The Death of Two Mules: Ben and Pete

Ben and Pete were mules, big ol' mules, didn't know how stout they was.  We had them a long time, broke them out.  Didn't break ol' Pete until he was five years old, which was a mistake.  He'd done got mule-headed by the time we broke him.  Always kind of stubborn.  But Ben, he was just as gentle as a school girl.  We had them till they died.  Both died the same time, quicksand--about a day apart.  Went down right side by side there in the pasture durin the wet season.  They probably was fifteen or sixteen years old.  It was above that terrace I was tellin you about we used to keep cleaned out, on the Owens place.  There was a patch of timber run through there, wasn't very wide.  All that hill back in there was all grass, lespedezas where the cattle and horses run.  There was a strip of timber through there about a block wide and a block long to try to keep that hill and dirt from washin.  It was sandy, and it'd been real wet--wet, wet.  They was comin down through there one walkin right behind the other.  One went down--Ben went down first.  We didn't see it, but later we could tell by lookin what happened.  Pete started out around him and down he went.  

All the farmers fought quicksand up and down Bell Cow. After a big rain it'd turn to quick sand.  We might be playing, us kids, around the swimmin hole and walk around and find it.  You could feel it.  You'd start to go down.  Or you'd start paddlin with your foot and it'd start to quiver, maybe a whole patch around there'd be quicksand.  We used to get plumb down in it to our knees.  

But a horse is heavier.  He'd go right on down.  ol' Pete drowned Ben, actually, tryin to rear and heave and get out of there and fell back over across his head and punched his head down in the mud.  We had all kinds of help there and still couldn't save him.  Then Pete killed himself, strainin and heavin, tore his insides all up.  He got hold of a tree root there with his teeth.   He'd grunt and groan and pull, and of course he just kept goin deeper and deeper and deeper.  It was enough to make you cry.  

We had all kinds of men from everywhere, all over the community--they came from ever direction when a farmer needed help.  We finally got Pete out, after probably eighteen hours of it, but he didn't live but a few hours.  

We'd build swings and jack them around there and pull around and dig and pry and shove and lift.  We used that ol' beltin material like we used to drive a thrashin machine, half an inch thick--it'd take two tractors to pull it in two.  Then take three poles and put them in the ground like an Indian tepee and build a swing and work in under him.  Then we'd take a pulley and tackle and get two of them on him and keep pullin and diggin.  But the damned quicksand would fill back in as quick as you could dig it out.  

You'd get on the telephone in an emergency like that and ring five longs.  Any time any farmer heard five longs on the telephone he would run to the phone.  It'd be a house on fire or an animal down, someone have a kid hurt, or something.  That was the smoke alarm in them days.  We always had lots of help.  Everybody within several miles'd be there.  A different world now. Life went at a slower pace.  They'd stay there all night.  Be out in the field all day when the phone rang, and they'd be there all night.  Women would come and cook meals and bring food and water and lanterns.  

Before ol' Pete died though, he fell off into the ditch there one time, a big ol' gully back there on that hill where the lespedezas was.  It was soft dirt, and it'd washed a gully there twenty foot deep or thirty, narrow down at the bottom.  He was grazin along the edge there and that bank give way with him.  And they were big mules.  Down in there he went and landed on his back, all four legs up in the air.  I was workin there at Boggs's when Daddy called me.  He wanted to know if I could get loose, which was hard to do then, but I did.  I went out there and tried to help him, but shoot there wasn't nothin you could do.  You was gonna lose him, that was all there was to it.  An animal can't stay on their back too awful long.  

Then an idea hit me.  I went back to the house and called Glen Key.  He had a winch truck--he'd started workin in the oil fields some--with them big ol' long winch poles on it and chains.  I called him to see if he'd come out there and try to get the mule out.  Glenn wouldn't come, I knew he wouldn't, but he sent Hub Lantz, who worked for him--Kathy's daddy, used to live by us down on First Street.  Hub backed that thing up in there, and of course the winch truck had a saddle on it, and Daddy was there.  We shoveled and worked and got that saddle in there under Pete.  Hub got in there and put that ol' winch in gear and started tightenin the chains and picked him right straight on up into the air.  Then Hub put her in gear and drove right straight out and let him down real gently on the bank.  Daddy made us stay up all night and walk him to keep him from takin pneumonia from layin there on his back.  They get fluid in their lungs.  We walked him all night long, took turn about, and he was alright.  But if we hadn't had that winch truck we'd have lost him right then.

How much would he have weighed?  I don't know.  Mules don't weight heavy like horses do.  "So many hands high" is the way they was always measured.  He was about sixteen or eighteen hands high.  Ben and Pete was so big I never could harness them hardly.  I couldn't throw the harness hard enough to get it up on them.  I'd stand on the edge of the water trough to put the bridle on them, even when I was a young man. 

I always wanted to put them against Hughie's big ol' team of  mares, but we never did. [Hughie was his father-in–law.] I think one of us was a coward and the other was glad of it.   One of those mares weighed 2100 and the other weighed 2110--huge Percheron mares.  They was stout too.  But I still don't believe they'd ever pulled them mules backward.  But I doubt if the mules would have pulled them backward.  We'd a probably broken some harness.

I saw Ben and Pete break a harness once tied onto a school bus.  I mean harness flew every direction.  The ol' bus was buried down there in that bottom mud.  Those mules knew how to pull.  They'd get down so low that you could no more than about put your hand like that right under their belly, and they'd dig in their hind feet, stretch out, and keep leanin forward.  

All animals are not trained to pull.  Charlie Stenson trained them, helped Daddy train them to pull.  It ain't ever team that knows how to pull.  Hughey had his horses trained to pull too.  It'd been a tug of war.  We argued about it a lot for a few years after we got married.

Daddy had a big set of harness on them mules--they was pretty and big rascals, well built.  One time down there they was workin on the road with a bunch of them, several teams.  They had a stump in the way, and they'd tried two or three teams on it, and none of them could pull it out.  Daddy told them if they'd unhook and get out of the way--he was pullin a fresno--he'd pull it out for them.  They kind of laughed at him.  He went over and hooked up ol' Ben and Pete on it and walked right out of there with it.  Left them all standing there dumb.

from North of Deep Fork: An Oklahoma Farm Family in Hard Times. Advance Graphics, 1996; Create Space, 2011. On Sale at Amazon.