Part 3 (1/2)
Two or three jurors who were too much fuddled with drink to saddle and mount were quickly captured. The rest escaped. Of course, the court was outraged and indignant, but it was powerless. So Jim was released, thanks to Shang's diplomacy and eloquence. And, by the way, in the dark days that came to ranchmen in 1885, Jim, risen to be a well-known and powerful banker in ------ City, furnished the ready money necessary to save Shang's imperilled fortune; and when at length he heard that Shang was at death's door, Jim found the time to leave his large affairs and come all the way up from ------ to Llano to bid his old friend farewell.
For two or three years after the war the cow-hunters were busy acc.u.mulating cattle. From Palo Pinto to San Diego great outfits were working incessantly, scouring the wilds for unbranded cattle.
Directly an animal was sighted, one or two of these riders would spur in pursuit, rope him by horns or legs, and throw him to the ground.
Then dismounting and springing nimbly upon the prostrate beast, they quickly fastened the beast's feet with a ”hogtie” hitch so that he could not rise, a fire was built, the short saddle iron heated, and the beast branded. The feet were then unbound and the cow-hunter made a flying leap into his saddle, and spurred away to escape the infuriated charge sure to be delivered by his maddened victim.
In this work horses were often fatally gored and not a few men lost their lives. Notwithstanding the fact that it was such a downright desperate task, the men became so expert that they did not even hesitate to tackle, alone and single-handed, great bulls of twice the weight of their small ponies; they roped, held, threw, and branded them. The least accident or mistake, a slip of the foot, a stumble by one's horse, a breaking cinch, a failure to maintain full tension on the lariat, slowness in dismounting to tie an animal or in mounting after it was untied--any one of these things happening meant death, unless the cow-hunter could save himself with a quick and accurate shot. Indeed the boys so loved this work and were so proud of their skill, that when an unusually vicious old ”mossback” was encountered, each strove to be the first catch and master him. And G.o.d knows they should have loved it, as must any man with real red blood coursing through his veins, for it was not work; I libel it to call it work; it was rather sport, and the most glorious sport in the world. Riding to hounds over the stiffest country, or hunting grizzly in juniper thickets, is tame beside cow-hunting in the old days.
The happiest period of my life was my first five years on the range in the early seventies. Indeed it was a period so happy that memory plays me a shabby trick to recall its incidents and fire me with longings for pleasures I may never again experience. Its scenes are all before me now, vivid as if of yesterday.
The night camp is made beside a singing stream or a bubbling spring; the night horses are caught and staked; there is a roaring, merry fire of fragrant cedar boughs; a side of fat ribs is roasting on a spit before the fire, its sweet juices hissing as they drop into the flames, and sending off odors to drive one ravenous; the rich amber contents of the coffee pot is so full of life and strength that it is well-nigh bursting the lid with joy over the vitality and stimulus it is to bring you. Supper eaten, there follow pipe and cigarette, jest and bandinage [Transcriber's note: badinage?] over the day's events; stories and songs of love, of home, of mother; and rude impromptu epics relating the story of victories over vicious horses, wild beasts, or savage Indians. When the fire has burnt low and become a ma.s.s of glowing coals, voices are hushed, the camp is still, and each, half hypnotized by gazing into the weirdly s.h.i.+fting lights of the dying embers, is wrapped in introspection. Then, rousing, you lie down, your canopy the dark blue vault of the heavens, your mattress the soft, curling buffalo gra.s.s. After a night of deep refres.h.i.+ng sleep you spring at dawn with every faculty renewed and tense. Breakfast eaten, you catch a favorite roping-horse, square and heavy of shoulder and quarter, short of back, with wide nervous nostrils, flas.h.i.+ng eyes, ears pointing to the slightest sound, pasterns supple and strong as steel, and of a nerve and temper always reminding you that you are his master only by sufferance. Now begins the day's hunt. Riding softly through cedar brake or mesquite thicket, slipping quickly from one live oak to another, you come upon your quarry, some great tawny yellow monster with sharp-pointed, wide-spreading horns, standing startled and rigid, gazing at you with eyes wide with curiosity, uncertain whether to attack or fly. Usually he at first turns and runs, and you dash after him through timber or over plain, the great loop of your lariat circling and hissing about your head, the n.o.ble horse between your knees straining every muscle in pursuit, until, come to fit distance, the loop is cast. It settles and tightens round the monster's horns, and your horse stops and braces himself to the shock that may either throw the quarry or cast horse and rider to the ground, helpless, at his mercy. Once he is caught, woe to you if you cannot master and tie him, for a struggle is on, a struggle of dexterity and intelligence against brute strength and fierce temper, that cannot end till beast or man is vanquished!
Thus were the great herds acc.u.mulated in Texas after the war. But cattle were so abundant that their local value was trifling. Markets had to be sought. The only outlets were the mining camps and Indian agencies of the Northwest, and the railway construction camps then pus.h.i.+ng west from the Missouri River. So the Texans gathered their cattle into herds of two thousand to three thousand head each, and struck north across the trackless Plains. Indeed this movement reached such proportions that, excepting in a few narrow mining belts, there is scarcely one of the greater cities and towns between the ninety-eighth and one hundred and twentieth meridians which did not have its origin as a supply point for these nomads. Figures will emphasize the magnitude of the movement. The cattle-drive northward from Texas between the years 1866 and 1885 was approximately as follows:
1866 260,000 1877 201,000 1867 35,000 1878 265,649 1868 75,000 1879 257,927 1869 350,000 1880 394,784 1870 350,000 1881 250,000 1871 600,000 1882 250,000 1872 350,000 1883 265,000 1873 404,000 1884 416,000 1874 166,000 1885 350,000 1875 151,618 --------- 1876 321,998 Total 5,713,976
The range business on a large and profitable scale was long since practically done and ended. In Texas there remain very few open ranges capable of turning off fair gra.s.s beef. With the good lands farmed and the poor lands exhausted, the ranges have become narrower every year; and every year the cost of getting fat gra.s.s steers has been eating deeper and deeper into the rangeman's pocket. Of course, there are still isolated ranges where the rangemen still hang on, but they are not many, and most of them must soon fall easy prey to the ploughshare.
When the rangeman was forced to lease land in Texas, or buy water fronts in the Territories and build fences, his fate was soon sealed.
With these conditions, he soon found that the sooner he reduced his numbers, improved his breed, and went on tame feed, the better. A corn shock is now a more profitable close herder than any cowpuncher who ever wore spurs. This is a sad thing for an old rangeman to contemplate, but it is nevertheless the simple truth. Soon the merry crack of the six Footer will no more be heard in the land, its wild and woolly manipulator being driven across the last divide, with faint show of resistance, by an una.s.suming granger and his all-conquering hoe.
The rangeman, like many another in the past, has served his purpose and survived his usefulness. His work is practically done, and few realize what a n.o.ble work it has been, or what its cost in hards.h.i.+p and danger.
I refer, of course, not alone to the development of a great industry, which in its time has added millions to the material wealth of the country, but to its collateral results and influence. But for the venturesome rangeman and his rifle, millions of acres, from the Gulf in the South to Bow River in the far Canadian Northwest, now const.i.tuting the peaceful, prosperous homes of hundreds of thousands of thrifty farmers, would have remained for many years longer what it had been from the beginning--a hunting and battle ground for Indians, and a safe retreat for wild game.
What was the hards.h.i.+p, and what the personal risk with which this great pioneer work was accomplished, few know except those who had a hand in it, and they as a rule, were modest men who thought little of what they did, and now that it is done, say less.
CHAPTER III
A SELF-CONSt.i.tUTED EXECUTIONER
Some think it fair to give a man warnin' you intend to kill him on sight, an' then get right down to business as soon as you meet. But that ain't no equal chance for both. The man that sees his enemy first has the advantage, for the other is sure to be more or less rattled.
”Others consider it a square deal to stan' back to back with drawn pistols, to walk five paces apart an' then swing and shoot. But even this way is open to objections. While both may be equally brave an'
determined, one may be blamed nervous, like, an' excitable, while the other is cool and deliberate; one may be a better shot than the other, or one may have bad eyes.
”I tell you, gentlemen, none o' these deals are fair; they are murderous. If you want to kill a man in a neat an' gentlemanly way that will give both a perfectly equal show for life, let both be put in a narrow hole in the ground that they can't git out of, their left arms securely tied together, their right hands holdin' bowie knives, an' let them cut, an' cut an' cut till one is down.”
His heavy brow contracted into a fierce frown; his black eyes narrowed and glittered balefully; his surging blood reddened the bronzed cheeks.
”Let them cut, I say, cut to a finish. That's fightin', an' fightin'
dead fair. Ah!” and the hard lines of the scarred face softened into a look of infinite longing and regret, ”if only I could find another man with nerve enough to fight me that way!”
The speaker was Mr. Clay Allison, formerly of Cimarron, later domiciled at Pope's Crossing. His listeners were cowboys. The scene was a round-up camp on the banks of the Pecos River near the mouth of Rocky Arroyo. Mr. Allison was not dilating upon a theory. On the contrary, he was eminently a man of practice, especially in the matters of which he was speaking. Indeed he was probably the most expert taker of human life that ever heightened the prevailing dull colors of a frontier community. Early in his career the impression became general that his favorite tint was crimson.
And yet Mr. Allison was in no sense an a.s.sa.s.sin. I never knew him to kill a man whom the community could not very well spare. While engaged as a ranchman in raising cattle, he found more agreeable occupation for the greater part of his time in thinning out the social weeds that are apt to grow quite too luxuriantly for the general good in new Western settlements. His work was not done as an officer of the law either.