MARRIAGE, COWS AND CARPETBAGS
THE foreman of Del Sol stood, hands in pockets, for some time, looking
down the trace whither the late visitor had disappeared. His head was
dropped forward, as one in studious distrust of his own judgment; a
frown yet more wrinkled his forehead. At length he turned and found his
way, not to the corrals, but to the house.
Blancocito still stood dozing in the sun. The mistress of Del Sol was
not riding this morning. Jim knocked at the front door.
“Come!”
He entered. Taisie was sitting at the end of the rawhide settee, still
in her bravest finery. Her hands lay in her lap; her eyes were somber,
clouded; doubt, distrust appeared her portion also.
She had looked about her with appraising eye; had reflected also. All
about, in every token, she saw evidences of lapse, of retrogression, of
decay, indeed of poverty rapidly running to seed. The lack of a strong
hand was not to be denied. Moreover, the conditions of this property
were reflected all over a state, where not even the strongest hand or
the clearest mind had been able to achieve solution. It was the hour of
travail for a great, unknown, forgotten country. Taisie Lockhart might
have known that the travail of a country is only the multiple of many
individual pains.
She looked now at her faithful henchman, silent for a time.
“Now, ma’am——”
“Yes, Jim?”
Nabours dropped into a chair, gripping the legs with twining spurred
feet.
“I was going to ast you how you liked this Gonzales man, ma’am. He’s
went now.”
“Were you taking a shot at him for luck, Jim? I heard a shot.” She tried
to smile.
“No’m. It was him. A rattler was by the gate. He shot its head off. I
must say he done it quick and easy too.”
“Well, he can ride.”
“Uh-huh—and shoot. Yes, I reckon. Fact is, he’s got a reputation now,
for a young man. He’s the youngest sher’f in Texas, like enough. He’s
only in six months, and in that time his county has done shrunk more’n a
thousand population. He ain’t killed that many, ma’am—no; but he has
done killed four or five, and them bad. Then when the Rangers was pulled
together again and him put in as a captain, a good many of them people
taken the hint and moved. It was time. Down there and in Uvalde there
was plenty of men that didn’t own a head or a acre, who’d agree to put
you up a herd of five thousand head on a month’s notice.
“I tell you, ma’am, the times is bad. The cow business in this state is
in one hell of a fix. . . . Well, it takes good shooting to be a sher’f,
let alone a Ranger.”
“Four? Four men? He killed them?” A sort of horror was in her voice, her
eyes.
“In duty, ma’am. It don’t hardly count.”
“He did not look—like that!”
“Huh! He didn’t? Well, I’d say he did! When he put on his guns they was
two, and he wore his right-hand gun pointing back and his left-hand one
pointing forward. I never seen no man do that before. If that don’t look
perfessional killer I ain’t no jedge. Now, which gun he done use to kill
the rattler I never could tell.
“He makes me study, ma’am. His eye is cold as ice. He don’t talk and he
don’t laugh. He’s got something on his mind. Somehow——”
“You’d trust him, Jim?”
“Ef he was on my side. But how in hell can you tell by looking at him
whose side he is on?”
“Four men! Yes”—her voice trailed off—“I thought he was—well, cold.
He never did—start.”
“No; and most does, Miss Taisie. And you that was dressed up your best
for him; and him a stranger you hadn’t saw sence he was a boy, and
hadn’t spoke to now till he come in and seen you. And he didn’t start!
“Miss Taisie, I’ve set in some games, but I can’t read that feller’s
game. He’s friendly, but he’s so damned mysterious I can’t get no line
on him.”
“What brought him here, Jim?”
“You, Miss Taisie! You bring ’em all here. Trouble is, all that comes is
dead broke; no more’n a saddle and a pair of spurs to their name. But
the McMasters family ain’t broke.
“Now, one thing is shore, Miss Taisie: This here can’t go on forever. I
ain’t no good at advice to womenfolks; all I can advise is cows and
caballos. But it looks plain to me that before long, you being a
orphant, you got to be married to some kind of a man. Peaceable ef we
can, by force ef we must, it looks plain to me, which am both yore paw
and maw, Miss Taisie, we got to get you-all married. It can’t no ways
run on this way much furder’n what it has.”
A dimple came in each of Anastasie Lockhart’s brown cheeks.
“Well, Jim?”
“But not to this man, no matter what he do, Miss Taisie! Not till I can
clean up my own mind. I’m oncertain on him somehow. Friends and
neighbors he ought to be—shore he ought. But Calvin McMasters, his dad,
was agin slavery and secession, and your paw was with the South he was
raised in. Them two was friends. I wouldn’t call the McMasterses damn
Yankees. But I can’t place him yet.
“Now, how about Del Williams? You know he’s been waiting and hoping. He
went to the war because you wouldn’t. He hung on with old Kirby Smith to
the last, wondering ef you would. He’s come back after the surrender,
hoping you would. He’s a good honest boy, that wears one gun one way and
saves his money, when he gets any. He’s a good segundo and he knows
cows.”
“Is that all I may ask?”
The girl’s voice was almost wistful. True, she was of the border. But
she had seen the wider world. There were books on shelves in that very
room. The portraits of her father and her mother were faces of
aristocrats. Their lives had been those of adventurers. To know cows?
Was that all the husband of the daughter of these two needed to possess?
“Miss Taisie, cows is all we got—and we ain’t got them.”
“I know it, Jim. I told you this morning, I’m broke. I was going to sell
out, move out. I was going to try to teach school, or something, over
East somewhere. Jim, it’s awful to be poor.”
“It’s awfuler when you ain’t been always, Miss Taisie.”
“But I’ll not be, now! We’re going to drive!”
“You say so, ma’am. It sounds so easy!”
“Why can’t we? Tell me? Haven’t I got cow hands working for me? Haven’t
I got fifty thousand cows in the T.L.? You say sixty-five thousand.
Isn’t the world full of grass and water north of here? Didn’t you hear
what he told you—hasn’t my father told you—that there’s a whole other
world waiting up north, not a man nor a cow nor a horse in it, hardly;
just waiting? Jim, the time to make money is when times are bad. If we
haven’t got cash we’ve got sand. This may be a time of despair or a time
of opportunity. It’s always been that way, all over the world. When some
despair others win—if they’ve sand to do it.”
“You talk like a book I read oncet, ma’am. It was full of maximuns.”
Taisie stamped her foot.
“We’ll put up a herd and trail it! I’ll go along! We’ll be utterly
broke—or else we’ll win!”
“You can’t go along, Miss Taisie. No woman could.”
“But I will!”
“You make things right hard for yore segundo, Miss Taisie.”
“Jim! Jim! Don’t talk that way! Don’t you think I know? Isn’t all this
hard for me too? But if we have luck I’ll make it easier for you-all.”
“You’re just a girl, Miss Taisie. Let’s get married first, huh? I don’t
mean me. How about you and Del?”
The girl rose, a native imperiousness in her gesture.
“Leave those things to me!”
“Oh, all right, all right,” sighed Nabours. “But maybe you’ll leave some
things to me?”
“What?”
The old range man rose and spread his hands.
“Miss Taisie,” said he, “fire me! I’m the damnedest liar in Texas!”
“What do you mean, Jim?”
“I am. I been lying to you. You ain’t got no cows left, hardly. Our
range has been combed and skinned; for two years it’s been going on—I
don’t know how long before. You ain’t got no sixty-five nor fifty
thousand cows. You’re lucky if you can put up a herd of four thousand.
We’ve all lied to you. We couldn’t tell you the truth. Ma’am, this
outfit would all lay down and die for you. They’d do almost anything but
tell you the truth. We couldn’t do that. We didn’t have the nerve.”
The girl sank back, her face pale.
“Why, Jim! I didn’t really know!”
“No, ma’am. Some gang’s at work in here, and north and west of here—far
north as Palo Pinto. We’ve been away, enduring the war and after the
war. We’re all broke, us Texans. But in Austin is plenty people ain’t
broke none a-tall. We don’t know nothing, can’t prove nothing. All I say
is, in Austin is plenty people ain’t broke a-tall.”
“You mean the Yankee treasurer?”
“I don’t say out loud what I do mean. All I know is, our range is
skinned; and I know we’re up against a strong game. That’s why, ma’am,
looking for the best of Del Sol and what yore paw meant for her, and
looking for yore own good interests, too, I been advising you to get
married. That’d simple up a lot of things.
“You see, then we could settle down and raise cows. We could build up
the range again. They ain’t going to be so brash about things when they
know they’s a real man in charge of Del Sol. But a orphant is easy
picking for a man like Rudabaugh and his gang of carpetbagging thieves.”
“You mean Rudabaugh?”
“I shore do. In Austin, we don’t know what’s going on. In office and
out, there’s a new gang in there. They’re organized fer to steal this
here whole state, lock, stock and barrel. They don’t stop at nothing.
They allow the war ain’t never done; that us Texans ain’t never
surrendered; that Lee’s still a enemy; and that all this state is fair
picking fer men that wasn’t never borned nor raised in Texas, orphants
and all. They got wide idees, yes. But they ain’t idees that was borned
in Texas, ma’am.”
“And are we helpless, Jim?”
“Damn nigh it, ma’am.”
“But surely we could raise two or three thousand head, of some sort, to
drive north this spring. Leave them the empty house, Jim! Leave them the
Del Sol round pen without a horse in it! Leave them our range—empty!
But by the Lord——”
She smote fist in palm, walked. Her foreman’s fighting blood kindled at
the flame of the old courage that had brought families into this
wilderness.
“Yes, by the Lord! Taisie, child, ef ever we do get on our feet, us
Texans, we’ll line up against them people and we’ll see it through!”
“Then we’ll drive, Jim?”
“Yes, we’ll drive! Ef it takes the last hoof, we’ll drive this spring,
come grass. I don’t know nothing about the country; I never driv a herd
so fur, and no one else never has. But ef you’ll let us do our very
best, we’ll bust north inside of thirty days!”
He caught both her long brown hands in his own gnarled and crooked ones,
his stubbled face grave, his gray eyes troubled; a figure not impressive
in his broken boots, his torn checked trousers, but with a sincerity
proved these years since his boyhood under this girl’s father.
“You’ll take it fair, child, ef we do the best we can fer you! You’ll
never holler?”
“You know I never will, Jim. And you know I’ll go along and I’ll go
through.”
“Lord help you, Miss Taisie! And Lord help us too! There’s been times
when my job seemed a heap easier than what it does right now!”
* * * * *
AUTHOR’S NOTE.—There is no Gregg, no Parkman, no Chittenden for the
lost and forgotten cattle trail. Although almost as important as the
east-and-west railroads in the early development of the trans-Missouri,
it has no map, no monument, no history, almost no formulated condition.
There is a comprehensive literature covering our westbound expansion,
but of the great north-and-south pastoral road almost the contrary must
be said, such is the paucity of titles.
The classic of the cattle trade of the West is a crude book, now rare,
by Joseph G. McCoy, called _Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the
West and Southwest._ It is upon this book that the author has rested
most largely in endeavoring to restore the feel of the early cattle
drives. It was printed in 1874.
Within the past two years Mr. George W. Saunders, of San Antonio, Texas,
has printed a book, _The Trail Drivers of Texas_, containing brief life
stories from the pens of more than a hundred men who trailed cattle
before and after the railroad days. These sketches are human documents.
The author wishes to acknowledge obligations to this work, which he has
used almost literally in many passages for the sake of known accuracy.
The books of Andy Adams—_The Log of a Cowboy_; _Wayne Anthony_, Cow
Man; _Wells Brothers_; _A Texas Matchmaker_; The Outlet—make the most
authentic fiction or quasi fiction of the trail days. Mr. Adams made
trips on northern drives, his experience beginning in 1882. His books
are storehouses of later trail data. The author makes acknowledgment to
that source of information. Records of army exploration also have been
useful.
The quasi biography of Chas. A. Siringo, _A Lone Star Cowboy_, is still
another, and very useful record of life in the early Southwest. It
abounds in facts as well as in thrilling incidents. The author can
personally testify to its accuracy in many details of the bloody history
of New Mexico. Mr. Siringo’s boyhood dates back into the Texas that
existed before the northern trails began.
The author himself went to the Southwest in 1881; has lived and traveled
in the West all his life; and has followed or crossed the old cattle
trail at perhaps fifty points between the Gulf and Northern boundary
lines. The term of years thus indicated covers many changes. The future
will bring yet swifter change. As to the great pastoral days of the
West, it is high time for a fiction that may claim to be faithful and
reverent.
Fiction cannot be exact, else it would be history and not fiction. That
it should fairly reflect the spirit of its chosen day goes without
saying. To lurid writers who never could have known the West, the author
has found himself unable to contract any debt, but would make full
acknowledgment to all who have aided from a wider information or
experience.