Part 1 (1/2)
The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier.
by Edgar Beecher Bronson.
CHAPTER I
LOVING'S BEND
From San Antonio to Fort Griffin, Joe Loving's was a name to conjure with in the middle sixties. His tragic story is still told and retold around camp-fires on the Plains.
One of the thriftiest of the pioneer cow-hunters, he was the first to realize that if he would profit by the fruits of his labor he must push out to the north in search of a market for his cattle. The Indian agencies and mining camps of northern New Mexico and Colorado, and the Mormon settlements of Utah, were the first markets to attract attention. The problem of reaching them seemed almost hopeless of solution. Immediately to the north of them the country was trackless and practically unknown. The only thing certain about it was that it swarmed with hostile Indians. What were the conditions as to water and gra.s.s, two prime essentials to moving herds, no one knew. To be sure, the old overland mail road to El Paso, Chihuahua, and Los Angeles led out west from the head of the Concho to the Pecos; and once on the Pecos, which they knew had its source indefinitely in the north, a practicable route to market should be possible.
But the trouble was to reach the Pecos across the ninety intervening miles of waterless plateau called the _Llano Estacado_, or Staked Plain. This plain was christened by the early Spanish explorers who, looking out across its vast stretches, could note no landmark, and left behind them driven stakes to guide their return. An elevated tableland averaging about one hundred miles wide and extending four hundred miles north and south, it presents, approaching anywhere from the east or the west, an endless line of sharply escarped bluffs from one hundred to two hundred feet high that with their b.u.t.tresses and re-entrant angles look at a distance like the walls of an enormous fortified town. And indeed it possesses riches well worth fortifying.
While without a single surface spring or stream from Devil's River in the south to Yellow House Canon in the north, this great mesa is nevertheless the source of the entire stream system of central and south Texas. Absorbing thirstily every drop of moisture that falls upon its surface, from its deep bosom pours a vitalizing flood that makes fertile and has enriched an empire,--a flood without which Texas, now producing one-third of the cotton grown in the United States, would be an arid waste. Bountiful to the south and east, it is n.i.g.g.ardly elsewhere, and only two small springs, Grierson and Mescalero, escape from its western escarpment.
A driven herd normally travels only twelve to seventeen miles a day, and even less than this in the early Spring when herds usually are started. It therefore seemed a desperate undertaking to enter upon the ninety-mile ”dry drive,” from the head of the Concho to the Horsehead Crossing of the Pecos, wherein two-thirds of one's cattle were likely to perish for want of water.
Joe Loving was the first man to venture it, and he succeeded. He traversed the Plain, fought his way up the Pecos, reached a good market, and returned home in the Autumn, bringing a load of gold and stories of hungry markets in the north that meant fortunes for Texas ranchmen. This was in 1866. It was the beginning of the great ”Texas trail drive,” which during the next twenty years poured six million cattle into the plains and mountains of the Northwest. Of this great industrial movement, Joe Loving was the pioneer.
At this time Fort Sumner, situated on the Pecos about four hundred miles above Horsehead Crossing, was a large Government post, and the agency of the Navajo Indians, or such of them as were not on the war-path. Here, on his drive in the Summer of 1867, Loving made a contract for the delivery at the post the ensuing season of two herds of beeves. His partner in this contract was Charles Goodnight, later for many years the proprietor of the Palo Duro ranch in the Pan Handle.
Loving and Goodnight were young then; they had helped to repel many a Comanche a.s.sault upon the settlements, had partic.i.p.ated in many a b.l.o.o.d.y raid of reprisal, had more than once from the slight shelter of a buffalo-wallow successfully defended their lives, and so they entered upon their work with little thought of disaster.
Beginning their round-up early in March as soon as green gra.s.s began to rise, selecting and cutting out cattle of fit age and condition, by the end of the month they reached the head of the Concho with two herds, each numbering about two thousand head. Loving was in charge of one herd and Goodnight of the other.
Each outfit was composed of eight picked cowboys, well drilled in the rude school of the Plains, a ”horse wrangler,” and a cook. To each rider was a.s.signed a mount of five horses, and the loose horses were driven with the herd by day and guarded by the ”horse wrangler” by night. The cook drove a team of six small Spanish mules. .h.i.tched to a mess wagon. In the wagon were carried provisions, consisting princ.i.p.ally of bacon and jerked beef, flour, beans, and coffee; the men's blankets and ”war sacks,” and the simple cooking equipment.
Beneath the wagon was always swung a ”rawhide”--a dried, untanned, unsc.r.a.ped cow's hide, fastened by its four corners beneath the wagon bed. This rawhide served a double purpose: first, as a carryall for odds and ends; and second, as furnis.h.i.+ng repair material for saddles and wagons. In it were carried pots and kettles, extra horseshoes, farriers' tools, and firewood; for often long journeys had to be made across country which did not furnish enough fuel to boil a pot of coffee. On the sides of the wagon, outside the wagon box, were securely lashed the two great water barrels, each supplied with a spigot, which are indispensable in trail driving. Where, as in this instance, exceptionally long dry drives were to be made other water kegs were carried in the wagons.
Such wagons were rude affairs, great prairie schooners, hooded in canvas to keep out the rain. Some of them were miracles of patchwork, racked and strained and broken till scarcely a sound bit of iron or wood remained, but, all splinted and bound with strips of the cowboy's indispensable rawhide, they wabbled crazily along, with many a shriek and groan, threatening every moment to collapse, but always holding together until some extraordinary accident required the application of new rawhide bandages. I have no doubt there are wagons of this sort in use in Texas to-day that went over the trail in 1868.
The men need little description, for the cowboy type has been made familiar by Buffalo Bill's most truthful exhibitions of plains life.
Lean, wiry, bronzed men, their legs cased in leather chaparejos, with small boots, high heels, and great spurs, they were, despite their loose, slouchy seat, the best rough-riders in the world.
Cowboy character is not well understood. Its most distinguis.h.i.+ng trait was absolute fidelity. As long as he liked you well enough to take your pay and eat your grub, you could, except in very rare instances, rely implicitly upon his faithfulness and honesty. To be sure, if he got the least idea he was being misused he might begin throwing lead at you out of the business end of a gun at any time; but so long as he liked you, he was just as ready with his weapons in your defence, no matter what the odds or who the enemy. Another characteristic trait was his profound respect for womanhood. I never heard of a cowboy insulting a woman, and I don't believe any real cowboy ever did. Men whose nightly talk around the camp-fire is of home and ”mammy” are apt to be a pretty good sort. And yet another quality for which he was remarkable was his patient, uncomplaining endurance of a life of hards.h.i.+p and privation equalled only among seafarers. Drenched by rain or bitten by snow, scorched by heat or stiffened by cold, he pa.s.sed it all off with a jest. Of a bitterly cold night he might casually remark about the quilts that composed his bed: ”These here durned huldys ain't much thicker 'n hen skin!” Or of a hot night: ”Reckon ole mammy must 'a stuffed a hull bale of cotton inter this yere ole huldy.” Or in a pouring rain: ”'Pears like ole Mahster's got a durned fool idee we'uns is web-footed.” Or in a driving snow storm: ”Ef ole Mahster had to _git rid_ o' this yere d.a.m.n cold stuff, he might 'a dumped it on fellers what 's got more firewood handy.”
Vices? Well, such as the cowboy had, some one who loves him less will have to describe. Perhaps he was a bit too frolicsome in town, and too quick to settle a trifling dispute with weapons; but these things were inevitable results of the life he led.
In driving a herd over a known trail where water and gra.s.s are abundant, an experienced trail boss conforms the movement of his herd as near as possible to the habit of wild cattle on the range. At dawn the herd rises from the bed ground and is ”drifted” or grazed, without pus.h.i.+ng, in the desired direction. By nine or ten o'clock they have eaten their fill, and then they are ”strung out on the trail” to water.
They step out smartly, two men--one at either side--”pointing” the leaders; and ”swing” riders along the sides push in the flanks, until the herd is strung out for a mile or more, a narrow, bright, particolored ribbon of moving color winding over the dark green of hill and plain. In this way they easily march off six to nine miles by noon. When they reach water they are scattered along the stream, drink their fill and lie down. Dinner is then eaten, and the boys not on herd doze in the shade of the wagon, until, a little after two o'clock, the herd rise of their own accord and move away, guided by the riders.
Rather less distance is made in the afternoon. At twilight the herd is rounded up into a close circular compact ma.s.s and ”bedded down” for the night; the first relief of the night guard riding slowly round, singing softly and turning back stragglers. If properly grazed, in less than a half-hour the herd is quiet and at rest; and, barring an occasional wild or hungry beast trying to steal away into the darkness, so they lie till dawn unless stampeded by some untoward incident.
Every two or three hours a new ”relief” is called and the night guard changed. Round and round all night ride the guards, jingling their spurs and droning some low monotonous song, recounting through endless stanzas the fearless deeds of some frontier hero, or humming some love ditty rather too pa.s.sionate for gentle ears.
But when a ninety-mile drive across the Staked Plain is to be done, all this easy system is changed. In order to make the journey at all the pace must be forced to the utmost, and the cattle kept on their legs and moving as long as they can stand.
Therefore, when Loving and Goodnight reached the head of the Concho, two full days' rest were taken to recuperate the ”drags,” or weaker cattle. Then, late one afternoon, after the herd had been well grazed and watered, the water barrels and kegs filled, the herd was thrown on the trail and driven away into the west, without halt or rest, throughout the night. Thus, driving in the cool of the night and of the early morning and late evening, resting through the heat of midday when travel would be most exhausting, the herd was pushed on westward for three nights and four days.
On these dry drives the horses suffer most, for every rider is forced, in his necessary daily work, to cover many times the distance travelled by the herd, and therefore the horses, doing the heaviest work, are refreshed by an occasional sip of the precious contents of the water barrels--as long as it lasts. By night of the second day of this drive every drop of water is consumed, and thereafter, with tongues parched and swollen by the clouds of dust raised by the moving mult.i.tude, thin, drawn, and famished for water, men, horses, and cattle push madly ahead.
Come at last within fifteen miles of the Pecos, even the leaders, the strongest of the herd, are staggering along with dull eyes and drooping heads, apparently ready to fall in their tracks. Suddenly the whole appearance of the cattle changes; heads are eagerly raised, ears p.r.i.c.ked up, eyes brighten; the leaders step briskly forward and break into a trot. Cow-hunters say they smell the water. Perhaps they do, or perhaps it is the last desperate struggle for existence. Anyway, the tide is resistless. Nothing can check them, and four men gallop in the lead to control and handle them as much as possible when they reach the stream. Behind, the weaker cattle follow at the best pace they can. In this way over the last stage a single herd is strung out over a length of four or five miles.