Slain rancher's cattle sold

The crowd was a little larger than usual at the Tahlequah Sale Barn Saturday. Several people came just to see one of their good friends’ cattle sell. Charlie Kirk would have been a little disappointed in the prices, his friends said. Kirk, 88, was slain June 27 at his ranch home south of Tahlequah. Saturday’s sale was but the first of three offerings of the Kirk herd. Additional groups of cattle will be sold the next two Saturdays at the Tahlequah sale. It begins at about 11 a.m. Kirk, who was in the end stage of pancreatic cancer, likely would have had to disperse his herd of more than 300 head of cows and calves before long, but he wouldn’t have been pleased with doing so, said Craig Loftin, who helped Kirk with jobs like gathering the cows. He wouldn’t have wanted to have the auction. “He was going to stay with it to the end,” Loftin said. That Sunday morning before he was killed, Loftin and Kirk rode horses together, he said. Kirk had worked his entire life to assemble the herd. “He was just an old-time cow man,” Loftin said of his friend. The cows all had Kirk’s CK brand on their left hips...more