Wild Cow Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

it when you get to the bank.”
    Fred was my friend and even though I was a high-school kid he loaned me money on my signature just like I was a grown man. When I suggested that I give him this money out of my pocket and he put it in his pocket when it really belonged in the bank, he started in to give me a bringin’-up lecture on how to tend to my bank business.
    He said, “Now Ben, you are a grown boy buying and selling horses and cattle and you’re doing it in a grown-up, business-like manner and right now you just as well learn to do your banking business likewise. A bank is an institution that maintains a big headquarters with people to wait on you and money to loan you and a safe to keep all valuables, and what I’m trying to tell you is that anything that belongs to the bank, bring it or take it to the bank. I’m not going to be taking your deposits before daylight in the café or after dark down at the wagonyard or at the stock pens. You just as well learn now to bring it to the bank and do your banking business at the bank.”
    I looked across the counter at Little Pat and said. “Ain’t he gettin’ highfalutin. The next thing I know he’ll be wantin’ me to call him Mr. Smith.” Pat just sort of chuckled and didn’t get in on the conversation. As I got off the stool and started to leave, Fred started telling me that I shouldn’t be giving my money to other people to do my banking for me and if I had ANYTHING THAT BELONGED TO THE BANK, BRING IT TO THE BANK .
    It was still early and cool, and I rode to the Coleman pasture by the middle of the morning. After I had counted all the steers in the pasture and saw that therewas plenty of salt in the trough and the windmill was running and there was plenty of water, I headed my horse on over to Springtown, which was only four or five miles. Late in the afternoon I rode back to the Coleman pasture, fed Beauty, and went to bed early on a saddle blanket spread out in tall sage grass.
    I waked up before daylight, and it was a nice cool Sunday morning and I thought I would ride into town early. I started Beauty out at a nice flat walk to let her warm up slow and didn’t intend to put a very hard ride on her since I had nothing to do that I knew of when I got to town. I topped the ridge about two miles north of town at Couch’s barn. This was a big old rock barn that had been built by Mr. Couch, who was an early-day developer of the West, horse breeder, and founder of the Citizens National Bank. It had later been turned into a dairy barn.
    Just as I topped the rise about even with the Couch barn, I heard an awful commotion, screamin’, hollerin’, and carryin’ on over at the barn. A half-grown boy dived through the window about halfway up the barn wall and two screaming young girls came runnin’ through the front door, followed by a grown man that was about to run over them. I could hear a lot of hollerin’ and bawlin’ and going on in the barn. I reined up my horse and rode over to the barn. It was barely daylight and I asked what the trouble was.
    The reason there was so many hands out at the milk barn was that milking in those days was done by hand and it usually took a good-size family or several hired hands to run a dairy. It seemed they all got their breath at once and began to tell me about a bad fightin’ cow hadgot in with their dairy cattle down in the pasture and that morning had horned her way into the barn to eat with the milk cows and when she realized there was people mixed up with the milk cows, this big yellow-brindle longhorn fat cow decided to clean the place out. The man spoke up to explain to me that the cow was one that had gotten away when a truckload of cattle had turned over on that hill a few days before.
    I said, “Yeah, that’s just another one of them cases that people are goin’ to have to learn: cows or horses aren’t made to haul in trucks. They get four or five of them in a big truck and they make it top-heavy, and comes