By Jack M. Willis
Journal Correspondent

Continuing our tales of man's unequal association with mules - Needless to say, the mules always won.

Younger Stewart : Younger Stewart, about three miles west of Robeline, La. on Hwy. 6. in Natchitoches Parish. His place is marked by a well-known sigh proclaiming NO HOPE RANCH--SCRUB COWS & BITTER WEEDS.

He's 88 years young this year, and proudly tells people he's not older, he's Younger. His father was a tie-hacker by trade, and his other calling in life was that of a horse and mule trader and once upon a time he traded a stack of ties for a young jack mule over near Many one time, and the mule was so well trained that Younger said, "We like to have worked him to death, because you could work him with out a bridle and he'd work all day just on voice commands." But, he intoned, "He was the most peculiar mule I ever had any dealing with."

The Stewarts would always do the spring plowing, planting, cultivation and lay-by with him. They fed him and the other three mules morning and night, but this particular young mule would start pawing in front of his stall door every morning at daylight until he was fed. Some times Younger said if you were the least bit late bringing him his morning feed, he'd have a hole six inches deep pawed out in the hard clay floor of the stable by the time they finally got there with the feed.

After making a day with him, and giving him his evening feed, he'd eat, and be turned out with the rest of horses and mules to get a drink of water and spend the night. This particular enclosure where they kept the various draft animals had seven different gates leading into it, for one reason or another and every evening after the little mule would drink his fill, he would go check every gate to see it he could get out. If they weren't tied shut with barbed wire, he'd get out and roam all night, and no telling where they'd finally find him next morning.

The Stewarts farmed land on both sides of a creek, and were always taking him back and forth from one field to the other across this little, narrow highway bridge, and one night they failed to check all the gates, and the mule got out. Younger said, "About eight o'clock that night here come a ton-and a-half truck loaded with scrap iron, and that little mule was a-crossing that bridge, but the driver had up a head of steam, and that truck couldn't stop. He hit that little mule so hard it knocked his carcass plumb over the bridge railing. I guess he wuz dead before he hit the creek bottom."

Jesse Coleman: Mr. Jesse Coleman lived out on a segment of the old Harrisonburg to Natchitoches Road, near the Routon community, east of Jena, LA where he farmed and drove a school bus. I'd been knowing Mr. Jesse for a while because he would come pick me up in the afternoons and take me out to his bus to get me out of my mother's first-grade classroom where she taught.

My Dad and I went to a wake one night where he and some other older gentlemen were sitting up. The conversation got around to tales about panthers.

Mr. Jesse got him a fresh chaw, took the floor, and began telling about a little mule he had owned one time, that he claimed was the only mule he ever saw that had any sense. Mr. Jesse swore that night that there wasn't any chore that mule couldn't or wouldn't do. He recounted, "Why, I could hook him up to a buggy, surrey, wagon, slide-you name it and he'd pull it! He'd plow, you could ride him, he was bomb proof-you could shoot a gun off of him, and I never had a minute's trouble out of him."

He said, "I hardly ever rode him but he could out-single foot any horse, and he could maintain that difficult gait without getting tired. One particular day my cousin wanted to borrow my "using" horse one weekend so I said O.K. That left me to go courting on Saturday night on my mule, but I didn't care, he was gaited so good. Well, I stayed a tad late at "sweet thang's" house, and the moon was high, and it was almost like daylight when I left her house about midnight. I was about half asleep in the saddle and the little mule was trotting along easy like, when all of a sudden for no reason at all, the hair on my neck stood right straight up, and I thought to myself, what in the world is going on? I happened to turn around and look behind the mule, and there was a big panther slinking along behind my mule trying to get within jumping distance. About that time that little mule must have got a whiff of that cat and I didn't even have time to put the spurs to her, and she must have jumped about twenty feet ahead the first leap, and every time her front feet would hit the ground, she'd squeal. We weren't but about a half-mile from our house, and when I got to the front fence she sailed over it just like an English jumper. I bailed off on the front porch and she kept going over the yard fence and galloped out of sight. Well, I went on to bed, and she finally came up about ten o'clock the next morning trailing her reins. When I got to looking her over she had about six scratches on her haunches from that big cat's claws. When he'd strike her that was what was causing her to squeal the night before, and was I ever glad I was riding her, because she ran faster than anything in the parish that night."

Back