I had in mind. The morning was hot and still and me and that steer both got plenty well worked up, and I just had the tip of one horn sawed off about like I thought it ought to be. I quit and went to camp and shaded up till late afternoon thinkin’ that a little more time and a little sorer head would make that steer dehornin’ a little less troublesome.
Along late in the afternoon I greased my saw with some lard thinkin’ it might make it cut better and stepped on Beauty and rode back down to the corrals. Now a cow brute’s horns are shaped and set at the base of the head into the skull to where it’s next to impossible to break a horn from a straight lick or where the pressure would
push between the horn spread from point to point backward against the skull. The most common way that a horn gets broken off at the skull is by a hard lick from the outside of the horn driving into the center of the horn spread. Pressure or a sudden lick can loosen or knock a horn off real quick. I started to saw on the other horn on this old big brown-colored steer and in his scuffin’ and fightin’ somehow he managed to get his right horn on the left hand side of that big post and threw the pressure against it from the outside and when he hit it with all his weight he knocked his own horn off at the base of the skull, leaving enough stub to hold the rope. He was mad and hot and a fine spray of blood squirted clear to the top of that fence and on the ground for about five or six foot. Not more than a few minutes later I heard an awful lot of bawlin’ comin’ from the thicket up the draw.
People that don’t know might not realize how much difference there is in the tone and expression of the bawl of a cow brute. Old-time cowmen can tell from a distant bawl whether it’s a cow, steer, or a bull by the tone and the long or short of the sound. Other things that can be told by the tone of a bawl is whether a cow has lost her calf and is bawling for it to answer her, or if it’s a stray that’s lost from the herd. Sometimes cattle will make different tones of noises when they are bawling at the change of weather, and when cattle are excited by the presence of animals of prey, such as panthers or wolves, the tone of their call takes on a considerably higher pitch. There are other circumstances or conditions that can be determined from the tone and pitch of the noise that the cattle are making when they bawl. The most bloodcurdling
of all these different sounds is when primitive or cold-blooded cattle smell blood and they can actually tell the difference between cow blood and other kinds. I knew real quick that the faint afternoon breeze had carried the smell of blood to the rest of the wild steers the same as the whirlwind had carried the scent of blood from my leg when the steer followed me into the corral. They moved in a close bunch out of the thicket and into the opening with their heads high and continued their high tone of savage bawlin’.
This old steer had bled for about thirty or forty minutes real bad, and when it began to taper off the weather was so dry that the blood dried quickly on the ground and on the fence and I guess the scent faded out on the wind, but the steers up the draw didn’t offer to go back into the brush. It was late enough in the afternoon for them to come to water, and they weren’t making any move like they intended to come in. I just thought that maybe in the cool of the afternoon or just maybe at dark that a strong scent of blood on the early night wind might bring these old steers into the corral. Because of that gash in my leg, I felt like I had considerable score to settle with this old boy who had knocked his horn off, and I couldn’t see how he would need just one horn for anything.
I rode back to camp and got me a clean empty lard bucket and my poleax. A poleax has a single blade and the back part of the ax is wide and flat and heavy, to be used for driving fence posts or poles, and I guess that’s where they get the word poleax.
Just about dusk I had already opened the gate and
propped it back and tied a long rope on the bottom and at the end of the gate so I could jerk it closed without having to stand in the gate opening. I wanted to make it easy for these old steers to come in. I put another rope around his neck and tied it so he would not choke and tied this rope to the fence, in case the horn made a clean break and the horn rope came off the neck rope would still have him tied. Then I took my poleax and took dead aim and with all my strength I hit that other horn at the same angle as the bull had hit the one against the post and it popped and flew off into the air. I grabbed my lard bucket and followed that spray of blood around that was squirtin’ from that steer’s head till I had blood all over me and had about half a bucketful before he stopped squirtin’ blood to where I could catch it in the bucket, and in the next few minutes the blood-curdling bawlin’ noises from the wild steers that had by now moved well out into the glade sounded loud and clear.
I went by the water trough and washed the blood off my hands and face and threw enough water on my clothes to kill the scent and hurried and climbed up to the top of the windmill tower and began to let a little dribble of blood pour from the lard bucket. As the bawlin’ came closer I would spill out a little more blood on the wind. By spilling a little blood from the top of the windmill, the scent would carry farther than dried blood squirted on the ground.
By now there was some moonlight and these cattle were fightin’ each other between short runs toward the smell of the blood. When they did stop, I would dribble a little more of that warm blood into the night air and here
they would come again. By the time they were close to the windmill, I was high enough above them that they couldn’t get my scent and I guess, too, that the steer blood would have overcome what human scent there would have been on me. There was a little blood left in the bottom of the bucket, but I quit pourin’ any out and sat breathlessly still waitin’ for them to pick up the scent of the bloody steer and the blood on the fence as being the scent they were followin’ instead of what I had been pourin’ out of the bucket.
They had gotten close enough now and I had been gone from the corral long enough so that the cattle in the corral began to answer, and whether any music teachers believe it or not, there was a plaintive tone difference in the bawlin’ of the steers tied and the ones comin’ in.
They passed the windmill and water trough without stopping to drink and ran into the corral to where the two steers were tied. They attacked the steer that had his horns knocked off and blood all over him, from both sides like they intended to destroy him and get him out of his misery.
While this fightin’ was going on I got down off the windmill, pulled the gate shut, and wrapped my rope around the gate and gatepost three times and tied it hard and fast. The next thing I had to do was to untie that one steer before they horned him to death. I hurried around to the back side of the corral, and he was fightin’ to get loose and these steers were pitchin’ him back and forth so that big heavy post was actually wavin’ in the air in spite of how deep it was set in the ground. I took my knife and cut the rope. It wouldn’t have been possible to untie it
with all that pullin’ and pressure that that old steer was puttin’ on. As he came loose and went to runnin’ around in an effort to get away from these other cattle, their beastly instinct seemed to have told them that he was free and they quit fightin’ him.