by Mari Sandoz
But the best that the Border Rover could find to report were the violent goings on up at Trail City. The route itself turned out just as the local stockmen had warned. Something more than bleak-eyed buffalo skulls was needed to keep the Texans from taking short cuts and even long ones to find grass for the starving herds. From the first the skull markers had to be backed up by armed guards "to assist any lost drover" to find his way back to the trail.
John R. Blocker had started 25,000 steers north in nine herds to graze their way slowly along. The lead herd met one of George West's up toward the Kansas line and the two trail bosses decided they could make time by cutting across the west end of Kansas. Together they were strong enough to make it stick against any armed guards. But as they drifted to the state line, a bunch of horsebackers came charging over a row of low hills to meet them, surrounding the foremen. They ordered the herds stopped in their tracks. They wouldn't even be allowed to swing over to the National Trail now, since they plainly did not intend to stick to it.
"These are Blocker and West herds," the trail bosses announced, as though the two men were beyond the law.
But the guards stuck to their position, and the two leaders hurried back to notify their bosses. Many an armed man had trembled at the wrath of Blocker and West, who were among the toughest and most determined men ever to look down the bony back of a Longhorn. It was said West would fight a cyclone with a bradawl for his cattle. He was considered to be the man who really established how far a Texas cow could walk by the long drive he made back in 1867 when he took 14,000 cattle to an Indian reservation up on the Missouri, little more than 100 miles south of the Canadian border. Blocker was called stubborn as a blue-eyed burro and was almost as great a trailer as West. The three Blocker brothers had driven more Texas cattle to market than any other outfit. It was said that in one year they pushed 82,000 head up the Chisholm Trail. Both West and Blocker believed in the frontier rancher's code: "Take a heap of abuse before you kill a man," but now they were really fuming.
The Kansas guards ignored them as they had Culver. In the meantime other herds were stacking up behind them, with the whole trail region virtually blocked by starving cattle with nowhere to go. One of the drovers, a friend of Blocker, put in his two-bits' worth. "Give the word, Johnny. I'll take my men and kill every one of them fellers."
Blocker was so certain that the law was on his side that he held the herds while they telegraphed Washington, keeping the wires hot to their senators and to the War Department for troops to escort their herds through. When they were about ready to shoot their way to grass, a small troop of cavalry came cantering up in a whirl of dust to take the cattle up along Culver's National Trail, staying with them every inch of the way past Kansas. The guards from the Sunflower State had won.
Although the early herds were taken around Kansas, the flood of stock became too great for the border guards, and cattle from the fever region spilled over the Cherokee Outlet, into Kansas and through Bent County, Colorado. There were howls enough to foretell a month of northern lights in coyote country but even before fall dried up the movement, a kind of bitterness had fallen upon the ranchers along the route. Plainly the National Trail was a joke, a mammoth snipe hunt in which the Colorado ranchers were the tender-feet left holding the sack. The Pueblo Chieftain complained that the northern cowmen were tired of losing their grass to the through herds and on top of that losing their cattle to the fever, for which not even the Bureau of Animal Industry men were finding a remedy. Possibly the matter could be settled without bloodshed but it didn't seem probable.
In the meantime winter quieted the roistering Trail City. Like its little imitations along the route the fronts of the saloons and dance halls were boarded up, leaving the main street, the trail bare to the biting winter winds. The cattle had gone through by the hundreds of thousands to the overcrowded ranges and the northern reaches of the Big White Ruin.
By the next June stock was moving again, with typhoid fever spreading, several cowboys down with it at Trail City, several to die, and more along the trail. "Boil your water in a tin cup, if necessary to drink. Better stick to coffee—"
"Or hard liquor—"
At least safer, the doctor out from Dodge for the epidemic agreed.
By mid-June there was a constant crossing of herds at the Arkansas, around 175,000 head with no buyers, now that the bonanza was done. Several rains had started the grass and the cattle could be held without too much loss. But that meant idle cowboys in town, with a lot of shooting among the gamblers and other lawless element. Then August 18, 1886, a dispatch from Trail City was picked up by newspapers all over the cow country but read most closely in San Gabriel, Texas, and up in Nebraska, where the settlers passed the papers around until they were worn and tattered, perhaps reading where a work-blunted finger pointed: MAN BURNER KILLED BY COWBOY, saying, "Well, they got 'im; finally got 'im!"
Or perhaps: "So Old Print Olive finally got what he was askin' for for years."
All who could read had to savor the print for themselves, and those who could not, or had no glasses, had to hear it over and over. I. P. Olive, cattleman from Nebraska, now located near Trail City, Colorado, had been killed by a cowboy named Joe Sparrow.
"Sparrow—it say Sparrow?" an old Texas cowpuncher asked through clamped lips, his jaw tipped up to hold his tobacco juice.
"Yes, that's what it says."
Nobody up in Nebraska seemed to know such a man although some up along the trail this summer thought they might have seen Sparrow down there, a Hard Case, so it was said. Anyway, the news of the shooting started all the talk of the Olive killings again, both in Texas and Nebraska, and brought out the story of Print's son killing a man in the Smoky Hill country not long ago. Now this fellow Joe Sparrow came out of some place away to hell 'n' gone and picked off the head of the outfit, the old bull himself, Print Olive. A man ought to know more about a cowboy like that.
Soon there were many rumors, some saying that the fight was over a livery bill Sparrow owed Print, others that it was an old grudge from way back in Texas or that Sparrow was just traveling under that name, a man who had been living for nothing except to avenge Mitchell and Ketchum and that he had a son with the same hatred, planning to vent it on Print's son Bill. Some claimed that Bill had already been shot over a game of billiards and that the father, the Joe Sparrow, disguised as a cowboy had killed Print at a roundup of the Olive cattle.
But all these stories had to be changed later because it turned out that young Bill Olive was alive and hanging around the saloons drunk and fighting, much like his father for so many years. He had been mixed up in a killing but it was Bill who did the shooting—shot the man who killed his father. That didn't seem probable, either, not with a J. J. Sparrow standing preliminary examination for the murder of I. P. Olive, with a dozen or so eyewitnesses called in and at least a hundred more who saw the murder.
In the end it seemed that Bill Olive had killed a man up in the Smoky Hill country just to show he could do it and stood trial, one more case Print Olive had to win. He got the son acquitted but it cost a lot of money—not as much as his own release up in Nebraska but enough. Somehow putting Mitchell and Ketchum out of the way had stirred up the animals more than all the troubles in Texas, as Print complained at the time, so it was handy that the defense of his son came cheaper for he no longer had the kind of money he spent up in Nebraska.
Apparently nobody, not even around Trail City, knew much of the story behind the killing, although a Garden City, Kansas, paper reported that Sparrow had worked for Olive at one time and had some trouble, apparently over a herd of cattle. Later other stories made the rounds. Perhaps it was true that Sparrow had come in from Dodge on Sunday and happened to run into Print Olive next morning, had a few words with him, Olive pulling his gun. The cowboy grabbed it. Furious, and sour drunk, Print promised to kill Sparrow before sundown, Joe arguing all the time he wanted no trouble. The sheriff took Print away and got him to bed.
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sp; Some suggested to Sparrow that he better get out of Trail City but the man said he wasn't running. Besides, he didn't plan to have any trouble with anybody. But in the afternoon Print came through Haynes' saloon, found Sparrow, and everyone could see there was a storm coming up, that Olive had to carry out his threat but intended to make out a case for himself this time. Everybody, including the bartender, looked for shelter, preferably where they could see, most of them agreeing later that Sparrow was still trying to avoid trouble. But when Olive reached for his gun, Sparrow fired and missed—deliberately, some thought, and still talked quietly to the drunken man. Now Print fired, seeming to graze Sparrow, and this time the old rancher got a bullet through the left breast. He went down, striking his head on the doorcasing, falling on his gun hand. He seemed suddenly cold-sober but whimpering as he eased his gun out from under him. "Oh, Joe, don't shoot!" he begged, shifting himself for a swift draw.
Now Sparrow knew he had to shoot fast. This time he put a bullet through the left temple of the man who had killed so many. Then he gave himself up.
Before long some were remembering that Ami Ketchum's brother had held the mob off when they wanted to lynch Print Olive, and his words: "If the law fails to punish him . . . I'll do it my way." Perhaps Sparrow was the brother.
But that couldn't be. Surely somebody would have recognized the brother, or so it seemed. But was Tamar Snow's brother so well known? He had his stepfather to avenge, and the betrothed of his pretty young sister.
The Olive family came for Print's body and took it by train to Dodge City. The Texas relatives came up and stood sorrowfully by while the Independent Order of Odd Fellows carried out a very formal and impressive funeral for I. P. Olive, the big cattleman from Texas.
Not long after his father was killed Bill Olive showed up around Beaver City in the Neutral Strip. Since then he had been living by the moderate labor of gambling and selling the meat of an occasional fat steer he stole from the nearby ranches. On the side he seemed to be one of the younger men in one of the tough gangs of road trotters, the claim jumpers of the region—a fat practice here, where the settlers could not make legal entry, only hope to hold their land by squatters right until there was some decision where the Strip belonged, with Texas, Colorado, or the Indian lands of the Cherokee Outlet. In the meantime there was no law, no sheriff, not even a federal marshal because legally the Strip was less than a mirage in the eyes of the beholder.
At the point of their Winchesters the road trotters forced the squatter to ante up enough money to satisfy them, all he could raise, or lose his land. If the place was a good one and well improved, he probably lost it anyway no matter how much he paid. Finally the settlers got together and a couple of claim jumpers, Bennett and Thompson, were killed. This time Bill Olive managed to put his gun on the side of the settlers in time to save his hide—just one more proof to the old-timers that the gunman shot on the side with the money or the most guns.
Before long there was another Olive story to tell. It seemed that while Bill was off on a hunt, perhaps making night meat, the woman he was living with quit the country, saying Billy abused her beyond endurance when he was drunk. On his return he trailed her to the Cimarron station. Afraid to tell the truth, she made up a story. Henderson, a bartender at Beaver City, a squatter town of the Strip, said Billy was not coming back, had deserted her.
Young Olive came roaring into the saloon. Henderson denied saying it but Bill and one of his side-kicks, John Halford, called Lengthy, went on a big spree, and after many hours in and out of the saloon, came back to shoot up the place: the lamps, glassware, and all of Henderson's personal stuff Bill could locate, with Lengthy holding his gun on anybody who might think of interfering.
There was no law to call on, no sheriff, no marshal, so Henderson just waited, backed up against the wall. Finally young Olive left, but came running back with his Winchester. He motioned Henderson outside and down the street ahead of him, the man's bar apron blowing in the wind. Everywhere people stood back from the doors and windows, out of range when the bullets began to fly, watching Henderson's boots scuff up the dust while Olive poked him along with the Winchester muzzle in his britches, cursing, striking him over the shoulder with the barrel, then prodding him along again, with Lengthy Halford buffaloing Henderson across the side of the head with his pistol a couple of times. Still no one interfered, not one of all the armed men around tried to stop this "naturally wild son of a wild father," as several remarked, keeping well out of sight.
At the edge of town, with the audience left behind, Billy Olive pushed his Winchester against the bartender's back and pulled the trigger. The cartridge failed and Henderson ran, Halford's pistol shot missing him, too. By the time Olive got the rifle working, the man was out of sight, headed into the sandhills beyond Beaver Creek.
After some time Henderson's friends picked up the nerve to ride out looking for him. They found him hugging the bottom of a washout full of old wind-drifted tumble-weeds. They talked him into coming back to town. "You got to bushwhack him," a leader of the better element argued. "We can't go on letting the Olives make everybody eat dirt. You're the man to stop it. It's you he tried to kill—with you it's self-defense."
Henderson took a long time rubbing the sand off himself and wiping his haggard face with his bar apron. Finally he agreed, provided they would keep him surrounded by their saddle horses so he wouldn't be picked off by a long-range rifle shot before he even got his hand on a gun.
The little knot of horsebackers crossed the bottoms, splashed through the shallow, sand-choked Beaver, and into town to get Henderson's Winchester, the townspeople standing behind their doors and windows, expecting Olive and his partner to start the bullets flying this time for sure.
When Bill Olive heard that Henderson had dared return he started angrily along the street, Lengthy a few steps behind, searching store and bar along one side and then crossed over to the other. Henderson, from behind a sod wall, saw Bill come. He steadied his rifle on his hand against the rough, rooty surface and fired. Bill Olive fell, the dust spurting up around him before the report echoed across the street. For a moment Lengthy looked down at his friend, as still as though dead for hours. Then he swung all around, searching out the spreading of blue smoke, fearfully, as an animal might. When he saw it he started to run from it. At a hitch rack he jerked the reins of a horse and was off in a whipping gallop.
Nobody made any move to hold the bartender. He walked back to his saloon, set the Winchester in the corner behind the bar next to the frame of the shattered mirror, and wiped his hands on his apron. Then with his fingers on the edge of the bar he said, "What will it be, gentlemen?"
So ended the Olive gang, except for Ira, settled down, quietly running the Olive property left in Nebraska, to live a long time among people who forgot that he was the brother of the man burner. Not far away, married to a brother of Judge Wall, who had stood up to the Olives, lived the twice-bereaved girl with the lovely name of Tamar Snow.
With the beef bonanza busted, the bones of two big Die-Ups bleaching on the prairie, the cattlemen were cautious and slow to buy. The Coolidge Citizen, across the line in Kansas, reported that while 90,000 cattle were sold at Trail City in 1887, at least 70,000 more were returned to the home regions without buyers. The Range Journal said that several herds taken north had found no market and, turning their tails to the home of the aurora borealis, were marching back to the Panhandle of Texas. Probably saw the bones of their brothers up there, some said, and mighty glad to get back South before the snow.
This was also the year that a land office was established at Lamar, Colorado, bringing in a stampede of settlers to the Bent County region lying directly across the skull-marked National Trail. It was about the end. Only a few tried to fight their herds through the settlements and the tightening range practices of the cattlemen after that. During the last twenty-two or three years at least 10,000,000 Texas cattle had plodded northward to one market or another. It was estimated that
32,000 drivers, most of them hard-bottomed, hard-working cowhands, rode the trails. Chuck wagons had rutted their way clear to Canada; their campfires had blown ashes over every mile, with prairie graves and boothill burials scattered all the way.
Two of the early dedicated men did not live to see this ending, two very different men, but neither inclined to brook the slightest opposition or interference. Not only was I. P. Olive dead by violence, as he had lived, but the great exponent of the deeded pasture and the rancher-owned National Trail, Captain Richard King, was also gone. Many must have known when he spoke so vigorously in November, 1884, for his trail that he was a dying man, dying of stomach cancer, leaving his wife a half-a-million-acre ranch, plastered with half-a-million dollar debt, money gone for fencing, more land, blooded cattle, mostly Shorthorns usually so susceptible to the disease of the South. Somehow King kept them alive in the region of the fever that had broken herds and trails and men. E. J. Kleberg, an attorney once working against King, later his lawyer and engaged to marry the boss's daughter, became manager of the ranch. He was the man now faced with the problem of getting the cattle to market without giving all the profit, and more, to the railroads.
So Kleberg, the son of the German liberal who fled his unfriendly nation for America, became boss of King's Kingdom.
And so the old dedicated men were dying, and their time as well.
CHAPTER V
OF THE GIANTS—THE XIT
AS THE prairies were cleared of Indians and buffaloes the cattle frontier crept up out of the lowlands of Texas and washed against the cap-rock barrier to the Staked Plains. It moved out along the Canadian and pushed up the deep canyons from the Quitaque, such as the Tule and the Palo Duro, so like the scorings of some giant grizzly clawing at the plains.
From the first the cattle bred in the newer regions grew larger than their ancestors in the lower bottoms, perhaps due to the iodine shortage that lengthened both man and animals over so much of the Great Plains country, and surely due to the nutritious grasses that got too little moisture to be washy, summer or winter, curing like fine standing hay as soon as the seeds ripened.