Goats on the Piney

Graves wrote about seeing them on the Brazos River on page 57....

"Goats, wild as deer…The herds of them mushroomed with the grassless drought and the Japanese market for mohair. Cattle went gaunt and were sold off, even cherished private herd-strains built up through forty years, but the Angoras stayed healthy on the tough bitter leaves of the oak brush. They are little trouble to own. If the screw worms eat one up, you are only out five dollars, and if he lives his hair pays that much every year. Some say they ruin land; some say not; I don’t know. They have yellow, wise, evil eyes, but also a self-sufficiency that I like and that our present blocky kinds of beef cattle have lost. Kowf! one says, reading your presence on the wind, and the whole bright hair-haloed herd goes twinkling off into the brush on sure legs."

We started up the bluff to catch this one for Greenfield’s initiation but she went twinkling off into the brush on sure legs.