March 15, 2021 - Back in the mid-fifties I often visited my brother John who lived with his wife’s parents in Huxley, Texas that lived up the hill from Harris Branch. This little Branch and the nearby Bayou Seipe flow eventually into the Sabine River. John’s in-laws (The Furlows) had cows that often crossed the road in front of their house and wandered to the creeks and sometimes the Sabine River.
I planned to meet John one Saturday for a Harris Branch squirrel hunt. When I drove up, his wife Shirley was standing in the road. She tearfully told me us that John had left on horseback hours ago to look for a missing cow. “I’m afraid something has happened to him,” she cried. About that time, we heard a noise coming from the woods and suddenly John’s horse exploded running at full speed. In a moment of panic, I raced about fifty yards into the woods, and I came face to face with John. He was wet and at the point of exhaustion. “I knew what Shirley would think when my horse came up without me,” he gasped. “I was swimming a cow across Bayou Seipe when my horse jumped up, threw me off, and headed home before I could reach the bank.” A happy and relieved Shirley ran to meet us as we returned from the woods.
That all happened in 1956 and I have analyzed that story many times. The compassion of Shirley, John and me was all evident. Shirley wept for him, my running to him showed my feelings and John showed his feelings for others by trying to keep us from worrying. The only one of that story that thought only of himself … was John’s horse.
