‘Hey there! Poteet! What’re you up to?’
‘Watering my cattle, as always.’
‘That’s fenced.’
‘It shouldn’t be. This is open range, time out of mind.’
‘No longer. Times have changed.’
‘They shouldn’t.’
‘Poteet, if your men touch that fence, my men will shoot.’
‘They’d be damned fools if they did. I’ve got some powerful gunmen ridin’ with me.’
At this point Earnshaw Rusk rode up, and he was preparing to issue orders to his troops when Poteet spoke: ‘Friend Earnshaw, I don’t want your men to do anything foolish. You see my chuck wagon? Why do you think the sides are up?’
When the Rusk men looked at the ominous wagon, they could see that it had been placed in an advantageous position, with its flexible sides closed. ‘Friend Earnshaw, one of my good men in there has his rifle pointed directly at you. Another has you in his sights, Mr. Yeager. Now I propose to water my stock as usual, and I shall have to cut your fences to do it.’
Rusk took a deep breath, then said firmly: ‘Poteet, my men will shoot if thee touches that fence.’
For a long time no one spoke, no one moved. R. J. Poteet, born in Virginia fifty-six years ago, had acquired certain characteristics in the cattle-herding business which he was powerless to alter, and one was that his animals must be tended daily, honestly and with maximum care. This included regular watering. Since the close of the War Between the States, he had trailed one large consignment north each year and sometimes two, for a total of twenty-one herds, some of huge dimension, and he had never lost even two percent, not to Indians, or bandits, or drought, or stampede, or shifty buyers, and it was unthinkable that he should vary his procedures now. He was going to water his steers.
Earnshaw Rusk believed profoundly in whatever he dedicated himself to. When he saw that a new day was opening upon the once-free range, he spurred its arrival. And perhaps most subtle of all, he had become infected with the Texas doctrine that a man’s land was not only his castle, but also his salvation.
In the long wait no one fired, but all stood ready. Then the two leaders spoke. Rusk, still playing the role of general, said: ‘Did thee know, Poteet, that Ranger Rossiter is here to end this fighting? If thee shoots me, he’ll hound thee to the ends of the earth,’ and Poteet snapped: ‘Rangers always side with the rich. I’m surprised a man of your principles would want their help. Friend Earnshaw, what would you do if you had twenty-seven hundred head of cattle within smelling distance of water? And none elsewhere to be found?’
There was silence, when life and the values men fought for hung in the balance; it was prolonged, and in it Earnshaw Rusk dropped his pose of being a general and acknowledged that what he and Frank Yeager had been doing was wrong. It might represent the wave of the future, and perhaps it would prevail before the decade faded, but as things stood now, it was wrong. It was wrong to fence in a water hole which had been used, as Poteet said, ‘time out of mind.’ It was wrong to cut off public roads as if schoolteachers and children were of no concern. It was wrong to impose arbitrary new rules merely because one was strong enough to get a loan at the bank, and it was terribly wrong to abolish a neighbor’s inherited rights simply because thee had bob wahr and he didn’t.
‘What would you do if the cattle were yours?’ Poteet repeated, emphasizing the pronoun.
Rusk had been trained to respect the moral implications of any problem, and since he had already conceded that his fencing in the water hole was wrong, he must now correct that error. In a very low voice, as if speaking philosophically on a matter which did not involve him personally, he said: ‘If they were my cattle, I’d have to water them.’ And with a motion of his right arm he indicated that Yeager and his men should withdraw.
‘We’ll replace your fences,’ Poteet said as his hands started cutting. ‘But if I were you, I’d leave them down.’
Rusk could never turn aside from a moral debate: ‘For a few years, Poteet, thee wins. But thee must know the old ways are dead. Soon we’ll have fences everywhere.’
‘More’s the pity.’
‘Thee will carry my wife’s cattle on to Dodge?’
‘As always.’
‘I’ll go count them.’
‘I’ll do the countin’.’
Like many a politician, Senator Cobb, abetted by Petty Prue, was an outstanding success in Washington but something less when he returned home to explain his behavior to his constituents. On his latest visit to Jefferson he had barely reached his plantation when a group of irate voters drove up, headed by a jut-jawed Mr. Colquitt.
‘Senator,’ the man demanded, ‘why did you let ’em blast our Red River Raft?’
While he fumbled for an explanation, they dragged him from the parlor and down to the Lammermoor wharf, and what he saw came close to bringing tears to his eyes, for the stout wharf which he and Cousin Reuben had built with such care back in 1850 now wasted away some fifty feet removed from the sparse water in which no boat of any size could function.
‘You allowed ’em to destroy the value of your land,’ Colquitt said. ‘And in town it’s the same way. Our beautiful harbor where the big boats came from New Orleans. All vanished.’
Another man cried in anguished protest: ‘Why didn’t you stop ’em?’
Seeing the anger of his constituents, Cobb knew that their questions were vital and that if he wanted to continue as a senator, he must give them a sensible answer, but he was not the man to hide behind platitudes or fatuous promises that could never be kept. He would give them an honest, harsh answer: ‘Gentlemen, no one in Jefferson has lost more by the destruction of the Raft than I have. Look at this dry hole. A way of life gone. But on the day that fellow in Sweden made TNT possible, he doomed our Raft. For a hundred years people had been talking about removing the Raft, and they accomplished nothing. TNT comes along and there goes our livelihood.’
‘It should of stayed that way,’ Colquitt said, and Cobb replied: ‘With TNT many valuable things are going to be changed.’
‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’
‘Do? About the Raft? Nothing. Do you think Louisiana is going to let us rebuild it so that our Jefferson, population eight hundred thirty-one, can have a seaport?’
As soon as he had given this sharp answer he knew he must become conciliatory, so he invited the men back into the parlor, where Petty Prue served tea and molasses cookies: ‘Gentlemen, you asked me what I am going to do. Plenty, believe me. First, I’m going to surrender to TNT. It blew our Raft right out of the Red River, and nothing will ever restore it. Second, I will lead the battle to get a railroad into this town, because once we do that, we’ll get our cotton to New Orleans faster and better than before. Third, I’m going to make every improvement possible at Lammermoor, because even though we’ve lost our dock, we’ll discover new ways to prosper. In Texas that always happens.’
Mr. Colquitt, jaw still outthrust, growled: ‘Cain’t you make Washington give us a railroad?’
‘I’ve tried to nudge them, but Washington says: “We have to consider the whole nation, not just little Texas.” ’
‘Senator, I’ve learned one thing in life,’ Colquitt conceded. ‘Whenever the United States government meddles in Texas affairs, Texas gets swindled.’
Cobb laughed, as did his wife, who said: ‘Our experience has been the same, Mr. Colquitt. Texas is so big, it has imperial problems. Congress is used to handling the little troubles of states like Vermont and Iowa. Texas staggers them. They have no comprehension of our needs.’
‘But how do you two people feel about the drop in value of your plantation? Who would buy it now, with no dock?’ Colquitt asked.
It was Petty Prue who answered, vigorously: ‘Of course the value has dropped. And sharply. But you watch! It’ll grow back for some reason we can’t even imagine right now. That’s the rule in Texas. Change and adjustment and sorrow. But always the value of our land increas
es.’
‘Why don’t we just leave the Union?’ Mr. Colquitt asked; he had grown up in South Carolina.
‘That’s been settled.’
‘But we can still divide into five separate states, that I’m sure of.’ Mr. Colquitt had been in Texas only three years but already it was we; two more and he would be a passionate devotee of all things Texan.
‘We could divide,’ Senator Cobb granted, ‘but I doubt we ever would.’
‘Why not?’
‘Which state would get the Alamo?’ he asked with a smile.
If Texas had been powerless to halt the dynamiting of the Red River Raft, it did finally end the Great Range War. A number of bills were proposed and enacted, putting an end to the killing; they worked this way, as a small farmer near Fort Garner, where the fighting had been heaviest, saw it:
‘Anyone who cuts a fence, anywhere, any time, he’s to be arrested, fined, and thrown in jail for a long spell. Anyone found with a pair of cutters—on his person, in his house, in his wagon—he gets similar punishment. Any trail driver like R. J. Poteet who forces his cattle onto land which has been fenced is sent to jail for one to five.
‘But don’t you think for one minute that the big owners who have fenced in public land get off scot-free, nosiree. They will be asked politely to unfence land that contains traditional water supplies. They have to provide gates if they’ve fenced across public roads. And they must not ignore the customary rights of ordinary citizens. But they don’t have to do any of these things right away. Government allows them grace periods up to six months, and if they haven’t made the alterations by then, they’ll be given warnings. When they’ve ignored such warnings, maybe three years, they’ll be severely rebuked … in writin’. Fines? Jail? For the big owners? You must be jokin’!’
Inexorably the movements launched by Rusk to turn his village into a proper town continued, often in directions he had not anticipated. With the first four keystones in place—store, school, saloon, bank—he was free to turn his attention to the next three: churches, newspaper, railroad. With these he met both success and failure.
Banker Weatherby, also eager to see his town and his bank grow, was instrumental in solving the problem of the churches. ‘Earnshaw,’ he said one morning when Rusk came in to pay interest on his loan, ‘a town does better if it has a core of strong churches.’
‘How do we attract them?’
‘We have several informal congregations in town right now. They’d be delighted to have free land. Then we’ll ask the Fort Worth newspapers to announce that we’ll give any recognized religion a free corner lot of its own choosing.’
Weatherby’s advice was resoundingly apt, for when this news circulated through Texas eight different churches investigated and six selected their sites and started building. Baptists chose first and nabbed the best spot in the heart of town; Methodists came second; the Presbyterians chose a quiet spot; and the Episcopalians not only selected on the edge of town but also purchased an adjoining lot because they said they liked lots of space for a generous building. The Church of Christ would be satisfied for the first dozen years with a small wooden building, and a group that called themselves Saviors of the Bible erected only a tent.
This was one of the best trade-offs Rusk would make, because the churches brought stability; they encouraged settlers from older towns to move in; and they deposited their collections in the First National Bank of Fort Garner.
When the bank had been in existence for some time, an official arrived from Washington to inform Weatherby that the title he had invented for his establishment could not be so loosely applied: ‘You can’t go around calling just any old bank a National Bank. Take that sign down.’ While the official was in town he also listened to Rusk’s complaint about the name of the place: ‘Can thee please inform the government that we want a better name? Fort Garner existed only a few years. It’s a silly, militaristic name. Much more appropriate would be Larkin.’
Earnshaw made no headway with his plea, but it did serve as further inspiration for a campaign he would continue for two decades. Whenever he posted a letter he asked the man in charge: ‘When does the name-change take place?’ And always the postmaster replied: ‘That’s in the lap of the gods.’ The gods were either opposed to the change or forgetful, because the name stayed the same, and this so irritated Earnshaw that he finally wrote a letter to the President:
Mr. President:
I have tried constantly to have the name of our post office changed from Fort Garner to Larkin, and have not even received the courtesy of a sensible reply. The state of Texas has so many post offices bearing the word fort, it seems more like a military establishment than a civilian state. Fort Worth, Fort Davis, Fort Griffin, Fort Stockton and Fort Garner to name only a few. We would appreciate if you would instruct your Postmaster General to rename our town Larkin.
Earnshaw Rusk
He received no reply, but quickly his attention was diverted to a matter of much graver significance than the choice of a name. A bright young man from Massachusetts with a Harvard degree, Charles Fordson, had for some time been moving through the West with two mules, a wagon and a cargo which had since the days of Gutenberg represented real progress. It was a hand-operated printing press with ten trays of movable type, and it was seeking a home.
As soon as Rusk learned of the young man’s arrival he cornered him, showed him the five remaining empty buildings, and assured him: ‘We need you, and you’ll find no better prospect in all of Texas. Larkin! Sure to become a metropolis. Join us and grow!’ And so this vital link was added to the tenuous chain of civilization: in 1868, the Larkin brothers had chosen this confluence for the site of their ranch; in 1869, the United States Army confirmed the wisdom of their choice; in 1879, Sutler Simpson thought that if he were to open a grocery here, he could make money, and before long Banker Weatherby thought the same. Now, in 1881, young Charles Fordson with his peripatetic press listens to Earnshaw’s blandishments and decides that the newspaper just might succeed, but he names it the Larkin County Defender, for he fears that the town alone might not provide enough activity to justify his venture.
During a quiet spell in the winter of 1881, Fordson sought to distract attention from hard times by publishing a series of well-constructed articles combining news and editorial opinion. Random paragraphs indicate the thrust of his argument:
… In Larkin County during the past two years there have been four executions by gunfire on the streets of the county seat and ten in the outlying districts.
… Certainly, at least half the fourteen victims deserved to die, and we applaud the public-spirited citizens who took charge of their punishment. But it would be difficult to claim that the other half died in accordance with any known principles of justice. They were murdered, and they should not have been.
… The only solution to this problem is a stricter code of law enforcement, by our officers, by our juries and by our sentencing judges. This journal calls for an end to the lawlessness in Larkin County and in Texas generally.
The articles evoked a response which Editor Fordson had not anticipated, for although a few citizens, like the Baptist minister and three widows who had lost their husbands to gunfire, applauded the common sense of his arguments, the general consensus was that ‘if some popinjay from Massy-chusetts is afeered of a little gunfire, he should skedaddle back to where he come from.’
The serious consequence of the articles came when the governor directed a fiery blast at the would-be reformer. His defense of Texas was reprinted throughout the state, bringing scorn upon Larkin County:
Weak-willed, frightened newcomers to our Great State have offered comment in the public press to the effect that Texas is a lawless place. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our lawmen are famed throughout the nation, our judges are models of propriety, and our citizens are noted for their willing obedience to whatever just laws our legislature passes …
The governor’s theories received a
test in the case of the Parmenteer brothers, sons of a law-abiding farmer. The boys, as so often happened in families, followed two radically different courses. The elder son, Daniel, did well in school, read for law in an Austin office, passed his bar examination before the local judge, and became one of the leading lights in Larkin County, where he married the daughter of a clergyman and was in the process of raising four fine children.
His younger brother, Cletus, disliked school, hated teachers, and despised law officials. By the age of eighteen he had been widely known as ‘a bad ’un,’ a reputation that grew as years passed. At first he merely terrorized people his own age, until boys and girls he had known would have nothing to do with him. Then he started stealing things, which his parents replaced, but finally he launched into the perilous business of stealing horses and cattle, and that put him beyond the pale. As an outlaw he participated in two killings, and following a raid into New Mexico, a price was placed on his head in that territory, but as usual, this was ignored in Texas. He became a shifty, quick-triggered idler who brought considerable ignominy to his otherwise respectable family, and he could find no woman willing to risk marriage with him. He consorted only with other petty outlaws, and it was widely predicted throughout the county that sooner or later young Clete would have to be hanged by one sheriffs posse or another.
Things were in this condition one bright spring day in 1881 when the growing town of Fort Garner heard the familiar sound of gunfire, and then the shout: ‘Parmenteer has killed Judge Bates!’ People rushed into the streets to find the alarm correct. At high noon, on the main thoroughfare, a respectable judge—well, not too respectable—had been callously shot in the presence of not less than twenty witnesses, all of whom identified Parmenteer as the killer. But it was not Cletus, the outlaw, who had done the killing; it was Daniel, the law-abiding lawyer.
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