Emerson Hough

“ With cracking of horns and tossing of heads, the front of the herd came shuffling down the shallow draw to the edge of the water, led by a few lank and rangy steers, old Alamo, the accepted lead steer, still in front. They were creatures alert and wise as deer, true longhorn stock of the lower range. Something of the wild instinct blended with their recent practical education. Crowded by the numbers pushed against them from the rear, old Alamo shook his head for half an instant, then bent his knees and plunged in, following the swimming horse on ahead. Some men still rode the same mounts. ”

“ On a gentle slope well-nigh four thousand cattle were lying close packed in a vast oval, less than a fifth of a mile in extent, half that distance across on the lesser axis. Bedded on high, dry grass, in the path of the breeze, themselves full of grass and water, they lay, heads high, level with their cover, blowing and chewing, eyes closed and happy.
The fire points of the cook’s evening meal now barely showed. Afar came the faint sound of men’s voices, singing—the night watch riding slowly, two men in one direction, two in the opposite, fifty feet or so back from the bedded animals. ”

“ Laughter and jests, dust, noise, lowings and groanings, the clack and clatter of cattle moved into the wings, the smell of the herd blending with the odor of singed hair—all the old-time flavor of cattle work in the open—went on now, the thin wedge of tail-twisting, surly brutes pushed out of the chute gate increasing steadily. The nucleus of the Del Sol trail herd grew steadily, until finally the red sun fell below the distant screen of the live-oak groves. ”

“ A cool haze, almost a mist, lay before dawn on the prairie lands. Now, when morning came on the Del Sol range, a sea of wide horns moved above the tall grass. With comfortable groans the bedded herd arose one by one, in groups, by scores and hundreds, stretching backs and tails. The night riders ceased their circles, the cattle began to spread out slowly, away from the bed ground, a little eminence covered with good dry grass and free of hillocks, holes and stones, chosen by men who knew the natural preferences of kine. ”

“ In a more open valley they came in sight of the great T. L. herd, scattered over two miles of country, grazing or lying at rest. A dozen riders lolled, leg over saddle horn, themselves a-doze, waiting for the foreman’s return.
“Ain’t it purty?” said Nabours, the real cowman’s love of cows in his speech. And it was a noble sight, this wild picture in a wild land. Any way one looked there was no edge to the world. ”

“ A pair of swing men, no more, must serve to control each three or four hundred head of cattle on the march.
The rangy vanguard were kept moving out, heading north, still on their own native range. Soon they struck a steady walk, in which they were encouraged.
“Roll along, little dogies! Roll along, roll along!” chanted Len Hersey, on the head swing, as the great motley herd got form.
Far at the back came the unhappy drivers of the drag—the old, the maimed, the halt and the blind, steers bowed down with weight of woe. ”

“ A lizard scuttled across the dust of the dooryard. A road-runner sped along the fence of poles and rawhide, bent on its own mission. War was marked in every sign and token of Texas from its very first. No manner of pest and curse ever lacked in its cynically indifferent confines. Starvation, thirst, filled these mud-thickened bayous every year with hundreds of dead horses. The bones of cattle lay uncounted for a thousand miles, each dried hide and rack of whitening bones enriching soil that had no answer to its own fecundity in animal life. ”

“ The day of the northbound hegira of the cows had come. The immortal gods, trickling through their fingers grasses of grama, mesquite, redtop, buffalo, bluestem, watched a new land spring lustily into being. It was born of blood. But it was born of South and North, which never again were to know war one with the other. Both shared in sending old customs to a new land. A new language came to it. New industries grew in it. More rapidly than any tract of all our country or of any country ever was settled, the Great West of America became great and strong indeed. ”

“ We will come in here and sit down in this land, which we know is good.
“I can see that the white people are too many. They are making roads across the grass. Some day the buffalo will be gone. Over their trails will walk these new cattle—have we not seen them come? I can hear their hoofs coming, as many as the wind can count among the trees. It is done. I have said all I want to say.”
“Rudabaugh,” said Griswold, turning to him at length, with no pity in his eye, “get ready to die. God may have no mercy on your soul. You’ve shown none—not once in all your life. Take what you’ve earned!” ”

“ McMasters and Del Williams, a couple of hundred yards apart, gently threaded out the farther edge of the loosely grazing cattle, along whose flanks a dozen hands sat loose in saddle, ready to take their appointed places on swing and drag. A few old steers, rangy, tall, wild, sunburned, trotted out ahead—the natural vanguard, pacemaking, electing itself then and there, and holding place for a thousand miles. The point almost formed itself, as should be; for the art of trailing cattle was to use their instincts, not to alter them; to follow them and not to crowd them ”

“ The custom of the range was based on the natural habits of the cattle and the natural peculiarities of the grazing lands. The accepted brand, the right of the finder to an unowned range or water front, the tendency of cattle to cling to home, the law of natural probability in all things—such were rigid natural laws which no man might ignore with safety. As animal life ran wild, so also did human life, one no more restrained than the other. Only the saving grace of the Saxon instinct for some sort of law brought Texas, literally born in the wilderness, up to what she is to-day. ”

“ An orphan, left alone at twenty, just as she came home from her convent schooling at the ancient city of New Orleans, with no woman relative and no female companions other than her servants, what could be the fate of such a girl, seventy-five miles from the nearest town, twenty-five from the nearest rancho, and the rumor of her beauty continually spreading league by league? On her shoulders rested all the responsibilities of what was or had been one of the largest and richest ranches of Central Texas, and thereto was the responsibility for what manner of beauty sets mad the hearts of men. ”

“ Oh, you are comforting!” said Taisie Lockhart bitterly.
“It will be very hard for a girl like you not to marry some man. It is a very terrible thing to marry the wrong man, my dear. It’s a very terrible thing to let a man think you meant to marry him when you didn’t. It’s the worst when a man wants to marry and can’t—because he can’t forgive an insult to his honor. It is lucky you are not a man.” ”

“ In no corner of the world have the primitive instincts of man found fuller loosing than in the border capitals of the cow trails.
It was the etiquette—unvarying in Saxon outlands—that he who danced with a damsel must lead her to the bar after they twain had trod a measure, else lack in a decent respect for the opinion of mankind. Of actual sets, of any measured cæsura, there was none. The music was furnished by rum-soaked men who sat apart on barrels, the same who had welcomed that morning the first Texas herd ever seen in Abilene. ”

“ Nabours and Dell Williams slowly edged out a string of cattle, making a point. Swing men rode gently somewhat farther back; others pushed in the stragglers. Quietly, efficiently, with the long skill of men who all their lives had “savvied cows,” they broke the compact mass into a long-strung-out line, traveling quietly in the direction laid out by the leaders. The herd submitted itself to guidance. All went well until they reached the raw new lines of the crude branding chute, when a few of the old mossy horns began to stare and then to roll their tails as though about to break away ”

“ Within a few moments a third of the herd was bogged down. An inexplicable confusion took place among the others. No man could do anything here. The riders only followed such strings of cattle as they could hear farther down the stream. They all knew that when daylight came they would have their work to do in salvaging from the quagmire. Most of them tried to find their way back to camp, and those who made it sat huddled, drenched, as the weird flame-edged clouds passed on. ”

“ But had there been any glimpse of the sun the veteran foreman would never have pushed his herd into the river late in the afternoon, for a reason which any trail man would have understood.
At that point the river ran almost north and south, so that the course of the cattle was almost westward. In the evening any rays of the sun would lie like a path across the water.
But cattle will not swim into the sun. No good trail boss ever undertook to cross a herd into a sunset. The one hope of Nabours was in a continuous cloudiness of the evening sky. ”

“ A strange, alarming, oppressive feel, as though of a settling fog, came upon them all. If a man reached a hand to his hat brim the electricity literally dripped from it.
Rarely, even on the high prairies, did the tremendous electrical disturbances ever reach such violence; not one of these hardened range men had ever seen the like of this. But to the wonder of all the cattle did not at once make any break. ”

“ He extended his hands, long, slender, well kept, so that she might see.
“I am a killer!” said Dan McMasters bitterly. “That’s what I have become for sake of Texas, for sake of the law, for sake of women and children, I suppose. But no woman or child for me! It’s worse to be a killer than it is to be killed. ”

“ She knew her horse was swimming. On ahead, Jim Nabours sat as though upon the surface of the tawny water, the top of his saddle cantle showing over the streaming tail of his horse, which swam on, steadily and confidently, after the gallant fashion of the Texas strain. ”

“ It takes big men to do big business, and you will have to pardon me if I say it never was in the cards to pack cattle in Texas, by Texas or for Texas. The South needs the North in this thing. It’s going to take both the North and the South to make this country out here.” He swept a wide arm. “The West! Oh, by golly!”
“Well,” sighed Jim Nabours, still unable to credit his sudden good fortune, “my boss is the richest girl in Texas right now, if she was in Texas. I’ll have to admit she owes part to a damn Yankee, same as part to us Texans.” ”

“ Aberlene! Kerchunk! Aberlene!’ ” explained Len Hersey to his fellows.
When they came into view of the great herd, held closely by the riders, Nabours pulled up with the enthusiasm of the natural drover.
“Look at ’em!” he exclaimed, waving a hand. “If that ain’t a perty sight I don’t know what is!”
“Great glory!” exclaimed the Abilene man. “I didn’t know there were that many cattle in the world! Sir, my fortune is made! Where’d you get them all?”
“In Texas we don’t ast no man that. I told you we done raise them cows by hand, every one of them.” ”

“ It would have been of no use to steal him, and his shoulder brand was but perfunctory. Jim Nabours and most of the hands scoffed at any pinto, and selected solid colors—any color so only it was not black; but Blancocito put all their horsely wisdom to shame. He never tired and never quit. No trail was too long for him. Gentled when a three, he never wholly had surrendered even to Taisie or the best of Taisie’s top riders his inalienable Texas right to life, liberty and the pursuit of pitching, though these tendencies he usually held in abeyance in the case of his mistress. ”

“ When the early herds pushed up into that unknown land from the straggling half-Spanish settlements of the Southwest men ignorantly walked over wealth which they then did not heed and did not need—the wealth that lay under the tall grasses and the short grasses. Of the bunch grass, the vine mesquite grass, and the redtop and the Eastern bluestem, they could talk understandingly. They lived in a day and land as yet pastoral. But their cattle walked over unsuspected millions of millions of gallons of oil that one day later would be needed. ”

“ Every woman in all Texas, at least in all the Texas of Bexar, Guadalupe, Comal, Gonzales and Caldwell counties, was sorry for Taisie Lockhart. She was trying to hold together the property left her by the sudden death—through murder—of her father, Burleson Lockhart, frontiersman on the bloody borders of the Southwest since 1831. And every woman wondered what man she would marry. Every woman also demanded that she marry soon. ”