THE STAMPEDE ON THE TURKEY TRACK RANGE
By permission _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_
Dark. Well, it was dark, and no mistake. We had been holding a big herdof steers for a week. It was on the Turkey Track ranch, and they weremostly Turkey Track steers, that is, they were branded with the SantaMaria Cattle Company's brand, which is a design ([symbol: Arrow]) oneach side, called Turkey Track by the cowboys, who never think of usingany other means of identifying a cow than by giving the name of thebrand she carries.
And en passant when a cowboy says "cow," he uses the word as a genericterm for everything from a sucking calf up to a ten-year-old bull.
We were in camp in a noble valley some fifteen miles long by ten wide,dotted here and there by cedar groves, and at that season covered withsplendid grass, where we were holding a bunch of steers that the companywas getting ready to ship; it was a lazy enough life except thenight-work. There was plenty of grass to graze them on in the daytime,and a big "dry lake" full of water, where three thousand head coulddrink at once, and never one bog or give any trouble. Two men on "dayherd" at a time could handle them easily enough, and as there werenine of us, or enough for three guards of three men each, we didn't haveanything much to complain of.
"_The men on day herd could hold them easily_"]
"Old Dad," the cook, built pies and puddings that were never excelledanywhere, and occasionally he'd have a plum duff for supper that simplyexhausted the culinary art.
The steers were, as the boys say, "a rolicky lot of oxen." Most everynight they would take a little run, and it usually took all hands anhour or so to get them back to the bed ground and quieted down, whichdidn't tend to make us any better natured when the cook yelled, "Rollout, roll out," about 4:30 every morning.
The weather had been lovely ever since we started in, but this eveningit had clouded up, and in the west, toward sunset, great "thunder-heads"had piled up and little detached patches had gone scudding across thesky, although below on the prairie not a breath of air was stirring. Themuttering roll of heaven's artillery was sounding, and occasionally uptoward the mountains a flame of lightning would shoot through therapidly darkening sky.
By eight o'clock, when the first guard rode out to take the herd fortheir three hours' watch, it was almost black dark. The foreman or"wagon boss" of the outfit came out with them, asked how the cattleacted, and told the boys to be very careful, and if the herd driftedbefore the rain, if possible, to try and keep them pointed from thecedars, for fear of losing them.
[Music: THE COWBOY'S "SWEET BYE AND BYE"]
THE COWBOY'S "SWEET BYE AND BYE"
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Last night as I lay on the prairie And looked at the stars in the sky, I wondered if ever a cowboy Would drift to that sweet bye and bye?
CHORUS
Roll on, roll on, Roll on little dogies roll on, roll on; Roll on, roll on, Roll on little dogies roll on.
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The road to that bright mystic region Is narrow and dim, so they say, But the trail that leads down to perdition Is staked and is blazed all the way.
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They say that there'll be a big round-up Where the cowboys like dogies will stand, To be cut by those riders from Heaven Who are posted and know every brand.
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I wonder was there ever a cowboy Prepared for that great judgment day Who could say to the boss of the riders, "I'm all ready to be driven away."
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For they're all like the cows from the "Jimpsons" That get scart at the sight of a hand, And have to be dragged to the round-up, Or get put in some crooked man's brand.
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For they tell of another big owner Who is ne'er overstocked, so they say, But who always makes room for the sinner Who strays from that bright, narrow way.
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And they say He will never forget you, That He notes every action and look. So for safety, you'd better get branded, And have your name in His big tally book.
As we rode back to camp we both agreed that the very first clap ofthunder near at hand would send the whole herd flying, and if it rainedit would be very hard to hold them. He told all hands not to pickettheir night horses, but to tie them up to the wagon (much to the cook'sdisgust), all ready for instant use.
Perhaps I should explain a little about this business, so that myreaders may understand what a "bed ground" is, and how the cowboy standsguard.
At sunset the day herders work the herd up toward camp slowly, and asthe leaders feed along to about three or four hundred yards from camp,one of the boys rides out in front and stops them until the whole herdgradually draws together into a compact body. If they have been wellgrazed and watered that day they will soon begin to lie down, and in anhour probably nine-tenths of them will be lying quietly and chewingtheir cuds. All this time the boys are slowly riding around them, eachman riding alone, and in opposite directions; so they meet twice in eachcircuit. If any adventurous steer should attempt to graze off, he issure to be seen, headed quickly, and sent back into the herd.
The place where the cattle are held at night is called the "bed ground,"and it is the duty of the day herders, who have cared for them all day,to have them onto the bed ground and bedded down before dark, when thefirst guard comes out and takes them off their hands.
Well, as I said at the beginning, it was dark, and although it was notraining when they left camp, the boys had put on their slickers, oroilskin coats, well knowing that they'd have no time to do it when therain began to fall.
The three men on first guard were typical Texas boys, almost raised inthe saddle, insensible to hardship and exposure, and the hardest andmost reckless riders in the outfit. One of them, named Tom Flowers, wasa great singer, and usually sang the whole time he was on guard. It'salways a good thing, especially on a dark night, for somehow it seems toreassure and quiet cattle to hear the human voice at night, and it'swell too that they are not critical, for some of the musical efforts areextremely crude. Many of the boys confine themselves to hymns, picked upprobably when they were children.
A great favorite with the Texas boys is a song beginning "Sam Bass wasborn in Indianer," which consists of about forty verses, devoted to thedeeds of daring of a noted desperado named Sam Bass, who, at the head ofa gang of cut-throats, terrorized the Panhandle and Staked Plainscountry, in Western Texas, some years ago.
We used to have a boy in our outfit, a great rough fellow from Montana,who knew only one song, and that was the hymn "I'm a Pilgrim, and I'm aStranger." I have awakened many a night and heard him bawling it at thetop of his voice, as he rode slowly around the herd. He knew threeverses of it and would sing them over and over again. It didn't take theboys long to name him "The Pilgrim," and by that name he went forseveral years. He was killed in a row in town one night, and I'm notsure then that any one knew his right name, for he was carried on thebooks of the cow-outfit he was working for as "The Pilgrim."
I lost no time in rolling out my bed and turning in, only removing myboots, heavy leather chaps (chaparejos), and hat, and two minutes laterwas sound asleep. How long I slept I can't say, but I was awakened by arow among the night-horses tied to the wagon.
The storm had for the present cleared away just overhead, the full moonwas shining down as it seems to do only in these high altitudes inArizona; not a breath of air was stirring, and I could hear the measured"chug, chug, chug," of the ponies' feet as the men on guard slowlyjogged around the cattle. I was lazily wondering what guard it was, andhow long I had slept, when suddenly the clear, full voice of Tom Flowersbroke the quiet with one of his cowboy songs. It was set to the air of"My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean," and as I lay there half awake and halfasleep it seemed to me, with all its surroundings, that it was ascharming and musical as the greatest effort of any operatic tenor.
"Last night as
I lay on the prairie, And looked at the stars in the sky, I wondered if ever a cowboy Would drift to that sweet by and by."
The voice would swell and grow louder as he rode round to the campsideof the cattle, and as he reached the far side the words "sweet by andby," came to me faintly and softly, as if the very night was listeningto his song.
"The road to that bright, mystic region, Is narrow and dim, so they say, But the trail that leads down to perdition, Is staked and is blazed all the way."
I had never heard Tom sing this song before, nor had I ever heard himsing so well, and I raised on my elbow to catch every word:
"They say that there'll be a big round-up, Where the cowboys like dogies[A] will stand, To be cut by those riders from Heaven, Who are posted and know every brand."
[A] A dogie is a name applied to yearlings, that have lost their mothers when very young and just managed to live through the winter.
Here an enterprising steer made a sudden break for liberty, and the songwas stopped, as Tom raced away over the prairie to bring him back, whichbeing done in a couple of minutes, the song was again taken up:
"I wonder was there ever a cowboy Prepared for that great judgment day, Who could say to the boss of the riders, I'm all ready to be driven away."
Another interruption which I judged from the sounds was caused by hispony having stumbled into a prairie-dog hole, and I think Tom was"waking him up," as the boys say, with his heavy quirt.[B]
[B] Quirt, a short, heavy Mexican riding-whip used by cowboys.
That done, he picked up the thread of his song again
"And they say, He will never forget you, That He notes every action and look, So for safety you'd better get branded, And have your name in His big 'tally-book.'
"For they tell of another big owner, Who is ne'er overstocked, so they say, But who always makes room for the sinner, Who strays from that bright, narrow way."
As the closing words floated out on the cool night air, I turnedsleepily in my bed and saw that a huge black cloud had come up rapidlyfrom the West and bid fair to soon shut out the moon. I snuggled down inmy blankets, wondering if we would have to turn out to help hold thesteers if it rained, when the silence of the night was broken by a pealof thunder that seemed to fairly split the skies. It brought every manin camp to his feet, for high above the reverberation of the thunder wasthe roar and rattle of a stampede.
It is hard to find words to describe a stampede of a thousand head oflong-horned range steers.
It is a scene never to be forgotten. They crowd together in their madfright, hoofs crack and rattle, horns clash against one another, and alow moan goes through the herd as if they were suffering with pain.Nothing stands in their way: small trees and bushes are torn down as ifby a tornado, and no fence was ever built that would turn them. Woebetide the luckless rider who racing recklessly in front of them, wavinghis slicker or big hat, or shooting in front of them, trying to turnthem, has his pony stumble or step into a dog-hole and fall, for he issure to be trampled to death by their cruel hoofs. And yet they willsuddenly stop, throw up their heads, look at one another as if to say,"What on earth were you running for?" and in fifteen minutes every oneof them will be lying as quietly as any old, pet milk cow in a countryfarm-yard.
They bore right down on the camp, and we all ran to the wagon forsafety; but they swung off about a hundred feet from camp and raced byus like the wind, horns clashing, hoofs rattling, and the earth fairlyshaking with the mighty tread.
Riding well to the front between us and the herd was Tom trying to turnthe leaders. As he flew by he shouted in his daredevil way, "Here'strouble, cowboys!" and was lost in the dust and night. Of course allthis took but a moment. We quickly recovered ourselves, pulled on boots,flung ourselves into the saddle, and tore out into the dark with thewagon boss in the lead. I was neck and neck with him as we caught upwith the end of the herd, and called to him: "Jack, they are headed forthe 'cracks.' If we get into them, some of us will get hurt." Just then,"Bang, bang, bang," went a revolver ahead of us, and we knew that Tomhad realized where he was going, and was trying to turn the leaders byshooting in their faces.
These cracks are curious phenomena and very dangerous. The hard adobesoil has cracked in every direction. Some of them are ten feet wide andfifty deep, others half a mile long and only six inches or a foot wide.The grass hides them, so a horse doesn't see them 'til he is fairly intothem, and every cowboy dreaded that part of the valley.
Jack and I soon came to what, in the dust and darkness, we took to bethe leaders. Drawing our revolvers, we began to fire in front of them,and quickly turned them to the left, and by pressing from that sidecrowded them round more and more, until we soon had the whole herdrunning round and round in a circle, or "milling," as it's called, andin the course of fifteen or twenty minutes got them quieted down enoughto be left again in charge of the regular guard.
Jack sent me around the herd to tell the second-guard men to takecharge, as it was their time, and for the rest of us to go to camp,which was nearly a mile distant and visible only, because "Dad," thecook, had built up the fire, well knowing we wouldn't be able to findcamp without it.
Before we got there the rain began, and we were all wet to the skin; butwe tied up our ponies again, and five seconds after I lay down I wassound asleep and heard nothing till the cook started his unearthly yellof "Roll out, roll out, chuck away." I threw back the heavy canvas, thatI had pulled over my head to keep the rain out of my face, and got up.The storm was over. In the East the morning star was just beginning tofade, and the sky was taking that peculiar gray look that precedes thedawn and sunrise. The night-horse wrangler was working his horses uptoward camp, and the three or four bells in the bunch jingled merrilyand musically in the cool, fresh, morning air.
We were all sleepy and cold, and as we gathered around the fire to eat,some one said, "Where's Flowers?" The foreman glanced around the circleof men, set down his plate and cup, and strode over to where Tom hadrolled out his bed the evening before. It was empty, and, what wasmore, hadn't been slept in at all. A hasty questioning developed thefact that none of us had noticed him after we had come in from thestampede.
"Well," said Jack, "it's one of two things: either he has run into oneof those blamed cracks and is hurt, or else he has a bunch of steersthat got cut off from the herd in the rain and has had to stay with 'emall night, because he got so far from camp he couldn't work 'em backalone." As this was not an unusual thing we all felt sure it was thecase, and after a hasty breakfast, all of us but the men just off guard,struck out to look for him.
Some way I felt a premonition of trouble as I rode out into the prairie,and leaving the rest to scatter out in different directions I rodestraight for the cracks. It was an easy matter to trail up the herd, andas I loped along I couldn't get the song out of my head. As I drew nearthe crack country I saw by the trail that we had not been at the leaderswhen we thought we were, but had cut in between them and the main herd.I could see our tracks where we had swung them around, leaving probablyone hundred head out.
I hurried along their trail, and as the daylight got stronger and thesun began to peep over the hills, I could make out, about a couple ofmiles from me, a bunch of cattle feeding. I knew this was the bunch Iwas trailing, and already some of the other boys had seen them also andwere hurrying toward them. But, between me and the cattle was, I knew, adangerous crack. It was some six feet wide and ten deep, and probablyhalf a mile long. If Tom had ridden into that he was either dead orbadly hurt. As I neared the crack my heart sank, for I saw the trailwould strike it fairly about the widest place, and my worst fears wererealized when I reached it, for there lying under a dozen head of deadand dying steers was poor Tom. The trail told the whole story. He hadalmost turned them when they reached the crack, and he had ridden intoit sideways or diagonally, and some twenty steers had followed, crushinghim and his horse to death, and k
illing about a dozen of them. Thebalance were wandering about in the bottom of the crack trying to getout, but its sides were precipitous everywhere.
Drawing my six-shooter, I fired two shots, and rode my pony in circlesfrom left to right, which in cowboy and frontier sign language means,"Come to me." The boys quickly rode over to where I was, and we, withgreat work, managed to get his body out from under his horse and up ontop. He still held his pearl-handled Colts in his hand, every chamberempty, and his hat was hanging round his neck by the leather string.Tenderly we laid his body across a saddle, lashed it on with a rope, andtaking the boy thus dismounted up behind me, we led the horse with itssad burden back to camp.
I think death, when it strikes among them, always affects rough men morethan it does men of finer sensibilities and breeding. They get over itmore quickly, but for the time the former seem to be fairly overwhelmedwith the mystery of death, and seem dazed and helpless, where the latterwould not for a moment lose their heads.
But Jack quickly pulled himself together. It was fifty miles to thenearest town. With our heavy mess-wagon and slow team over a sandyroad, it would take two days to get the body there. Packing it on ahorse in that hot Arizona sun was out of the question, and so we decidedto bury him right there.
Tom had no relatives in Arizona, nor any nearer friends than us rough"punchers," so that no wrong would be done any one by burying him there.
"_Some pre-historic people had carved hieroglyphics onit_"]
We laid his crushed form under a cedar tree near by, while Jack and Iwent out to find a place to dig a grave. About half a mile from camp wasa big black rock that stood up on end in the prairie as if it had beendropped from the clouds. Some prehistoric race of people had carved deepinto its smooth face dozens and scores of queer hieroglyphics which noman today can decipher or understand. Snakes, lizards, deer, andantelope, turtles, rude imitations of human figures, great suns withstreaming rays, human hands and feet, and odd geometrical designs, alldrawn in a rude, rough way as if the rock had been the gigantic slate ofsome Aztec schoolboy which hundreds of years of storm and weather hadnot rubbed out. This rock was called the "Aztec Rock." It was a landmarkfor miles around, and as Jack remarked: "It was a blamed sight betterheadstone than they'd give him if we put him in the little CampoSanto,[C] in the sand at the foot of the mesa, back of town."
[C] Campo Santo, the Mexican term for graveyard.
So here we dug his grave, and then we wrapped him in a gorgeous NavajoIndian blanket, and laid poor Tom Flowers away as carefully and tenderlyas in our rough way we knew how.
The day-herders had grazed the herd up close to the rock, so that theycould be at the grave, the cattle were scattered all around us, and thecook had taken out the mess-box and used the mess-wagon to bring thebody over in.
When the last sods were placed on the mound, Jack with tears runningdown his sunburned face, which he vainly tried to stay with the back ofhis glove, looked around and said: "Boys, it seems pow'ful hard to plantpoor Tom and not say a word of Gospel over him. Can't some of ye say alittle prayer, or repeat a few lines of Scripter?"
We all looked at one another in a hopeless sort of way, and no one spokea word until the youngest there, the "horse-wrangler," a boy fromIndiana, whom we had named the "Hoosier Kid," spoke up and said: "I kinsay the Lord's Prayer, ef that'll be any good."
"Kneel down, fellers, and take off your hats," said Jack; and there inthe bright sunshine of an Arizona day, with a thousand long-hornedsteers tossing their heads and looking at us with wondering andsuspicious eyes, with no sound save the occasional hoarse "caw, caw" ofa solitary desert raven idly circling above, that dozen of rough cowboysknelt down, their heads reverently bared, while the "Hoosier Kid" withstreaming eyes, slowly recited that divinely simple prayer which we hadall learned at our mother's knee, "Our Father who art in Heaven,hallowed be Thy name."
As we rode slowly back to camp the words of the last song that poor Tomever sang would come to me again in spite of all I could do.
Ah, me. Poor Tom. It's little religious training you got on theprairies, or the trail, or in the cow camp; but if that "Great Owner"looks into the heart, I am sure He found you worthy to wear His brand,and to be cut into the herd that goes up the "trail that is narrow anddim."
Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan Outlaw and Other Stories Page 7