Swimming-holes—Hunting in West Texas—Fishing in Nueces River—Jim
Conners—Foreman Betner—A runaway car.
About a mile above the Cline mines there used to be a splendid
swimming-hole, some 12 or 14 feet deep, with a sandy bottom, and a large
flat rock on the bank to dress on. Many an exciting game of catch and
water polo we had there during my first year at the mines.
But I shall never forget my first swim in this hole. A week or so after
I arrived, I asked where a man could get a swim, as the creek at the
mines was shallow, with a muddy bottom. A young fellow offered to show
me a good place, and, as no one else seemed to want to go, we started
off together, and he took me to the hole I have mentioned. When we
arrived, he “guessed” he would not go in, so I stripped and dived in by
myself, while he sat on the rock and watched me. After I had been in
some ten minutes he drawled out, “Say! do you know why I and the other
boys do not want to go in swimming?” “No,” I said.
“Why?” “Well,” he said, "we’re some scared of the alligators." I was out
of the water in a flash, and then he began to laugh, and laughed all the
way back to camp, where he told all the other boys, and they certainly
had lots of fun at my expense. It turned out that there was not an
alligator nearer than 100 miles of us.
But “water-moccassins” (a species of snake that lives in the water and
is claimed to be poisonous) there are in plenty, though I never saw one
bother anybody. They tell a story about a New York tourist in Florida
who wanted to go swimming. His guide took him to a pool where there were
lots of moccassins. The Northerner, in spite of his guide assuring him
that they would not touch him, refused to go in, and demanded to be
taken to some place where there were no snakes. The guide then took him
over to a bayou, where there was not a snake to be seen. Here the Yank
was satisfied, stripped, and went in for his swim. When he got out, he
asked the guide if he could account for the fact that there were no
snakes in the bayou when there were so many in the first pool. "How come
there ain’t no snakes in hyah? Why, the ’gators keeps them et up!" the
guide replied.
Later on the company built two large dams, with a capacity of about five
million gallons each, one below and one above the camp. The upper dam
then became our swimming-hole, as it was closer to the works, and on it
we also used to sail canvas boats or canoes that some of us made. Fish
were very plentiful, mostly catfish, rock-bass, perch, and sunfish;
though some years later I got black-bass from the government hatchery,
and stocked the entire river with them.
This part of West Texas is an ideal hunting country for small game.
There are plenty of rabbits, both the cotton-tail and the jack-rabbit,
or hare; quail in thousands, both the Mexican and bob-white varieties,
also at certain seasons of the year wild pigeon and duck of all kind
abound; deer are plentiful of the “white-tail” variety, and a few
“black-tail,” and these are increasing, owing to the new protection laws
passed by the state, whereby the sale of game is practically prohibited.
Coyotes, javelines (the small wild boar), wild cat, fox, coons, and
possum are plentiful in the lower part of the country, and up in the
cedar brakes and hills in the northern part of the country there are
still bear and panther to be found; these sometimes come down into the
plains, one of the latter being shot about two miles below the mines,
and on another occasion I saw two. Of turkey there are still a few left,
but they are very wild, wilder even than the coyote, which is saying a
good deal.
The fishing on the Nueces (Nut) River, about nine miles from the mines,
is very good, and the water is of crystal clearness; there I have caught
bass up to 12 lbs., and alligator char up to 4 feet in length, and have
seen others over 6 feet long. Although these latte are no good for the
table, they are well worth trying for, as they are one of the gamest
freshwater fish I have ever hooked; they have given me splendid sport,
much to the disgust of my camp partner, who could not see the sense of
catching fish that were not good for the pot, and then throwing them
back again. They are a species of pike, with a much longer mouth, like
an alligator, hence the name. Catfish also have been caught, weighing as
much as 45 lbs., and a blue cat of that size will give a man all he can
handle on a light rod.
Our new foreman, Betner, was a well-built man of about forty-five years
of age, of the stamp known as “raw-hider” in the States, and his boast
was that he could get more work out of a gang of men than any man he had
met. He was of the stamp of the famous Jim Conners. Conners was put as
boss of a gang of rough longshoremen in Buffalo; before he started work
he decided to call his men altogether and give them a talk. When he had
them all there he roared out, "Now yez are to work for me, and I want
every man to understand what’s what. What I sez goes, and whin I spake I
want yez to jomp, for I kin lick any man in the gang!" There was silence
for a minute, then one burly fellow stepped out and said, "You can’t
lick me, Jim Conners." "I can’t, can’t I?" bellowed Conners. "No, you
can’t," was the reply. “Oh, thin go to the office and get your money,”
said Conners, "fer I’ll have no man in me gang that I can’t lick." So it
was with Betner; he would not have any man in his gang who would not
lick his boots.
His history will give some idea of the man himself, and also of what
extraordinary chances some men get in this extraordinary country. Betner
started life as a bell-boy in a hotel that used to be the stopping-place
of Flagler, the great Standard Oil magnate, who tried later to build up
Florida. He was a good-looking lad, quick and cheerful, and Flagler took
an interest in him, and asked him one day if he would not like to quit
the hotel and come and work for the Standard. Betner jumped at the
chance, and Flagler gave him a job, kept his eye on him, and pushed him
along all he could stand. After some years, when Betner was a grown man,
he had charge of a small barrel repair shop for the Standard. Then
Flagler came forward with the capital and started Betner in a cooper
shop for himself, and at the same time gave him part of the Standard’s
contracts for barrels. He was clearing over $10,000 a year, when he got
the idea that all his rise was solely due to his own wonderful business
ability and efforts, and that he did not need Mr. Flagler any longer. He
began drinking and gambling, and became a man about town—-all of which
were Mr. Flagler’s pet aversions. He sent for Betner and remonstrated
with him, and was practically told to mind his own business. After this
the end came quickly, as Flagler broke him much quicker than he had
raised him up. Then our superintendent, who had also been a Standard man
before he came to us, and knew Betner in those days, gave him a job, and
brought him to the mines.
Betner fell foul of me shortly after he arrived, and did his best to
make things so unpleasant for me that I should quit; and this he kept up
till the day he left, though he did not seem to have nerve enough to
fire me. And I walked the chalk line as closely as I could, and tried to
give him no opportunity. I found out later that the reason he was after
my scalp was because he had got wind of the fact that I had been sent
down by Bole of New York, who was at that time president of the company,
and he thought I was there as a spy on the rest of them. But in any case
it came natural to him to rawhide all the men, as he had been accustomed
to do in the east, where men will either stand it or quit. Besides, he
had been mostly handling submissive foreign emigrants, and now had a
different class to deal with, and did not realise it. The Southern boys
will not stand it except from some one they look up to and respect or
fear. There used to be a man named Kipp Kinney at the mines, who really
was a genuine gunfighter. He had killed a man in Uvalde some years
before, and had lived in the hills till the affair blew over. He had
been with the sheriff, Pat Garrett (the most noted sheriff in the South
at that time), when they had to kill the notorious Billy the Kid, who
had killed nineteen men by the time he was nineteen years old. One has
seen pictures of the typical Texas cow-boy, tall, ungainly, all bones
apparently, with heavy eyebrows and a long drooping moustache. Well, add
to this pale grey eyes, deeply set, dark reddish-brown skin, with little
hair-like veins close to the surface, and a pronounced Roman nose, and
you have Kipp. Kipp told me one day he was going to quit, and on my
asking him why, said, "Well, you know that man Betner and I cannot just
naturally get along. I guess he cannot help being as he is, but if I
stay I shure’ll have to kill him, and I am getting too old to have any
more trouble." Betner was quite unaware of the risks he was taking with
men of this stamp, for I proved later he had very little courage to back
his bluffs.
He never learned much Spanish, but he had the Mexicans scared to death
of him, and they jumped when he spoke, whether they understood clearly
what he wanted done or not. One day Betner was raising a three-foot
steel stack, forty feet long, up to its base on top of a boiler. He had
it swung up on a block and tackle from a gin-pole, with three or four
Mexicans on each guy-wire holding it perpendicular. He had it almost
ready to place and lower away, when he found he needed one more man to
assist him at the foot of the stack. Without turning round to indicate
any particular man, he called out, in broken Spanish, “One man come here
quick.” Mexicans of this class are natural born fools, and each poor
frightened man thought that he must mean him individually, so let go his
guy-wire and ran to Betner. It is a wonder no one was squashed, as down
came the stack and flattened out.
On one occasion Himan the engineer wanted to lower three flat cars
loaded with bridge-timbers down the track that led to the mine, a 2½ per
cent. grade. He put me on the first car ahead, took the last himself,
and the axeman climbed on the middle one. When I slacked up my brake
away we went, and in about 100 feet we were going fairly fast, so I
jammed on my brake, and turned round in time to see the other two
fellows jumping off. My brake had practically no effect on the speed,
and they yelled to me to jump. But by the time I was ready we were close
to the pit, and there were buildings so near the track on both sides,
that I could not jump for fear of striking them. However, just as we
passed the corner of the warehouse, there was a small clear space, and I
jumped. As I picked myself up, I saw the last car going over the edge
into the quarry. Also there was Mr. Betner, who asked me what I meant by
jumping off and letting the cars go. I told him that I had done all I
could, but could not hold them. He said no one but a born fool would
attempt to move cars on that grade (thinking that I had been the one to
move them), and just then the engineer arrived on the scene. He asked
Betner if he were alluding to him, as he had ordered the cars moved, and
then they had it out. It turned out that the middle car’s brake was
broken, and that on the last car the chain had come unhooked from the
rod when Himan released it, so that my brake was the only one holding
the three heavily loaded cars.