The Life of Me: An AutobiographyJohnson, Clarence Edgar
History
The Life of Me: An Autobiography
Johnson, Clarence Edgar
Fisher County (Tex.) -- Biography; Fisher County (Tex.) -- History; Johnson family; Johnson, Clarence Edgar, 1906-1994
But now back to the farm at Royston. Most people think of cattle
drives as something that happened long ago; and that's mostly
true. But soon after we moved to Royston, I got Lester Whitley
to help me drive a little herd of cows to Carriker's farm in Kent
County. Lester would ride Old Nancy and I would ride Old Buck.
We would carry a bite to eat for lunch, but there was no need to
go to a lot of trouble and try to take everything as though we
were heading up the trail to Abilene, Kansas, like back in 1885.
After all, we wouldn't be far away by nightfall, and my brother
would have all day to put a few things in my car and drive out to
find us about sundown. He would need to bring us something to
drink, something to eat, something to sleep on and some horse
feed and a rope or two.
Lester and I got an early start and had the cows headed in the
right direction when we learned that we had one old Jersey cow
that thought she was a racehorse. Right away she started running
straight up the road ahead of all the others. And she kept right
on trotting until one of us got ahead of her and brought her
back. We could see we really needed three horses, one for that
old trotter and two for the rest of the herd. But we had to get
by with one for her and one for the others. We thought surely
she would settle down after awhile but she didn't. It was the
same thing all day long, one of us behind to drive and one in
front to hold her back.
Sundown found us about where we had planned to be. There was a
place where the fence was set quite a way back from the road,
embracing an extra two or three acres of Johnson grass and weeds
and a puddle of water, all within the right-of-way. So we turned
the cattle into that little pocket and held them there while they
grazed and settled down.
If it had not been for that one old cantankerous Jersey cow, our
entire day would have been dull and uneventful. There wouldn't
have been anything of value to mention in our story during that
day. Without that cow, our story could just as well have started
after we got them bedded down for the night.
We could have begun our story with,--We waited and we waited. It
got dark, and we still waited for my little brother to drive up
in the car, but he didn't. We had no horse feed, so we didn't
feed our horses. We had only one rope, so we staked Old Buck out
and hoped that Old Nancy would stay with him through the night.
She was tired from the day's work and fortunately she didn't try
to leave. Nor did the Jersey cow give any further trouble. I
know she was tired. There is no way a cow can run as far as she
had run that day and not be tired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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