Page 106 - Speedhorse March 2018

I heard that. I had two hundred dollars cash in my pocket and asked if she’d take it and I’d come back with the rest the next day.
“That’s how I got Beggar Boy.
“That was one time when the Texans were just a little slow on trigger.
“There’s the picture of a horse here on my wall that I’d never let anybody take away. I guess he went as far as anything walking to show what a Star-Beggar cross could do, but you can’t leave his sire, Chicaro Bill, out of it, either.
“I bred that horse in that picture on the wall. I bred his mother and his maternal grandmother. His grandmother was Peaches by Oklahoma Star out of J4. J4 was this mare I got from Will Rogers’ nephew, Herb McSpadden. J4 was by Old Red Buck out of a bay mare by Red Man.
“Then I bred Peaches to Beggar Boy and got a black filly with a slanting star. When she was full-grown, she was 14.2 and weighed around 950. I named her Beggar’s Peaches. Her name went onto the list of all-time leading producers in AQHA, and it’s still there.
(Beggar’s Peaches is “Little Peach” on AQHA books.)
“I honestly don’t remember if it was before or after I acquired Chicaro Bill, but I bred Beggar’s Peaches to Chicaro Bill and got Bill Doolin in 1944.
“Bill Doolin was as good an example of one hundred percent TRY as has ever breathed air. A lot of good men wound up going soft over Bill Doolin – I hear that he turned Bill Hedge’s life around, in fact.
“Bill Doolin wasn’t just as racehorse, he was some sire and some maternal grandsire. One of his daughters, Monett Mason, named after my wife, is a leading producer in AQHA computers.
“That horse in the picture there on my wall – Bill Doolin – they say he was lucky because after I sold him, all the owners he had were good to him. Luck didn’t have anything to do with it. You get what you give in this life, and Bill Doolin got his.
“. . . I’ve always said that anybody that got past the age of eighty oughta be knocked in the head. But I’m still here. A long time ago, I almost went into professional boxing. They say I had a good left jab. I’d be willing to try and prove I had it if anybody came up to me and said anything unkind about Bill Doolin.
“I was full of fire when I bought the 240 acres back in ’29, and by the early thirties, I was into breeding horses like I wanted to be. People start associating me with horses about that time, but breeding good horses was something I always wanted to do. It just took me a while to get down to it.”
In 1896, Ron was five years old and still living in the state where he was born, Ohio. His grandfather was a doctor who depended
on a horse and buggy team to make housecalls in emergency situations or otherwise. He demanded the best of horses.
“My grandfather had a measuring stick behind his eyes. He could have taken one look at a horse, then gone off, made a skin-tight coat, and it would have been a perfect fit on the horse. It was through him that I first learned the difference between horse and HORSE.”
In 1905, when Ron was fourteen, his father was in financial trouble and took a longshot. He hauled his family south to the settlement of Nowata in Indian Territory to begin a new life.
“My father set up an abstract company in Nowata, handling court records and documents, things like that. He built himself back up
again, and we fared pretty well. I had a brother, Charlie, that I loved a lot. He was sorta the family pet. Down the line, he took a little financial help from our parents, and Charlie ended up being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma. As for me, I never asked for a dime from anybody.”
Ron finished high school in Nowata in 1907, the year that Oklahoma became the 45th state in the union. By then, he was somewhat of a scrapper who seldom began a fight but
had the reputation of putting an abrupt ending to one, in his favor. For a while, he fought professionally and was gaining a name for himself among the pros when he made the decision to hang up his gloves.
“Fighting wasn’t really what I wanted to do.”
By 1909, Ron was hoeing corn for fifty cents a day in Nowata. He eventually migrated to East Texas and hired on with an oil company, dressing tools. His daily wages skyrocketed
from fifty cents to eight dollars. By 1919, he had progressed from dressing tools in East Texas to buying and selling oil leases for Sinclair Oil Company in North Texas. He remained in that pursuit on a fulltime basis until 1928. During that period, his path crossed those made by two other men. One was Langford Shaw, who also bought and sold leases.
“We became lifetime friends. I named my first son after Langford. He was never involved in horses with me in any way, but I wouldn’t want this story written without mentioning his name.”
The other man whose trail crossed Ron’s was Clarence W. Wright, a self-made man who had entered the business world while still in his teens.
“I started out hoeing corn, and he started out with a steam popcorn machine. How about that . . .”
At the time Ron Mason and Clarence Wright met, Wright was an original investor in the petroleum company, Sunray DX, and was a director and vice president of the company. Sunray had been in operation for several years, but not on a bigtime basis. Then in 1928,
Ron came across some property north of the Canadian River.
“It could be had for one million flat, no small sum in those days. It was ripe, just right for Sunray. So, I called Clarence Wright and told him I wasn’t asking, I was telling him he had to buy it. He did.”
Ron’s commission on the $1 million deal was 5%. It was confirmed in writing in the springtime of 1928.
“Right after that, I went looking for land of my own and found the 240 acres. I was living in Tulsa at the time. Clarence Wright wanted me to stay in oil, and if I had, I could’ve been a millionaire, I guess, like he turned out to be. But I finally had the money to get into horses, and my mind was made up that that’s what I was going to do.
“Clarence Wright and I never lost touch with each other. The lease I negotiated for him turned Sunray from a fledgling into a big bird in oil, and Wright never failed to tell me so. So, I guess that lease north of the Canadian River turned both our lives around.”
Sunray DX, after drilling successfully ahead for many years, was finally purchased by Sun Oil. One of the last personal letters Wright penned before his death was a warm note to Ron Mason, who keeps that note, along with correspondence from Langford Shaw, also deceased, in a special scrapbook. In that same scrapbook, there is a section devoted to another individual – a lengthy photo layout showing
a big range horse in various poses. Cutlines in Ron’s script: “Big Red.” “Big Red, My Using Horse.” And one, with Ron aboard – “Big Red and Me.” On and on, one man’s tribute to the horse that was friend and transportation during the heyday of the Cross J.
Big Red descended from the family of Blake Horses, as did many mares that can be considered among the foundation mares of
the Cross J. The Blake Horses were bred to the ideal standards of their breeder, Coke Blake, of Pryor, Oklahoma. Around 1878, Coke Blake first glimpsed a dark sorrel in the land of the Daltons, Younger and James brothers. The owner of this fast horse, Foss Barker, tacked up a special sign wherever the sorrel was stalled – “Cold Deck Against the World.”
It was Cold Deck’s destiny to live and breed and race in the midwest and southwest when hell and lies were raised every day. Whether he was by Steel Dust or by Steel Dust’s son, Old Billy, is anyone’s guess. His mother was Maudy by Bay Cold Deck by Hamburg Dick by Printer I by Janus II by the imported Janus, if common accord among Quarter Horse historians can be considered unerrant.
Cold Deck sired many fast sons and daughters. Four of his sons – Diamond Deck, Grey Cold Deck, Printer II and Berry’s Cold
104 SPEEDHORSE, March 2018
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM MAY 1981 ISSUE