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teen-age-cowboy Sunday idea about what to do with a mad fightin’ cow that belonged to the bank. I led her on up the paved street early on Sunday morning with nobody in sight and rode around the telephone pole right in front of the bank door and made several wraps around the pole leaving the cow five or six feet of slack. I stepped off my mare and ran the rope around a concrete column at the bank door, then I threaded the end of the rope through the handle of the bank door and over to the concrete column on the other side of the door and tied the rope off to the last column.
    I did all this in a matter of seconds and stepped on old Beauty and rode down to the telephone pole on the east side of the drugstore, tied my horse, and went to the Texas Café for breakfast. Little Pat waited on me and there were very few people around, and I was leisurely eatin’ my breakfast when the phone rang and Pat answered it and I heard him say, “Yeah, he’s here. You want him?” and then Pat hung up. As he walked back towards me he had a puzzled kind of look on his face and said, “Why is Fred Smith hunting you?” Looking as innocent as I could with a mouthful of ham and eggs, I blubbered and said I had no idea. As Pat started on to the kitchen, he said, “Fred said he would be down here in a few minutes.”
    Fred was a short, red-complexioned, nice-looking sort of a fellow whose black hair was getting thin on top and a little gray in the temples. All of a sudden he busted through that front door a-wearin’ his house-shoes, a pair of regular britches, the top part of his pajamas, and no hat. When I looked up and saw him, before he had time tostart on me, I said, “Fred, you must be confused. From the looks of your garb, you ain’t decided whether you are gettin’ up or goin’ to bed.”
    “Don’t be trying to start on my garb. That’s not what I’m down here for. My phone’s been ringing steady for the past ten minutes—people calling waking up the family telling me about a cow being tied to the bank door.” In a mad kind of voice he said, “Ben, what cow is that and why in the hell did you tie her up in front of the bank?”
    His remark didn’t cause me to lose any interest in my breakfast, and between mouthfuls I explained to him where the cow came from.
    By this time he was mad and nervous. Little Pat had set a cup of coffee out on the counter for him, but he didn’t even sit down. He was walking up and down the aisle beating on the counter and talking to me.
    “I’m glad you got her, but why didn’t you take her to the wagonyard or to the stock pens or any place besides the public sidewalk in front of the bank?”
    Little Pat was listening and by this time there were a few more people who had discovered the cow was tied to the bank door. I rared back and said, “Mr. Smith, ANYTHING THAT BELONGS TO THE BANK, TAKE IT TO THE BANK.”
    Pat blew coffee out of his mouth and took to the kitchen. Fred said, “Hell, I didn’t mean a cow!”
    By this time about everybody was laughing but Fred, and I wasn’t going to laugh because I was being plumb innocent. I just told him that I was tryin’ to learn the lesson that he was tryin’ to teach me, and just yesterday mornin’ he told me when I was tryin’ to pay a note and give him some money to deposit, I said, “You told me ‘ANYTHING THAT BELONGS TO THE BANK, TAKE IT TO THE BANK.’ ”
    He finally broke into a little chuckle and said, “You’ve took her to the bank, now we’ve got to take her away from there before people start to Sunday school and church.”
    I said, “Fred, I am goin’ to leave town in the mornin’ before daylight to go to the Denton place below Brock to look at some horses and maybe buy them. Now if you was carryin’ my money to pay the bank a note I owe for $40, and if you was goin’ to deposit $160 of my money for me to check against to buy them horses with, then if you was goin’ to put about $5 extra with it, we’ll say for