Johnny and The Tornado

   Johnny and the Tornado 

   by

    Paige Baize 

We were riding for the Shannon Ranch down at Big Lake. We threw a pretty good sized herd together there at the headquarters. Johnny Ferguson, the manager, was in the herd.  I don’t remember exactly, but he was probably cutting drys. It was kind of a stormy day in the spring and it was thundering and lightening and doing a lot of rumbling. Johnny wasn’t paying any attention to the weather. He just kept on working the herd. All of a sudden, I looked back there to the southwest and there was a tornado that had dropped down out of the clouds. It looked like it was probably over there by the Lower Draw Pasture.

You aren’t supposed to talk when you are holding herd around a working, but I said, “Johnny there is a tornado over yonder.” He stopped and he was riding a horse called Little Bill, pulled that horse up, and sat there watching that tornado. He said, “Yep, it sure is, but I believe it is going the other way”, and he went right back to work. They said that tornado did a little bit of damage over there by Ozona, but it sure didn’t stop our working.