Cattlemen

by Mari Sandoz

  Once the old trans-Missouri country had drawn the world's finest crop of travelers and adventurers, come to hunt, to-view the aborigines, perhaps to live for years with the Sioux. Now once more everybody came but for a ranche, as the Britishers still spelled it, a ranch with cattle by the tens of thousands to bawl their fat way to market, and high-stepping horses to fork. Soon the range of all the West was claimed and fought over, even leased and occasionally bought when these were possible, as in Texas and along the railroad right of ways. Cattle by the millions were needed to stock these new ranges if there was to be money from the grass. Texans yielded their stock, even their fine young breeding heifers, for although they knew they were building up the stiffest kind of competition in the North, the price they asked and got was high. And safe in the pocket, as some of the old-timers comforted themselves, men who had seen the bottom drop out of the market as a bronc drops out from under a tenderfoot.

  The Midwest, too, was skimmed of its best seed and Oregon—all blockier, heavier stock than the southern, while even much of the inferior she-stuff that usually went to market as culls was kept for breeding. Many calves usually cut for steers were now kept as herd bulls, while the dearth of their kind, usually plentiful at the slaughter pens and the feed lots, made even the canners boom.

  Around Cheyenne and in Boston and Edinburgh it was said that a man could buy a calf in the forenoon and sell it in the afternoon for enough profit to pay for his dinner, with a hearty nip or two thrown in for sauce. Indeed, the only way to avoid making money in beef was not to go near the business at all or to punch cows for the other fellow at $25 a month. It was the new bonanza—not of gold but of something better, something that touched deep in man's nature, a bonanza in something he could grow and develop as his own living handiwork, a creature that stirred him twenty, twenty-five thousand years ago as the magical being that nurtured him, helped shape his destiny.

  "Cattle, give us cattle!" was the cry from the San Antone to beyond the Marias of the north. By May, 1882, steers had climbed the highest since 1870, $9.35, a hundred for top quality. A steer ready for fattening on the northern ranges brought $37, perhaps even $50 in Texas, and could be sold to a Wyoming speculator for $60, beef cows at $35. There was a rumor that the British-owned Prairie Cattle Company had announced a dividend of 42 per cent for 1882, and according to livestock journals, Montana cattlemen were reaping profits from 25 to 40 per cent. Truly 1882 was the year the cow jumped over the moon, and next season she would clear the sun like an old-time, brush-popping Long-horn going over a granger's plowed furrow.

  None of this could be hidden or ignored, not even with the booming gold rush of the Black Hills. Brisbin's Beef Bonanza or How to Get Rich on the Plains, put out in 1881, was being read everywhere, and the newspapers publicized what was certainly the last outpost of adventure in a shrinking and dullard's world. Men and money poured out upon the Great Plains. Even the most cautious old-timers, the starters of the business, began to reach out, increase their herds beyond what they ever felt they might swing handily, and hunted more grass. Many of the earlier dedicated ones spread, too, in addition to men like Goodnight who had already moved twice and I. p. Olive now crowding the others in the cattle pool in Kansas. Ikard and Harrold, charter members of the Northwest Texas Association, added 70,000 cattle and drove them to range lying across the west line of Indian Territory, C. C. Slaughter bought state lands almost by the county in west Texas until he had a pasture fifty miles wide and eighty miles long. In addition he leased an empire of a ranch in Montana and trailed steers up there to finish on the hearty northern grasses.

  Kit Carter, president of the Northwest Texas group, who seldom ran more than about 8,000 head, organized a cattle company in 1883 and bought up 40,000 acres to guarantee range for around 15,000 cattle, come rain or drouth. The Snyder brothers, once associated in cow herds with Print Olive, were scattering their holdings from the Gulf up through New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming to the Pacific slope.

  But the real boom capital for the cow country came from the East and the British Isles. Although breeding stock was at peak demand, beef prices seemed to sag a little now and then, temporarily. Of course there were some sour months like the Drovers Daily Journal, with its 1882 prediction that catastrophe would result from overtrading. When the cattlemen recovered from their first fury at this traitor nurtured by their money, they asked what was meant by "overtrading." Was a starving cow chasing grass overtrading? Or a calf bawling for his mother?

  "We are just measuring up to the demand, sir," the Texans argue.

  The East, which kept pouring money into the range country, needed no justification, nor did London and Edinburgh, throwing pounds sterling into the pot to equal if not exceed the Yankee dollar. In Edinburgh drawing rooms buzzed with stories of the bonanza. Staid old gents scarcely knowing the difference between a steer and a stone cow discussed the bonanza over port or snuff as they warmed their knees. Young aristocrats hungry for adventure, particularly if a little wild and an embarrassment at home, had no trouble tapping the family exchequer for investment. The western cattlemen were only too happy to unload their holdings at fancy prices to such investors. As always in a profit-hungry time, swindlers flourished. Paper companies put out attractive prospectuses and handsome stock certificates. Without an acre of land or a solitary Longhorn steer they raked in the money like a croupier in a boom town. And why not? A Scotsman, J. S. Tait, issued a small brochure, The Cattle-fields of the Far West. He estimated the possible profits as from 33½ to 66½ per cent, and added some fine success stories.

  For instance, there was Searight of Wyoming who invested $150,000 in the cattle business in 1879, took nothing out, and put nothing more in, and although there was the hard winter of 1880-81, with some bad losses, before two more years had passed his business was estimated worth $1,500,000. Colonel Slaughter, president of the First National Bank at Dallas, made a similar sum from cattle before he reached middle life. Charles Goodnight, the Pioneer of the Panhandle, made, without any starting capital of his own, $600,000 in ten years. His partner, Adair of Ireland, put up around $360,000 or $370,000 the last six, seven years, and took out between $60,000 and $70,000. The remaining $300,000 of his investment was now worth $3,000,000. Tait added that Searight, Slaughter, Goodnight, and Adair could be surpassed in wealth by many cattle kings, and it was true there were a couple dozen such men—King, the Snyders, Lux, Lytle, Brush, Lawrence, Stuart, Kohrs, Carey, Kendrick, and so on, all pioneers in ranching. These were men who worked at the job, rode the range almost daily, supervised perhaps the smallest dab of tar on a wound to keep out the worms, saw the last sliver of rock salt on the far range, and caught the least sign of a buzzard circling where a critter might be dead. But now great corporations were moving in, organizations whose stockholders hired a manager, often several. Occasionally they got one who knew cattle, but most of them merely made a pleasant drive around the range in a buggy now and then while the owners talked cow over Scotch and water at their club in London or Edinburgh, played poker at Cheyenne or up at Miles City. Sometimes their hired hands rode the range and perhaps they connived with rustlers or branded part of the spring calves for themselves.

  Such outfits invited the incompetency and thievery they often got. Even when they bought out honest ranchers the figures in the tally books were quite unreliable since no account was taken of the losses in calf crop or of stock that died during the winters, say 1878-79 and 1880-81. Investors seemed to think they had to buy that day, that minute, sight unseen, or lose the golden opportunity. Up in Cheyenne a blizzard story was told of a lot of cowmen at the bar in Luke Murrin's saloon gloomily trying to figure what their livestock losses would be. "Cheer up, boys," Luke said heartily. "The books don't freeze," and set 'em up for everybody.

  Often, too, the pressure to show large dividends made men of judgment sell the herds down to the short hair, taking this year's profits out of next year's growth. But while many newspapers began to urge caution in the boom t
hey feared was already slipping toward a bust, one Colorado livestock journal insisted that cattle were one investment that couldn't come too high for any man. They would multiply, replenish, and grow out of even a bad bargain. In 1883 the Breeders Gazette reported that a good-sized bull calf worth $5 at birth could be a $45 to $60 steer when ready for market after four, five years' feeding on the free grass of the public domain. A thousand such animals would bring the owner $40,000 to $45,000 above their calf value. Even allowing another $5,000 for running expenses, the profit was still at least $30,000. But Bill Nye of the Laramie Boomerang dabbed his rope on the tallest tale of the whole beef bonanza. He told of an innocent tenderfoot who came to Wyoming with empty pockets leading a lone Texas steer and carrying a branding iron for the increase. Perhaps, as Nye said, innocence is truly its own reward, for the tenderfoot soon found himself the owner of 6,000 head of fine cattle, all but one the natural increase of his lone steer.

  Yet even with Nye's paper spread out before them for a good laugh, everybody in Cheyenne speculated in steers. The Boomerang reported that a justice of the supreme court of Wyoming bought a $40,000 herd—good publicity to draw capital into new ranch enterprises and into some established ones, too, in need of new blood.

  There were always some Massachusetts bonanza stories floating around. One told of a man from there who bought a Wyoming ranch the spring of 1883, 12,000 cattle, 700 horses, and other stock for $230,000. That fall he sold his beeves and 6,000 other cattle for a total of $180,000, which left him 6,000 head, counting calves, and 700 horses, worth at least what he had paid for the ranch. Another Massachusetts man, a manufacturer, was ordered to Nebraska for his health. He picked the cattle business for its fresh air, bought out a small spread of 4,000 cattle and drove in 5,000 from Oregon. In four years his $110,000 investment brought him an offer of $300,000 spot cash, which he refused.

  The Bay State Land and Cattle Company was one of the cross-financed outfits coming in, with some Massachusetts and Maine capital in addition to the Scottish and English money. The ranch was started in western Nebraska back in the late 1870's, well ahead of the boom. They shipped out a large frame house, knocked down, and set it up on the Lodgepole Creek bottoms—a palace rising out of the prairie. Cowboys came to stop their horses on the ridge and stare awhile as they slouched over the horn. It was said they had running water inside there, and a tub for washing all over, like in a buffalo wallow. The carpets come boot-heel deep, and velvet stuff was hanging over lace shutting out the windows. The grub tools looked like the silver on spurs and there were napkins to stick in the shirt collars. Of course that wasn't for the cowhands, but even in the cookhouse the grub was mighty rich—canned peaches any day, and when it was dried apples it was pie, raisin pie, too, even for breakfast, and beans, lots of good beans baked brown and sweet with molasses, cooked soft, too, not bouncing all around like Mexican jumping beans on a hot stove lid.

  But mostly it was the bathing room and the privy inside the house that the cowboys couldn't quite believe. Just like a man heard tell.

  Before long a second such house was dumped off the freight and bullwhacked out to the head of Pumpkin Creek, where the Bay State's main brand, the Half Circle Block, was centered. By the spring of 1883 the outfit was expanding very fast. They bought the Circle Arrow Ranch, from Creighton, Snodgrass, and McShane for $700,000 and that fall added the remainder of Creighton's holdings. The next spring they bought out "Coad's Kingdom," as the settlers called it, the Coad Ranch stretching from Chimney Rock west to Scotts Bluff between the North Platte River and the Wild Cat Mountains. Not large but very compact and protected. In addition the Bay State leased Union Pacific railroad lands and established another ranch up near Ten Sleep, Wyoming. With these bases the managers planned to run cattle all over the western part of Nebraska and the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming and much of the region between.

  Although they were building toward a herd of 150,000 head, their Indian contracts required outside steer purchases, and late the spring of 1883 the new manager, John A. McShane, went clear to Oregon and with a crew of eleven men prepared for the 1,200-mile, three-month drive back. It took many weeks to break and shoe their broncs for the rock and lava beds to be crossed, hunt up steers, not plentiful there either, throw and brand these heavier, shorter-horned cattle. Finally the herd of over 2,000 big two- to four-year-old FF steers was started east over a trail with vast stretches that made the route from Texas seem like a pleasant browsing along the grassy Platte bottoms, the crossing of the Red River only a little noontime cooling for the cattle compared to the roaring snow-fed streams they had to swim between Oregon and the hungry Sioux of Dakota.

  At Old Ferry, on the treacherous Snake River, the cowboys worked the cattle out on a long bar and let them stop to drink there, belly-deep in water. In the meantime two men hurried across and brought up seven, eight head of the ferryman's herd, mostly milk cows, to the bank as decoys. Then the two waddies at the point of the herd cut off some of the leaders, including the bell steer, and prodded these into the swift boil of water, swimming desperately to keep afloat and from being swept away. The rest were whooped in after them but for all the "Yi-hoo! Yi-hool" that the trail drivers could yell out, the lead steer hesitated and almost went under when the main current hit him. But he could see the cows calmly drinking on the far side. His eyes lost some of their bulging fear and he struck out straight across the river, swimming strong, the rest of the herd pushed hard behind him.

  They made it across the powerful snow-water stream that was not more than forty or forty-five yards wide here but so swift and deep that sometimes whole herds refused to try it at all. There were still three dangerous rivers to cross. At the Fayette the packs of barking, snapping curs set the cattle wild. This quieted a little when some of the dogs went floating downstream. The trail had many rocky stretches, including the lava beds that wore the hoofs of the herd to the quick, many long, arid sagebrush miles with no grazing, and finally the practically straight up-and-down trail at Terrace Canyon, called Tear Ass Canyon by every trailer who ever tried it. "So steep even the coyotes stop to throw on rough locks to make it down," an old puncher in the region warned the Bay State hands.

  By November the 2,012 big FF steers were delivered to the Indian agent at Pine Ridge, Dakota Territory. For all the three months on the trail they were good, well-fleshed stock, better than the Longhorns the Indians usually received, stringy and trail-gaunted by the long, fast drive over burning prairie. The FF herd was just nine head short of the starting number. McShane made up a few others lost on the way, it was said, made them up in the usual manner by gathering in any strays from earlier herds, or any way he could.

  The Bay State was by no means the flashiest of the foreign-owned ranches that dominated so much of the bonanza cow country. Most of Wyoming was taken up by British outfits. One of the fanciest was Moreton Frewen's up in the Powder River country before he sold it, and the Rocking Chair, coming in down in Texas, run by a British Lord for Queen Victoria, it was said, and not pretending to make money; nothing as common as that.

  John G. Adair, the Scotch Irish financier who went in with Goodnight in the Palo Duro, had set a sort of pattern, more or less, but the typical Englishman entering the business in the bonanza years went in more for adventure or perhaps because he could not maintain his position at home. Perhaps he wanted a hunting preserve or came across the sea because the distance reduced the embarrassment he was to his family, who were sometimes very glad to make periodic financial payments to keep him out of sight. But the remittance man didn't stand high in the cow country except with those getting some of the remittance into their own fists.

  More British ventures into the cattle country were by company, such as the Prairie Cattle Company, Limited, the first Scottish ranch venture in America, at least of any size. In 1880-81 they brought up the so-called range rights to much of the Cimarron in New Mexico, then added the LIT on the Canadian in the Panhandle. The new company had some immediate success on th
e rising beef boom, and the chairman announced that a $16 calf could be fed up to a $35 value with less than three shillings outlay. This helped spread enthusiasm. Late 1881 the Texas Land and Cattle Company, Limited, of Dundee, with shareholder connections to the Prairie, had bought the 236,000-acre ranch in Nueces County from Mifflin Kenedy, former partner of Captain King, for breeding stock. In addition they got control of more land in the Panhandle and the Cherokee Strip. Both these companies had some American obligations and shareholders. The Texas also succeeded early and paid an annual dividend of 15 per cent. The next year the Scottish Matador was registered to buy $1,250,000 worth of ranch property. In six months they had 60,000 cattle, 300,000 acres of land bought on an average of $1.68 an acre, and ranging privilege on almost 2,000,000 acres.

  With this demand for range Texas raised the minimum price for her unwatered state lands to $2 an acre. Still the cattle boom went on. More Scottish companies were formed, the investors anxious to grab a piece of the bonanza. One of the contact men sent out was John Clay. He came in 1880 and by 1883 he was made superintendent of the Western Ranches, Limited, up in Dakota. In 1882 the Wyoming Cattle Ranch Company, Limited, had been organized after Clay's favorable report on the 71 Quarter Circle, described as containing 4,000 square miles, 2,560,000 acres, but without stating how very much of this was government land, public domain. In 1882 the Powder River Cattle Company, Limited, took over the 76 Ranch of Moreton Frewen, who had amused the Wyomingites so much. The ranch lay along the Powder and the Crazy Woman, in Johnson County, far from the railroad, but not too far for the great festivities for visiting Englishmen under Frewen's management, although the land owned was nominal for the 54,629 cattle listed in 1884.