Chapter 5

Horses
Learning to ride
I was lucky in my years of handling stock. I have been shook-up and skinned-up a
few times but never hurt bad by cattle, except for one time when I was a fool.
Actually I have been banged-up more by horses than cattle. One of the reasons for
that was, I grew up with it. Too, I had an expert to learn from (Knox), but
experience is still the best teacher. That, like riding horses, you are better if you
start young.

As I have told you before, Knox started putting me on a horse when I was five. He
put me on the best cow horse and he would do the work. All I had to do was stay in
the saddle. I do mean I rode a horse, not a pony. Of course, I couldn’t reach the
stirrups on a big saddle. I didn’t have one smaller until much later. I am not
bragging, please don’t think that, but no horse ever lost me unless he pitched. I
have “pulled a lot of leather” in my time, though. That was the expression used if
you grabbed the saddle horn or held on to the saddle anywhere. I wasn’t proud.
Everyone said I had a talent for sticking on animals and I guess I did. So I can’t
take too much credit.

As I told you, Furneaux, the man that owned the cattle that were fed out there,
always got to pick a horse when he bought a trainload of cattle. He picked us some
“doozies”. Knox always had some personal stock and with the ones that belonged to
the Ranch, we always had several.

Mick and Dan

Mick and Dan were the feed team. They were about the first I remember. Mick
was a Bay and Dan a Sorrel. They knew the feed route better than we did. If you

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had been putting four scoops of feed to a trough, when you put in four they took
you to the next trough whether you were ready to go or not.

The troughs were lined in a straight line of twenty to twenty-five for each pasture.
If the cattle had knocked one out of line, they pulled out around it and never
hooked the wagon. You didn’t drive them down the line—you were busy throwing out
feed. It was several miles back home from the last pasture. You could tie a saddle
horse behind the wagon and, after finishing, you could go tend to fence or check
windmills or whatever. You could tie up the lines and they took the wagon home if
you had left the gates open. You shut the gates yourself on the way home.

Part of the way was down a public road. If a car came along, they pulled the wagon
over until the car passed. When they got home, if they were ahead of you they
knickered until somebody heard them and come down and unhooked and unharnessed
them. When Johnny Pickard would start to harness them, Mick would wait until he
took the heavy harness and stepped forward to throw it over his back. He would
put his foot on Johnny’s and hold him there with the harness in his hands in a very
awkward position. He never mashed his foot; he just put enough pressure on it so
he couldn’t move. He would hold him in that position for several minutes while
Johnny made lots of noise. Then he would move his foot and he could finish
harnessing him up. I never knew him to do this to anybody else.

Ben
“Ben” was the first saddle horse I remember. In fact, he was the first horse to
throw me off. I was four years old at the time, they told me. That I don’t
remember, but I do remember him throwing me. Ben was an excellent cow horse.
Knox was moving some cattle from one pasture to another. He didn’t have anyone to
help so he put me on Ben. He was holding the cattle against a fence on one side and
I kept them moving from behind. We passed some ploughed ground. He turned,
trotted out in the middle and pitched me off, then stood very docile while I
struggled to climb back on. We trotted back, caught up and finished the drive
without any more trouble.

He was one of the old-time horses that felt it only polite to pitch when you first
saddled him up. After he had his first go-round, that was it for the day and he
knew more about handling cattle than most riders.

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I wrote in the last letter about the feed team, Mick and Dan, and Ben, the first
horse I remember pitching me off. Ben was the horse I rode to school the first
two years I went. Not long after that, because of his age, he was retired to
pasture. He lived to be around thirty years of age if I remember correctly.

Part of my chores when I was around eleven or twelve-years-old was to get in Mick
and Dan late in the afternoon. When the feed run was over around 2 p.m., they
were turned out to graze until late in the afternoon. I was to bring them in so they

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were ready to go the next morning. I would take a short rope with me, catch one of
them, put a half hitch around their nose and ride them to the barn, bareback.

One day I couldn’t catch either one. There was Ben, who always grazed with them,
fat and sassy in his retirement. So I caught him. He stood very quietly while I
mounted. We started towards the barn and the closer we got the fast we went.
Of course, with just a rope, I had no control over him. All at once he stuck his head
down between his front legs and started to pitch. Over his head I went and I
instinctively held onto the rope. That was a mistake. I hit the end of the rope and
it was like popping a whip. I hit the ground sitting flat down. I think that is why my
ears stick out so far from my head now.

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Snip
Sometimes the owner would accidentally pick out a good horse. One of these we
called “Snip”. He was a line-back dun with a white “snip” on his nose. He was prone
to be a little lazy unless you used spurs. Then he was a good cow pony. He was
Knox’s roping horse for years. He only weighed 950-1000 lbs. but I have seen him
hold 1200 to 1300 lb. steers on the end of a rope. There was no way he could be
tangled in a rope. The reason for this is Lambert (one of Knox’s sons) roped a steer
off him when he was a young horse and barely broke to ride. He threw Lambert off
and he and the steer had it out. When they corralled them, they were still tied
together and from that day on he was an excellent roping horse—he learned his
lesson the hard way.

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I remember when I would try to ride him without a saddle; he would catch me by
the seat of my pants with his teeth and gently pull me off. He never hurt me but
he didn’t like to be rode that way.

I remember another incident with Snip, our best roping horse. When I was in the
ninth grade and thought I was a big boy, another man had the ranch leased.
Instead of big steers, he had stocked it with one that run 500-600 lbs. It was just
before Knox had to give up on the job.

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There was a steer that had “outlawed”. That was the name they all give to the ones
that were uncontrollable. He took up several miles away with a neighbor’s cows.
There were two brothers working there then who were twenty-five to thirty years
old. They went after the steer and come back without him. They said they couldn’t
get him because he was fighting anything that moved. Knox said that was a “come
off” when two grown men let a 500 lb. steer get the best of them.

Saturday, when I was out of school, he told me to take Snip and go get that so and
so. Snip was on up in years by then but was still very dependable. Knox said to rope
him and drag him half way home if I had to. That, maybe, would break him of
wanting to go back.

The neighbor was happy to see me, as part of the time he couldn’t even handle his
milk cows. The steer would come in the lot with them and run him out. In fact,
when I arrived he was inside with his cows. He said maybe we could talk him out. I
asked him to open the gate and let me inside, as I didn’t want to have to chase him
all over. I saw he was going to try to jump over the fence so I made a quick throw
just as he jumped. I flipped him on his side in the stock tank and sloshed water all
over. The neighbor said, “Son, you are wasting all my water.”

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When we would come to a gate on the way home, I would get Snip turned right and
get off and work my way out of the steer’s reach. I knew if I got a rope’s length
away Snip would keep him off of me. Then through the gate and repeat the process
to get the gate shut. Leaving a gate open was a “no-no” or you would have cattle all
over the country. When I got him home, he was wore out and pretty well choked
down but still fighting. Knox said, “Get off, I will get on the horse and you get the
rope off.” Now I really appreciated that because that was going to be about the
hardest part.

T.D. Huddleston (Dad’s brother-in-law, married to his (sister) Lela. T.D.’s real
name, believe it or not, was Thelma—no wonder he went by T.D.!) come down to
help. He was a country boy but didn’t know anything about that kind of stock. He
walked between the horse and the steer, so no way could Knox keep him off T.D.

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He knocked him down and run over him. Luckily, all that was hurt was a sprained
thumb and he’d did that punching on the steer’s head trying to get away.

I then stood on the ground by the fence. Knox let him have some slack. When he
charged, he climbed out of his way, and while he butted the fence where I had
stood, I reached down and lifted the rope off. I can say this—that steer never
left again.

Don’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t brave. In fact, I have had the “hell” scared out
of me quite often. But if you handled stock, you had to do things like that. The
thing was to know what you were doing and not get restless. On big steers we
sometimes tied a “hay hank” on a pole and lifted the rope off.

Whoa! I got away from horses didn’t I?

As I write things keep coming back to me that happened. The horse we called Snip
as well as being an excellent roping horse was also a very dependable all around cow
horse, but a little on the lazy side. If I do say so, he worked better for me than
most grown people. You know how some animals are with kids. Since he was not apt
to act up, we always put visitors on him.

I remember going fishing with T.D. Huddleston and he rode Snip. South of us, on
what was known as the Woodhouse Ranch, one pasture had over 2,000 acres. Right
in the middle was a good tank for fishing. I knew the pasture, as they had it leased
at one time and I had ridden over it many times.

We caught several good catfish. As we started home, before I noticed what he was
doing, T.D. looped the stringer over the horn of the saddle on Snip. One (catfish)
finned him in the shoulder. Snip snorted and jumped. Of course every time he
jumped, another finned him. He started to pitch. The harder he pitched, the
worse he got finned. The fish started coming off the stringer and he scattered
them over several acres. I got on the horse I was riding and finally hemmed him up
in a fence corner a long way from where it all started. We finally got home without
a single fish.

Another time Orville Voorhies spend some time in the summer with us. He was a
torn-down nuisance. (He died recently, incidentally). The train that come through
the ranch ran about thirty head through the fence into a neighbor’s place. Knox
told me to go after them and to take Orville. I didn’t want to take him, but Knox
didn’t want to fool with him either. So I saddled Snip and let them bring up the
rear while I herded from the sides.

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One steer decided to go back. At the same time Snip remembered he was a good
cow horse and headed him. He turned on his back feet and come back—as any good
horse should. Orville didn’t turn. He kept on in the original direction. He hit
sitting down and scooted a good twenty feet in the green grass. He wasn’t hurt but
I am sure they never did get the green grass stain out of his pants.

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Chuck
Another horse we had about then we called Chuck because Knox said he was
“chuckle headed”. What he meant was that he had a “Roman nose” which meant
that he was at least half mustang. He was a small Bay. He come off the Double
Circle Ranch in Arizona and had a big brand on one hip. He also had three other
brands, which meant he had been around. He was a character. He was the best
range cutting horse I have ever seen. He was getting old when we got him but he

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was tops. I saw Knox ride into a herd and point out the steer he wanted, take off
the bridle and the horse would take him out and put him where he belonged. Knox
did that just to see if he was that good. That wasn’t general practice.

He had some faults. One was that if anything got around his flank or tail, you had a
rodeo. I saw Johnny double a rope to try to whip a bull away from the herd. In
slinging it around, he caught it under Chuck’s tail. Oh boy—Johnny turned
everything loose to try to hold on. His feet come out of both stirrups and they
beat him on the shins and skinned them clear to his knees. After he turned the
rope loose, it worked out and he quit pitching.

I remember one time I had a ride to school and at that time was walking about two
and a half miles to and from the ride. Wilson and Johnny had been checking on
some washed out fences, as we had had a lot of rain. They come along as I was
walking home and Johnny got me up behind him on Chuck to ride home. He stopped
and got off to throw some drifts off a bridge. Either I touched Chuck in the flanks
or he just decided I didn’t have any business behind the saddle. He started to

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pitch. I wrapped the saddle strings around my hands, but they pulled loose. I hit in
a ditch full of water. Luckily it wasn’t too cold.

Filly
Another horse was Knox’s pride and joy, a mare that belonged to him personally.
She was known simply as Filly. She was a beautiful thing—a deep-gold Bay with a
completely white face. She could outrun anything in the country, except we weren’t
allowed to race her. That has ruined many good horses.

She was strictly a one-man animal. Knox could even go out in a big pasture and call.
She would come to him and follow him like a puppy. The rest of us usually had to
rope her to even catch her in the corral.

Wilson and Johnny were both afraid of her so they really had trouble with her.
She was about the best horse I remember, but you had to ride her hard and get
her tired—then she was an excellent cow horse. But she never acted like that with
Knox.

One time she reared up and walked on her back feet when I got on her. Knox
scolded me thoroughly for making her act up. I told him that I didn’t, but he didn’t
believe me. A few days later, she did the same with him. He had a hammer on his
saddle. A horse has a knot between their ears that, if you know how to tap it, you
can knock them out without doing any damage. He reached back, took the hammer
and whapped her between the ears. As she fell he calmly stepped off, waited until
she come out of it and got back on. We went ahead and finished our job and from
that day on I never saw her rear up again. But I never saw her pitch. She wasn’t
mean, just very spirited, but Knox never understood why anyone else had trouble
with her because she was always so easy for him to handle.

Loco Weed
About the last year that Furneaux from Dallas had the ranch leased, he picked out
a horse to come in with the trainload of cattle. He was a big, long-legged, solid
white gelding. Off from him, at a distance, he looked real good.

He wanted him for a polo pony for his son and was quite taken with his looks. If you
knew horses, up close you could tell he wasn’t the type. For one thing, he was six
years old and had only been ridden a few times. He was too old to be trained
correctly. Furneaux wanted to leave him there for us to finish breaking him.

I was the only one that ever rode him. Johnny was afraid of him. Knox wasn’t
physically able to ride the “rough string” anymore. He wouldn’t let anyone else on

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him for fear they would ruin him worse. He pitched with me a couple of times and I
rode him, so I decided I was “good”.

One day I got on him to get some cows away from a string of feed troughs. Knox
had a pair of long-shanked Spanish spurs. I put them on, and Knox told me not to
get on him with the spurs. But as I said, I had decided I was “hot stuff”.

A cow broke away, and I caught him with the spurs. That was a mistake. He really
started to pitch. I rode him, but would have been better off if he had thrown me.
He hit a patch of wet grass and all four feet went out from under him at once. He
hit flat on his left side with my left leg pinned under him. It ruined one of the
spurs, tore the left stirrup leather clear off the saddle. Why it didn’t even mash
my leg I will never know. It did knock my left shoulder partly out of place.

Knox got off his horse, felt my shoulder, and gave it a quick jerk, and it snapped
back. He said I caused it, so get back on him. I couldn’t with my arm hurting and no
stirrup on that side. It was about a half mile to the house. I walked and led him
there, got another saddle, come back and helped them finish. I was a little
miserable. But you knew that the “law” was—get back on the horse that threw you.

After that I rode him with the feed wagon to round up each pasture to feed. We
had had a lot of bad weather and the cattle were trying to stay where they had
some cover; gullies, behind hills, and etc., out of the wind. It had been raining a lot
and was very muddy. Where the wagon had been, the tracks were very deep and
full of muddy water.

I went ahead of the wagon, got off, and opened a gate and closed it after. I
started to get back on when he decided to pitch. I got in front of the saddle,
behind the saddle, then on both sides without ever getting in it. Then he lost me. I
hit in the wagon tracks and rolled. I was even muddier and wetter than when you
fell in the “crawdad hole”. It was about four miles home and I was wet and cold. I
was mad, too, so I rode him at a long lope all the way home.

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He was making a pretty good cow horse but was still very unpredictable. In fact, it
later turned out when they got him to Dallas, that before we got him he had been
on “loco weed”. As far as I know, he was the only animal I ever had any dealings
with that was “locoed”. After they got him to Dallas, they put him in a stable for
about three weeks, fed him up, then attempted to train him for a “polo pony”. They
said he threw everybody that tried to ride him. That is when they had a vet check
him and found out about the loco weed. He later died from the effects when he
was about seven years old.

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Rocking Chair
About that same time, a man from San Angelo leased the ranch south of us. He
hired me to ride his fences and check stock and water. He had a horse he wanted
me to use they called “Rocking Chair”. He was the easiest riding horse I ever
“forked”. He was a good cow horse but had been rattlesnake bit. He had a big joint
above a back foot left over from it. When something rattled you’d better be ready
to ride. He was scared to death of snakes.

Mr. Wynn, who I worked for, come from San Angelo. He was used to big diamond
back rattlers. His steers kept coming up with their head all swelled up. He kept
saying that there was a big diamondback in the pasture. He said the small
rattlesnakes weren’t big enough to make a steer swell up that way. I tried to tell
him different but he wouldn’t listen.

Sure enough, I was on Rocking Chair one day and rode up on a huge diamondback.
My horse come unglued. I finally got him settled down and tied him to a mesquite
tree about 100 yards off. I went back and hunted up the snake and killed him. You
had to be careful because lots of times they were in pairs. Kid-like, I cut the
rattlers off to show everybody. I put them in my pocket and went back to get on
the horse. We had some fun because the horse could smell the snake on me. I
finally threw the rattlers away, but it didn’t help because the odor was on my
clothes. I finally managed to ride him home but he was so scared that he was
covered with sweat as if I had run him for miles.

In the summer, when the wind wasn’t blowing much, they had little gasoline pumps
they hooked on the windmills to pump water. You had to stay right with them to
keep them running.

There was a family that lived in the big pasture and I would turn my horse in their
corral rather than leaving him saddled up all day. The tenant had a mule that was
bad to fight and could jump any fence on the place. He jumped in with Rocking
Chair and skinned him up pretty bad. I wasn’t going to have that. I knew Snip, the
lined-back Dun I had told you about before, would take care of himself. So the
next day I changed and rode him. The mule jumped in with him and Snip whipped
him and made him jump clear back out. The next day he jumped in with Rocking
Chair again, but I was watching and got it stopped. The third day I didn’t say
anything to anybody but I rode Chuck, the little half-mustang Bay. I knew he was a
mean little devil. Sure enough, the mule jumped in with him. He hemmed that mule
up in a corner and he peeled that mule’s hide from head to foot. From then on I
could ride anything I wanted to and the mule wouldn’t even come around close.

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You went at daylight and run the pumps all day if you didn’t get the tanks full. You
can’t imagine how boring it was because you had to stay close enough to hear the
engine. I had to do that at home, too, in the summer. That is when I started
smoking, out of boredom.

Dan
In later years when another man had the place leased, a man named Ben Green
worked there. He had some horses he always kept there. One I remember he
called Dan, a very good cow horse. He would put you up by any animal if you could
ride him but he was prone to pitch when first saddled up.

One day T.D. Huddleston and myself went to get two steers that took up at a
neighbor’s. You could bring them home and two or three days later you had it to do
all over again. We got them home and had to take them through two gates. They
wouldn’t go through at all.

T.D. was a fine fellow, but he wasn’t much help on a horse. We finally got one
through, but the other wasn’t about to go. I got mad and the horse had enough of
it too. He put me right up beside the steer and that is when I bent the quirt you
have now. I stood up the stirrups and hit him between the horns with all my might.
He fell like you had shot him. He got up and hunted the gate and never strayed
again. I made a believer out of him.

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The low hills on the far horizon are known as the “Cap Rock”. That line actually
marked the place where the glaciers stopped during the ice age. They slowly
covered North America, pushing dirt and debris ahead of them and stopped at this
spot in Central Texas. They then began their slow retreat, leaving behind this
ridge. As you get closer, you see a plateau—flat on top with steep sides on each
side. During the 1800’s, Comanches lived on top. They would swoop down on raids to
the farms and ranches, steeling horses and cattle and, at times killing the settlers.
(This is where the raid spoken about in the newspaper article originated.) Then they
would return to the top of the “cap”. There were very few spots where there was a
trail to the top, and anyone up there would know you were climbing hours before you
reached them. Because of this, there was not a treaty signed between this group
and the U.S. Government until the early 1900’s, just prior to WWI.

Another story I had been told was that at one point in the 1800’s, the U.S. Calvary
decided, because of the desert-like terrain, to import camels and use them as pack
animals. This was not a very successful venture. However, a few escaped and so
over the years from time to time, cowboys were pretty startled to ride up on one
still wandering around wild.

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I am not sure when this was taken, probably in the 1930’s. However, the tree
branch framing the picture is a Mesquite (just about the only tree that grew on the
ranch). The Mesquite tree has shallow roots that reach out for much farther than
the circumference of the tree. This is the reason it can survive in the drought
conditions always present in that part of Texas. All of the brush in the picture
below is also Mesquite.

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