“The Toughest Cowboy Ever” May 23, 2011
I recently posted this on a website wanting stories about “The Toughest Cowboy Ever”. Nobody over there commented on it, so I’ll try it here. An old friend of mine, Bernard Michelle, a member of one of my first bands, “The Roughriders” told me this story many years ago:
A couple of cowboys on a cattle drive were sitting by their fire in the middle of the night when a bearded stranger wearing bear-skins galloped up in a cloud of dust. He was riding a huge snorting bull with a big brass ring through its nose.
He jumped off , punched the bull in the head to knock it out, came to the campfire, and emptied a hot pan of beans straight into his mouth, washing it down with a whole pot of boiling coffee.
He then slapped the bull awake, threw a leg over it as it rose to its feet, exclaiming, “Sorry t’eat an’ run boys, but there’s a _mean_ sonofabitch on m’tail!”
- Posted in : Politics
- Author :Administrator
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I think I’d find a reason to be on the other side of the mountain real quick! Great tale, by the way.
I have chores to do- So I’ll just leave it as “He ain’t as tough as another guy I heard of!”
Hey, y’all know how to keep a fool in suspense?? Tell you tomorrow (Sorry, I’m just feeling whacky today!)
Reminds me of that conversation between Rufo and Oscar in Heinlein’s *Glory Road*.
====
“So let’s speak of other matters. You mentioned the Strong Muldoon–”
“You mentioned him.”
“Well, perhaps I did. I never met Muldoon myself, though I’ve been in that part of Ireland. A fine country and the only really logical people on Earth. Facts won’t sway them in the face of higher truth. An admirable people. I heard of Muldoon from one of my uncles, a truthful man who for many years was a ghostwriter of political speeches. But at this time, due to a mischance while writing speeches for rival candidates, he was enjoying a vacation as a free-lance correspondent for an American syndicate specializing in Sunday feature stories. He heard of the Strong Muldoon and tracked him down, taking train from Dublin, then a local bus, and at last Shank’s Mares. He encountered a man plowing a field with a one-horse plow . . . but this man was shoving the plow ahead of himself without benefit of horse, turning a neat eight-inch furrow. ‘Aha!’ said my uncle and called out, ‘Mr. Muldoon!’
“The farmer stopped and called back, ‘Bless you for the mistake, friend!’–picked up the plow in one hand, pointed with it and said, ‘You’ll be finding Muldoon that way. Strong, he is.’
“So my uncle thanked him and went on until he found another man setting out fence posts by shoving them into the ground with his bare hand . . . and in stony soil, it’s true. So again my uncle hailed him as Muldoon.
“The man was so startled he dropped the ten or dozen six-inch posts he had tucked under the other arm. ‘Get along with your blarney, now!’ he called back. You must know that Muldoon lives farther on down this very same road. He’s strong.’
“The next local my uncle saw was building a stone fence. Dry-stone work it was and very neat. This man was trimming the rock without hammer or trowel, splitting them with the edge of his hand and doing the fine trim by pinching off bits with his fingers. So again my uncle addressed a man by that glorious name.
“The man started to speak but his throat was dry from all that stone dust; his voice failed him. So he grabbed up a large rock, squeezed it the way you squeezed Igli - forced water out of it as if it had been a goatskin, drank. Then he said, ‘Not me, my friend. He’s strong, as everyone knows. Why, many is the time that I have seen him insert his little finger–’ ”
====
Rufo never did get to finish that story.
Lovely. _Glory Road_ is one of only two works by other people I’ve ever wanted to write a screenplay for. The other is _Last Enemy_ by H. Beam Piper, my very favorite of all his work.
Ever read the jokes by the Scottish descent character Alex Kilgour in Allen Cole and Chris Bunch series STEN etc, folks in service to the Eternal Emperor? They’re a real treat.
The best is the one about the regiment challenged to combat by a lone Scotsman hiding on a rocky hilltop. Punchline is that the only survivor of the final wave - the Sergeant Major yells a warning back to the regimental commander “Run sah run! It’s ah trap! Thar’s TWO ah them!”
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Lonnie- I LOVED Sten! Especially when he finally grew up and left the Emperor’s service. But MY favorite Alex stories are the Spotted Snakes (”Return of the Damned”) and The farmer and the Pig (”Return of the Emperor” I think.)
Now, to the toughest cowboy. The cowboy had been wandering in the desert since his horse was killed 5 days earlier, and his canteen was crushed when the horse fell on it. Finally, he made it to town, and walked into the local saloon to try to get a drink. The townsfolk laughed at the pathetic sight he made, and refused him a drink unless he first took a drink from the spittoon, which hadn’t been emptied in 4 weeks of 90+ degree weather. The cowboy was so thirsty, he picked up the spittoon and took a gulp. and the townsfolk were amazed when he didn’t stop- they watched his throatkeep working as he swallowed more and more, until he finally finished and dropped the spittoon, and it rattled emptily around the bar floor. The bartender said “Are you crazy?? We said one sip, not the whole thing!!” The cowboy said “Well, the sirst sip just kept coming as one big piece!!”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t the toughest, but he was certainly the one with the toughest stomach.
Frank Sinatra - My Way
Yes there were times, I’m sure you knew,
when I bit off, more than I could CHEW.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ATE it UP, and SPIT it OUT!
Lonnie Courtney Clay
When he died he didn’t owe nobody nothing.
No one left his table hungry.
He never stole and no one ever stole from him.
His wife always went to sleep with “that secret smile.”
His kids grew up to ride, shoot straight and tell the truth.
You knew where you stood with him.
His nose and knuckles were scarred and busted. No one ever said he was on the wrong side of a fight, even the ones he lost.
Tough enough for me.
Sorry for describing the kind of man I want to grow up to be.
Seems I read about a cowboy who was working a ranch next to some farms (back in the day when the settlers hadn’t yet divided up all the land, and some was still open range). He’d just got a new horse, and it was still a mite skittish, but for the most part they was gettin’ along okay — when he was riding the fence one afternoon and come up on a rattler laying in the dust. Well, ol’ Mr. Rattler lets out a buzz, and that skittish horse half jumped to the moon — and on the way down, our friend come out of the saddle and landed astride the fence, feet on the ground on both sides.
He spat a good stream of tobacco juice between Mr. Rattler’s eyes, swallowed his chaw, picked himself off bobbed wire, and got back up on his horse to make his way on back to the big house. ‘Course, he did have to let the stirrups down a couple notches…
The fastest draw does not always win. See movie “The life and times of Judge Roy Bean”. Bad Bob gets Beaned through the chest by a shotgun blast from Bean shooting out of a barn…
Sometimes the ‘good’ guy gets blown away unfairly. See Kris Kristophersen’s duel with the sheriff in “Billy The Kid”. Billy claimed to be on friendly terms (even shared a meal of beans), but the sheriff insisted…
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Minor point, Lonnie, from the happy wielder of a .45/70: it wasn’t a shotgun. It was a big-caliber Sharps or Spencer or something like that, maybe .56 caliber. I remember that for a brief moment, you could see daylight through Bad Bob, who was played wonderfully by the great Stacy Keach.
I love that damn movie, which is why I was so disappointed by Newman’s _Buffalo Bill and the Indians_, which was nothing but an insane liberal diatribe by some howling leftist who couldn’t tell the difference between Bill Cody and George Custer,
Check this out! chiappafirearms dot com slash product slash 728
A product fit for a science fiction writer!
Rhino is interesting concept. Anyone out there shot one?
I remember glancing at an article in Guns or Handgunner showing weapons designed on CAD. Rhino looks like one of the proposed weapons.
I stand … corrected Neil, putting my nose into the corner, going down on hands and knees…
LOLOL please don’t make me laugh too hard with your response.
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Have a wonderful Memorial Day yawl!
Lonnie Courtney Clay
@Adminstrator: Glory Road has been my screenplay fantasy since I was a pup, an embarrassingly long time ago. I always thought it would translate perfectly literally … and now, in this age of special FX, you could do the parts I could never figure out.
@All: every “toughest cowboy/Irishman/etc.” story is but avariation on the old acorn “You gon’ be here when John gets here?”
Speaking of a$$ whippings, I would like to challenge the whole crowd to a contest, either here or on my newsgroup at Google. I propose that I can deliver a put down of anything said, regardless of how ingratiating or obnoxious, which inverts the comment to provide a nuanced rebuttal humiliating to the commenter - in four words or less. I am qualified due to my 20 years of software writing (over 4000 pages) in which I produced source code replete with jokes and insults towards the employers, yet which was syntactically correct to perform the desired functions. Warning : I am a member of Tau Beta Pi, whose symbol is the “Bent”.
Neil, I know that this is imposing upon you. This is YOUR blog, and YOU decide what’s what. Mostly, I want to whet my skills blade because I hope to start publishing soon. I know that YOU can stand the competition in science fiction. Besides, I intend to do only satires, lampoons, and parodies for a while, which are not really your style. Something like Fritz Laumer’s Retief series is what I have in mind.
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Here are _my_ four words, Lonnie: “It was _Keith_ Laumer_.
John, I agree with you about _Glory Road_ and have had the same desire to do a screenplay. I even know who should play Star: Anna Torv.
I first heard the joke you cited on a Brother Dave Gardner rcord.
Does anybody else think these Captcha things are getting harder to read?
Oof Fritz Leiber, Keith Laumer, eh…
Contest round 1 ! My response : Keith on the Fritz?
Lonnie Courtney Clay
explanation :
Fritz = Frigging retarded imbecile, totalitarian zoophile
Keith = Keeps everyone intoxicated, totally hardcore
Because of a Movie about the ‘66 TW (now UTEP) Miners It would have to be RObert Heinlein’s Puppet Masters. Then again acknowledging the grand Master ain’t a bad thing. Bad ass yes, bad no.
BTW the Toughest cowboy was Cuchalain. When is someone adapting An Tain Bo Cuailgne into a western?
Nawp - the toughest was Horatio. Held off an invading army single handedly until the bridge was destroyed. See my telling elsewhere by searching Google my full name in quotes plus “Horatio”. However, I do admit that CuCuChulain was a close second. He doesn’t rate first because he transformed into a hideous monster in battle. I think his clan was the Arn Dayff Nebb, too lazy to Google it…
Lonnie Courtney Clay
p.s. K on the F - in poker you lay cards down from least to highest. I maintain that a Keith Laumer beats a Fritz Leiber hands down.
Cuchalain was involved in a range war, cowboy stuff. I’ll give Horatio props for heart and balls.
You’re right! You said “cowboy” rather than “fighter”, my error!
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Sorry, Neil, but if we’re picking a perfect Star (as long as this is a fantasy pick) it’d be Lynda Carter, blonded. I’ve seen her as Star since I feirst read “Glory Road” right after seeing the premier of “Wonder Woman” as a teen. Hell, at 60something, she’s still got it!.
And YES!!! the Catcha is getting harder to read, and sometimes I gotta ask for 6 or 7 different ones before there’s one I can read! The current one is a perfect example- Gotta roll it to another.
Since we’re picking of cowboys and the Irish I quote the following from Buachaill On Eirne, which is my favorite secular song (translated into English)
“A cowboy my Darlin’ I never will be,
I’d rather drink beer and play with pretty girls
up in the hills,
And if I’ve lost my wealth dear, I’ve not lost my mind…”
A geas was put on me to fall in love with the first woman I danced to it with. Since I was already married to her I was careful to dance with Irma to it.
Rodeo cowboys have multiple broken bones, all their teeth are false, and they got the rheumatis something fierce, Ranch cowboys have it harder.
Got me two scars just above my hairline, five stitch scar on left eyebrow, busted nose fake tooth and a busted knuckle plus arthritis in hips and knees from walking off walls and unassing from moving pick up trucks. and I’m a wimp.
It’s coming up on one month since this blog entry was started. I check here about five times per day, but conversation has petered out, and I already butted in too much…
Scars hmm. Left hand two, right hand one, right foot two, right calf one, forehead one, hundreds of small scratch scars not counted…
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Where are Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfus when you need them?
Shaw- DEAD
Dreyfuss- old and senile
Me- bullet scar to laft index finger, knife scar, left armpit, right leg, burn scars, both arms. Limp and slightly curled hand, right side. Awesome good looks, un-affected.
I gotta zipper right down the middle of my chest where the cardiothoracic cutters did the Aztec high priest bit with a bonesaw and a set of rib spreaders, and a shorter (about 7 cm) transverse scar in the epigastrium where the chest tubes and the external pacer wires fed into the mediastinum.
Hurt like a booger, too. Do they count?
SURE!!!!
I knew a cowboy so tough he dipped his habaneros in hot sauce.
“Sorry t’eat an’ run boys, but there’s a _mean_ sonofabitch on m’tail!”
Probably his ex-wife…
Al, the habanero lost its place in the record books some years ago to the jolokia with twice the Scoville level. And there are now some unstable hybrids (out of Britain, of all places) that are pushing one and a half megascovilles. Haven’t personally eaten anything hotter than a Red Savina habanero yet, though one of those is mighty fine in a three-egg omelet with some sharp as a razor Vermont cheddar.
“Find your soul-mate, Homer!”
Chess ball playing preacher?
I haven’t seen Ward Griffiths before, checked past six months. New kid on the block? Don’t sell yourself cheap. Check the writings of Uncle Al Schwartz for discussion of a really hot food. Oops butted my butt-head up my butt, but Ole Al is a professional chemist not a writer except as a hobby, like me.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
He has a lot of facts on tap.
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Lonnie, compared to Ward Griffiths, YOU’RE the newbie in the bunch. There’s an e-mail disty rumbling around with higher use rate than this particular Web site, and Ward’s been bumping around in that forum for quite a while now.
If you’ve got the e-mail addresses of Mr. Smith, Mr. Holder, Mr. Perez, or Mr. Osborne, contact one of ‘em and let him know that you’d like to be on the “CC” list, and these senior personages might deign to plug you in.
I can’t make such an offer myself. “I am only an egg,” even though pretty well fried.
Well said, Richard. Lonnie, Ward is a distinguished senior member of this forum. Meaning he’s an old guy, like me. He has been my friend for longer than I can calculate, but to give you an idea, he is responsible for my love of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey.
Write to me at lneil (at) netzero (dot) com and I’ll plug you into what we’e taken to calling the ODDfellows because we all seem to suffer from Occupation Defiance Disorder where it comes to being governed.
Well, I probably let these blogs go for about a year before I started posting, but I was in the forums from early on. Oh, yeah, I guess I am old. I think I was subscribed to TLE by about the dozenth thrilling episode.
Neil, you were already drinking Jameson’s before LFScon. The hotel bar in Columbus didn’t have it so I helped you get through the weekend with Bushmill’s.
A few folks do seem to have gone missing lately. Anybody heard anything out of Alan Weiss or the Hobbyt?
> The hotel bar in Columbus didn’t have it so I helped you get through the weekend with Bushmill’s. <
Actually, it was the other way around.
I just heard from Alan. He’s struggling to keep his business afloat. I think Hobbyt, from whom I hear regularly is taking a break, although he peeks.
“the habanero lost its place in the record books some years ago to the jolokia with twice the Scoville level. And there are now some unstable hybrids (out of Britain, of all places) that are pushing one and a half megascovilles.”
Whaddaya think the sauce is made of?
The toughest cowboy in the world is not in Congress, as can be seen by the budget mess the’re in for lack of testosterone.
Albert, it’s not an endocrine inadequacy that afflicts the Congress anent the budget mess, but a psychopathic thought disorder that has disconnected them from objective reality.
Either that or the stupid sonzabitches have lied so often and so consistently to so many people that they can’t handle anything remotely resembling the truth.
Frankly, I’ve given up trying to “medicalize” my consideration of civil government in these United States. It’s not so much that these career slurpers-at-the-public-trough are diseased but that they’re just plain evil. Morally rotten. Willfully and deliberately in violation of all ethical standards.
Lamp-pole decorations not yet properly set a-dangling.
I agree, but off theme. BTW Current mess means most of Congress and possibly the Prex. only survivors will be those who voted against a compromise that passes.
Complete sentence is “BTW Current mess means most of Congress and possibly the Prex will be voted out.”
The two sides of the “boot-on-your-neck” party have finally painted themselves into a corner. Now, if only meither side realizes it in time to hop to dry pavement!! After all, no matter what they do, when America goes bankrupt, we know exactly what to do- NUKE WASHINGTON DC!!
Neale, no matter what is going on right now in Mordor-on-the-Potomac, that little nidus of formerly malarial swampland tucked away between Maryland and Virginia is always going to have some value as a tourist destination.
Before you get overly enthusiastic with the Plutonium, consider instead what might be made of it as a theme park.
Complete to dangling effigies (some of them audioanimatronic to present the images of freshly-lynched bureaucrats and incumbent politicians kicking and jerking and voiding their bladders) decorating the lampposts up and down Pennsylvania Avenue as the passing tour guides recite the names of the actual corpses these sanitary replacements represent.
The Great Bartucci is right again! Here is the URL to a sequelette to _Ceres_ which makes the case. I’d just plant it here, but this @#$%^&*! software makes the following nonsense necessary:
http colon slash slash www dot bigheadpress dot com slash lneilsmith slash question mark page dot id equals 396
Or just go to my novel _Ceres_ on this website and find the little story at the end of the big book.
There are some nice restaurants in DC. Don’t know if decorating the city like Thor’s temple doesn’t count as violation of First Amendment.
So let’s do it right. Cut a blood eagle on the bastards!!:)
Now, now. No religious connotations should ever be accorded.
Besides, considering the crimes of those most deserving of being hauled up and made fast, the notion of sending them to ANY sort of afterlife - and the fates eternal they’ve earned for themselves in the eyes of the religiously inclined - would simply be a needless cruelty.
You don’t torture vermin. You exterminate ‘em.
I have green eyes and excellent night vision.
vermin are for playing with before you kill them
umrow.
Hum… I put it in both as an HTML coded link and just as the naked URL and it made ‘em both a link. I dono….
http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?page_id=396
Copy above by highlighting and using ctrl+c claw.
paste to address bar with ctrl+v claw.
if necessary press enter.
sheesh.
NOPE!! I stand with my assessment of the final solution to Wash-Deec…… NUKE-EM!! NUKE’EM NOW!! Fuck theme parks, auto-animatronics, rides, or whatever. If some enterprising entrepeneur wants to RE-CREATE it on private property elsewhere, fine by me! But if we fail to nuke it flat, then salt the ruins, then cover the entire thing with lovely fresh clean manure, we will deserve the return of M-O-P. I’m done bein’ tolerant. Remember: “Those who fail to destroy politics and politicians are doomed to have them again and again!” (Neale Osborn, 7-19-2011)
And another quote from the living room of the Maha-Neilie, by Neale Osborn, sometime in the early ’90s- “The government which governs best is the one which leaves us the fuck alone- and the one that will leave us the MOST fuck alone is NO FUCKING GOVERNMENT AT ALL!”
Covering radioactive ruins with “lovely fresh clean manure” is hardly what I’d call remediative, Neale.
At the very least, I’d insist on a good, thick layer of boulder gravel, atop which would be spread an even thicker layer of finer stuff (pea gravel for choice, I guess), then a layer of coarse sand, and THEN an admixture of topsoil and fresh manure, suitably seeded with quick-growing grass - contractor’s mix, though it ain’t pretty - to minimize erosion.
Contour for drainage as desired, sticking in trees and shrubbery (”We are the knights who say Ni!”) as might seem esthetically pleasing.
Those with practical landscaping experience are requested to correct and extend as warranted, please.
Hm. On second thought, would it be better to put down a good thick layer of thoroughly non-porous clay before beginning the boulder gravel deposition?
Treating Mordor-on-the-Potomac like a landfill at the end of its usefulness has a certain poetic appropriateness, don’t it?
For that matter, why bother with a nuke? One big bomb isn’t going to knock down EVERYTHING inside the Beltway, and we’ll still have to run a fleet of D9 and D10 bulldozers (or the equivalents) to level the buildings, with rippers to tear up all that pavement.
There’s all that Army Corps of Engineers equipment that’s just gonna get left to rust when the FedGov is abolished. Let it be offered to whichever operators are willing to tear off a chunk of the District of Columbia and turn it into nascent parkland.
Think “sweat equity.”
What? Isn’t anybody else fond of Leslie Fish’s *The Digwell Carroll*?
“Pile high, pile high, the devil’s underground.
“Pile high, pile high, keep the devil down.”
Fair enough, Richard, but all the denizens of DC MUST be used as fertilizer, or I insist on the nuke first!!!
but the poor innocent rats (real rats, sprecies rattus rattus) and mice, It;s not their fault they have to share the city with politicians and bureaucrats.
Neale, it is ill-advised to employ toxic waste as fertilizer without thorough treatment.
Besides, would YOU want to bring your family to picnic on a patch of parkland into which has been invested anything of the physical remains of “Barry” Soebarkah?
Talk about a buzz-kill!
I’m calling for cremation of what’s left after the lynchings, with the disposal of the remnants in the deepest subduction zone at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Let the planet do the recycling.
Albert, fuhgeddabout the specimens of Rattus rattus presently occupying the species’ niche in Mordor-on-the-Potomac. They will scamper and survive as always, and will serve even more ecologically beneficial roles in the cleansed and otherwise remediated realm to be made of Hamilton’s Hell-Hole.
If Neale can’t get over his fission-bomb fixation, we may even see mutated strains appearing, large and slavering and mete for the attentions of the increased numbers of Americans interested in hunting them as varmints - heck, maybe even big game - in those convenient parklands.
Gotta build lots of inconspicuous but adequate berms ’round the periphery as bullet-stop if we’re gonna keep that in mind.
Well, I really hate to give up the radioactive solution, but……. That target range DOES sound pretty good, as well! But as to picnicking on the remains of Barry, well that sounds like an excellent place to picnic. And my kids would agree!
Here’s an old joke which I got from where I posted it at military-quotes.com
An old cowboy sat down at the Starbucks and ordered a cup of coffee. As he sat sipping his coffee, a young woman sat down next to him.
She turned to the cowboy and asked, ‘Are you a real cowboy?’
He replied, ‘Well, I’ve spent my whole life breaking colts, working cows, going to rodeos, fixing fences, pulling calves, bailing hay, doctoring calves, cleaning my barn, fixing flats, working on tractors, and feeding my dogs, so I guess I am a cowboy.’
She said, ‘I’m a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women When I shower, I think about women. When I watch TV, I think about women. I even think about women when I eat. It seems that everything makes me think of women.’
The two sat sipping in silence.
A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the old cowboy and asked, ‘Are you a real cowboy?’
He replied, ‘I always thought I was, but I just found out that I’m a lesbian.’
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Much as I like the idea of DC under a mushroom cloud, do have some pity for those of us likely to be under the fallout plume.
And, yes, CAPTCHAS have gotten harder to read because automated systems have become capable of decoding the old ones.
http://www.ckuunderwear.com/