Papa had bought a full potload {truckload] of bulls at a discount, some old and useless, but most because unruly and even dangerous as crossbred bulls are wont to become at that stage of their lives when still serviceable as bulls but nearing the end of productivity. The idea was to stag them, turn them out in a river bottom pasture, put on a couple of hundred pounds of weight each and then sell them in six months or so for a quick turnaround. A good plan in principle, but in practice not so good. Stagged bulls are not the same as oxen. Oxen are castrated at an early age before the testosterone flows and so have no recollection of their manhood. They are usually docile and grow large and fat because no energy wasted fighting other males and chasing heifers. Stagged bulls, on the other hand, are what the old-timers called ‘proud cut.’ No longer able to reproduce, they still have stirrings of their manliness and often grow even more cantankerous and unruly.
And as summer turned to fall, the day came to gather them from the pasture they had been turned into the previous spring and haul them to market for the anticipated profit. Three trucks with trailers lumbered into the pasture before the break of day with the morning dew still heavy on the grass and the six cowboys unloaded a pack of excited cowdogs and their already saddled horses. A heavy fog hung over the landscape and as the grey, dull sky began to show some signs of color, the fog begin to lift from the bottom below to reveal a frightening sight. The stags had come up from the river bottom below to face their adversaries.
Clifford Austin was one of the cowboys whose job it was to pen this crowd of snorting, angry stags eager for a fight. Clifford had been a cowboy for hire all his life and despite the system of segregation he had grown up in, had earned a begrudging respect. Astride his horse, he was a full equal. This time, however, he rode a young mare which had not yet conceded fully that Clifford was her master. Seeing the stags that had come up to meet them and do battle, Clifford leaned over to his mare, and gently said, ‘Now Molly today you and me gotta be of the same mind or it’s gwina turn out bad for us both.
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