TRAINING MULES and handling people bear some commonalities, which may be why Lipscomb County Sheriff James Robertson has been able to combine the two vocations. Robertson learned mule-training from his father, and has spent much of his life working with young horses and stock dogs, as well. His law enforcement duties have prevented him from training new mule teams lately, but he still fits horses, dogs and cattle into his schedule.

Panhandle Sheriff Spent Most
Of His Life Training Animals

By David Bowser

HIGGINS, Texas — Rolling down North French Street, James Robertson hollers "Tiny," and the team of mules pulling the wagon turns left behind Perk's Fina Station. Robertson yells "Buster," and the two 1700-pound mules arc to the right into the parking lot.

James Robertson is the tall, lanky sheriff of Lipscomb County with a cowboy sense of humor, but he's spent most of his life training horses. For the past 20 years, he's also trained mule teams.

He used to have two teams, Buster and Tiny and Mick and Pete, but Mick died last year. Pete hangs out with Buster and Tiny now.

Robertson, the teams and the wagon have been in parades and taken the homecoming court around the Higgins football field at halftime. But the teams aren't just a hobby. They're for work.

Robertson uses them to pull the wagon when he feeds his cattle. In the winter of 1992, he used a sled. He was the only one who could get around.

"We had 64 inches of snow here," he says. "There for a week or 10 days, I was the only one who could feed cattle."

Robertson learned to use a team from his father, but he started out training horses.

"I was 13 years old the first time I rode a horse for pay," says the Higgins native.

Robertson's grandfather homesteaded five and a half miles southeast of Higgins in what is now Oklahoma.

"It was Indian Territory then," Robertson says. "My Dad was born on that place in an old dugout."

His father, Nels Robertson, was born the spring before Oklahoma became a state.

"He never owned a tractor in his life," Robertson notes.

By the time Robertson was 14, Verner Parker, who raised Quarter horses south of nearby Follett, Texas, hired the teenager to ride colts for him.

"I had ridden some for Art Maggard, Dale Page and some other guys around Higgins," Robertson explains. "I started riding Parker's colts for the rest of my time at home, 'til I got out of high school."

From high school, Robertson headed to Kansas in the spring of 1970.

"I went to work for Wayne Minnix up there," Robertson says. "I was 18 when I went to work for him, and I had my own idea about how to handle things."

One day, however, Robertson was thrown and knocked out. Minnix brought him around.

"He helped me sit up on an old feed bunk," Robertson recalls. "Then he looked at me and said, 'You've got some pretty good ideas, they just don't work.'"

Robertson says he learned a lot from Minnix about the horse business.

"He'd give some money for a horse and bring him out to the ranch," Robertson says. "Maybe I wouldn't be able to ride him, so he'd just load him up and take him off, take maybe half of what he gave for him."

They were sitting around the kitchen table one night when Robertson asked him how he could afford to do that.

Minnix finished rolling his cigarette and told him it didn't matter how much the ticket cost — if he was on the wrong train, he needed to get off!

Another time, a horse bucked off with Robertson into an in-ground silo.

"It was 14 feet off the side," he says. "I survived it and the horse survived it, but I was young and I thought the world had come to an end. I was thinking things before we went off the edge that you should never be thinking right before you die."

Minnix walked over the edge and looked down at Robertson and his horse. Robertson looked up and asked, "How am I going to get him out of here?"

"You rode him in," Minnix snorted. "Ride him out."

That summer, Robertson also became acquainted with a young lady.

"I thought she was the grandest thing in the world," he says. "It took a couple of months to get her to go out with me."

But after two or three dates, Robertson was drafted.

"I'm not sure if her dad had anything to do with that or not," he grins.

In the army, Robertson was assigned to a military police unit. After two years as an MP, he came back to Kansas and married Carmen, the girl he left behind.

Robertson rode horses for Minnix for another year, then rode horses for another horse trainer in Kansas, Billy Allen.

"He's the one who got me into showing them," Robertson says.

After that, he rode horses for Jerry Gigot in Garden City, Kan.

"While we were there, we were real successful," Robertson remembers.

It was in Kansas, through a strange twist of fate, that Robertson resumed his law enforcement career.

"I got into a fight one night with my neighbor," he says.

Robertson had moved to Scott City, Kan., after he got out of the army and was living in a duplex. He came home one night to find his neighbor and wife fighting on the front porch. Their baby was lying on the sidewalk in the cold night air, so Robertson picked up the infant to take it inside. The neighbor turned on him. Robertson found himself in the middle of a domestic quarrel not of his making when the local sheriff showed up.

"I got acquainted with the sheriff there that night," Robertson says. "His name is Alan Stewart, and he's still the sheriff there to this day."

Robertson met Stewart again when the sheriff came by looking for the neighbor, who had decided to leave town.

It was a few months later, after Robertson had gotten married, that Sheriff Stewart came by the house and wanted to know if Robertson would go to work for him.

"I said, 'Naw, I'm a horse trainer, not a cop,'" Robertson says.

Stewart continued to talk, and offered Robertson a deal.

"I don't even remember what it was now," Robertson grins, "but I remember thinking, 'Holy Cow, that's a lot of money for just a 40-hour week.'"

That was 1974. When Robertson was elected Lipscomb County sheriff in 1996, Stewart was one of the first to call and congratulate him.

It was 1980 when Robertson and his bride moved to Higgins.

After they moved, the oil boom went bust and wrecked the horse business. Robertson started breaking teams with the help of his father.

"We've got pictures of my dad when he was 84 with four head of mules, sowing oats there where we live now," Robertson says.

Robertson still raises hay in that field. He still uses a team to plow it, plant it and cut it. It takes about four days with a team of mules to plow that 12 acres.

There are some tricks to training teams, he admits.

"I'd never have been able to do it without my dad," he says.

Robertson still experimented, though.

"I was young and impetuous," he admits. "I had to learn by wrecking a lot of things."

He recalls the time he had three mules on a three-horse plow.

"It was a 16-inch, one-bottom turning plow," he recalls.

Robertson had heard old-timers talking about teams that would try to run off and the farmer would just stick the plow into the ground and stop them.

Of the three head in harness, one started bucking, he says. It scared the others, and they ran off.

"I was just sitting there on this little seat," he says. "There's no tongue on this plow. I thought 'This is no problem. I'll just sock that plow in the ground a little deeper.'"

He quickly found out that a plow, if it's in the ground, won't stay in the ground at 40 miles an hour, and if it's not, it won't take ground at that speed.

"I like to have tore my head off," he says, wincing at the memory of that day. "When I came to, I had to hunt my mules, and we never found all the harness. That plow's still sitting there all beat up."

His dad just laughed and told him he should have known better than to try to stick the plow in the ground traveling that fast.

"I didn't know any better then, but I do now," Robertson grins.

Robertson continued to train and show horses after moving to Higgins.

"When I was showing horses, reining, heading and heeling, calf roping, working cow horses, those were my specialties," he says. "I showed western pleasure, but I didn't enjoy it much."

When his kids got old enough and busy with school activities and couldn't go with him to the horse shows, Robertson had to go by himself.

"I hated that," he says. "I quit showing."

That freed up some time, so he started taking care of cattle. But he was also allowed to use the cattle to train his dogs.

"It's been a boon for them and for us," he says.

Now that he's the sheriff, he only takes care of about a third of the number he used to.

"We'll have somewhere between 450 and 500 head of yearlings, my daughter and I," he says.

And he takes care of them using a team and a wagon.

Today, Robertson still trains a few colts for friends, and he trains cow dogs and uses them with his yearlings. No teams lately, however.

"I haven't had any teams to break since I've been sheriff because of the time involved," he says.

He explained that the teams need to be used all day or not at all.

"It's not like running out and saddling a horse and playing with it for an hour or two," he says.

A team is different, he maintains.

"A lot of people have trouble with teams," Robertson says. "If you see one or two men holding a team while another one hooks them up, don't get in that wagon."

A good team is gentle, Robertson says, hands up a cup of coffee from Perk's, then climbs in the wagon. The iron wheels roll forward without a jerk as Buster and Tiny start out of Perk's parking lot and down U.S. 60 toward home.

"They're gentle," Robertson says of the 13 year-old mules in front of him. "They trust people, and that's the way we want it. Most people want to handle animals by overpowering them. We never do that.

"Anytime somebody's standing there talking about that stupid cow, that stupid mule, that stupid dog or that stupid horse, that guy's been outfoxed by that animal a few times."

He says that even the stock dogs they use will curl up at the foot of his daughter's bed at night to sleep.

"They love it there," Robertson says. "They won't quit you when the going gets tough."

Robertson is proud of his kids and is happy that his children grew up learning about horses, cattle, dogs and mules.

"I've got the only 15 year-old girl anywhere in the Texas Panhandle who can harness four head of mules and know what to do with them when she gets done," he says.

Robertson admits there's not much demand today for people who can handle teams of mules, but the lesson goes deeper than that.

"My kids know how to work, how to think and how to stay with a task until it's completed," he says. "There's not many kids today who know that."

They've also learned to respect the animals they work with.

In the horse lot is an old buckskin that Robertson used to rope off of. The horse is close to 25 years old.

"He fed my family for the first seven or eight years we were married," Robertson explains. "I figure I can take care of him in his old age."