Read Online Wild Cow Tales by Ben K. Green - Free Book Online Page B

at the doctor, who must have known what I was thinkin’ and said, “Yep, that’s him.”
    Scotty was over six feet tall. His entire body was well proportioned and in spite of a peg leg and his age, he still moved with grace—and there was an unmistakable pride in his carriage. It could well be said that he was a handsome man. He had an abundance of sandy hair and beard and medium-blue eyes wide set in a large face that was in keepin’ with his broad shoulders and body. However, the small lines of bitterness that had begun to form at the corners of his mouth and up through the middle of his chin were not appropriate on his handsome, expressive Scotch-Irish face.
    I said a low tone of voice, “I’d like to meet him.”
    When he got nearly even with us the doctor raised up and said, “Scotty, I want you to meet Ben Green from Texas.”
    Scotty already knew who I was because as his home was on the road at the edge of town he had seen me drivin’ his cattle to the stock pens. I had stood up straightand extended my hand, but he turned on his peg leg and did not offer to shake hands.
    Instead he broke loose in his Scottish brogue and clipped his words hard and sharp and said, “I choose not to be friendly with the ‘hireling’ of a bank that would take a ‘Kattleman’s’ herd from his land—and to make it worse they send this slight lad from Texas mounted on ponies to do the riding of a man and horses. Then an old and trusted friend and the doctor that has tended to the needs of me and my family would call him ‘friend’ and heap more insult on Scotty Perth by suggesting that I make his acquaintance.”
    With this blast at me off his chest, he turned and moved off so smoothly that I almost forgot he had a peg leg.
    There were several people standing in earshot that began to turn and ease away. I was embarrassed to silence and the doctor started to apologize for Scotty and in a way was defending him.
    I turned and started to the hitch rack to mount my horse and said in a whipped tone of voice, “I guess I would be better off out in the mountains.”
    Dr. Turner said, “I’ll be looking for you back in town in a few days.”
    His tone was friendly and kind. I said, “Thank you, I’m glad there is one Texan lives here,” as I stepped on my horse and rode out of town. Scotty Perth had embarrassed me before the doctor and the others listening, but the worst thing he done to me was that he had made some belittling remarks about the best band of horses that I had ever owned when he insinuated that “Texas ponies”(as he put it) were not good horses. Second, I didn’t appreciate the tone of his voice or the look on his face when he referred to me as a “slight lad.”
    I stayed in my camp and rode after cattle for about two weeks during which time nobody came around my camp, which was about seven miles off the public road. I had begun to understand even better why nobody found Scotty Perth when he broke his leg. Every day I rode the pasture hazing the cattle out of the high pasture into the pasture that sloped to the valley; finally I knew that I had all the cattle out of the high pasture. I was sure that there were a lot more cattle left in Scotty’s Canyon than it would take to make my total count of three hundred, including the cattle that I had already shipped. Three hundred was the number the bank had talked about.
    In making the trade with the bank to gather the cattle, we had agreed that I was to be paid $3 a head to gather three hundred head, and that I was to gather all the rest of the cattle on the ranch for $1 a head. In the trade the bank was to pay me for gathering the first hundred and fifty head when I shipped them. And I had agreed to not draw any more money until all the cattle had been rounded up and taken off Scotty Perth’s ranch. This was the bank’s way of bein’ sure that the ranch would be clean of all cattle. The only part of the contract that was in my favor was that the bank had paid