by Frank Harris
Life on the Trail On the tenth of June we took a train to Kansas City, the gate at that time of the «wild west.» In Kansas City I became aware of three more men belonging to the outfit: Bent, Charlie, and Bob, the Mexican. Charlie, to begin with the least important, was a handsome American youth, blue eyed and fair haired, over six feet in height, very strong, careless, light hearted: I always thought of him as a big, kind, Newfoundland dog, rather awkward but always well meaning. Bent was ten years older, a war veteran, dark, saturnine, purposeful; five feet nine or ten in height with muscles of whipcord and a mentality that was curiously difficult to fathom. Bob, the most peculiar and original man I had ever met up to that time, was a little dried up Mexican, hardly five feet three in height, half Spaniard, half Indian, I believe, who might be thirty or fifty and who seldom opened his mouth, except to curse all Americans in Spanish. Even Reece admitted that Bob could ride «above a bit» and knew more about cattle than anyone else in this world. Reece's admiration directed my curiosity to the little man and I took every opportunity of talking to him and of giving him cigars, a courtesy so unusual that at first he was half inclined to resent it. It appeared that these three men had been left in Kansas City to dispose of another herd of cattle and to purchase stores needed at the ranch.
They were all ready, so the next day we rode out of Kansas City, about four o'clock in the morning, our course roughly south by west.
Everything was new and wonderful to me. In three days we had finished with roads and farmstead and we were on the open prairie; in two or three days more, the prairie became the great plains, which stretched four or five thousand miles from north to south with a breadth of some seven hundred. The plains wore buffalo grass and sage brush for a garment, and little else, save in the river bottoms, trees like the cottonwood; everywhere rabbits, prairie chicken, deer and buffalo abounded. We covered about thirty miles a day: Bob sat in the wagon and drove the four mules, while Bent and Charlie made us coffee and biscuits in the morning and cooked us sow-belly and any game we might bring in for dinner or supper. There was a small keg of rye whisky on the wagon, but we kept it for snake-bite or some emergency.
I became the hunter to the outfit, for it was soon discovered that by some sixth sense I could always find my way back to the wagon on a bee-line, and only Bob of the whole party possessed the same instinct. Bob explained it by muttering, «No Americano!» The instinct itself, which has stood me in good stead more times than I can count, is in essence inexplicable: I feel the direction; the vague feeling is strengthened by observing the path of the sun and the way the halms of grass lean, and the bushes grow. But it made me a valuable member of the outfit, instead of a mere parasite midway between master and man, and it was the first step to Bob's liking, which taught me more than all the other haps of my early life. I had bought a shotgun and a Winchester rifle and revolver in Kansas City, and Reece had taught me how to get weapons that would fit me, and this fact helped to make me a fair shot almost at once. Soon, to my grief, I found that I would never be a great shot, for Bob and Charlie and even Dell could see things far beyond my range of vision. I was short-sighted, in fact, through astigmatism, and even glasses, I discovered later, could not clear my blurred sight. It was the second or third disappointment of my life, the others being the conviction of my personal ugliness and the fact that I should always be too short and small to be a great fighter or athlete. As I went on in life, I discovered more serious disabilities, but they only strengthened my deep-seated resolve to make the most of any qualities I might possess; and meanwhile my life was divinely new and strange and pleasureful.
After breakfast, about five o'clock in the morning, I would ride away from the wagon till it was out of sight and then abandon myself to the joy of solitude, with no boundary between plain and sky. The air was brisk and dry, as exhilarating as champagne, and even when the sun reached the zenith and became blazing hot, the air remained lightsome and invigorating. Mid-Kansas is two thousand odd feet above sea-level and the air is so dry that an animal when killed dries up without stinking; and in a few months the hide's filled with mere dust. Game was plentiful: hardly an hour would elapse before I had got half a dozen ruffed grouse or a deer, and then I would walk my pony back to the midday camp, with perhaps a new wild-flower in my hand whose name I wished to learn. After the midday meal I used to join Bob in the wagon and learn some Spanish words or phrases from him or question him about his knowledge of cattle. In the first week we became great friends. I found, to my astonishment, that Bob was just as voluble in Spanish as he was tongue-tied in English, and his command of Spanish oaths, objurgations and indecencies was astounding.
Bob despised all things American with an unimaginable ferocity and this interested me by its apparent unreason. Once or twice on the way down we had a race; but Reece on a big Kentucky thoroughbred called Shiloh won easily. He told me, however, that there was a young mare called Blue Devil at the ranch which was as fast as Shiloh and of rare stay and stamina. «You can have her, if you can ride her,» he threw out carelessly and I determined to win the «Devil» if I could.
In about ten days we reached the ranch near Eureka; it was set in five thousand acres of prairie, a big frame dwelling that would hold twenty men; but it wasn't nearly so well built as the great brick stable, the pride of Reece's eye, which would house forty horses and provide half a dozen with good loose boxes besides, in the best English style.
The house and stable were situated on a long billowy rise, perhaps three hundred yards away from a good-sized creek, which I soon christened Snake Creek, for snakes of all sizes simply swarmed in the brush and woodland of the banks. The big sitting room of the ranch was decorated with revolvers and rifles of a dozen different kinds, and pictures, strange to say, cut out of the illustrated papers; the floor was covered with buffalo and bear rugs, and rarer skins of mink and beaver hung here and there on the wooden walls. We got to the ranch late one night and I slept in a room with Dell, he taking the bed while I rolled myself in a rug on the couch. I slept like a top and next morning was out before sunrise to take stock, so to speak. An Indian lad showed me the stable, and as luck would have it, Blue Devil in a loose box, all to herself and very uneasy, «What's the matter with her?» I asked, and the Indian told me she had rubbed her ear raw where it joins the head and the flies had got on it and plagued her; I went to the house and got Peggy, the mulatto cook, to fill a bucket with warm water, and with this bucket and a sponge I entered the loose box. Blue Devil came for me and nipped my shoulder, but as soon as I clapped the sponge with warm water on her ear, she stopped biting and we soon became friends. That same afternoon I led her out in front of the ranch saddled and bridled, got on her and walked her off as quiet as a lamb. «She's yours,» said Reece, «but if she ever gets your foot in her mouth, you'll know what pain is!»
It appeared that that was a little trick she had, to tug and tug at the reins till the rider let them go loose, and then at once she would twist her head round, get the rider's toes in her mouth and bite like a fiend. No one she disliked could mount her, for she fought like a man with her forefeet, but I never had any difficulty with her, and she saved my life more than once. Like most feminine creatures, she responded immediately to kindness and was faithful to affection.
I'm compelled to notice that if I tell the other happenings in this eventful year at as great length as I've told the incidents of the fortnight that brought me from Chicago to the ranch at Eureka, I'd have to devote at least a volume to them; so I prefer to assure my readers that one of these days, if I live, I'll publish my novel On the Trail, which gives the whole story in great detail. Now I shall content myself with saying that two days after reaching the ranch we set out, ten men strong and two wagons filled with our clothes and provender and dragged by four mules each, to cover the twelve hundred miles to southern Texas or New Mexico, where we hoped to buy five thousand or six thousand head of cattle at a dollar a head and drive them to Kansas City, the nearest train point. When we got o
n the great trail a hundred miles from Fort Dodge, the days passed in absolute monotony. After sunset a light breeze usually sprang up to make the night pleasantly cool and we would sit and chat about the camp fire for an hour or two. Strange to say, the talk usually turned to bawd or religion or the relations of capital and labor. It was curious how eagerly these rough cattlemen would often discuss the mysteries of this unintelligible world, and as a militant skeptic I soon got a reputation among them, for Dell usually backed me up, and his knowledge of books and thinkers seemed to us extraordinary.
These constant evening discussions, this perpetual arguing, had an unimaginable effect on me. I had no books with me and I was often called on to deal with two or three different theories in a night; I had to think out the problems for myself, and usually I thought them out when hunting by myself in the daytime. It was as a cow-puncher that I taught myself how to think-a rare art among men and seldom practiced. Whatever originality I possess comes from the fact that in youth, while my mind was in process of growth, I was confronted with important modern problems and forced to think them out for myself and find some reasonable answer to the questionings of half a dozen different minds. For example, Bent asked one night what the proper wage should be the ordinary workman. I could only answer that the workman's wage should increase at least in measure as the productivity of labor increased; but I could not then see how to approach this ideal settlement. When I read Herbert Spencer ten years later in Germany, I was delighted to find that I had divined the best of his sociology and added to it materially. His idea that the amount of individual liberty in a country depends on «the pressure from the outside» I knew to be only half true. Pressure from the outside is one factor, but not even the most important: the centripetal force in the society itself is often much more powerful: how else can one explain the fact that during the World War liberty almost disappeared in these States, in spite of the First Amendment to the Constitution. At all times, indeed, there is much less regard for liberty here than in England, or even in Germany, or France: one has only to think of prohibition to admit this. The pull towards the center in every country is in direct proportion to the masses, and accordingly the herd-feeling in America is unreasonably strong. If we were not arguing or telling smutty stories, Bent would be sure to get out cards, and the gambling instinct would keep the boys busy till the stars paled in the eastern sky. One incident I must relate here, for it broke the monotony of the routine in a curious way. Our fire at night was made up of buffalo «chips,» as the dried excrement was called, and Peggy had asked me, as I got up the earliest, always to replenish the fire before riding away. One morning I picked up a chip with my left hand and, as luck would have it, disturbed a little prairie rattlesnake that had been attracted probably by the heat of the camp fire. As I lifted the chip, the snake struck me on the back of my thumb, then coiled up in a flash and began to rattle. Angered, I put my right foot on him and killed him, and at the same moment bit out the place on my thumb where I had been stung; and then, still unsatisfied, rubbed my thumb in the red embers, especially above the wound. I paid little further attention to the matter; it seemed to me that the snake was too small to be very poisonous; but on returning to the wagon to wake Peggy, he cried out and called the Boss and Reece and Dell and was manifestly greatly perturbed, and even anxious.
Reece, too, agreed with him that the bite of the little prairie rattlesnake was just as venomous as that of his big brother of the woods. The Boss produced a glass of whisky and told me to drink it: I didn't want to take it, but he insisted and I drank it off. «Did it burn?» he asked. «No; 'twas just like water!» I replied, and noticed that the Boss and Reece exchanged a meaning look. At once the Boss declared I must walk up and down, and each taking an arm, they walked me solemnly round and round for half an hour. At the end of that time I was half asleep: the Boss stopped and gave me another jorum of whisky; for a moment it awakened me, then I began to get numb again and deaf. Again they gave me whisky; I revived, but in five minutes I sagged down and begged them to let me sleep. «Sleep be d… d!» cried the Boss. «You'd never wake. Pull yourself together,» and again I was given whisky. Then, dimly I began to realize that I must use my will power and so I started to jump about and shake off the overpowering drowsiness. Another two or three drinks of whisky and much frisking about occupied the next couple of hours, when suddenly I became aware of a sharp, intense pang of pain in my left thumb.
«Now you can sleep,» said the Boss, «if you're minded to; I guess whisky has wiped out the rattler!» The pain in my burnt thumb was acute: I found, too, I had a headache for the first time in my life.
Peggy gave me hot water to drink and the headache soon disappeared. In a day or two I was as well as ever, thanks to the vigorous regimen of the Boss. In the course of a single year we lost two young men just through the little prairie snakes that seemed so insignificant.
The days passed quickly till we came near the first towns in southern Texas. Then every man wanted his arrears of salary from the Boss and proceeded to shave and doll up in wildest excitement. Charlie was like a madman. Half an hour after reaching the chief saloon in the town, everyone of them save Bent was crazy drunk and intent on finding some girl with whom to spend the night. I didn't even go to the saloon with them and begged Charlie in vain not to play the fool. «That's what I live for,» he shouted, and raced off. I had got accustomed to spend all my spare time with Reece, Dell, Bob or the Boss, and from all of them I learned a good deal. In a short time I had exhausted the Boss and Reece; but Dell and Bob each in his own way was richly equipped, and while Dell introduced me to literature and economics, Bob taught me some of the mysteries of cow-punching and the peculiar morals of Texan cattle. Every little herd of those half-wild animals had its own leader, it appeared, and followed him fanatically. When we brought together a few different bunches in our corral, there was confusion worse confounded, till after much hooking and some fighting a new leader would be chosen, whom all would obey. But sometimes we lost five or six animals in the melee. I found Bob could ride his pony in among the half-savage brutes and pick out the future leader for them. Indeed, at the great sports held near Taos, he went in on foot where many herds had been corralled and led out the leader amid the triumphant cheers of his compatriots who challenged los Americanos to emulate that feat. Bob's knowledge of cattle was uncanny and all I know I learned from him. For the first week or so, Reece and the Boss were out all day buying cattle; Reece would generally take Charlie and Jack Freeman, young Americans, to drive his purchase home to the big corral, while the Boss called indifferently first on one and then on another to help him. Charlie was the first to lay off: he had caught a venereal disease the very first night and had to lie up for more than a month. One after the other, all the younger men fell to the same plague. I went into the nearest town and consulted doctors and did what I could for them; the cure was often slow, for they would drink again to drown care and several in this way made the disease chronic. I could never understand the temptation; to get drunk was bad enough, but in that state to go with some dirty greaser woman, or half-breed prostitute, was incomprehensible to me. Naturally I enquired about the Vidals; but no one seemed to have heard of them, and though I did my best, the weeks passed without my finding a trace of them. I wrote, however, to the address Gloria had given me before leaving Chicago so that I might be able to forward any letters; but I had left Texas before I heard from her; indeed, her letter reached me in the Fremont House when I got back to Chicago. She simply told me that they had crossed the Rio Grande and had settled in their hacienda on the other side, where perhaps, she added coyly, I would pay them a visit some day. I wrote thanking her and assuring her that her memory transfigured the world for me-which was the bare truth: I took infinite pains to put this letter into good Spanish, though I fear that in spite of Bob's assistance it had a dozen faults. But I'm outrunning my story. Rapidly the herd was got together. Early in July we started northwards driving before us some six thousand head
of cattle which certainly hadn't cost five thousand dollars. That first year everything went well with us; we only saw small bands of plains Indians and we were too strong for them. The Boss had allowed me to bring five hundred head of cattle on my own account: he wished to reward me, he said, for my incessant hard work, but I was sure it was Reece and Dell who put the idea into his head. The fact that some of the cattle were mine made me a most watchful and indefatigable herdsman. More than once my vigilance, sharpened by Bob's instinct, made a difference to our fortunes. When we began to skirt the Indian territory, Bob warned me that a small band or even a single Indian might try some night to stampede the herd. About a week later, I noticed that the cattle were uneasy: «Indians!» said Bob when I told him the signs. That night I was off duty, but was on horseback circling round as usual, when about midnight, I saw a white figure leap from the ground with an unearthly yell. The cattle began to run together, so I threw my rifle up and fired at the Indian, and though I didn't hit him, he thought it better to drop the sheet and decamp. In five minutes we had pacified the cattle again and nothing unfortunate happened that night or indeed till we reached Wichita, which was then the outpost of civilization. In ten days more we were in Kansas City entraining, though we sold a fourth of our cattle there at about fifteen dollars a head. We reached Chicago about the first of October and put the cattle in the yards about the Michigan Street depot. Next day we sold more than half the herd, and I was lucky enough to get a purchaser at fifteen dollars a head for three hundred of my beasts. If it hadn't been for the Boss, who held out for three cents a pound, I should have sold all I had. As it was, I came out with more than five thousand dollars in the bank and felt myself another Croesus. My joy, however, was short-lived. Of course I stayed in the Fremont and was excellently received. The management had slipped back a good deal, I thought, but I was glad that I was no longer responsible and could take my ease in my inn. My six months on the trail had marked my very being. It made a workman of me, and above all, it taught me that tense resolution, will power, was the most important factor of success in life. I made up my mind to train my will by exercise as I would train a muscle, and each day I proposed to myself a new test. For example, I liked potatoes, so I resolved not to eat one for a week, or again I foreswore coffee that I loved for a month, and I was careful to keep to my determination. I had noticed a French saying that intensified my decision, Celui qui veut, celui-il peut: «He who wills, can.» My mind should govern me, not my appetites, I decided.