The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

Now, when a man is hungry, he can take a drink of water and go to sleep in a warm bed and forget his hunger until morning. But we had no water and no warm bed, and the night was too cold to sleep without cover. We built a large fire but it cooked us on one side while the other side froze. And I've got to tell you, saddles make very poor pillows. In the movies I have seen cowboys use saddles for pillows, but this was no movie, this was for real. And furthermore, I was no cowboy, just a poor farmer trying to pick up an extra dollar to keep body and soul together while fighting my way through a wicked depression.

Again it looked as if the devil was after me for sure. But I didn't really think he would stoop so low as to get my own blood brother to help him. I didn't see how the devil could do this to me, after all the things I had done for him. Just the thought of some of the things I had done for him caused my spine to tingle, and I moved a little closer to the fire. I wondered whether it was the chill of the night, my fear of the darkness, or the thoughts of my past that made me shiver and move closer. Anyway the night was totally dark and cold and damp, and I was completely miserable. In such misery the one best thing I could wish for was daybreak, and when it finally began to push the black out of the eastern sky, it was a welcome sight, and I was glad.

We saddled up early and pushed on. Before noon we left the highway and funneled the herd through a gate and out into open ranch pasture. Still the Jersey cow simply refused to stay with the others. On the highway she could only go forward between the fences, but here in the pasture she could go all directions. When we came to the next ranch house, we borrowed a corral long enough to catch the cow and put one end of a rope around her horns and the other end around the neck of a large Hereford cow. That ended our trouble with the Jersey cow. Things went so smoothly after that, we could hardly believe it.

When we got to the nearest corner of the Carriker pasture, it was still a long way to the gate that opened into the pasture. We were tired, sleepy, hungry, thirsty, weary, and almost entirely angry at one little brother who had contributed so much to our misery. So instead of making the long drive to the gate, we took wires loose from the fence posts, tied the bottom wires down, propped the top ones up, and drove the herd through the fence and into the pasture. This ended our drive, but there was still one little chore to do.

I wanted to cut the rope between the Jersey cow and the Hereford cow and let them run free. The terrain was rough and almost completely covered with trees and cedar bushes. I prepared my catch rope and made one desperate attempt to rope one of the cows. I threw the loop and it went over one horn of the Hereford. I knew the herd would vanish into the brush before I could get ready and try again. So I jumped to the ground and tried to flip the rope around the other horn also. I had hoped to delay them long enough to rush in and cut the rope between them. But I had no such luck. My throw rope came off the one horn and they quickly disappeared into the thick brush. They were all gone, vanished into the bushes.

I looked for Old Buck and he was gone too. Then I looked for Lester and he was nowhere in sight. I called to him and he came riding up out of the brush. I asked if he had seen Old Buck. He hadn't, but he rode off to find him. We found Old Buck working alone and holding back a bunch of cows that were trying to run away. There were two ways for the herd to escape. Lester had gone one way and had tried to hold the cows back, but had failed. Old Buck had gone the other way alone and had cut off the escape route of the other half of the herd. Not a single cow had gotten by him, but the two cows we wanted had escaped down the way Lester had gone. I could write a book telling about the splendid work Old Buck did for me while we were together.

Anyway, we fastened the fence wires back in place and were riding toward home when night overtook us out on the highway. After dark some men from our community drove by in their car, recognized us, offered to take us home and we accepted. We still had only one rope, so we staked out Old Buck as we had done the night before and hoped that Nancy would stay with him one more night.

Needless to say, when I got home I ate everything I could get my hands on. I was hungry enough to eat anything that wouldn't fight back and couldn't outrun me. And my bed was so much better than the one that had tortured me the night before.

Early the next day when we returned to get our horses, Old Nancy was not there. We searched for her but in vain. We returned to the area every day for a week looking for horse tracks either in the lane or in the pastures on both sides of the highway. But we found no clue whatsoever as to where she had gone. Then finally a thought came to me. Down in the valley of Texas there was a woman I had heard on radio—I believe her name was Ethel Duncan— who claimed to have aided many people in locating lost articles. If you would send her a dollar she would answer three questions for you. I knew it would be worth a dollar to me to have her answer just one question. So we went to the telegraph office in Rotan and I wrote my question on a telegram form, "Where can I find my lost saddle mare?" The telegraph operator read the question, looked at me, and shook his head just a little, as if to say, "There's one born every minute." But money talks, and since I had the dollar to send to Ethel and enough left over to pay the man for sending it to her at McAllen, he took my money and sent the question and the dollar.

About an hour later the following message came over the wire, "In my opinion your mare is grazing along the right-of-way of the railroad which runs into Rotan from Nugent, about three miles from home."