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around a curve or goin’ down a hill it gets to swingin’ and turns over. Cattle and horses weren’t never intended to be hauled anyway. If the good Lord hadn’t aimed for them to walk, he wouldn’t have given them four feet and legs. Them trucks are all right, I guess, for corn, watermelons, or other stuff that can’t move around.”
    While I was giving off my expert opinion on how to move stock, Mr. Dairyman spoke up and said that these cattle that were in the truck when it turned over belonged to the bank, and Fred Smith had told him when he got this one in a pen to call him and he would send me to get her. I told him that this was the first I had heard about this, but to have a bad cow fastened up in a barn would be taking advantage of her since I was used to having to catch them out in the brush, and I sure would be glad to get her now instead of having to come back after her when she was turned back out.
    We were figuring on how to get in there and how to catch her, and I decided I didn’t want to go in there onhorseback on that concrete floor to get my horse horned and maybe slip down in as small a place as a dairy barn. I had a hard, long maguey rope tied on my saddle, and I took it in my hand and stepped inside the front door. They had lights all over the barn and that old cow would run at a shadow if it would move. She was standing in the middle of the barn pawing like a bull, blowing her nostrils and shaking her horns. I stood real still and watched her a minute.
    The milk stanchions had been built out of two-by-four and two-by-six lumber where the cows stuck their heads through to eat while they were being milked. The plank on one side of these old-fashioned milking stanchions was solid The other side had a bolt run through it at the bottom and was swinging between the two-by-four frames at the top, and after the cow had stuck her head through the stanchion you pushed that one closed at the top and latched it by swinging a little wood block against it that was hinged on the other end. I decided that I would go behind these stanchions against the wall, which was about two feet of space, and let this old cow run at me and when she got her head through I was going to fasten the stanchion. Then I would have her caught and that would give me plenty of time to put my rope on her.
    Well, I got back behind the stanchion and it wasn’t any trouble to get her to run at me, but it took a lunge or two for her to get her head turned to where her horns would go through this milk-cow-size stanchion. When she had her head just right, I reached over and pushed the stanchion up and tripped the little block against it at the top. After I had this done, the milk crew came in the front door and Mr. Dairyman had gone around back to openthe back door when I said I was ready, and he had led ole Beauty around back for me to let her in when I had the cow ready to let out.
    A maguey rope is hand-woven in Old Mexico out of long, fine, stout cactus fiber and each rope is woven and platted individually. The end of a maguey rope where it is started is smooth and does not have a knot like the end of a common rope that has been cut and tied, and the other end has a platted hondo that you slip the knot end through to form your loop.
    I dropped my rope on this old cow’s horns and she was bawlin’ and lungin’ and shakin’ that row of stanchions with her 1,300 pounds that was well made out of two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, and at the rate that she was going I wasn’t sure that she wasn’t going to tear up the inside of the barn. I realized my fancy Mexican maguey wasn’t stout enough to hold this 1,200- to 1,300-pound cow and that she was sure to charge my horse and cause a lot of trouble if I didn’t outsmart her pretty fast.
    There is not much you can do to hurt the outside of a mean, mad cow and whippin’ and jerkin’ would sort of be a joke. I put a half hitch around her nose and threw the rope over the top of the stanchion and