Horseshoes, Cowsocks & Duckfeet

by Baxter Black

  There was a natural hot spring near the camp. Dan had tapped this resource by installing an eight-foot stock tank in the spring, thus creating the only hot tub on the mountain. One twilight, a member of the hunting party came in dog tired. He swung up the trail to the hot tub, anticipating a good soak before supper.

  Unbeknownst to him, Big Eddie was basking in a little hot water therapy. As the hunter stumbled into the clearing, Big Eddie rose to his full height, shedding water like a three-hundred-pound buffalo robe, and covered himself in surprise! The frightened hunter wheeled, and ran into camp screaming there was a grizzly bear in the hot tub!

  On another occasion, Big Eddie had stayed in camp during the day to watch the sourdough rise. From his tent that morning, he spotted a nice cow elk ease into a clearing near camp. Eddie grabbed his gun, chambered a shell, and stepped through the flaps. His dangling suspenders caught on the upright and jerked him over backwards. A shot rang out! The propane tank exploded! The supply tent caught on fire, disintegrating a pack train full of expensive, down-filled, waterproof, brand-name, guaranteed, color-coordinated, Davy Crockett–recommended, eco-approved, nothing-under-three-hundred-dollar stuff. Not to mention a couple of Weatherby rifles.

  But despite his frequent Boone and Crockett screwups, Eddie had a way about him that reminded the visiting hunters that they were in the presence of a primitive force.

  Eddie served stew one night. The whiner of the group stirred it with a spoon and then griped, “I don’t like carrots.” Big Eddie bent over the petulant hunter. He took the plaintiff’s fork and picked the carrots out of his bowl one at a time, and ate them.

  “There,” he said.

  My son, Guy, read the part of the three-year-old when this appeared on NPR. He did it well. . . . Of course, he was three at the time.

  WEE THANKSGIVING

  How do you explain Thanksgiving to a three-year-old?

  “A long time ago . . .”

  “Yesterday?”

  “No, more than yesterday. A bunch of people came in a big boat . . .”

  “Pirates?”

  “No, good guys and mamas and babies . . .”

  “And boys, too?”

  “Yup, and boys, too. But when they got in the woods, they were hungry but they didn’t know what to eat.”

  “And they had bears in the woods, and tigers.”

  “Probably, but they didn’t see them. So they were hungry and walked around looking for something to eat. And then came the Indians who lived in the woods.”

  “With . . . with bows and arrows and shooting?”

  “No, no. The Indians said they would help them find something good to eat . . .”

  “Like fruit bars and Pop Tarts and chickanuggets . . .”

  “Well, the Indians said they should have a picnic, and so the Indians got some turkeys to eat and they cooked ’em and made fry bread and corn on the cob . . .”

  “But no peas, but some cottage cheese and bread and honey . . .”

  “Right, so they made a big table . . .”

  “On the blanket . . .”

  “Yeah, no table, just a big blanket, and they all ate and ate till their stomachs were full . . .”

  “And the little boys, too?”

  “And the little boys and little girls and little boy and girl Indians, all of ’em ate . . . and then took a nap.”

  “But the little boys no wanna take a nap. Little boys wanna play with bows and arrows.”

  “Okay, but when everyone woke up, they were happy. So the Indians shook hands, and they all said Thanksgiving to each other and Thanksgiving to God . . .”

  “And to Jesus and Pastor John and Grandmother Phyllis and to all the little boys.”

  “Yup, and they said it was so much fun, let’s do it next year.”

  “And tomorra or free days.”

  “So now every year, we have Thanksgiving with friends and eat a lot and say thanks for the blessings we have.”

  “Bessing? What looks like, a bessing?”

  “A blessing? Sometimes it looks like a little boy.”

  “Like me?”

  “Yup, sometimes it looks just like you.”

  Barbecued cabrito is traditional southwestern fare; they raise a lot of Spanish goats in west Texas. Rarely do they travel by air.

  GOAT DAY

  I had invited several friends to have Thanksgiving at my house. (A tradition my insurance agent says I can no longer afford.) Each of my guests were gracious and had asked if they could bring anything. When Mac asked what he might contribute, I suggested he bring the goats.

  “Goats?” he asked.

  I explained that Friday was Goat Day. We always built a big fire outside and spent the afternoon basting Spanish goat in sop made from Shiner’s beer. And, since the best Spanish goat came from west Texas, I figgered he could bring it.

  “But I’ll be flyin’ my own plane,” he sputtered.

  “Perfect,” I said. “They’ll only be in transit a short time.”

  Although he did his best to talk me out of it, I remained firm.

  So that fateful Tuesday morning, he was out on the San Angelo airport tarmac takin’ the backseat out of his twin-engine Bonanza. The ever-vigilant Drug Enforcement Agency noted his suspicious behavior and took him in for questioning. His truthful explanation was so preposterous that they called me in Colorado to check his story!

  Upon his release, he flew to Junction, Texas, and picked up four Spanish goats. He hog-tied each one and put them in gunnysacks, which he taped around their necks. Sort of a goat-head bota bag. He spread newspapers and scattered straw just in case.

  Four hours later, Mac was swingin’ wide around the busy metropolitan Denver airspace, in touch with the Stapleton International tower. The goats were in full chorus and bleating each time he keyed the microphone.

  “This is twin Bonanza . . . baa . . . baa . . . four-zero . . . blat. . . blat. . . seven- t h re e . . . bleat. . . whiskey. . . braaaack. . . .”

  We were waiting at the Tri-County Airport when Mac dipped his wing and skidded down the runway. He crawled out on the wing. I noticed his hair was standing on end. He looked like he’d been castrating pigs in a metal building. You could almost hear his ears ringing. His eyes were glassy, his voice hoarse, and he was vibrating.

  I opened the passenger side to the deafening chorus. The imprisoned smell of four enclosed goats hit me head-on. The floorboard carpeting looked like Walden Pond.

  Goat Day was the highlight of that Thanksgiving, and Mac got proper recognition, but his plane was never the same. On hot west Texas afternoons when he planned to go flying, he would spray Lysol, scatter sliced onions, and sprinkle Old Grandad and cooked cabbage in the cockpit to mask the scent. It never worked.

  No matter what he did, after riding in the plane for an hour, he would smell like an army of goats had adopted him and marked him as their personal territory.

  He eventually sold the airplane at a yard sale . . . on a cold winter day.

  THANKSGIVING

  My idea of a vegetarian meal is a turkey sandwich. Course my idea of a salad is a jalapeño and Miracle Whip. I’ve been told my eating habits would make a hyena bulimic. I eat mostly meat and candy.

  But I look forward to Thanksgiving. My fondest Thanksgiving memories span a six- or eight-year period after I got married back in ’83. Bein’ a single late-thirties cowboy type at the time of the wedding, I had become frayed around the edges and was hangin’ with some equally frayed late-thirties cowboy types. The kind of people you would not normally have in your home on a holiday.

  I convinced my darlin’ that it would be charitable to have these misfits at our house for Thanksgiving week. I made a good case for their neediness. I read from Matthew 28:12. I promised to replace anything that did not survive the week, from shrubbery to furniture to goldfish. I even offered to have the in-laws for Christmas. She agreed.

  Our invitations went out and were received like a leg o’ lamb at a coyote reunion. They
came from all points of the cowboy globe, from Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Texas. They arrived by plane, pickup, Amtrak, Greyhound, and thumb. They were well behaved, in the sense that a herd of bison would be well behaved at a faculty wives’ tea. But they tried not to cuss around the kids, leave too many bottles and cans behind the furniture, or track mud and snow on the livin’ room rug.

  I’ve never been to Planet Hollywood, Studio 54, or the locker room of the World Wrestling Federation, but I would guess Goat Day was close.

  On Thursday, we had turkey, company, music, and awe-some good cheer! Friday, we sacrificed goats in the snow and barbecued cabrito outside in the frigid Colorado air, toasting our good fortune.

  And I spent Saturday and Sunday tryin’ to get ’em all to leave.

  This Thanksgiving, I sit down at a nice table with calmer, more sedate company. We stuff ourselves, and afterwards, sit around and talk about the bad habits we quit.

  Course some of this more sedate company are veterans of Goat Day. Older but no wiser, just treating themselves a little easier. I like it just as well, and I don’t have as big a mess to clean up after. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

  I have the good fortune to be surrounded by friends like Freddy and Robin, and we are all blessed that our friend Ken is a lawyer who does cowboys pro bono. If the intricate legal details of this story evade you, imagine how the judge must have felt.

  FREDDY’S TRIAL

  Ken took Freddy’s case for the same reason ivory poachers, Enron, and Billy the Kid are able to get legal assistance: morbid curiosity.

  “It’s open-and-shut,” explained Freddy. “See, I hired this man to artificially inseminate my cows. I should have been suspicious when he gave me such a good deal on the semen. I’d never heard of the breed, but the price was right. A month or so later, I put in a cleanup bull. Kind of a Poland-China cross with a big swollen foot like he’d spent the winter in a bear trap.

  “They were due to start calvin’ on Labor Day. Nothin’ happened for several weeks. Then they started poppin’. All the calves were spotted and had one clubfoot! Direct descendants of the cleanup bull. I figger none of the A.I. breeding worked, so I’m takin’ him to court.”

  Ken collected the gruesome details and stressed the importance of establishing the actual calving dates. This could be compared to the A.I. man’s breeding dates, which would show that none of the calves were a result of the artificial insemination. Unfortunately, Freddy’s extensive records had been lost when he cleaned out his glove box.

  Freddy fairly leapt with excitement! “I have a witness who was there at Thanksgiving!” He’d seen the baby calves and could vouch for their age at the time. “Very young,” Freddy said seriously.

  The day of the trial, Ken put Freddy on the stand to present his case.

  In anticipation, Ken had schooled Robin, Freddy’s loyal friend and star witness, about his testimony. First, they must establish his credibility as a stockman, more than just a casual observer of the livestock business. Second, they had to relate his visit to Freddy’s ranch with a specific date, mainly Thanksgiving.

  Robin took the stand and was sworn in. He sat, turned to the judge, and raised his left hand, displaying a missing middle digit. “Roping injury,” he said solemnly. Then he winked at Freddy as if to say, “Credibility established.”

  Ken led the witness like a hung-up bareback rider. “And was there any special reason the date of your visit to Freddy’s ranch remains so vivid in your memory?”

  “Yes, your honor,” said Robin sincerely. “It was a beautiful afternoon, we were riding through Freddy’s cow herd. It was shortly after a meaningful relationship had gone awry. I was riding a new horse that I’d been given by a close personal friend. I was suddenly transported to my youth, a family time when my uncle, God rest his soul, returned from the war. He let me ride in the saddle in front of him. I was full of the love, adulation, and childish pride to be there with Uncle Tony. It was so vivid a recollection, there in the midst of Freddy’s sleek and peaceful cows, my eyes brimmed like a fountain and I was taken back in time. I could almost taste the turkey and jalapeño gravy.” Robin wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.

  “And approximately what date was it?” asked Ken.

  “Labor Day,” said Robin, “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “Case dismissed!”

  People who “love” machinery are handy to have around. After all, there are some things that are difficult to do a’horseback.

  DOZERMAN

  Ron is one of those good ranchers who has an affinity for machinery. The new bulldozer was his proudest possession. The monsoon rains had turned his northern Mexico ranch as green as Indiana. But they had also washed out a few pasture roads.

  He kissed his wife good-bye and headed out the door to spend the day “dozing.” She handed him his lunch sack and commented on the new straw hat he was wearing. “All you need is a cape and mask, and you could be ‘Dozerman,’ ” she teased.

  Well, Dozerman had a great day. He smoothed, graded, and moved large rocks in a single bound. At day’s end, he started home. Passing under a dead oak tree, he noted that, being more powerful than a locomotive, he should push it over someday.

  Little did he know that his superthoughts were being monitored by residents of the oak tree. They mobilized and swarmed the open cab of his bulldozer. Attack of the killer bees!

  Dozerman was unprepared. The air around him was filled with angry buzzing. Little squiggly feet, flapping wings, and pointy stingers tormenting his ears and arms and head and knees. With cartoonlike martial arts flailing he managed to knock his new hat onto the dozer track. He caught a glimpse of it riding forward and disappearing over the front like a log going over a waterfall.

  Seizing control of the situation, he leaped from the seat, arms windmilling. He tugged his hat from beneath the track and, being faster than a speeding bullet, he tried to outrun his attackers.

  In his mind, he imagined diving into a lake to evade the swarm. Alas, there was no lake. They continued to dive-bomb his hair, neck, and torso, to crawl down his collar and into his gloves. He rolled, whirled, pirouetted, stumbled, skipped, and cartwheeled across the pasture, slapping himself silly with his free hand and beating his hat into the shape of a dish towel.

  Finally he outran the horde and stopped, arms on his knees, chest heaving. He looked back through his swollen vision to the bulldozer still purring like a mountain lion under the oak tree. How had he run the course of rocks and knee-high weeds without stepping on a rattlesnake?

  And, how does someone, even with X-ray vision, find his glasses when he can’t see them? Undaunted, he waded back the way he had come, swishing the deep grass with a big stick like some demented beachcomber, and got lucky.

  The bees had won the round, but they let him sneak back on the bulldozer and clank home in his flapping straw turban, crooked eyewear, and bumpy skin. He was a sight to see.

  Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no . . . it must be Dozerman’s hatband and right glove being carried off to buzzard heaven.

  Battle scars . . . some are more glamorous than others.

  THE BULLRIDER’S LIMP

  When I was a kid, we had what we called the “bullrider’s limp.” If you were entered up the Saturday before, you could develop a limp and make it last for a week! When a good-lookin’ sweetheart asked what happened, you kinda shuffled and shrugged it off. “Got hurt,” you’d say. “How?” she’d ask on cue. “Ridin’ bulls,” you’d explain nonchalantly.

  Images of John Wayne, stoic and brave, filled the air. The dragon slayer injured saving the damsel. The concerned female dabbin’ peroxide in the bullet wound creasing your shoulder. “It’s nuthin’,” you’d say, wincing in pain. If only you had a saber slash across the cheek.

  I remember when George and I went to the Bare Ranch for a week. We worked and sorted the cows, checked the bulls, and helped the crew finish up the fall work. On the last night, Geo
rge was injured in the line of duty. He wore a cast for weeks, explaining every time he was asked that he’d hurt himself working cows. When pressed for details, he’d finally admit he’d broken his ankle when he fell off the cookhouse steps!

  Jess’s injury was not as glamorous and harder to explain. It looked like he’d been snorting raspberries! His nose was the size and color of a ripe plum.

  “Lissadig to hib xplane id wass hart to keeb a strate fase.” He’d picked up a bale of hay to feed the heifers. With the practiced motion of experience, he’d hefted the bale and dropped it over his upraised knee. But here the story takes a different twist. The baling wire broke! It struck like a snake, whipped around, and bit his nose!

  The end of the wire penetrated the meaty part of his proboscis on the left side, drilled through the nasal septum, and exited his right nostril! With a climatic flourish, it wound a dally around the other end of the wire!

  His daughter and wife looked on, dumbstruck! Jess grasped the wire and cautiously moved it side to side. His head flopped back and forth like a hypnotized chicken! While his daughter ran to the shed to get some wire cutters, his wife, Shalah, unwound the wrap and tried easing the wire back through the entry hole. Jess stood like a twitched horse getting his mane roached.

  He stayed out on the ranch for quite a while, tryin’ not to blow his nose and packin’ it with ice in the evenings. However, even in their remote ranch country, word spread. They had a steady procession of neighbors coming by to offer sympathy and get a firsthand report. That way, they’d have credibility when they told the story over and over and over. . . .

  HIND SPEAK

  “Hey, buddy, maybe you’ll rope better after your horse foals. Ha, ha!”

  “Thanks, pal. I had a horse like yours once. But his brain was so small, his head caved in and he bit his own ears off! Look, it’s starting in yours. . . . See that indention.”

  The quick retort. That clever comeback, the snappy rejoinder that puts the annoying smart mouth in his place. The French call it esprit de l’escalier—“the wit of the stairway.” In my case, it would be better called esprit de l’much later. I don’t think of what I wished I’d said till I’m tossing and turning at two o’clock in the morning.