EASTERN CAPITAL
THE passengers who descended from the train left the coaches nearly
empty. The head of steel was to the westward and new towns were
projected for thirty miles; but the greater fame of Abilene, the city of
the future stockyards, capital of a coming cow trade, still acted as
magnet for a majority of the traders and buyers, adventurers, hunters,
all the curious-minded gentry then eagerly exploiting a West which never
yet had lived. The rumors of northern drives of Texas cattle had in some
way gone abroad; this first arrival was a news event of the first water.
Before these arrivals now spread the vastest, sweetest empire that ever
fell to gaze of any adventurers of new fortunes. The very feel of it was
in the warm but vital air that blew across the waving prairies; lay in
the far horizon that swept untarnished by any settler’s smoke, far as
the eye might reach. The flowers here also had not yet known a bee and
there was not a weed. At times the edge of the buffalo grass was east of
the Western border. The bluestem had not yet fully got to Abilene. The
buffalo that year moved a little farther west. Their wallows dotted the
surface of the earth thereabout for years to come. The great
checkerboard of the gods, four vast spaces in the corners of the
greatest crossroads of the world, still lay out as the Range—mesquite
and grama in the Southwest, bunch grass and buffalo grass in the
Northwest; native—and later bluestem—grasses in the Northeast; redtop
and its fellows in the Southeast; all lapping, encroaching, passing,
augmenting as the swift years altered the range. From Spanish-moss lands
to the sagebrush steppes, from the scant grama to the waist-high green,
lay the country of the cows. At that time it was but imperfectly known.
The original, the aboriginal titles had not yet been extinguished.
The raw little village of itself meant not so much to most of these men,
who had seen such villages before, east of the Missouri. The scanty
edifices were accepted at least as sufficient. There were saloons,
stores, a hotel. The travelers looked to their weapons and their
luggage, and then, each after his own fashion, headed out toward the
signs which made offerings to civilized man. Most went to the saloons, a
few moved toward the Drovers’ Cottage, where even now, before her formal
opening, Lou Gore was making mankind comfortable on the frontier. Others
wandered up and down the street, gazing this way or that. None passed
the corrals of the Abilene Stockyards without a curious gaze at the
gaunt, long-haired creatures which now marked a renaissance of the
entire cattle trade in America. It all was crude, young, new and
unspeakably alluring—this strange new world, offspring of time and the
whim of the immortal gods at play on their great four-squared
checkerboard.
McMasters called Hickok aside, spoke to him quietly, after a time.
“Our men have gone over to the new saloon,” said he. “I see one is
headed for the Twin Livery Barn. They’ve probably got horses there, or
are looking for some.”
“Well,” said Hickok, “you know them best. They haven’t made any break
yet and I’ve got nothing on them. None of them ever harmed me. What’s
the game?”
“I want you to watch them for a little while,” replied McMasters. “I’ll
not leave much to you except the watching. I’ll be with you very soon.
Just now I want to find out what’s going to be done about the sale of
this herd. McCoyne has got some man in tow; and yon’s Nabours, the Del
Sol trail boss—he’s just come in. I think I ought to know what goes on
there.”
McCoyne, the exuberant and irresistible prophet of Abilene, indeed now
was bringing forward a stranger, a bearded, stocky, self-contained man
of nondescript dress, yet rather of Western look himself. The three
little groups now joined.
“Mr. McMasters,” begun McCoyne, “and you, too, Mr. Nabours, and Marshal
Hickok, this, now, is Mr. Pattison, just come to town. He’s in the
market to buy some range stuff. He’s been in the packing business in
Indianapolis for several years, and he has just come out to Junction
City, a couple of hours over east, to start a packing plant of his own
out here; though I don’t see why he didn’t pick on Abilene for that.
Anyhow he has to come here for his cattle.”
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the stranger thus introduced, smiling
humorously. “I am glad to meet you. Yes, I am looking for some cattle. I
don’t know how you guessed it.”
“Where’d you want them delivered?” inquired Jim Nabours, coming to the
thing on his own mind. “We got some cows. I can testify they’re good
travelers.”
“Well, not far,” replied Pattison. “That some of your cattle over in the
pens? Junction City is just over here a couple of days’ march. I am
going to try to pack a few cattle in there this year. I shouldn’t wonder
if we started some stockyards in Kansas City before long. My friend, old
Mitch, has been talking of it a long time. If they get the yards it
won’t be long until a packing house is started there. That would save a
lot of distance in shipping East.
“I know that two Milwaukee and Chicago men—Plankinton is the name of
one and Armour, I think, is the other man—well, they are figuring on
going into the packing-house business in Kansas City. They’ve got a man
out there now, looking things over.”
“Then where does it leave you at Junction City?” demanded McCoyne.
Pattison spread out his hands with a shrug.
“Of course, their man is crazy. He’s talking of using a hundred thousand
cattle every year. I shouldn’t wonder if they did put down half that
many. All this Western country is going to take a mighty jump since the
railroad has gone West. That’s why I am here, of course. I’ve come out
to look over this whole business myself. If it’s all the same to you I’d
like to look over your herd. Mr. McCoyne says it isn’t far out to where
you are holding it.”
“How’d right now do?” asked Nabours calmly. “How much time do you want
to look over our cows? With me it’s sharp’s the word and quick’s the
motion.”
“About five minutes. I’ve seen your sample in the corrals here. How much
a pound do you figure you ought to get?”
“How much a pound? I don’t know nothing about that. I don’t know how
much a cow weighs.”
“Well, I can tell you. One of your sample steers will weigh about nine
hundred pounds. They look like greyhounds crossed on a window shutter.
Two cents a pound would be a lot for them. Now, a fat steer will weigh
twelve hundred instead of nine hundred, and he’ll bring four cents
instead of two. Say I give you eighteen dollars for your lean steers,
right off the trail. I could give you thirty-six dollars if they was
fat; say if they’d been wintered up here and fed north.”
“Mister,” said Jim Nabours, “you’re talking foolish, though pleasing. I
don’t know how much nine hundred pounds is, nor twelve hundred pounds;
but when you tell me any Texas steer is worth more than thirty dollars
you make me think you ain’t got no money to buy nothing. You don’t mean
to say that in the presence of witnesses?”
“I certainly do mean to say it,” rejoined Pattison. “But that isn’t all.
Your Texas steers will bring a good deal more than thirty dollars when
you have taken time to move them up north of the edge of winter and
ranged them and fattened them and bred the horns off of them. That can
all be done in five years.”
“I ain’t got no five years,” said Jim Nabours. “You allowed five minutes
will do. Well, let’s climb on top our broncs and ride out and see; it’s
only about two miles or so north.
“Come on, Dan.” He turned towards McMasters. “Ride along with us. I rely
some on your judgment.”
McMasters turned toward Hickok with a quiet word or so, and waving his
hand strolled off to pick up his own horse. McCoyne, anxious as he was
to see a trade effected, did not dare forsake the city of Abilene at so
critical a time. The newly christened Lone Star was full. Besides, he
was mayor of the town.
“Bill,” said he, accosting Hickok, “I got you here now, and I’m going to
have you elected town marshal. We can’t hold any election right now, and
we may need a town marshal right soon. I appoint you marshal right now,
and Mr. McMasters as your deputy.”
Hickok looked at him lazily and smiled.