One spring morning, me and my son Dalton were out checking pastures. We went by my neighbor’s and I saw his wife out with their stock trailer gate open. I told Dalton they must have some cows they can’t catch and they will probably be calling us soon.
We went and checked another pasture and, sure enough, he did call me.
He asked, “Bo, do you have your dogs with you?” I told him, “No, but I have my son.”
He said he had one old brahma cow he couldn’t get to come out of the brush.
Dalton and I went over to look. We went through a pasture so rough and thick you couldn’t throw a hatchet through it. There were old railroad fences, bodark trees, black jacks and horse flies as big as your thumb. There was a creek running right through the middle of it.
We got back to the west side of the pasture and got a glimpse of her from about 50 yards away … then she was gone.
We came back out and met up with Jim and told him we would have to come back.
A couple of weeks later he calls and says, “I need you to come help me Sunday morning. I know you go to church but I will pick you up at daylight and have you back in time to go to church.” He told me he called some of our friends, Gerald and Bill, and asked them to bring their dogs.
We all got there and greeted each other, then rode for an hour to an hour and a half with the dogs tracking and trailing. We came to the creek right at the opening and I saw her tracks. The tracks were so fresh they still had bubble in them. I told the others she was close.
Sure enough, we went to the left and found her lying down, hiding like a deer. She jumped and ran with dogs hanging on her until she got back to the county road in a bodark thicket.
Gerald went in with the dogs and back and forth they went. They would bay her a while and she would run a while. Finally she popped out behind me. I was waiting for her to do that. When I turned to run toward her I saw that Jim was heading towards her with his loop up. I headed for him and he saw me coming, so he pulled up and let me rope her.
Bill rode in and heeled her and Gerald and I got off and tied her feet. While I was standing there with the dogs barking and all the punchers telling different stories about the race, time and sound stopped.
I looked into her big brown eye and God spoke to me and said, “That was you, Bo. You were running from Me and hiding in dark places in the daytime, drinking that old bad water, until I sent the right people to get you.”
All the sound and time came back. I heard the dogs barking and the punchers talking and I realized that I was the same as the cow. I, like the cow, thought I was in a good place. I didn’t realize God was only trying to save me from myself, just like we were trying to save this cow.
My best friend, Curt Krigbaum, wrote a song titled “Day of Redemption” about it. We all think we know where we want to be and think that where we are is where we should be, but it takes God’s voice to tell us where He wants us to be. Always listen to that still, small voice.