Cattlemen

by Mari Sandoz

  In Dakota on this one point—fast horseflesh—the Texans, Frenchmen, breeds, and Sioux Indians were alike in their wild partisanship and their betting. Some of the hottest rivalries grew up around the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota, in Dahlman's stomping grounds. He usually had at least one fast horse to run against the reservation stock which was mostly from Big Bat Pourier's tough old racing line or an occasional cross of thoroughbred blood that drifted in. Then Joe Larvie took a gray thoroughbred as his share in the town site of Hot Springs in the Black Hills and cleaned up on the best that the army posts around could put up, or Pine Ridge Reservation, and the ranchers, even those with imports from the British Isles.

  In the meantime Jim Dahlman, down in Texas buying cattle, got his hands on a blood bay called Fiddler. He matched the horse all the way north from the Pecos and never lost. Fiddler became the pride of the dying cattle trail, and Dahlman picked up some good money from such outfits as the XIT and got part of the little that was left of I. P. Olive's fortune. At Ogallala and a dozen other places he took on every local pride. The blood bay's sudden bursts of speed were the talk of all the trail and of all the Texas cowboys around the tricorners of Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska. They were both loyal, and gamblers, and put everything they had on Fiddler in a challenge to the Larvie Gray. The Sioux hurried to back the Gray with money, blankets, beadwork, horse—everything. The Frenchmen of the region and the wealthy breeds were horse lovers, too, and laid their money down.

  Cowboys from far beyond the region began to place bets, hoping to see a big run, particularly those from the Dakota ends of the Texas outfits like the Driskills, the Hash-knife, Turkey Track, Flying V, and the old Chisum ranch hands who had followed the Jinglebob herd when it was sold north to Hunter and Evans—men like Johnny Riggs, sheriff of Sheridan County which butted up against the Pine Ridge Reservation, and Charley Nebo and others who had their natural bent indulged by the gay and wagering ways around the old French trader families and their Indian relatives. Some said even Doc Middleton, the outlaw, had money down, although it was more than likely, some thought, that his gang would try to sweep off both Fiddler and the Gray. Perhaps that would be a little daring even for Doc, with all the guns sure to be handy. Besides, to protect the cattle of the Sheridan County region from his outfit, Doc had been made deputy sheriff.

  As the day of the race neared stories of Fiddler's great speed got around and the backers of the Larvie horse began to falter a little, think of ways to back out. Then Big Bat laid $1,000 in cash on the line for the Gray. Interest grew immediately, for Big Bat was a most knowing man when it came to the hind leg of a horse. Tension mounted between the Texans and the local boys, particularly the breeds, and the stakes grew, too, until it was plain that one side or the other would be cleaned out, stripped like a gully in a cloudburst.

  Very confident until now, the Texans began to get a little uneasy over all the show of money and promised a bullet to the man who rode the Gray, first slyly, then in open threat, which only raised the betting ante. Buckskin Jack Russell, the Gray's trainer, was a cold-nerved Indian scout but with so many genuine sheriff dodgers in the region packing guns, he had to remember that he was a family man, and so he backed out. Now there were days of despair among the Indians and the breeds until Brady, a little cowboy with a good hand for a horse and an eye for one of Joe Larvie's handsome breed daughters, offered to ride the Gray. Threats scared him, but not enough.

  The race was to be run at White Clay, Nebraska, just south of the Pine Ridge Reservation. The low flat had begun to fill up with campers a week ahead. Indians dropped the harness off their ponies down along the creek and while the women set up the smoky tents the men gathered in little knots and circles to talk horse. Ranch outfits came in with roundup wagons and camped, too, and small groups of soldiers from Robinson and Meade and farther away. Sporting women showed up and a couple of wagon saloons opened for business in addition to the regular ones at White Clay. Later comers poured in over the dusty summer prairie from Pine Ridge, the Black Hills, across the Badlands, and from the Niobrara, the Belle Fourche, and the Little Missouri.

  The day of the race thousands of Indians moved in to the track before daylight, sitting up very close within touching distance of the stripped dirt route, with cowboys and ranchers coming later to line the track all the way. A good place up near the finish line had been staked out for the old carriage of Joe Larvie and his family, particularly his handsome daughters, including Nellie, who was married to Crazy Horse the short summer before he was killed, and the youngest one, showing her French blood in the pretty dark eyes that were made bolder by it. Yes, one could see why Tom Brady risked a bullet by riding the Larvie Gray.

  The betting ground, covering two acres, was cluttered with horses of all kinds, saddles, rifles in circular stands, and a great deal of other cowboy stuff. There were Indian ponies, wagons, beadwork, and regalia at the base of the Sioux betting post. There was a pile of currency and promises of money and cattle weighted down by gold coins, about a dozen pistols, and a tangle of cartridge belts with holstered guns. Here the reservation people had thrown their wagers down in Indian fashion and were covered. There would be a fine haul for a Fly Speck Billy or a Dune Blackburn, but only against the thousands of guns here on everybody, even the outlawed ones under the blankets of the Indians. A couple of sturdy, unmoving Indian police in thick, woolly uniforms stood by the betting post, and a handful of new deputy sheriffs wandered around, looking and talking important.

  As race time neared, the shouting, the excitement, and the dust rose. Many of the horsebackers coming in were ranchers, a few with their women and girls, looking very ladylike in their sidesaddles, with so many Indian women astride and some settler wives, too, perhaps even riding bareback on a folded apron. The cowboys, too, pushed their horses in closer, a few with dark Indian faces. Here and there a horse started to kick, raising a flurry of return strikes and nippings, quieted by sharp cuts of the rein ends and muttered curses.

  Then Dahlman rode out to a great cheering and a rousing Rebel yell as the shiny blood bay plowed quietly, daintily, through the great crowd of Indians pushing close to look him over. But almost at once they drew back, making swift little gestures of concern to each other, their immobile faces somehow darkening. There was a quiet sort of signaling relayed back through the people and then someone pushing, elbowing up slowly through the jam to the 600-yard straightaway course. It was Young Horse, whose family had been mustangers. He crowded through and out upon the track. There he dropped his blanket, looked all around along the narrow lane between the spectators. Then he squatted down and touched the racecourse with his hands, palms pressed into the soft dust, doing something that the watchers could not see. If he said any words, they were lost in the roar of ridicule and joking from the cowboys.

  Slowly Young Horse rose and drew his dusty blanket up about him. "Let the red horse run past here," he said to the Indians standing close as a wall. Then he edged sideways off between them and was gone.

  When Brady came out on the Larvie horse a great whoop and the shrill Sioux woman's cry of approval went up from the Indians. The little cowboy touched his heavy quirt to his hat when he passed the Larvie girls. It was a fine sight, with the excitable gray rearing high against the bit, to come down faunching at the close rein that held him prancing, springy as a deer, the foam flying.

  At the starting end Fiddler was quiet at his side of the track, well trained, an old-timer of many, many races. Jim Dahlman sat him confidently, his white hat down close over his nose as he always wore it, waiting. The gray broke several times, was called back, until finally they stood for one moment side by side. The gun cracked and Fiddler shot out, a full length ahead, to the thin, alarmed cries of the Indian women. But Brady whipped from the first jump, and the gray crept up through the heel dust to the flying tail, the flank, then to Dahlman's stirrup, the Indians whooping to see it. And when he reached the bay's neck, Fiddler just laid his ears back, lengthened his
stride, and turned on that famous wild burst of speed for home.

  But little Tom Brady had bet everything on the Gray, his cow horse, his whole outfit, even his gun, and by all this the girl he hoped to win. The quirt cut the gray hide as the rider whipped to both sides, Indian fashion, and the horse ran but was losing, so Brady leaned far over and gave the high, penetrating Sioux war cry into the horse's ear. He shot ahead now, coming up even, and so they ran, neck and neck in the whitish dust that was like fog, like fine winter snow flying, running so close together that one good buffalo robe would almost have covered both. They came like the wind, like that blizzard wind out of Dakota, and yet for all the spur and whip Brady could pour on, Fiddler was pulling away, only the width of a finger at first, then farther, a full length, both the Indians and the cowboys yelling.

  Then Fiddler reached the place where Young Horse had touched the track. Suddenly he faltered, broke his rushing stride, shifted his gait, ran wide for a few jumps, the Indians falling back like grass before the wind, Dahlman cursing, setting his spurs, whipping the bay with the reins in his fury. In the meantime Brady cut the Gray with the butt of the quirt and the horse went ahead by a length, by two, running low, belly to the ground like a coyote fleeing scared. Dahlman, a matchless horseman, settled his darling of the Texas trail. Under the leather Fiddler exploded in a burst of speed such as the northerners had never seen before. It brought a great cheering from every horse lover there, but it was too late. The Larvie Gray was already past the finish, still stretched low, running far out into the valley of the White Clay before he could be stopped.

  Jim Dahlman was back first, face grayish under the deep sunburn, hands shaking. He dismounted, loosened the cinches. To the angry, profane cowboys and ranchers who moved up around him he had only one foolish, feeble answer, one he said over and over: "Something happened, I don't know what. Fiddler quit for the first time—"

  "Probably stepped in a gopher hole," one of the cowboys who never bet anyway suggested reasonably.

  "That little buck probably sprinkled some Indian stuff other horses hate—"

  By night the Indians had packed up everything in sight and retreated across the reservation line with it, before anybody could decide to reprieve his losses.

  "Young Horse has made good medicine this day, very good horse medicine," they told each other, some smiling a little, as they clucked their ponies homeward.

  Unfortunately Brady didn't get the girl after all. Seems she preferred the agency blacksmith who had never won such wealth for her mother's people or ridden such a race. But then she was a beauty in a land of few women, the people up around there said, their voices moderate.

  The cattlemen had been accused of agitating for troops against the ghost-dancing Sioux in 1890, helping to bring on the killing of Sitting Bull and the massacre of Big Foot and his fleeing band at Wounded Knee. Certainly the alarming letters of some ranchers to their senators about the impending slaughter of settlers, some, in fact, already killed, helped bring those troops. Local correspondents for some New York papers sent in reports about blood flowing on the Indian frontier although their pieces were usually written in bars at Chadron or Rapid City, drinking cowman whisky. Some didn't know that not one Indian had left the reservation or that the whole essence of the ghost dance was one of non-violence. In the meantime, some of the timid settlers did pull out and the ranchers got more reservation range for less lease money out of the confusion and despair among the Sioux.

  With the troops and the contractors that an Indian war always brought, there was even more interest in horse racing. This time Jim Dahlman helped work up a real man-and-animal killer: a 100-mile race around a five-mile route at Chadron. Once more the Texans, the French, and the Indians were excited, particularly the latter, when they heard of the first prize, $1,000 "for the best horse of the northwest" with $500 and $250 for the runners-up. Everybody knew the Indian horse was the toughest and certainly could come out the winner.

  Good long-range horses were brought in from everywhere, to be grained and hardened on the long, dusty route. Cowboys shagging by stopped here and there along the track to lean over the saddle horn a while and watch. Soon, however, even the Texas cattle scarcely lifted their horned heads as riders whipped past without reining out after them.

  Dahlman, turning an ear toward the young orator, William Jennings Bryan, had shifted from stock inspector for the Wyoming Association to a little ranching for himself, but mainly to the offices of sheriff and mayor at Chadron. Even so he was asked to put a horse into the long race, for the publicity. Why not run his bronco cow horse Baldy, just for the hell of it?

  "I know Baldy's been out on pasture and grass-soft," one of Jim's cowboys said, "but nobody's ever wore him down."

  Baldy was brought in. Dahlman ordered the rider to put the horse through the first fifteen miles in the short lope his mustang blood could hold so long. After an hour's rest he was to be put in again, rested, and run again, so through the 100 miles.

  The race started at the little cow town, a whole long line of horsebackers, Indians, and breeds riding in it, too, and one Mexican. Some of the Texans shifted their bets to the Mexican. "White man rides a horse down, Indian gets on for another five, ten miles, Mexican sets fire to his tail and runs him ten, twenty more," they argued with each other.

  The horses were a shaggy lot, some real broomtails but good enough to ride down. Dahlman's bald-faced red looked no better. The other horses started off in a hard run, and were whooped on when they came around and around, Dahlman's Baldy far behind, but dog-loping along, easy as though carrying a fence-line rider, with a fine, sunny day ahead of him. Before the twenty-mile round was done, three horses were out, two dead back on the track, it was claimed. After that they thinned out fast, Baldy the only one to finish the 100 miles and still going, grass belly and all, but pretty gaunted down. And when the Humane Society came in with warrants for everybody, twenty of the Sioux braves in regalia were hired to run a foot race down the Main Street. In the excitement and the crowding, pushing, everybody connected with the race got away.

  Other towns saw that the race had brought business to Chadron, even in these hard-time years. Early in the spring a horse named Doc Middleton was taken up to Wyoming from Chadron, brought in casually as a "fancy buggy horse" and hid away at Charley Richards' ranch down at Bates Park, to harden and work out for the Fourth of July. Of course the news of Doc got out and some sports at Casper sent word to Jim Dahlman, at Chicago just then, for a better horse. He bought one called Sorrel John to be sent out a week ahead, with a professional jockey. Doc's backers went to take a look and came back with their chin whiskers dragging, scared. Charley only raised his bets on his horse but a lot of Sorrel John money went uncovered.

  The Fourth came with a $500 purse and all the bets placed before the fast workouts of Sorrel John scared off any new money. Somebody hunted up a third horse who drew the outside of the roughly diamond-shaped track, with the Sorrel at the pole.

  There were the usual false starts of the professional jockey until he got Sorrel John off to a ten-foot jump on Doc. At around 200 yards this was closing up, and it was neck and neck until the homestretch, where Doc drew away to win over the professional rider and the imported horse to a great whooping and roar.

  Immediately Sorrel John's backers demanded a return race. This time Charley Richards put up all he had and could borrow, as did a lot of other ranchers and hands. Doc won again. Dahlman, with his usual sporting spirit, decided he would make up the $1,000 personal losses at the gaming tables that evening. He started at faro along about sunset and although the dealers worked in relays around the clock, Jim gave up at midnight, down almost $1,600. He took the train back to Chadron.

  "That's what you get, betting against your own town," Charley Richards told him. "But we're always glad to take your money."

  But now the biggest race of all came up: 1,000 miles, Chadron, Nebraska, to the Chicago World's Fair. The man behind it was John J. Maher, the hoa
xer who, with his sensationalized accounts of the nonexistent Sioux uprising, helped bring on the Wounded Knee massacre. He made up the story of the great race, but it caught on so well over the country that Chadron businessmen felt trapped. Then Buffalo Bill Cody, at the fair with his Wild West Show, took it up. A combined purse of $1,500 was gathered. Photographers and newspapermen came out, and with a big crowd watching the ten riders started the relay run that was to be "The Greatest Horse Race of All Time," and surely "The Supreme Test of Man and Horseflesh!" Doc Middleton, the notorious but gentlemanly horse thief, was going along for the publicity and the fun. This time the Humane Society had men there from the start, mounted and ready to work the route in relays with the riders. Daily news dispatches were carried by the papers from points along the way. Two weeks after the start the first of the six riders checked in at Cody's Wild West Show, but he was disqualified, because, Chadron heard, he had studied the route too well ahead of time. The next man was accused of riding the cushions or at least the hard seat of a caboose after he reached the more civilized regions along in Iowa, his horse in the flatcar or something better. For a long time all anybody at Chadron knew was that Rattlesnake Pete, one of the two genuine cowboys in the race, was very late because his last horse gave out on him. Doc Middleton was also late. He turned out a real soft-bottom, openly riding the cushions, but then he only went for the trip.

  The newspapers finally announced the prizes: the $500 from Cody's show divided among eight men, the top, $175, going to John Berry, $25 to Middleton, the $1,000 raised in Chadron went to seven men, Berry not in the money here at all, although Middleton got $75. There was general disgust, and if Chadron or the region had been inclined to much personal encounter, as say, in old No Man's Land or New Mexico, there would have been shooting and bloodshed. But Chadron took things a little easier, particularly on such a good conversational topic. The town got the publicity, but the real honor went to the western cow horse—standing up so well that even the Humane Society seemed pleased.