Cattlemen

by Mari Sandoz

  Mid-February, 1877, three windburnt, whiskered men rode over the mesquite-dotted Dillingham Prairie to Graham, not far below the Red River. One was C. C. Slaughter, forty, tall, affable, gallant, his well-groomed beard a little bushier than a goatee—still sometimes called the first native cattle king of Texas. He had started buying when he was seventeen with $520 he made hauling and trading lumber and wheat along the Trinity. He had pushed his little herd three hundred miles northwest and was now boss of the vast Long S Ranch out on the Prairie. He had a home in Dallas, where he had gone into banking—one of the first of a breed to prove very long-lived, the banker-rancher, making money on his cattle in good years and in bad stretches foreclosing on his neighbors and spreading his range farther and farther.

  Beside Slaughter rode Jim Loving, son of one of the early dedicated men. He sat the saddle with more weariness and more age than his forty-one years and with much gray in his full mustache and pointed beard. He had not only lost his trail-blazing father to a Comanche arrow but, a big cattle operator and trail driver himself, he had lost so much stock to the brand-burning fires of the rustlers that he was literally broke. All he had left was a little one-horse ranch and a good name. The latter, at least, he knew he must keep.

  The third man, the eldest, was C. L., Kit, Carter of Palo Pinto County, around fifty-seven, with a bushy and benevolent white beard. He was a man of integrity and friendliness, with a twinkle in his eyes. Born in Virginia, he had come to Texas young. Like Jim Loving, Carter carried an Indian-made sorrow deep in his stooped breast. Kit and his young wife had pushed out with the frontier early and it was not far from today's trail to Graham, eight years ago, that his son Shapley and eleven other cowboys were surrounded by Indians. The cowboys fought them off all day but young Shapley was one of those who died.

  The three men heading for Graham this chilly February day rode like kinsmen—three bowlegged stock growers of the open country where a man had forty miles of elbow room—a region that had demanded a lot of energy, push, and guts to cut it from the wilderness and the Indians, and which now seemed even harder to hold. They were old friends, the three. They had worked roundups together, punished Indian depredators together, grieved for their bereavements together. But now they had to raise their sights.

  At the little cow town of Graham other men came riding in, singly, in pairs, and in bunches, some over one hundred miles of mesquite and post-oak country. They gathered at the potbellied stove of the hotel, some looking with exaggerated envy at Burnett's big white hat, a John B. Stetson from Philadelphia—something new, called Boss of the Plains.

  "You shure got to be careful with your ambeer spittin' in the wind—"

  "Pounding out a couple of those prairie fires like my cook's always setting sure would black up a pretty albino belly like that J. B. you got," another offered.

  But mostly the men had little time for even such mild joshing except to cover their seriousness, their uneasiness about this new undertaking, and none of the joking was about rustlers. One man there, George Reynolds, had already been in trouble over letting a thief get away. While out hunting cattle one winter his wrangler, a youth who was left in charge of the camp, skipped out with Reynolds' favorite riding horse, a rawhide lariat, and all the camp blankets. The rancher and a couple of his hands cut for sign and located the wrangler thirty, thirty-five miles off. They got the loot back, including the lariat, and started to the sheriff with him, a good stiff distance. They met a cowman who suggested it would be much quicker to string the wrangler up, as a warning.

  "You know—hanging out a dead owl to scare the rest away," he said.

  They looped a throw rope over a branch and told the youth to get on with his praying. He prayed so fervently and pitifully that softhearted George Reynolds decided a good thrashing would do more good than a hanging. He applied the rawhide rope solidly to the wrangler's rear, gave him an overcoat against the cold weather, and told him to hit the road.

  The news of the planned lynching pleased the sheriff but when he heard about the good rawhiding instead, he sent word to Reynolds that this was a penitentiary offense and he better keep dodging. George did, for several years, but when he wanted a marriage license he got a couple of gun-packing friends to go to town with him to get it, face the friendly sheriff down if they had to. It worked out all right and the Reynolds set up housekeeping in the sod-roofed dugout on George's lonely ranch, adding another woman, like Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Loving, and Slaughter's mother, to those who never got sight of a sister soul in months and months.

  Now, here at Graham, many realized they would have to give up such individualistic action as George's with the wrangler. It came hard for these old longhorns, hard as a horse pill to swallow.

  Some put off thinking about this by wondering whether Charlie Dalton would show up for the meeting. He did, although seven years ago the Dalton family had sold Jim Loving a herd of cattle for $15,000 on tick, on time. After the rustlers cleaned Jim out, Charlie had to reclaim what little was left to him for the family debt. It wasn't easy to do and here would be the first time they had to meet in close quarters.

  Plainly Jim Loving was edgy as a mustang before a storm and when Charlie Dalton came through the door the wind-squinted eyes of the others slipped uneasily to Jim and then away. In the silence the clump of Charlie's boot heels was loud on the rough-sawn pine floor, the clink of his spurs like trace chains clanking. There was a sort of shifting among the dark-faced men, a sort of aligning without movement, and for a minute or so all the old animosities here were laid bare, rising to life like a nest of spring rattlers.

  "How'd do, Charlie," someone said.

  Half-a-dozen others also spoke, pushing their hats back from pale foreheads, the group moving around a little, talking overloud, one or two laughing, for there was more than personal animosities at stake here, perhaps even lives. Only something much deeper than any personal things could have drawn others besides Dalton and Jim Loving together here at all.

  There was a little further attempt at codding, joking, but it was still feeble as a heifer's newborn calf in a norther, and gradually the talk turned to the rustlers. One of the first was Median, converted into a granger by the rustlers who stole nearly all his cattle. He went into corn, wheat, and hay for the ranchers around him who were trying to protect their stock by corraling it more, which called for feed. Median had made it in cattle from around 1854 through the war and the Indian raids but the rustlers threw him. He stroked his whiskers now, admitting that he was still turning grass wrong side up. "But I ain't joined the Farmers Alliance yet," he assured the rest. "Knights of Labor are more my bunch, but both outfits tell me they're with us in our plans here, and they got power in the statehouse."

  Lynch, in his thick Irish brogue, talked about his little place where the first big hauls started when that gang from Griffin swept off his whole herd in the night. He had taken his young wife to a dugout when they got back broke from the California gold rush. He moved her into a good two-story house since, but if the rustlers carried on much longer he and the lady would be back in the dugout.

  Finally C. C. Slaughter spoke and everybody stopped even the moving of the jaws to listen, even those who envied him this respect. His father, Old George, was still called Sam Houston's right-hand bower, the last man to deliver a message to the Alamo, it was said, and the first one to marry in the Texas Republic, with C. C. here the first one born of such a marriage—the true Texian. The father had flourished in ranching, but his cattle were of the old wild blood, mostly hoofs and horns, with no market in Texas except for the hide and tallow at the rendering plants. By 1853 he had moved to the Indian border. To his ranching and his soul-saving as a Baptist preacher he added practical knowledge in frontier medicine. He delivered the babies of the couples he married, doctored the sick, and buried the dead. Besides preaching the double gospel of salvation and cattle, he fought off Indians and reared eleven children, two of them here among the forty men called together, the forty selected
from among themselves to save their cattle business.

  It was fitting that C. C. Slaughter would be the one to lead the group out of the hotel to a big winter-browned oak for the final organization where no alien ear except the sleeping squirrels might hear. The forty men stood or squatted on their worn boot heels, their hams cradled against their spurs —whiskered men, with only the youngest in stubbles. These were the first cowmen of Texas and the whole Southwest to establish a permanent organization—a formal notice that the day when a man could start in the cattle business with no more than a cow horse, a rope, branding iron and the nerve to buck the brush, was past. From now on the range here, though mostly public lands, and the cattle, even the un-branded, were no longer free for the taking.

  There was long, even windy talk of range and brand control, with the story of Dan Waggoner's 144 steers stolen and a Box put around his 3-D with a bar iron. No Box 3-D was registered so he recorded the new brand in his own name and went to reclaim the steers from the brand burner, with the weight of the guns on his side, of course.

  Yes, but most of the brand artists were smarter, at least smart enough to whoop the stolen stock out of the region, if not to record their brands.

  That was true, and in their helplessness these old cowmen, thorny as prickly pear, often sensitive as a shedding rattler, formed the Northwest Texas Stock Raisers Association to work for the interest of the stock growers of the region. The territory was divided into six districts sprawled across north Texas, from near the Arkansas line westward and around almost to El Paso. The roundups would be supervised by the Association; doubtful ownership of any stock and any question of brand or brand artistry would be the responsibility of the roundup boss selected by the members. When trail herds from south and central Texas came through, Association members were to check them for stock belonging to any member. Kit Carter was elected the first president, with Jim Loving the secretary. The heads of the six districts included some of the shrewdest old cowmen of Texas, not only the initiators of the Association but little Seth Mabry, the Harrolds, the Ikard brothers, and old fighters like Hittson, who, it was said had brought the 10,000 head of stolen stock back out of New Mexico.

  As the men scattered back across Dillingham Prairie some were content with what had been done, some hopeful. Many, however, were uneasy about a new factor brought up, discussed, praised, and damned—the new invention called barbed wire. Of course the menace or the boon was still a long, long while off, but some thought that eventually it would reach all the range. Some had seen it and these, too, were divided about its portent.

  The new Stock Raisers Association plunged into its work and was aided by the unusually high spring flooding of the Red River. The 300 yards of roiling, brown-red water held up the herds there and gave the inspectors time to look over the stock and all those detained on the trail, their camp-fires stretched back from the Red across Texas to the San Antonio.

  But the Association was no medicine wagon cureall. By the second meeting at least one charter member was accused of violating the rules against driving and molesting cattle outside of his own district. Captain Millett offered a resolution for additional power to stop herds or to make arrests. There were some who recalled the highhanded outfit Millett himself ran, wild cowboys in many shooting scrapes, a big one last January at Fort Griffin. Two of the captain's cowboys, full of rye, had spurred for the Bee Hive, shooting and yelling all the way. A deputy sheriff and the county attorney tried to stop them. In the gun fight two men were killed, two wounded, one of them a Millett hand. The other got away north, but afoot.

  Yes, it would be Millett advocating arrests right and left, but then how else could the Association be effective? The query: "By what right do you stop me?" was answered to the satisfaction of most of the members, at least, by the Association's power and the guns that the rustlers or trail drivers would find against them all the way to the Red. Nothing else, no legal right.

  The fall meeting of 1878, the first session away from the old oak at Graham, was at Griffin, where the rustling by gangs had started. The town was pretty sleepy in its dust these days, with the buffalo hide trade about done. Still they managed a little excitement for the Stock Raisers, even had a little old-time talk of lynching, but quietly, because of the bloody vigilance committee, who, it was said, had disposed of eighteen men they claimed were livestock thieves. Ungallantly they strung up a lawyer apparently because he defended a woman who poisoned her husband.

  People around Griffin had been missing cattle again, even the former sheriff, who had a slaughter lot in town. He said the thieves were the trickiest he had ever run across but he was working on them. Then a cowboy noticed a hide sticking out above the water in a shrinking pond near the slaughter lot, with the brand of a small ranch nearby still showing clear. He spread the word. Men gathered to plunge into the stinking water, fishing out a dozen hides with various brands. The former sheriff saw it was time to hit for the wilds but he was caught and locked in the county jail. There was a rumor that his friends and confederates would rescue him and so the vigilance committee broke into the jail, took him out for a volley of six-gun and rifle fire. To shut his mouth, some of the soured Griffinites said.

  It was a sobering experience for the Stock Raisers, this session around such violence. President Carter spoke out sternly against these tactics. The Association was as anxious to round up rustlers as anybody, with so many of the members busted by the thieves, but they planned to work with range detectives and court trial rather than the slapdash of necktie parties down at the pecan trees or a volley of Winchesters.

  But there were members as hot as any rustler's iron to take matters into their own hands. "Look at the private law down at King's Kingdom," one argued. "No rustlers bother him much."

  "King owns the land," some of Carter's backers pointed out.

  "Yeh, and the Mexies he's moved up, too, owns them."

  "How about the law that Goodnight and the Mexican sheepmen agreed on out in the Panhandle?"

  Well, that was mostly state land and they had no legal basis for their action off their own property, but they probably had the guns.

  The different factions pulled this way and that, not only at Griffin but later, too. As some pointed out to Carter around Christmastime, there were worse things than necktie parties. Up in Nebraska, for instance, where the Olive outfit, run out of the San Gabriel region in Texas here, was burning settlers, whether rustlers or not. Carter knew something about the situation up there, out in west Nebraska. A brother of one of his trail bosses had homesteaded west of Sidney and was run out not by a Nebraska cattlemen organization but by the Wyoming Stock Growers. Crops eaten up, his wife scared into crying fits by bullets coming through the window at night.

  The problems were a little different in the North from those of the early cattle days of Texas. Up there it wasn't a matter of rounding up a lot of Longhorns by hard work from the brush, mostly wild stock about as easy to gather as deer and as hard to drive, as the brush poppers put it. The North was mostly prairie, the cattle tamer, even the Longhorns trailquieted. Getting a stolen herd away was often much easier, with grass and water usually handy and markets, too, down almost any stream leading to the Platte, or along the canyon of the Niobrara clear to Iowa, if wished. She-stuff was profitably pushed north, perhaps down the breaks and canyons of the Powder, the Belle Fourche, or the Little Missouri.

  The frontier always had many men who left home a jump ahead of the sheriff and some managed no more than that for years. Some of the buffalo hunters come north drifted into outlawry, and occasional miners, too, with the placer diggings pinching out in the Black Hills. But the most successful rustlers were former cowboys who got their time by one request or another. Experience in handling range stock was very important and such men were hardest to track, to bring in if overtaken or to string to some cottonwood. Ranchers who lost stock usually started the hunt by trying to trace down their former hands. Often the cowboy had built up a little bunch with his
own brand and ran it with the ranch herd, perhaps encouraged to take cattle as part of his wages because the boss lacked cash money except market time or because he felt it helped the drifting cowboy settle down, keep him from throwing his money around in gambling dens and on whisky and women. Often a few fat cows and calves kept a hand from yelling for his time just because his bedroll got soaked or the beans happened to rattle like buckshot in his tin plate. It wasn't as easy to hit the road with a bunch of cows as with only a kack and ditty bag to throw on a horse. In the South some ranchers had used the cowboys in their dubious mavericking on other ranges by encouraging them to do a little off-time cow taking for themselves. In the North, even at roundup time, a cowpuncher might brand an occasional slick for his boss on the sly, and do the same for himself. But sometimes this led to changing even his employer's brand, or that of a neighbor, particularly if the owner happened to be an eastern financier or, more commonly, a Britisher off across the sea.

  Often cowboys who got a few cows together, by honest work or the long rope, set up little spreads of their own. This, perhaps even more than the occasional theft of a critter, decided both the Wyoming and the Montana associations to bind their members not to hire men owning cattle. So they were black listed, thrown into the same pot as everybody from the known rustler to the honest ranch hand trying to get a little start. In Wyoming ranchers who hired cowboys on the black list were ordered investigated. No black-listed cattleman or cowboy was permitted in a roundup, and any foreman who broke the rule not only could be fired but forfeited the $3,000 bond he had to put up. This was a powerful weapon against any newcomer, any settler, but the bond itself kept all small operators from roundup foremanship. In Montana the black list was denounced as a way to shut out the small, the beginning stock grower, and the newspapers over the territory broke out in editorials condemning it as the act of greedy cattle kings.