Centennial

by James A. Michener

  In this mellow mood they rode to the castle, where Charlotte had platters of steaks waiting, and Mrs. Skimmerhorn drove up to chat with Charlotte while the men talked business, and about nine o’clock that night R. J. Poteet called the ladies in and said, “I have the distinct pleasure of announcing that as of this moment, John Skimmerhorn has been hired to manage the big new spread being put together by our friends from London. Mrs. Skimmerhorn, how soon do you think you can get your goods packed?”

  When Charlotte said she would help, as would some of the other wives from the ranch, Mrs. Skimmerhorn judged it could be done in four days. “Do it,” Poteet said, and more drinking followed, and Amos Calendar came close to intoxication, relaxing in good-humored fellowship for one of the few times in his life. “Yeah,” he chided Poteet. “You was takin’ such care of little Jim Lloyd, like he was a baby. And you was so careful to protect him when we was fightin’ the Pettis boys.”

  He stopped and winked at Jim. “Well, did you hear about your little fellow? He creeps up into the mountains and he kicks open the door of that old saloon and he pumps hot lead into them Pettis boys ... yungh ... yungh ... yungh ...”

  “Was it you who shot them?” Poteet asked, but Jim would not reply.

  At the railway station next day Poteet accidentally let the cat out of the bag. As he was about to board the train he told Jim, “One of the luckiest breaks I ever had. There I was, tryin’ to find a manager and out of the clear blue sky comes this letter from this lawyer fellow in Bristol. England. Never heard of him, and he says that he’s heard from his London sources and might I be in the market for a good manager? Wasn’t that lucky?”

  “Yep,” Jim replied slowly. “Imagine—a total stranger.”

  He never disclosed to Charlotte that he knew how Skimmerhorn had landed his new job. He was going to, but on the day everyone gathered at the train station to see the couple off on their long trip to Texas, Skimmerhorn took him aside and said. “You really didn’t have to do it, Jim. But since we’ve been partners for so long, I want you to know I appreciate it.”

  “Do what?” Jim asked, for he could not think of anything he had done to warrant such thanks.

  “The two thousand dollars Charlotte gave me ... to buy into the new ranch.”

  “It’s only what you’re due,” Jim said, and that evening as he drove north with Charlotte he realized how much he loved this energetic, headstrong Englishwoman. He was about to kiss her when she reached over impulsively and kissed him.

  “You’ll be the best manager the ranch ever had,” she said.

  And he was. He combined the enthusiasm of Oliver Seccombe with the cautious good management of John Skimmerhorn. Under his tutelage, Crown Vee Herefords were prized throughout the west, a fact in which Charlotte and Jim took great pride. The ranch didn’t make much actual profit; that would come later, Jim said. when the reputation was better established and they could charge more for their bulls and heifers, but it didn’t lose money either, and for eighteen years the Lloyds improved the holding and gave it vigorous leadership. And then, one day in early 1911, they received their last letter from old Finlay Perkin. He was ninety-one that year, still capable, still preoccupied with the workings of the ranch:

  My ninety-first birthday reminds me, James Lloyd, that you, too, are growing older and you must attend to the problem of your successor. Bear in mind that John Skimmerhorn had a substantial apprenticeship before he assumed the reins, and that he in turn gave you careful instruction. The board wishes that you write them very fully on this matter by return mail. There are several young men related to members of our board who would like to try their hand running a great ranch, but I believe the best results come when an American brought up in the tradition assumes control. Twice you have referred to young Beeley Garrett, and I have made some judicious inquiries through our Wyoming connection. He seems a solid man with a responsible business sense. I am aware that he has been connected with sheep, and normally this would disqualify him in your country, but in England that has never been the case. Include in your letter an assessment of young Garrett. He comes from a strong family, and that is always reassuring, I think.

  So Jim determined to put his affairs in order and reviewed what he knew of Beeley Garrett. The name was an odd one, derived from the Garrett habit of giving first-born sons the family name of the wife. He was in his late thirties. and although he had started life running sheep for his father, he had later received a thorough grounding in Herefords on the ranch at Roggen. He was married to Levi Zendt’s granddaughter, an irreverent dark-haired girl with five-eighths Indian blood and the appearance of an Arapaho princess.

  Levi Zendt had had two children: Clemma, who had run away. and Martin, who had stayed at home. Like his sister, the boy had experienced difficulty in adjusting to an Indian heritage, and for a while it looked as if he might respond to local taunting by turning outlaw, as the Pasquinel brothers had done. But one summer he happened to visit the Arapaho reservation in western Wyoming, and while there he met this delightful Indian girl who had neither care nor inhibition. On the spur of the moment he persuaded her to run away with him, and after they were married he discovered through her his comprehension of what it meant to be an Indian. They had a daughter named Pale Star, and it was this lively girl that Beeley Garrett had married.

  Jim Lloyd, obedient to Finlay Perkin’s advice, sought Garrett out and asked if he might like to accompany the Venneford cowboys on their spring roundup, and Garrett guessed immediately what was in the wind. “Crown Vee has got to find somebody to run that place when Lloyd retires,” he confided to Pale Star. “And with luck, it could be me.”

  “Why not invite them to supper?” Pale Star asked teasingly. “I don’t want Lady Charlotte to discover late in the game that I’m an Arapaho.”

  It turned out to be a relaxed, amusing party. When the two men retired to talk ranching, Pale Star said, “I insisted on this supper, Mrs. Lloyd. I wanted to be sure you knew I was an Indian.” Charlotte laughed heartily and said, “Dear girl! I’ve been following the ins and outs of your family for three generations.” Growing more serious, she added, “I knew your Aunt Clemma ... not well ... but very intensely.” And Pale Star said, “Grandfather Levi told me that when you cotched Jim Lloyd, it was the best thing that ever happened in these parts.”

  While the women talked, Beeley Garrett was trying in a bluff, casual manner to let Jim know that he understood the fundamentals of Hereford management: “I think a ranch does best if it sticks to the great bulls. Anxiety IV, The Grove III. But most of us think that the best bull of all was Confidence, the one you Venneford people found in England. He ended the cat-hamming.”

  “We got the best beef cattle in the west out of Confidence.” Jim said. “It looked a mite less finished when the live steers were lined up, but weight for weight it butchered out forty pounds more of edible beef than anything you had at Roggen. And that’s where the money is.”

  Spring roundup in these years was an exhilarating time. The Venneford Ranch was down to half a million acres, but the lands it had disposed of were still largely unfenced and in the spring cows from as far away as Wyoming or Nebraska would wander onto the Venneford land to drop their calves. The only feasible way known to prevent rustlers from stealing calves and slapping a spurious brand upon them was to hold a general roundup and branding.

  This was made possible by a trait which all young animals possessed, cattle to an extreme degree. If you take a newborn calf from its mother, and place it at random among a hundred other bawling Herefords, in a surprisingly short time that calf—by smell, sound or some mysterious instinct—will find its way back to its mother.

  For example, suppose that if the mother bore the Crown Vee brand, and an unmarked calf ran to her, that calf had to belong to the Crown Vee ranch. By the same principle, if a calf bearing a rustler’s brand ran up to a Crown Vee cow, you knew that dirty work had been done and that you had a court case, unless some hot-handed cowboy shot the
rustler first, in which circumstance an obliging coroner would certify death from natural causes.

  But this remarkable capacity of the calf to identify its mother faded quickly and if you were tardy in your roundup, and your calves had already weaned themselves, they did not then run to their mothers, and the rustlers could brand such animals with impunity, for there was no way you could prove they were yours.

  Each of the large ranches sent out three or four chuck wagons identical to the one devised by R. J. Poteet years before. Each contained a jar of fermenting dough; each offered pancakes, beans and freshly cut steaks cooked in Dutch ovens.

  The traditional camaraderie existed, too. The wagons would move into an area about ten miles square and for two days men from various ranches would converge on that section of the range and round up cattle from the draws and the valleys. Fires would be started, and irons from six or seven ranches would heat side by side. As the cows were herded in, the calves were separated from their mothers by men on highly trained cutting horses. Then an older man like Jim Lloyd or an expert hand from another ranch would move among the calves and with a deft throw of his rope catch one of the little fellows by a hind leg and drag him bawling to where the cowboys worked. Two men would wrestle the calf to the ground, and then the team would spring into action. From the fire one man would take the brand and press it onto the hair, hard enough to mark the skin, but not so hard as to cause a deep wound. Properly branded, the mark would be recognizable till the death of the animal, and if it were subsequently altered by a rustler’s running iron—and very skilled the thieves became in converting a V into a W, for instance—the animal need only be slaughtered and its skin exposed to prove the alteration.

  At the same time that the calf was being branded, it was also castrated if it was a bull calf intended for beef. The testicles were carefully tossed into a bucket, for rocky mountain oysters were featured at every roundup.

  As soon as the branded calf was released, he would go bawling away to seek his mother, and it was always somehow satisfying to even the toughest cowhands to see the mother and child reunited.

  After two days the chuck wagons would move to a new location, perhaps as far east as Line Camp One. At night, when stars came out and the fires burned, men from surrounding ranches visited together, and talk would invariably go back to the old days, and men would recall how Old Rags had failed to jump the Pecos at Horsehead Crossing, how Oliver Seccombe had shot himself through the head, and how Nate Person was the best nigger ever rode a horse, and how Mule Canby had “taught hisse’f to shoot with a wooden arm.”

  This year the first two nights of the roundup were spent on the silent, empty plains northeast of Sterling, where the night sky arched from east to west without disclosing one tree or a road leading anywhere or any sign of human habitation. Jim Lloyd doubted if he had ever seen the prairie in better condition; wildflowers abounded and the grass was rich. When he saw the silhouettes of his Herefords in the moonlight he recalled the good years he had spent on this land, and he was content to be passing the responsibility on to a man like Beeley Garrett. He could rope. He handled a horse well. He knew a good calf from a weakling. And his judgment coincided with Jim’s on which of the bull calves to hold back for breeding purposes. It was unlikely that Venneford Ranch could find a better manager, and the good thing about him was that even though he had grown up with sheep, he had lost the smell. He had become a real cattleman.

  Jim asked him if he’d like to walk out toward where the horses were, and Beeley said. “Sure,” as if he hadn’t an idea in the world what Jim was up to.

  “I ain’t gettin’ any younger.” Jim said.

  “None of us is,” Beeley allowed.

  “You got a lot of good years ahead of you, Beeley.” Garrett made no reply, and Jim said, “Thing I like about you, Beeley, you were raised with sheep but you had the intelligence to switch to cattle.”

  To the son of a sheepman, this was an insult, but Beeley decided to hold his temper. The job had not been formally offered yet, and he wanted to hear the details. “I like Herefords,” he said quietly.

  They listened to the cowboys singing the old songs, and Jim said, “You ever notice, Beeley. there’s a thousand cowboy songs and there ain’t one sheep song.”

  But now Beeley was getting mad. He didn’t need a job. He’d be glad to work at Venneford, understand, but he’d be damned if he’d allow any man to throw manure on his father’s grave.

  “Sheepherdin’ is for Mexicans,” Jim stumbled on. “Or maybe Indians.”

  “Goddamn it,” Beeley shouted, “it was good enough for my father! You take your Herefords and shove ’em!”

  “Beeley!” Jim cried, shocked that any words of his should have given offense. “I wouldn’t for the world say anything bad against your old man. Christ, there never was a finer person in Centennial than Messmore Garrett. I was proud to have him as a friend.” Then, as if to make amends for his blundering: “Beeley, I’m offering you a job. Will you take it?”

  “Yes. But no more talk of sheep.”

  “Beeley,” Jim said in real remorse. “Charlotte and I eat mutton just to prove we got no animosity ... once a year, that is!”

  He extended his hand, which Beeley grasped, and they stood for a moment as the cowboys sang:

  “Old Bill Jones had a daughter and a son

  One went to college, the other went wrong.

  His wife got killed in a poolroom fight,

  But still he keeps singin’ with all his might”

  Jim placed his arm around Beeley’s shoulder and said, “How do you figure the old lady got killed in that poolroom? What was she doin’ there in the first place?” Beeley could provide no logical explanation.

  In the last weeks of 1911 Tranquilino crossed the Río Bravo at El Paso, and when he saw the crowds of refugees in Ciudad Juarez, he realized that open warfare had begun. And the deeper his train penetrated into Chihuahua, with frightened people climbing aboard the flatcars at every halt, each one with his tale of terror, the more disturbed he became.

  “The way things are going,” he told a bewhiskered man sprawled out next to him, ‘my wife could be in danger.”

  “Everybody’s in danger,” the man said. “And we’ll continue to have trouble until somebody shoots Salcedo, the bloody colonel.”

  “Is he that fellow with the shiny brown boots?”

  “You know him?”

  “I saw him shoot Frijoles’ wife.”

  “You did!”

  For a moment Tranquilino became a hero and he was encouraged to review the incidents that had terminated that first rebellion at the Temchic mines.

  “And he ordered you shot, too?” the bewhiskered man asked.

  “Yes, but Serafina guessed what was happening and sent me off to Estados Unidos.”

  “How is it up there?” some of the men asked.

  “Fine.”

  “They treat Mexicans poorly?” the man with the whiskers asked.

  “No.”

  The man appeared to be a schoolteacher, and he pulled from his pocket a dirty wallet from which he took a well-creased clipping. It came from a Texas newspaper and was in English, so none of the others could read it when he showed it around:

  Hilario Guttierez, a Mexican worker on a farm near Eagle Pass, made approaches to a white woman and was duly lynched.

  The man translated the article, then asked Tranquilino, “How do you like that?” and Tranquilino said, “Well, if he hit the woman and threatened her ...”

  “My stupid friend,” the man shouted. “He did not hit her. He smiled at her. Maybe he said, ‘Ay-ya, muchacha!’ And for this he was lynched.”

  “In Colorado we wouldn’t say that to an Anglo woman,” Tranquilino assured him.

  “Stupid!” the man shouted again. “The word I’m talking about is duly. It means in the natural course of affairs. Since he was a Mexican, he was naturally lynched. What else?”

  “What else?” Tranquilino asked. The
man was making no sense to Tranquilino, who was relieved when the fellow left the flatcar at Casas Grandes.

  At Guerrero, where Tranquilino got off, the situation was tense. Colonel Salcedo’s government troops had recently swept through the area, burning and killing, and farmers were beginning to arm themselves with pitchforks and scythes. “If Salcedo comes this way again, it will be a different story,” one old man promised, and Tranquilino thought, It’ll be different, all right. Two hundred dead instead of twenty.

  When he arrived at the Vale of Temchic and saw the four guardian peaks, with mists rising from the morning fields, he recalled the happy years he had known in this place, but when he reached Santa Ynez and witnessed for himself the deterioration of Mexican life, with the whole valley huddling in terror, he understood what the men on the flatcar had been talking about. His feelings were intensified when Serafina gathered the children to welcome him, and the oldest boy started telling him about Colonel Salcedo’s raid down the valley.

  “He started at the waterfall,” Victoriano said. The people of the valley liked to give their children heroic names; the other boy was Triunfador. “At the mines he shot every man who had asked for less work, and in Santa Ynez he shot a man and a woman who had spoken against the church.”