Page 160 - SPEEDHORSE April 2018

Ronald Mason with Chicaro Bill, the sire of Bill Doolin (out of Little Peach by Beggar Boy TB and out of Peaches 1 by Oklahoma Star),
at the Hepler Ranch.
The Man On The Hill
Part II
Stars And Beggars
by Lyn Jank
Recap of Part 1: Ronald S. “Ron” Mason, going on ninety-one, lives with his wife, Monett, in a white house on a hill overlooking the golf course west of Nowata, Oklahoma. Seventy-two years ago, he was hoeing corn in Nowata for fifty cents a day and already dreaming of breeding good horses.
By 1919, Ron Mason was buying and selling oil leases for Sinclair Oil Company in North Texas and Oklahoma. In 1928, he negotiated a lease purchase by Clarence W. Wright, Vice President and Director of Sunray Oil DX. Wright’s purchase marked Sunray’s entry into bigtime production. It also marked Ron Mason’s entry into the horse business. His commission on the deal would boost his bank account considerably.
Mason acquired some acres in the Redlands in the Osage Hills in Northeastern Oklahoma between Nowata and Bartlesville. He was thirty-nine when he and his family settled there, on the cusp of the Great Depression, in 1929. The Masons lived without plumbing or electricity, their only water supply was a small well. Mason christened the spread The Cross J Ranch and developed it into a 4,000-acre equine empire. As a lighthouse is to sailors at sea, so was the Cross J to horsemen coast to coast and beyond.
“Fighting wasn’t what I
really wanted to do.” - For a while, Ronald Mason fought professionally and is shown here in his boxing pose. “They say I had a good left jab.”
Cross J horses were bred for balance, speed and intelligence, each quality given equal weight in value. Cross J horses were tough, with
a turn of speed, kind dispositions and a dash
of class, whether they were rodeo dustslingers
or speedsters that lifted dust on straightaways
or purplebreds that quivered a bit if dust or anything silly like that dared to land upon them.
The day would come when top rodeo cowboys would contract for a Cross J foal
yet unborn. One of the early greats that drew everlasting attention from ropers was Old Baldy (Old Red Buck-Babe Dawson).
“Baldy was a yearling when I got him from John Dawson in Talala. He went on to be the number one calf-roping horse in the whole country. He was Number One. I personally broke Old Baldy, then Ike Rude trained him, and Ike, being a rodeo great, knew what was in Old Baldy. Baldy was three when Ike bought him, and they just went on from there,” said Ron Mason.
Old Baldy had long been a hero in the ranks of every cowboy that swung a rope when he was forced to call upon the full measure of his courage. He was badly burned in a trailer fire that broke out while Ike and Junior Caldwell were hauling the gelding to a rodeo. They had a gun, and their first thoughts were to put Baldy down to free him of the pain. Neither brother, however, could pull the trigger. Instead, they rushed Baldy to the nearest vet.
It took Old Baldy nine months to recuperate. The extensive, deep scars on his left fore earned him a nickname when he returned to the roping arena: Ol’ Burnt Leg. Baldy slung his arena dust for many more years. After he was retired, he would return to the arena occasionally to give calf-roping demonstrations. He conducted a
few of those classes as late as 1953, when he was twenty-three years old. Baldy died of old age. He lived the last years of his life under the devoted ownership of another rodeo great, Troy Fort.
The trademarks of Cross J Quarter Horses were many. Some that Mason especially favored: deep chest generously forked-up; no-nonsense rib cages, short pasterns and, above all, thin, flat, hard bones and long, strong hips. The Cross J stud was firmly laid on the foundation of the Cold Deck strain, with strong measures of the Cold Deck influence coming in through John Dawson horses such as Old Red Buck and his mother Babe Dawson.
By 1932, Mason was marked as an expert “horse picker” in the Redlands. Then horsemen’s faith in him was a bit shaken when he introduced the stallion he believed would become the chief Quarter Horse reference sire of Cross J rodeo
and speed horses: Oklahoma Star. Mason bought the mahogany bay with the star and left hind sock out of a calf lot in 1932. Horsemen had no argument about Star’s worth. He had remained poison to most contenders on straightaways for more than a dozen years. Many of his offspring were demonstrating their skills in the rodeo and
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