Centennial (86 page)

As trail’s end came closer, so did the men. Intense friendships sprang up where before there had been only courteous respect. “I got to say that for a nigger, Nate Person knows his horses,” Coker admitted, and Ragland, no great lover of Mexicans, paid a similar grudging tribute to Nacho Gómez: “He sure knows how to make crusty biscuits.”

They spoke often of Mule Canby, and when they did, Jim felt remorse at not having paid Canby the ten dollars he owed him for the Army Colt’s. “How will he earn his livin’ with only one arm?” he asked.

“Lotsa men with one arm make it,” Coker said. “You disqualify all the men with one arm or one leg, hell, you’d have to throw out half the men in South Calinky. We had a bad war.”

“Speakin’ of one leg,” Lasater said, “they was this pretty little gal in San Antonio had only one leg. All the women felt sorry for her. ‘What’s Letitia gonna do with one leg?’ And you know, all the men felt sorry for her too, so as a result little Letitia got more ...”

Here Mr. Poteet interrupted, indicating with a nod that Jim Lloyd was in the audience, and Lasater ended lamely, “She got more attention than most gals with two legs.” Jim felt he understood what Lasater was leading up to.

There was a lot of joshing, too. Again and again cowboys recalled Old Rags “tryin’ to jump the Pecos and fallin’ flat on his ass,” and Ragland protested that if he had had a fair run at the river he could have jumped it ... “but you saw for yourself how the bank was slippy and downhill.”

“Hell, on the best day you ever lived you couldn’t jump that river,” Savage responded. So a small wager was arranged, and Mr. Poteet and Mr. Skimmerhorn were given the job of stepping off eighteen feet, with a clean level approach, and a heavy starting line was drawn in the earth, and Savage said, “One inch over that line and you lose.”

So Ragland backed way up, scrunched up his body, yelled, “Here we go!” and came tearing down the approach, arms and legs flying in all directions. As he approached the line, he gathered his strength in one mighty effort and sailed a good six inches beyond the far bank of the river.

“My God! He done it!” Lasater shouted, and now the men entered their endless and tedious review: “It’s true that Old Rags fell in the Pecos when he tried it in Texas, but up here, with a fair chance to run ... hell, he cleared it and then some.”

Jim, watching the cowboys in these final days, experienced a sadness he could not control. He saw things clearly. If this particular group could be held together, each man lending strength to his companion, they could build themselves a good life. Even Lasater might be kept in line, but when they broke up and each had to fend for himself, troubles might well overtake them. Not Mr. Poteet or Nate Person. They were grown men, solidly constructed; you could trust them anywhere, and they’d get the job done.

But Lasater? Wild, splendid Lasater who would risk anything. He was bound to run into trouble, for basically he was weak. Jim prayed that Mr. Poteet would allow Lasater to stay with him for the trip back to Texas.

And Ragland, he was sure to get himself mixed up with women and make a mess of one affair after another ...

Then he began to think of the animals left dead on this trail. His own cow, wandering bereft across the alkali flats ... Stonewall shot dead at the moment of triumph ... the cattle drowned at the crossing ... the dead buffalo ...

God, he wished he could ride forever with these men. Just keep riding toward some distant horizon behind which the Comanche and the Kansans and the unfordable rivers lay. But it could not be. Trails end, and companies of men fall apart.

What would he do, a fourteen-year-old boy on the loose in a vast new territory? Something would turn up. He liked animals, and something would turn up.

On the last night watch before they reached the Platte, the two-to-four, as he rode with Coker he asked, “Was it really your brother, the one you shot?” They made a complete circle, and Coker said, “He was my brother and you’re my brother.” They made another complete circle while Jim pondered this, and on the next turn Coker said, “If two fellas eat dust in drag position for four months, that makes ’em brothers, don’t it?” Jim weighed this, and on the next turn Coker said, “If you ever need help, Jim ...” He left the rest unspoken, and the long night passed.

On the night of July 12, 1868, Mr. Skimmerhorn announced at the last campfire, “Tomorrow we reach our pasture,” and the cowboys reacted in a way that surprised Jim, for each man broke out fresh clothing, used his hands to press his bandanna free of wrinkles, even polished his saddle. For the first time Jim realized how vain these men were, what pride they had in their profession, and when dawn of that last day broke, each man rode a little straighter and spoke with a quieter precision, for they had accomplished a considerable feat and they knew it. They had herded nearly three thousand longhorns thirteen hundred miles, with minimum loss, and they were proud.

When word of their approach reached Zendt’s Farm, the villagers became so excited at the prospect of receiving cattle from Texas that everyone walked out to watch. The cowboys, with a larger audience than expected, outdid themselves in crisp commands and boldly waved signals. Lasater even unholstered his revolver, using it to signal the lead steers into the water.

The crossing was so easy it seemed an afterthought. “Not much like the Arkansas,” Ragland said scornfully, but Mr. Skimmerhorn pointed to the farthest banks of the valley and told him, “You thank your stars this river isn’t in flood. It reaches from there to there.” But Ragland wasn’t listening. He had spotted a pretty girl.

“You did it, John!” the newspaper editor shouted as the cattle climbed up the north bank.

“He did it,” Skimmerhorn called back, giving credit to Poteet. “What’s more, he’s gonna do it for us again.”

Ahead, to greet them as they forded the river, stood Oliver Seccombe: “Well done, men. The cattle look fine.”

The crowd separated to let the herd through and Nacho Gómez drove his wagon past the ladies and on to the final camping ground. When Buck brought his remuda across, Mr. Poteet assembled the cowboys, who were pleased for another chance to posture among the townspeople, and told them, “Each of you is to pick one horse from the remuda. A present from Mr. Skimmerhorn. The other horses,” he said, raising his voice so that the townsmen could hear, will be sold, tomorrow noon.”

“Where?” the horse-hungry locals asked.

“We’ll bring ’em in town, so look ’em over.”

Insistently, as if they had a corporate will of their own, the cattle pressed north and the men followed. The last river had been crossed, the last danger repulsed.

Jim Lloyd had stayed on the south bank with Coker, who, wishing to display his horsemanship, made a great show of rounding up the strays, but Jim, behaving more sedately, scrambled his horse up the north bank, and as he came over the brow he found himself looking into the eyes of a young girl, the most astonishingly beautiful girl he had ever seen.

She had a dark complexion, black eyes and ebony hair, which she wore in ribboned braids. She was almost as tall as he, and her face had that brazen look which challenges men. When he stared at her, she stared back, her eyes like pools of clear water at the far edge of the Llano. He sat very tall in his saddle and smiled down like a conquistador.

She broke into a disrespectful laugh, and when he was past he asked Mr. Skimmerhorn, “Who’s that girl?” Skimmerhorn turned in his saddle and said, “That’s Levi Zendt’s daughter. She’s part Indian,” and Jim said quietly, “I’m goin’ to marry her,” and the herd moved on.

CAUTION TO
US
EDITORS: Please, please make your artist exercise restraint in illustrating this section. I have studied forty-seven photographs of groups of cowboys in the years 1867-68-69, and not one appear in chaps, tapaderos or exaggerated hat. All wear working clothes, plus high-heeled boots and bandanna. The Denver Public Library has nine photographs of R. J. Poteet in the early years before he put together his big ranch northwest of Jacksboro, and he is not gussied up. He shows no flamboyance but a good deal of solid character.

Do not allow your artists to portray these cowboys as big men. Most of the good ones were slight. Boone McClure of that admirable Panhandle Plains Historical Museum just south of Amarillo is my authority for the statement: “We had this convocation of famous living cowboys, and three were picked as most representative. I’m only five-feet-six, and every one of those men was no taller than I.”

Few towering cowboys like those depicted by John Wayne and Joel McCrea, existed in those early days. From various photographs which contained reference points I have calculated the height of our thirteen men. We know that John Skimmerhorn was tall, like his father, say 6-1, but he was not a Texas cowboy. R. J. Poteet was not over 5-6, with Canby, Person, Calendar and Savage coming in at about that level too. Nate Person was a mite taller, but Gompert, Nacho, Coker and Buck were all 5-4 or less. Lasater might have run to 5-7, but only Ragland had any real height, 5-10 at the most generous. Jim Lloyd was a special case. At fourteen he was only 5-5, but he added some inches later.

Be careful how you handle John Chisum on that gigantic spread along the Pecos River. Don’t confuse him with Jesse Chisholm, 1806-68, after whom the greatest of the cattle trails was named, posthumously, as a matter of fact. Recent motion pictures have been making our Chisum a notable hero of the west. The facts do not support this. Tough? Yes. Fearless? I wonder. He never carried a gun on the theory that the code of the west forbade the shooting of an unarmed man, and he knew that a lot of people wanted to shoot him. He hired others to do his killing for him, and some say Billy the Kid was in his employ when finally shot. In protecting his assumed acres, he was ruthless, and in disciplining Mexicans he suspected of encroaching on the land he didn’t own, he was pitiless. I’ve read all that’s available on Chisum and find him at best an unlovely man. If you wish to cut him from the text, feel free.

On the other hand, I have tried to be restrained in depicting R. J. Poteet. In retrospect he seems better than I have said, a trail-hardened man who engaged in every aspect of range life without ever having been charged with a bad performance. In the 1870s he shot bandits and in the 1890s endowed a college. In the 1880s he ran squatters off his land, but in the 1900s gave land he owned for the founding of five different towns. He was the first to import to the prairies really good breed bulls from England, the first to bring in Black Angus cattle, the. first to experiment with irrigation.

A nice touch
. In later years Poteet confessed that whenever he was on a dangerous trail he allowed Nate Person to carry the outfit’s money. “Not only was Nigger Nate the best hand I had, but if the outlaws did ride us down, there was little likelihood they would search Nate for the money, he being black and they being from the south.”

Trouble spot
. Records of several long drives to the north indicate that many trail bosses took the eight cowboys who enclosed the herd—two points, two swings, two flanks and two drags—and rotated each man through each of the eight positions, clockwise, and some reader familiar with this may give you flak. R. J. Poteet argued that he wanted his top experts at the two points, with the best man riding left and the next best right. He also had a rule that if young or inexperienced cowboys wanted to ride with him, they had to prove themselves by making their first trip at drag, and so far as I can ascertain, he never wavered from this routine.

Technical point
. Although Jim Lloyd riding left drag would eat dust during the westward leg of the journey, when the trail turned north, as it did once the Pecos was reached, the prevailing northwest wind would throw the greater burden on Bufe Coker riding right drag.

Caption material
. R. J. Poteet has a passage in one of his letters which you might want to use: “I was always impressed by the fact that although we Texans held the Mexican in contempt, our profession and its vocabulary were borrowed from Mexican experience in running cattle south of the Rio Grande. Chaps from
chaparejos
, lariat from
la reata
, sombrero, mesquite, latigo, tapadero, bandanna, buckaroo from vaquero, corral, rodeo, remuda, ranch from
rancho
. While coosie, a word we use for cook, came from
cocinero
.”

Tell your artist to observe that the northern Texas cowboy invariably tied his lariat to his saddle horn, but a man from the Rio Grande, like Canby, would dally his, that is, give it a couple of twists around the horn, relying on friction to hold it. Dally comes from the Mexican
dar la vuelta
, “to give the turn.”

Llano Estacado
. Be careful what you say about this and how you show it on your maps. Few problems in American history are more sticky, because delineation of the area varies radically from one source to another; it probably extended as far south as the route we follow, but some experts claim it halted farther north. The derivation of the name is totally confused, six major theses having been advanced: (1) Spanish legend says stakes were driven to mark the only trail across the desert. (2) Indians claim that their ancestors drove stakes to guide an unknown Great Chief who would come from the east to deliver them from their enemies. (3) Josiah Gregg, famed historian of western commerce, says the stakes marked the course between water holes. (4) Later travelers believed the stakes had been set and adorned with buffalo skulls to mark the route of the Butterfield Overland Mail. (5) Naturalists, asking the irritating question “In a land without trees, how did they cut stakes?” explain, “From a distance the yucca looks like a stake.” (6) Herbert Bolton, the noted historian of the west, is probably closest to the truth when he says that one translation of the Spanish noun
estacada
is
palisade
, and in the western reaches of the area there were many spectacular bluffs resembling palisades, tilted and glowing in sunlight.