THE OLD COWBOY Part Twenty Three
(continued)

"That wind came up out of nowhere, and could take your hat right off if ya didn't have it screwed down tight. Ya couldn't even stand still in that wind. And just about the time ya got used to it blowin' one way, it'd turn on ya and blow the other.

By the time I'd been 'round long enough to get settled in good, some of them cowhands decided they'd do better out in California. I wished them good luck. I knew I'd never see them again.

T'weren't long 'til fall gave way to winter and that prairie wind came blowin' right along with it."

"Grandpa, we've got wind around here. Sometimes it feels like it's going to blow me away!"

"Well sure you do, but out west of here it is dif'rent. It smells dif'rent. It sounds dif'rent. It feels dif'rent when it hits you, like it's young and strong. Young and strong and wild and dangerous like a young bull, that can't be rode. 

They work hard to get the biggest, meanest bulls and' put 'em in a chute, in the rodeo. Then they get some young fella with the brains pf an ant that thinks he's really big stuff. Thinks he can tame anything that walks on four legs. And out of ev'ry rodeo they'll find one fool that drew a good bull. Or a bull that was havin' a bad day.

No matter, them big bulls got my a-ten-tion one year before the fam'ly came along. I wanted some ad-ven-ture, so I rode down to Oklahoma City and went to work on one of the smallest spreads a-round. I started in early summer. And summer dragged along that year. I just wanted things to speed up. I worked a lot harder than I needed to. I prob'ly did the work of two men that summer.

I was seventeen if I remember rightly. Once a week the straw boss and me went in town for supplies. Well I found there was a lot a pretty girls in town. And pretty girls liked bull riders best accordin' to the straw boss.

Grandboy you...


To Be Continued. . .