She rubbed my neck. “He’s not shoving you out.”
“I run this place. Those two would . . .”
She interrupted me. “Are you saying you raised two no-goods?”
“They’re good men, but . . .”
“But what? You’ve told me more than once that a lot of people said you were crazy when you sunk all your money into this ranch. And the old-timers laughed at you when you brought in those first Herefords.”
“They said I was a know-it-all and a big talker who would go broke because I didn’t do things the way they did,” I said. “I went broke, but a long time after most of them. Most of them that hung on were copying me.”
“Hamish and Gunn may have different ideas than you do, but you’re going to have to let them have their way sometimes. Listen to them, at least. You should have done that a long time ago.”
“I know what Hamish is thinking, whether he says it or not. He’s made some money and thinks he knows more than I do because of it.”
“You always said you built the ranch for your sons.”
“Hamish can say this is our ranch all he wants, but he’s the one with the money.”
“And that galls you that you have to have his help?”
“Takes more than money to run a ranch.”
“Hamish knows that. I don’t think he intends to shove you aside.”
“He better not. He and Gunn can listen to me a few more years and it won’t hurt them.”
“I think Gunn is going to marry Carmelita.”
“I thought she moved off. I haven’t seen her since she was a teenager.”
“She did, but she’s been back for a while. Don’t you ever go down to the village anymore?”
I hadn’t done anything but ride past the village for two or three years. Rancho Poquito, the little village that was once the cluster of jacales my original hands had lived in with their families. There were only ten or twelve jacales left and the whole place was squalid. I would have forgotten it at times if I couldn’t see it in the distance from my porch. Dirt-poor, yes, and none of them worked for me anymore, but that was no excuse. Those people still thought I was some kind of big shot, el patrón. The old men tipped their hats to me when I passed.
“Carmelita was always a pretty girl,” I said. “I offered to send her to school once, but her father wouldn’t take the money.”
“I think you are going to have another Mexican married into the family.”
“Hmmph.”
“You don’t care what people will say? Remember what some of the Anglos said when you married me?”
“Carmelita’s daddy worked for me for better than fifteen years. Never a better man. Her mama, too. I don’t guess Gunn marrying her will bring down the family bloodline.”
“Won’t stop people from talking.”
“They will, but let them. Those kind don’t matter as much as I once thought they did.”
“She was married before. Her mother told me her husband was killed in an accident. She has a child.”
I pulled Juanita into my lap. I hadn’t done that in a long time.
“After all these years, and I still can’t tell whether you like something or simply realize you can’t do anything about it,” she said. “Maybe you could put in one of your windmills down in the village . . . when you get the time and money.”
“Gunn won’t live in Poquito. He can build a house up here, or maybe we could remodel the old bunkhouse.”
“That’s not why you should build them a windmill. They are very poor.”
“Poor folks everywhere.”
“They have to carry their water from the river. The young people don’t stay in the village anymore, not since you have no work for them. Most of those left are old.”
“The young ones were spoiled, anyway. Is this you or Tiffany that wants this? She’s always lecturing me on my philanthropic responsibilities and the plight of the poor Mexicans and how we mistreated them.”
“Both of us, but mostly me. Most of those people were good to you. Good to me. They worked hard when you needed them.”
“I let them live on my land and I’ve never asked for rent.”
“I know it is not their land, at least legally, but they feel like this is their home, too. They built those jacales and raised three generations of babies there.”
“I always paid them fair.”
“They don’t want your land. That’s not what I’m saying. They didn’t even ask for a windmill. Tiffany and I thought . . . I thought that helping them with the water would be a good thing and a way to say thank you.”
“Having a well drilled isn’t cheap, and there’s no guarantee you hit water the first time.”
“Think on it.”
“I’ve got plenty to think on.”
“Come to bed. I don’t like it when you make me sleep alone. It scares me when you go out in the night and wander around or do whatever it is you do.”
“Habit from the old days.”
“You have a warm bed now and a woman who loves you.”
“I’m not sleepy.”
“The ranch will still be here when you get up. Come to bed.”
Chapter Forty-six
1905
Some crazy fool shot McKinley and that put his vice president, none other than Teddy Roosevelt, in the big chair. America reelected him in 1904. I could have cared less what that bunch of swindlers and pickpockets in Washington did, but when I received a letter from the Texas governor wanting me to attend a wolf hunt the President was holding not far north of me across the Red River in the Oklahoma Territory, I decided to go.
Gunn was still after me to try and get lease rights to run our cattle in the 480,000-acre chunk of the Comanche reservation that cowmen called the Big Pasture. We didn’t have deep enough pockets to vie with the cattlemen grazing that lease, but to appease Gunn I said I would check it out. The thought that maybe I could talk to the President about the Rough Riders was the real reason I went.
The politicians had opened up most of the western half of the Indian Territory to settlement, the Oklahoma Territory they called it after that, and the President was campaigning his way through there on his way to a Rough Rider reunion down in San Antonio. The culmination of his grand tour was to be when he returned to Oklahoma Territory for a wolf hunt with some dignitaries and a few of his friends. For some fool reason, the governor thought I needed to go. The President liked to meet cowboys and ranchers, and people had gotten it in their heads that I was some kind of pioneer or something. It was said that Roosevelt tried ranching himself up in the Dakotas, but the winter of ’86 froze him out like it did the rest of us. Besides learning something about the outfit Joseph had joined up with, I was curious about a president that might know a little about ranching.
Gunn and I rode our saddle horses up to Frederick. I guess we could have taken the train, but no matter how my joints bothered me, I still preferred to travel by horseback. And it would do me good to ride over the country again.
Instead of following the railroad, we cut due north. I intended to look around the old Texas Ranger camp close to where I crossed the Red with my first trail herd back in ’67. But they had built the town of Cottle, or what they were calling Salt Creek by then, nearby, and the people of that community had scavenged the old Ranger camp until you couldn’t tell where it had been.
We rode a big loop to the northwest on our way to Frederick, winding through the Wichita Mountains and hitting the old Dodge City Trail that we had sent our last trail herds over years before. We camped one night beside a little mountain of bare, gray granite—more a round mound of rock standing alone in the midst of the flat country than anything. Gunn showed me the graves of two cowboys working under him who had shot each other to death in an argument on the trail.
Everywhere we went we ran across cattle, and we occasionally met friends from the old days that were still hanging on—not as many as I would have liked, but a place to stay overnight and someone to visit with. Like Tex
as, that country still had some open grazing, but it was a scattered patchwork mixed among the new towns and homesteads that had sprung up since the Territory was opened. Everywhere we went we saw people. It wasn’t like that the first time I went over that trail in ’78 or so. There wasn’t anything back then but coyotes and Indians.
The papers said thousands lined up for the Oklahoma land rushes they held in those last years of the century—people hungry for land.
Even Gunn seemed to be enjoying himself. Give him a horse and some open country and he was as happy as a pig in mud.
When we finally made Frederick, it seemed like we were the last ones to the ball. The President’s private train car was already parked on the siding, and he and his guides and retinue had taken over the town’s only hotel as their headquarters. I saw the Texas governor with a group of men near Severs’s Store, but avoided him. He had worn the gray during the war, but I couldn’t abide by his politics. If I had ridden over there it wouldn’t be five minutes until he was patting me on the back and asking me to tell Indian fighting stories or telling me how a state banking system was good for the people.
Good for the people. Government is inefficient by nature, has nothing to do with common sense, and is incapable of running a lemonade stand, much less banks. The governor and the rest of his ilk ought to tend to their cigars and leave us all to our own ends. But that’s politicians and bureaucrats for you. Every damn one of them will tell you that they know something about business and the working man, but not many of them ever worked with their hands or ran a business, unless you count lawyering as a real trade. When they say “for the good of the people” they mean something that will get them a vote or something that will line their pockets. I had all the politicians and government types I wanted back in Alabama. I came to Texas and still couldn’t outrun them. You have a perfectly good place and then they show up, like hounds after scraps.
“Let’s see if there’s a room left in the hotel before we put up our horses,” I said.
Gunn waved at the governor. “Try to be friendly, Papa.”
“Your brother is more the kind to visit with the governor. You know how much use I have for those good old boys.”
“Are you still sore because they made you pay a lease for the state land? What was that, four cents an acre and about fifteen years ago? And I thought I held a grudge. The governor there didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“I’m sore because they made me lease, and then tried to sell me what was already mine. I know his kind.”
There was one room left in the hotel, and Gunn was going to have to sleep on the floor or find a hay pile down at the livery. Three days of sightseeing had me wanting a feather bed. Gunn took the horses and put them up for the night while I carried our things to the room.
I managed to dodge the crowd in the lobby on my way upstairs, but that so-called governor saw me when I came back down to hunt up a restaurant or someplace to eat. He was standing by a medium-sized man in glasses and a suit. I thought maybe he was the Oklahoma territorial governor or something. One governor was more than I could stand, much less two.
“Come over here, Argyle,” the governor said.
Damn a man that doesn’t know you or isn’t your friend that will refer to you by your first name. Poor manners for a man who was once a Southern officer, but that’s a politician for you—baby-kissers and white liars.
“Good evening, Governor,” I said.
More men gathered around. The only one I recognized was Burk Burnett. To look at him, you would have thought he was another middle-aged cowboy, but Burk was one of the richest cattleman in Texas and the salt of the earth. At one time, his ranch neighbored ours to the north across the Big Wichita. When a lot of us were going broke, Burk was still growing his Four Sixes brand. Some of that may have had to do with him contracting with the Indians for a grazing lease, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that Burk had the good sense to marry the daughter of the president of the First National Bank of Fort Worth.
Those stories about Burk winning his first herd in a poker game with a hand of four sixes is a bunch of hogwash. Burk knew when to sell and when to hold, and figured out that banking was more profitable than cattle. I hadn’t seen Burk in years, for he had left the ranch to his son and spent most of his time in Fort Worth. Burk’s only problem was that he thought too much of the Kiowa and Comanche. But he wasn’t around when the Indians were at their worst.
“Mr. President, I would like to introduce you to Argyle Dollarhyde, one of our earliest Texas cattlemen and pioneers,” the governor said.
President? And there I was thinking the man in the glasses might be a territorial governor at best. I gave him a closer look, but he still didn’t strike me as much.
“Old Argyle was out here before any of us,” Burk said.
It grated on me when men called me old, but I guess that’s the price of living too long. And Burk meant it as a mark of respect.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dollarhyde.” The President had a strange accent, somewhere between Blue Bastard Yankee and an English schoolmarm.
I shook his hand. “A pleasure, Mr. President.”
“Call me Teddy. We’re all good chaps here.”
Chaps? “I’m sure we are.”
“I see you wear a sidearm when not many do anymore, even out here. Is that a Smith Number 3 on your hip?” the President asked.
“It is. I guess I got in the habit of wearing one.”
“Argyle drove one of the first trail herds to Kansas and is one of our most noted living Indian fighters,” the governor said.
“It took exceptional men of rigor to settle the West,” the President said, brushing his mustache absentmindedly with one hand.
I cleared my throat.
“Yes, the red man was a spirited antagonist. Wonderful savages,” the President added.
“That’s not how I recall them.”
“The great chief Quanah Parker is somewhere around here. You must have Burk introduce you to him.”
“I think I met him once.”
“Oh?”
“Shouldn’t say I actually met him, but we had a long-range disagreement.”
The President laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. “You are a dry man.”
The governor looked nervously from me to the President. “Don’t mind Argyle. He’s too humble to take credit for his deeds. Why, we’ve tried to have him down to the Austin several times to hold a banquet in his honor and to recognize his service to our great state.”
“Don’t make apologies for this man. I admire his bluntness,” the President said with a smile. He raised a mug of beer in toast. “Bully to the rugged individualists who made this country great.”
Bully?
“Argyle is most legendary for single-handedly routing an entire village of Kiowa back in the old days,” the governor said.
“Tell me more,” the President said.
“I’d prefer not to,” I said.
“Come now, Argyle, don’t be so humble. Tell us the story,” the governor said. “I admit I have never heard it, except for third- or fourth-hand.”
“That was long ago, and not worth telling.”
“Argyle’s wife was lost to the Kiowa.” The governor tried to look squeamish as soon as he said it. “Forgive me. Perhaps it is rude on my part to bring up old memories.”
“Forgive me, also,” the President said.
“No apologies necessary. Like I said, that was a long time ago, and nothing to brag about.”
“Needless to say, it’s still something schoolboys will learn for years to come, and a good part of why your son will probably be elected to office,” the governor said. “Texas does like her heroes and the sons of heroes.”
“A round of drinks for the bully Indian fighter from Texas,” the President said. “Let us proceed to the local watering hole and partake of some refreshments.”
“Pardon me, Mr. President, but I had a long ride to get here. I
think I will find a meal and then my bed,” I said.
“Such Old South manners. Mississippi?”
“Alabama.”
“Very well then, Argyle Dollarhyde, I’ll see you in the morning. Perhaps then we can swap stories,” the President said.
“One of my sons joined up with your Rough Riders.”
“Glorious men. Glorious. Was he at the reunion in San Antonio, by chance?”
“He wasn’t.”
“Shame. It did my heart good to see so many of those I fought with. No bond is stronger than that shared by men who have faced death together.” The President’s voice rose higher and turned a little squeaky. “Do you know the American grizzly bear, Mr. Dollarhyde? Ferocious beast.”
“We don’t have them in Texas.”
“No, sir, but terrible fighters anyway. Fast as a horse and with claws this long.” The President held one hand about six inches from the mug of beer in his other. “I have hunted the grizzly, sir, and I promise you it is the finest big game animal in North America. Splendid animal. So full of spirit that a single bullet rarely takes it down.”
“We have black bears in Texas,” the governor said.
“Not the same,” the President said.
The crowd around the President had grown larger. Most of the men were cowboys, and I guessed the novelty of a president telling hunting stories in the lobby had them curious.
The President turned to his audience. “I mention grizzlies because that is the only way I can describe those men who charged valiantly with me up Kettle Hill with the Spaniards pouring hateful fire on us so thick it felt like a swarm of hornets filled the air. Did those boys flinch or cower? No, sirs, no! No finer example of American spirit displayed since the Revolutionary War. Hearts like grizzly bears! Achilles and his Myrmidons would have been no match for those men. Such men haven’t taken up arms since the walls of the Alamo!”
The crowd clapped, although somewhat awkwardly. The looks on the cowboys’ faces said they thought the President had too much beer, but most of the men in the audience were Texans and mentioning the Alamo was a sure way to get their attention and to stoke up their fighting spirit.
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