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spread the news had run back and was combing the switch of Reddy Calf’s tail. I watched a few minutes and my cookies tasted like sand and my Coke turned sour. I must have had a bewildered look on my face when Mr. Vance began to explain that these were motherless little girls that their father was trying to raise and make a living for; someone had given them Reddy Calf as a baby and they had raised it for a pet. Mr. Vance looked away from me and out towards the porch and the calf and said, “I know now where the father got the money to pay up the grocery bill with last week.”
    He had his arms folded, as was his custom, and as he walked up through the store and I followed him, he said, “Ben, I’ve got a milk-pen calf about that size and the cow is nearly dry and she’s fat too. I’ll sell you the cow and calf for $50 and whatever interest you’ve got in any other livestock in the community.”
    We went out to the barn close to the store to look at the cow and calf. The fat cow would bring probably $60 and the fat calf was worth more than the one I had lost, so we turned them into the road. I paid him the $50 and started driving my new stock back to town, and neither of us ever mentioned that Reddy Calf was the one that got away or that the calf he was givin’ me, virtually speakin’, had anything to do with money that he had got for the grocery bill.

COWBOY
BANKIN’

    H OT JULY DAYS WILL CAUSE A COWBOY to start long rides way before daylight so he can shade up in the heat of the day and save his horse and still get in a full day’s ride. Shultz Bros. had leased the Coleman pasture, about twelve miles north of Weatherford, and I was going out there to check around on the cattle and come back that night or the next morning. I had tied my horse to the telephone pole on the east side of Huddleston’s Drugstore, which was next door to the old Texas Café. The old Texas Café was a landmark in Weatherford that they had lost the key to. It had stood open day and night to all comers for more than thirty years. It was operated by Mr. Patrick and his son, Byron Patrick, and twenty-four hours of the day one or the other of them was there on duty. This was the meeting place foreverybody, whether they were leaving early or coming in late, and I had stopped by for an early breakfast. Little Pat had turned in my order for ham and eggs and hot biscuits. Nobody could ever have rightfully complained about the hospitality, the grub, or the atmosphere of the Texas Café. They had big stoves in the back corner and the front corner in the wintertime for their paying and nonpaying customers alike, and in the summertime there were big fans blowing outside from the kitchen and big fans blowing up in the front and ceiling fans swinging in the door and from the ceiling. It was the coolest place in town with a fifty-gallon barrel of ice water set on the counter with clean glasses for all comers. Many a businessman in town slipped out of bed early and didn’t disturb his wife and came down to the Texas Café to get away from burned homemade toast and get hot biscuits for breakfast.
    Fred Smith was the up-and-coming banker of the town that did lots of business with the cattlemen, traders, and farmers who were customers of the Citizens National Bank. He came in and sat down next to me and ordered hot cakes. Fred was a good banker and a good judge of cattle, but I told him right fast that whatever he was up early for wasn’t going to take much hard work or he wouldn’t be tanking up on them hot cakes. We had a lot of smart conversation during breakfast and when I was about to leave, I said, “Fred, I’m riding out early and won’t be in town when the bank opens. (Bankers worked on Saturday just like everybody else in those days.) That note for $40 that I’ve got at the bank ain’t due, but I’ve got the $40 in my pocket to pay it, and I’ve $160 in mypocket that I want you to deposit for me. I’ll give you the money and you tend to