We’d swum our horses across the river at a spot not too far from the herd, then ambled south toward the Big Cypress. I had my rifle resting across the saddle in front of me, a fine percussion Sharps in .54 caliber—a carbine, rightly, although I called it a rifle—while Casey toted Pa’s shotgun. It was Casey who first spotted the horse, standing among the scattered palmettos and Spanish bayonets a couple hundred yards away. We pulled up warily.
“That horse don’t look so good,” Casey declared after a few seconds, and I couldn’t argue the point. The chestnut was swaying weakly back and forth, its head drooped low, its saddle hanging partway down its side with one stirrup dragging in the grass. And then the horse just keeled over.
“Son of a bitch,” Casey squawked, his head rearing back in surprise.
After a few seconds, I said, “Let’s go take a look,” and lightly tapped my marshtackie’s ribs with the sides of my stirrups. [Ed. Note: Marshtackie is a Southeastern term for a small, fleet-footed horse, similar in size and heritage to the Western mustang.]
The horse was—or had been—a fine, tall gelding, although it was ribby and full of ticks when we found it. Its left shoulder swarmed with buzzing flies, and its mane and tail were knotted with burrs and twigs. Despite the saddle hanging across its rib cage, there was no rider nearby. A bullet hole under the crawling flies confirmed the animal’s cause of death; the drying blood and presence of maggots in the wound told us it had been shot quite a while before, then probably wandered out here on its own to die.
The horse had stopped on a spit of dry land that curved into the marsh like a giant thumb, although with an entrance barely twenty yards across. We did a quick search, but didn’t find anyone, and didn’t want to linger with darkness closing in. Jumping to the ground, I stripped the saddle—one of those Texas rigs with the tall horn and a high cantle—from the chestnut’s back, while Casey loosened a lightly rusted, slightly shortened Model 1841 military musket, what we used to call a Mississippi rifle, from beneath the bedroll. Then, being just fifteen and easily spooked by thoughts of the supernatural, we lit out of there like we had goblins on our tails.
Several of us went back the next day for another look, but didn’t have any better luck locating the rider. Satisfied that we’d done all we reasonably could, Pa ordered us on to Punta Rassa. Although we asked around town after we got there, nobody could recall a tall chestnut gelding or a man toting a sawed-off Mississippi rifle. By the time we were ready to head back home, Pa declared the rifle as belonging to Casey, and I got the Texas rig.
As best as I recall, that afternoon when Pablo told us we were being trailed by Jacob Klee and some of his boys, we weren’t too far away from that curling spit of land, and I told Casey to get the herd moving toward it.
“If we can reach Chestnut Thumb before dark, we can hold the cattle there with just a couple of hands,” I said. “That’ll free up the rest of us to fight, if Jake Klee wants to push it that far.”
Casey nodded curtly and wheeled his horse toward the retreating herd. Pablo hesitated uncertainly, until I told him to go with Casey. I held my own mount back, eyeing the flat palmetto plains that stretched away to the east and north, dotted with distant hammocks of oak and hackberry that reminded me of stumps, although I knew the bigger trees in those groves could tower seventy-five feet or more above the ground, with enough lumber in just one of them to build a small house. [Ed. Note: Hammock is a Southern term, referring to confined growths of hardwood vegetation on ground usually somewhat higher than the surrounding terrain; they tend to be relatively small in size, generally no more than a few hundred yards in circumference.]
There was no sign of Jacob Klee or his men, but I knew that didn’t mean much. Not in that Southern wilderness, as wild in those years as anything the American West would ever produce. There were too many places to hide, too many ways a group of determined men could slip in undetected, especially on something as unwieldy as a herd of longhorns.
My muscles were drawn tight from the prospect of a raid. I was young then, and unafraid as only the young can be, but anyone who has ever worked cattle knows what a burst of unexpected gunplay can do to an unruly herd, especially one just recently yanked from the scrub. A stampede in that swampy morass south of the Caloosahatchee could cost us half our drive.
Letting my gaze sweep the distant horizon a final time, I pulled my marshtackie around and spurred after the herd. It was late enough in the day that I had to pull the broad brim of my gray slouch hat low over my eyes against the westering sun. Thick dust mantled the plain, and the cattle’s lowing rose in protest to the quickened pace. We didn’t have any dogs—Pa had taken all of them, including my own merle, Blue Boy, to help with the larger herd—but the sharp cracks of our whips, snapping above the bony spines of the resistant herd, were enough to keep the cattle contained and on the move. I unfurled my own twelve-footer as I came up behind a lagging roan steer, popping it sharp as a gunshot above the animal’s tail to startle it after the rest of the herd.
My mind was only half on the task at hand as we pushed toward Chestnut Thumb. I was trying to take stock of the situation, weighing our odds and options. Although our situation wasn’t the best, it could have been worse. I had eight men in my employ. Besides Casey and Pablo, there were Casey’s younger cousin, Artie Davis, plus Roy Turner, Ardell Hawes, Dick Langley, Calvin Oswald, and Pa’s slave, Negro Jim. [Ed. Note: Although the n-word of the nineteenth century didn’t have the same negative connotations as it does today, the editor of this edition of the transcript has decided to substitute the word Negro in its place.]
That was about the same number of men that Jacob Klee had, although with one notable difference. With the exception of Negro Jim, all of my hands were young, ranging in age from fifteen to eighteen, and were considerably less experienced in the ways of warfare. They were good men; don’t get me wrong about that. Every one of us had been born on the cattle ranges of Southwestern Florida, raised in times of danger and strife. I didn’t have any doubts whatsoever that they would fight with the best of them. To be honest, what worried me most were the decisions I knew I was going to have to make in the next few hours and the fear that even the smallest miscalculation on my part could cost the life of one or more of my men, all of whom I considered friends. That’s a chunk of responsibility to set on the shoulders of an eighteen-year-old; hell, it’s a lot to hand to any man, no matter how much experience he has.
Negro Jim was riding point that day, and I urged my marshtackie up alongside his gray mule to outline my plans, sketchy as they were. He nodded solemnly as I spoke, although never taking his eyes off the herd.
“I reckon that sounds like something your daddy’d approve of,” Jim replied after I’d finished.
I didn’t say anything, but I was relieved by the old slave’s inferred approval. Negro Jim had fought in the last two Seminole Wars with my pa, both of them scouting first for General Harney, then for Colonel Loomis during the Third War, what the locals called the Billy Bowlegs War. Jim knew his way around a battlefield, and would have found a way to let me know if he didn’t agree with my plan or saw any major flaws in my strategy.
I’ve always called Negro Jim old, but he really wasn’t. Probably fifty or so in those years, and only aged and stolid in the eyes of a bunch of rowdy teenagers. Jim had been a part of the Flatiron for as long as I could remember, the first of the four slaves that we’d eventually own, and Pa’s right-hand man until us boys got old enough to shoulder more of the responsibilities. I knew Jim would fight, too, if he had to. The stories Pa told of him and Jim and my ma withstanding a three-day siege during the Second Seminole War can still send a shiver up my spine. But I wouldn’t ask him to participate if I didn’t have to. It was never a good thing in the South to arm a Negro against a white man, even a bunch of egg-suckers like those Judah Klee had spawned.
As I reined away from Jim, I spotted Roy Turner loping a chunky sorrel in my direction and slowed my own pony to allow him to catch up. Ro
y was Frank Turner’s youngest and in more or less the same boat as I was when it came to his father’s ranch. Roy had also been left behind while his pa and brothers went up the trail with my pa. The Turners owned the Slash T and ran cattle over all that land between the Kissimmee River and Arbuckle Creek, east of the Flatiron range. Being headstrong and hot-tempered, Roy didn’t waste any time getting to the point.
“Casey says Jacob Klee and some of his boys are following us, and that we’re going to fight.”
“I figured we would, unless you’ve got a reason not to.”
“Not a damned one,” he returned hotly.
Like the Flatiron, the Slash T had also been hit hard by rustlers since the war’s beginning, but things had taken a definite turn for the worse since the Federal reoccupation of Fort Myers. Where before we’d maybe lose a few head at a time, in recent months we’d been having bunches of twenty or thirty head at a time vanish, as if snatched into the sky by hungry gods.
A lot of those losses could be laid at the feet of Union troops, who were stealing our cattle in ever-increasing numbers for their own armies under the sweep of Lincoln’s Confiscation Act. [Ed. Note: Although the Confiscation Act of 1861, signed into law by President Lincoln on August 6th, was designed primarily to appropriate slaves held by Southern property owners, thereby preventing the use of black labor in order to free up able-bodied white men to fight the North, all Confederate property was deemed admissible; acts of confiscation increased with the war’s duration.]
Those things the Yankees wanted but couldn’t steal, they bought from men like Jacob Klee. Some said even old Judah Klee himself would occasionally fork a marshtackie and venture out of the swamps to steal some cattle or hogs, just to keep his hand in the game.
We were pushing pretty hard that day I’m telling you about, what with the light running its string and the Thumb still several miles away. We were following a winding thread of dry land bordering the northern rim of the Big Cypress, the country on either side of us becoming increasingly marshy the farther we went. The dust took on a reddish tint as the sun eased down atop the horizon, and the cattle bawled raucously at our unfamiliar urgency. The steady cracking of our whips and the grit-thickened voices of the cow hunters kept the herd moving along at a swift trot, although I knew not a popper touched a hide. [Ed. Note: A popper is the tip of a bullwhip, sometimes consisting of a small amount of lead sewn into the leather to give the instrument extra crack.]
Every one of us on that drive had been handling bullwhips since we were old enough to stand on two legs. It was the hallmark of the Florida cow hunter, where the lariat of the wide open spaces of the West was too easily tangled in the swampy scrub of the Southeast. The whips were used for the ear-splitting cracks that gave the herd both incentive and direction. In more sedate times we would have had catch dogs to help us work the herd, thick-chested curs born of the swamps and marshes, and as bred to the art of cow hunting as the men they assisted.
The sun was nearly gone by the time we reached the Thumb, just a crown of gold set down on the horizon. I sent Jim and Roy ahead to turn the herd onto the narrow spit, then ordered the right flankers to move up and help. As soon as the last cow had been driven through the narrow opening at the Thumb’s base, I had two of the boys string picket ropes from one side of the entrance to the other, tying the makeshift gate off on sturdy palmettos.
While they were doing that, Casey and Roy made a quick circuit of the Thumb looking for alligators—a big ’gator could pull even a moderately sized cow under without much difficulty if they caught the bovine unaware—and Jim eased his mule into the herd to shy out the two pack horses we’d brought along to carry our grub and supplies, which included our long guns and extra ammunition. Dick Langley and Ardell Hawes caught the horses and led them forward, although we left the packs in place. I didn’t know how long we were going to be there or what Jacob Klee and his boys might have in mind, and I wanted to be ready in case we had to make a run for it.
Jim dismounted and began passing out rifles and shotguns, and Artie jumped down to help. As a rule we didn’t carry our long guns while working cattle, as they had a tendency to get in the way, although we naturally wore our revolvers. They were a tool, like a knife or a hoof pick, and didn’t do anyone any good packed away where they couldn’t be easily reached.
After collecting my Sharps, I laid it across the saddle in front of me and reined out of the way of the others. Then I slid the strap of my leather shooting bag over my left shoulder so that it hung down on my right side, just above the Colt Navy revolver Pa had given me for my fourteenth birthday. The bag was a holdover from my muzzleloader days, although minus the powder horn. It’s where I kept extra ammunition and some small tools and cleaning supplies while in the field. It took only a few seconds to slip a linen cartridge into the Sharps’ breech, then press a musket cap down over the nipple.
Although still light in the west, dusk seemed to be settling all too quickly over the countryside. The night sounds were already in progress—frogs and insects and the piercing screams of limpkins that could rattle a man’s nerves if he didn’t know what they were. From the direction of the Caloosahatchee, a wolf’s lonely howl floated across the scrub. Calling the others close, I quickly outlined my plans, then ordered Calvin Oswald and Dick Langley to stay behind with Jim to guard the herd—Calvin because he was the youngest at fifteen and Dick because, although only a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday, he had a wife and newborn son back at his cabin at Lake Istokpoga.
“Them cows ain’t likely to drop off into the swamp, so all you’ll probably have to do is keep them from slipping out on this side and making a break for the river,” I said. “The rest of you can come with me.”
I paused briefly, noticing the taut anxiety of their expressions, the grim resolve in their eyes. My gaze strayed briefly over our collection of firearms. Although we all had pistols, not everyone owned a long gun. I had my Sharps, of course, another gift from Pa, this one for my tenth birthday, with my name and the date engraved on the brass patch box, and Casey had his shortened Mississippi rifle, picked up not one hundred yards from where we were sitting our saddles that night. Pablo had a pair of revolvers and a shotgun, and Roy Turner and Ardell Hawes each carried sturdy, full-stock muzzleloaders of traditional Kentucky design—most of our guns in those days had to be loaded from the front; my Sharps and Artie’s modified Joslyn were the only breechloaders in the crew—but Calvin just owned his handgun, and Dick Langley had only a single-barreled shotgun in addition to a twin-barreled percussion pistol. [Ed. Note: McCallister is probably referring to the Joslyn Model 1855 Navy version here, in .58 caliber.] Negro Jim had the double-barreled shotgun Pa had given him during the Indian Wars, although he’d never admit ownership where a white man might overhear him.
All in all, our armament wasn’t half bad, but I knew Klee’s men would have better. Outlaws usually did.
The flesh along both of my arms was tingling as I led my crew back onto the narrow ribbon of dry ground we’d been following toward the coast. I’ll admit the country wasn’t exactly the way I remembered it from when Casey and I found the chestnut there in ’61. It seemed a lot swampier, for one thing, with sloughs on every side, and the main trail had narrowed to less than eighty yards across. In some ways that was going to work to our advantage, as it would force Jacob Klee and his men within range of our guns. On the other hand, it wasn’t going to give us much wiggle room, if we needed to wiggle in a hurry.
You might be asking yourself why we all seemed so hell-bent on a fight that evening, but I can only argue that you weren’t there. I will say this. Even with all the jabbering I’ve done so far, I don’t think you can really understand what we were up against. There wasn’t one of us there who had any doubt whatsoever about Jacob Klee’s intentions. If it wasn’t our herd he and his boys were after, they wouldn’t have been so far south of the Caloosahatchee, swatting mosquitoes and dodging rattlesnakes and water moccasins and short-tempered
alligators the whole way. Nor would they have been following us, hanging back like Pablo said, but never very far away. No, they were after our cattle, and we didn’t intend to let them have them. At least not without a fight. And if we were going to tangle, I wanted it to be where the Flatiron had some control of the situation and not have a raid sprung on us unexpected.
It was fairly late by the time Jacob Klee and his men showed up. Twilight hung over the plain like a fog, and bats hogged the sky. I had my men spread across the trail with our rifles and shotguns in full view. The Klees advanced similarly, armed to the teeth with an assortment of long guns, all of them out in the open and ready to buck. As they drew close, I remembered Pablo’s words from that afternoon.
No man rides a horse like Jacob Klee. He makes that little Cracker pony of his look like a dung beetle.
Most of those Cracker ponies, what we called marshtackies, were small, finely proportioned animals, descended from stock left behind by Spanish explorers. Like the Western mustang, marshtackies had evolved over the centuries to suit their environment. They are quick, sure-footed, and as swamp-savvy as any old-time Seminole. Marshtackies are the horse of choice for those who make their living prying longhorns out of the scrub. They generally run about thirteen to fourteen hands, but Jacob’s horse was a lot shorter. Probably no more than eleven hands. [Ed. Note: A hand equals four inches, the approximate width of a man’s palm laid side-by-side up a horse’s foreleg and ending at the withers.]
A lot of people made fun of Jacob Klee and his tiny horses, but a lot more were angered by it, and not just his rough handling of the bit, but the loads he’d pile on them. I’m guessing the man weighed close to three hundred pounds by himself. Include a brace of revolvers, a rifle, plus his saddle and tack, and it added up. Just for comparison, three hundred pounds is about half what a full-grown scrub cow weighed in those days. Folks sympathetic to the Klees—and there were those, too—said the reason Jacob preferred shorter mounts was because of his arthritic knees and massive calves, not to mention having to haul all that bulk into his saddle, but most of us weren’t inclined to forgive the man for his selfishness.
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