Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

81 страница из 136

ssss1

Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

When harvesting sumac, often barefooted and always barehanded, we boys, sons of the tanner, had to keep a sharp lookout for rattlesnakes—and Texas cattle. We were repeatedly so warned by our parents. Also, it was generally understood that all children should “watchout” for Indians. This, however, did not greatly disturb us after we had made friends with Eagle Eye.

Then, one day, while cutting sumac for the tannery, with my brother Charley, near a timbered ravine three miles out southeast, close to the Oliver Logue farm, a long-horn steer, out of a large herd, chased me up a tree early in the afternoon and held me prisoner in the treetop until the riders, Abe Williams and John Taylor, came to round up the herd for the night.

I thought that steer would surely butt his horns off, the way he rammed that six-inch tree. He would back off, paw the ground, shake his slobbering head, and come snorting at the tree again and again. After quieting down, he grazed fitfully and frightfully close to the tree—and he came trotting in several times with something ugly on his bovine mind, I’m sure. Even now I wonder is it possible for an enraged cowbrute to have red eyes.