Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1896 — CURING THE RAM OF BUTTING. [ARTICLE]

CURING THE RAM OF BUTTING.

He Preferred Women. So Had a Log in Skirts to Experiment Upon. Jim McCue, rancher, politician, philosopher and horse doctor, walked on the ferryboat with a crutch the other day. He also had an arm in a sling and his head bandaged. “What’s the matter, Jim?” inquired two or three acquaintances. “I’ll bet any man in the crowd S2O he can butt harder and longer than any ram or billygoat in the State,” responded dim somewhat irrelevantly. “But I guess I’ve broke him off it.” “You look as if you had been broken some yourself,” suggested one. “Well, to tell the truth, I did get jammed around a little. I’ve been breaking a ram of the butting habit. This ram was raised a pet, and that’s what makes him so sassy. He knows who to tackle, too. He won’t touch a man, because he knows he’d get a fence rail frazzled out over his head; but a woman he will butt clear over into the next pasture. “The other morning this ram jolted a lady friend of mine clear across a field and through a picket fence, and I thought it was about time to clear him of the habit. I put on an old calico dress, tied on an old sunbonnet, and, concealing a sledge hammer under my apron, sauntered down through the field. The minute the ram saw me he dropped all the business he had on hand and came over to have some fun with me. He squared bff, shook his head, and made a run for me. When I stepped to one side to get a good swing at” him, the blamed old dress tripped me and I fell down. I started to get up, but that blamed old ram was behind me, and I turned two somersaults before I hit the ground again. I didn’t stand any chance at all. He just kept lifting me until he got me against the fence, then backed off and hit me another crack, and then another and another, till I thought he’d broken every rib in my body. Finally he jammed me clear through under the bottom rail, and I managed to crawl to the house. But I got even this morning. I had the hired man take a green oak log, dress it up in women’s clothes, and set it to swinging from a limb. That buck lost a horn tho first time he hit it, and it wasn’t long till the second went the same way. When I left him he was meeting it half way every time it swung back at him. and I wouldn’t wonder if he is worn down pretty close to the tail by this time.”