An article in a recent equine publication mentioned an incident involving buffalo, a young Bill Freeman and Buster Welch. At the time, Welch and Freeman’s father, Shorty, were already cutting horse legends. Bill, who passed away this past July at 58, had not yet committed to a career as a trainer. The article drew on Welch’s memories, which I had written about in a much earlier article for the Cutting Horse Chatter. What follows, however, is the story as told to me by Bill Freeman in 1995. Bill was a great storyteller and this is his version, word-for-word:

After I graduated from high school, I was working at the Boyd Ranch for Buster and my father. My dad and Greg (Buster’s son) and I were the only people out there. Buster was actually living at Roscoe (Texas) at the 18 Ranch and just coming in periodically.

When we would go in for lunch every afternoon, we’d always lie down and take a nap. I was terrible about leaving the front door open or any door that I walked through. Greg was bad, but I was worse.

Buster had about 20 head of buffalo on the place and those danged things went anywhere and everywhere they wanted to go. He kept badgering us. “You need to shut the doors. These danged buffalo are going to get in the house and tear it up.”

We said, “Okay, okay.”

Unbeknownst to me, he had a couple of those buffalo butchered and their heads mounted, and one afternoon he came sneaking in and wakes me up and says, “Listen, you slip out the back way. You left the door open and the buffalo are in the house. Go around the front and open the door and I’ll try to ease them out.”

So here I go. Of course, I’m in nothing but my underwear. I open the door and slip back around the side of the house and I wait and wait. And there was nothing. No sounds, no buffalo, no nothing.

So I ease up to the front door and I peek down the hallway. Well, I don’t hear anything or see anything. So I say, “Buster. Buster.”

No noise, no Buster. So I start to ease down the hallway and just as I get halfway down there, I see this buffalo head. So I backtrack and get out of the house and sit and wait. Still nothing.

So I ease back down the hallway. “Buster. Buster.”

I get nearly down to the end of the hallway and here he came. Of course, all I could see was the buffalo head and he snorts just like an old buffalo and I’m gone. I go plumb through the yard and across the gravel in the parking lot out front. When I finally look back, Buster’s in the front yard just whipping himself.

The funny thing about it, as naive and as dumb as I was, he could have set the whole thing up again. I actually thought I felt hot breathe on my rear.