Published: March 20, 2008 09:53 am            

Darrell would like that

“Down here in this draw is the pond where Dad sank my new trophy saddle,” my brother said.

“That was the best ridin’ saddle you ever had,” Daddy replied.

“How did that happen?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” Daddy replied. “That was me and old Chock.”

“I don’t know how it happened either, since all the rest of us were at the pens with 360 cattle sorting the calves off to ship,” said brother Keith.

“There was a bunch quitter that kept going back to the pond and I wasn’t gonna let her.”

That was the conversation on the way to Darrell Cash’s grave site. He would have loved that.

Darrell Cash was an old school cowboy, a bull dogger who won his share. Many of you Mayes County rodeo cowboys will remember him. (You know who you are Dale Willis, Patsy and Donnie Hough, Leon Stipes and assorted Foremans.) Darrell was a ranch cowboy in Oklahoma for 30 years before retiring near our hometown in Arkansas where he traded horses and rode at salebarns.

One of the last times I was with Darrell was at my family’s spring wagon ride. I was roping a bucket. Darrell asked if wanted to rope 10 for a dollar. Of course I did and he let me win. So he said “how ‘bout 10 for five dollars?” I bit. He took my five dollars.

“When I was in the service, there was a feller and me roped all the time. We’d bet like that - 10 for whatever.” Darrell was a World War II veteran.

Spurs rang as cowboys walked up the aisle to say goodbye to Darrell. He would have loved that, too, those spurs ringing on the way to see him out.

Darrell was from the old time cowboy crowd who trained their own horses and stayed in shape for rodeoing with hard manual labor. When I was growing up it seemed he was on crutches as much as he wasn’t.

Shorty Osier, who ran a Winston scoreboard for years, told me he was at the Will Rogers Stampede when Darrell got a horn through his cheek.

Although Darrell was nearly 30 years older than I am, I found some old rodeo programs recently where we were both entered. He had a long rodeo career.

One of the family rode a hazing horse and led a dogging horse Darrell trained, a shapey dun, to the graveside. Both horses carried a DC brand. The dogging horse carried Darrell’s favorite dogging saddle, an old school rough out on which there is no maker’s mark.

Daddy reminded Darrell’s nephew, Billy Don, that he used to kid Darrell asking if that brand stood for “Dixie Cup.”

“Sometimes it meant direct current,” Billy said.

Billy Don drove all night to make the funeral from announcing the rodeo at Grand Island, Neb. “Somebody in Darrell’s family was always coming from a rodeo, going to a rodeo, or getting ready to go to a rodeo, I guess,” Billy said.

“Uncle Darrell said a hand shake was optional but your word was your bond, and he lived like that.”

Darrell was as tough as they come but I never heard him say a cuss word. He stayed married to the same woman until death parted them. He wasn’t free with compliments.

At the wagon ride where we roped the bucket, I was riding my Smart and Trouble mare. “That’s a purty nice mount,” Darrell told me. A high

compliment indeed.

As I stood by his grave, I could smell the cattle across the road. Darrell would’ve liked that, too. I sang cowboy songs and Daddy played the

harmonica.

Billy’s back on the road to North Dakota. The dogging horses will go back to their jobs carrying Darrell’s nephews to the pay window. Darrell would like that.

        

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