v

ranch life in texas

the inhabited part of a ranch, the part of it on which the people who own it live, bears about the same proportion to the rest of the ranch as a light-house does to the ocean around it.

and to an eastern man it appears almost as lonely. some light-houses are isolated in the ocean, some stand in bays, and some in harbors; and in the same proportion the ranches in texas differ in size, from principalities to farms no larger than those around jersey city. the simile is not altogether exact, as there are small bodies of men constantly leaving the “ranch-house” and wandering about over the range, sleeping wherever night catches them, and in this way different parts of the ranch are inhabited as well as the house itself. it is as if the light-housekeeper sent out a great number of row-boats to look after the floating buoys or to catch fish, and the men in those boats anchored whenever it grew dark, and returned to the light-house variously as best suited their convenience or their previous orders.

but it is the loneliness of the life that will most certainly first impress the visitor from closely built blocks of houses. those who live on the ranches will tell you that they do not find it lonely, and that they grow so fond of the great[122] breezy pastures about them that they become independent of the rest of mankind, and that a trip to the city once a year to go to the play and to “shop” is all they ask from the big world lying outside of the barb-wire fences. i am speaking now of those ranch-owners only who live on the range, and not of those who hire a foreman, and spend their time and money in the san antonio club. they are no more ranchmen than the absentee landlord who lives in his london house is a gentleman farmer.

the largest ranch in the united states, and probably in the world, owned by one person, is in texas, and belongs to mrs. richard king, the widow of captain richard king. it lies forty-five miles south of corpus christi.

the ladies who come to call on mrs. king drive from her front gate, over as good a road as any in central park, for ten miles before they arrive at her front door, and the butcher and baker and iceman, if such existed, would have to drive thirty miles from the back gate before they reached her kitchen. this ranch is bounded by the corpus christi bay for forty miles, and by barb-wire for three hundred miles more. it covers seven hundred thousand acres in extent, and one hundred thousand head of cattle and three thousand broodmares wander over its different pastures.

this property is under the ruling of robert j. kleberg, mrs. king’s son-in-law, and he has under him a superintendent, or, as the mexicans call one who holds that office, a major-domo, which is an unusual position for a major-domo, as this major-domo has the charge of three hundred cowboys and twelve hundred ponies reserved for their use. the “widow’s” ranch, as the texans call it, is as carefully organized and moves on as conservative business principles as a bank. the cowboys do not ride over its range with both legs at right angles to the saddle and shooting joyfully into the air with both guns at once. neither do they offer the casual visitor a bucking pony to ride, and then roll around on the prairie with glee when he is shot up into the air and comes down on his collar-bone, they are more likely to bring him as fine a kentucky thoroughbred as ever wore a blue ribbon around the madison square garden. neither do they shoot at his feet to see if he can dance. in this way the eastern man is constantly finding his dearest illusions abruptly dispelled. it is also trying when the cowboys stand up and take off their sombreros when one is leaving their camp. there are cowboys and cowboys, and i am speaking now of those that i saw on the king ranch.

the thing that the wise man from the east cannot at first understand is how the one hundred thousand head of cattle wandering at large over the range are ever collected together. he sees a dozen or more steers here, a bunch of horses there, and a single steer or two a mile off, and even as he looks at them they disappear in the brush, and as far as his chance of finding them again would be, they might as well stand forty miles away at the other end of the ranch. but this is a very simple problem to the ranchman.

mr. kleberg, for instance, receives an order from a firm in chicago calling for one thousand head of cattle. the breed of cattle which the firm wants is grazing in a corner of the range fenced in by barb-wire, and marked pale blue for convenience on a beautiful map blocked out in colors, like a patch-work quilt, which hangs in mr. kleberg’s office. when the order is received, he sends a mexican on a pony to tell the men near that particular pale blue pasture to round[126] up one thousand head of cattle, and at the same time directs his superintendent to send in a few days as many cowboys to that pasture as are needed to “hold” one thousand head of cattle on the way to the railroad station. the boys on the pasture, which we will suppose is ten miles square, will take ten of their number and five extra ponies apiece, which one man leads, and from one to another of which they shift their saddles as men do in polo, and go directly to the water-tanks in the ten square miles of land. a cow will not often wander more than two and a half miles from water, and so, with the water-tank (which on the king ranch may be either a well with a wind-mill or a dammed cañon full of rain-water) as a rendezvous, the finding of the cattle is comparatively easy, and ten men can round up one thousand head in a day or two. when they have them all together, the cowboys who are to drive them to the station arrive, and take them off.

at the station the agent of the chicago firm and the agent of the king ranch ride through the herd together, and if they disagree as to the fitness of any one or more of the cattle, an outsider is called in, and his decision is final. the cattle are then driven on to the cars, and mr. kleberg’s responsibility is at an end.

in the spring there is a general rounding up, and thousands and thousands of steers are brought in from the different pastures, and those for which contracts have been made during the winter are shipped off to the markets, and the calves are branded.

texas is the great breeding state from which the cattle are sent north to the better pasture land of kansas, montana, and wyoming territory, to be fattened up for the markets. the breeding goes on throughout the year, five bulls being pastured with every three hundred cows, in pastures of from one thousand to ten thousand acres in extent. about ninety per cent. of the cows calve, and the branding of these calves is one of the most important duties of the spring work. they are driven into a pen through a wooden chute, and as they leave the chute are caught by the legs and thrown over on the side, and one of a dozen hot irons burning in an open fire is pressed against the flank, and, on the king ranch, on the nose.

an animal bearing one of the rough hall-marks of the ranchman is more respected than a dog with a silver collar around his neck, and the number of brands now registered in the state capital runs up to the thousands. on some ranches each of the family has his or her especial brand; and one young girl who came out in new york last winter is known throughout lower texas only as “the owner of the triangle brand,” and is much respected in consequence, as it is borne by thousands of wandering cattle. the separating of the cattle at the spring round-up is accomplished on the king ranch by means of a cutting pen, a somewhat ingenious trap at the end of a chute. one end of this chute opens on the prairie, and the other runs into four different pens guarded by a swinging gate, so hung that by a movement of the foot by the man sitting over the gate the chute can be extended into any one of the four pens. with this mules, steers, horses, and ponies can be fed into the chute together, and each arrive in his proper pen until the number for which the different orders call is filled.

it is rather difficult to imagine one solitary family occupying a territory larger than some of the eastern states—an area of territory that would in the east support a state capital, with a governor and legislature, and numerous[130] small towns, with competing railroad systems and rival base-ball nines. and all that may be said of this side of the question of ranch life is that when we are within mrs. king’s house we would imagine it was one of twenty others touching shoulder to shoulder on madison avenue, and that the distant cry of the coyotes at night is all that tells us that the hansoms are not rushing up and down before the door.

in the summer this ranch is covered with green, and little yellow and pink flowers carpet the range for miles. it is at its best then, and is as varied and beautiful in its changes as the ocean.

the ranches that stretch along and away from the rio grande river are very different from this; they are owned by mexicans, and every one on the ranch is a mexican; the country is desolate here, and dead and dying cattle are everywhere.

no ranch-owner, whether he has fifty thousand or five hundred head of cattle, will ever attempt to help one that may be ailing or dying. this seems to one who has been taught the value of “three acres and a cow” the height of extravagance, and to show lack of feeling. but they will all tell you it is useless to try to save a starving or a sick animal, and also that it is not worth the trouble, there are so many more. in one place i saw where a horse had fallen on the trail, and the first man who passed had driven around it, and the next, and the next, until a new trail was made, and at the time i passed over this new trail, i could see the old one showing through the ribs of the horse’s skeleton. in the east, i think, they would have at least pulled the horse out of the road.

but a live horse or steer is just as valuable in texas as in the east—even more so.

the conductor on the road from corpus christi sprang from his chair in the baggage car one day, and shouted to the engineer that he must be careful, for we were on major fenton’s range, and must look out for the major’s prize bull; and the train continued at half speed accordingly until the conductor espied the distinguished animal well to the left, and shouted: “all right, bill! we’ve passed him, let her out.”

[132]the randado ranch is typical of the largest of the mexican ranches which lie within the five hundred miles along the rio grande. it embraces eighty thousand acres, with twenty-five thousand head of cattle, and it has its store, its little mission, its tank, twenty or more adobe houses with thatched roofs, and its little graveyard. there is a post-office here, and a school, where very pretty little mexicans recited proudly in english words of four letters. around them lie the cactus and dense chaparral cut up with dusky trails, and the mail comes but twice a week. but every saturday the vaqueros come in from the range, and there is dancing on the bare clay floor of one of the huts, and the school-master postmaster sings to them every evening on his guitar, and once a month the priest comes on horseback to celebrate mass in the adobe mission.

around san antonio are many ranches. these are more like large farms, and there are high trees and hills and a wonderful variety of flowers. there are also antelope and wild fowl for those who love to hunt, and the scalp of a coyote brings fifty cents to those who care for money; for the coyotes pull down the young calves. the life on the range is not at all lonely here, for the women on the ranch do not mind riding in twelve miles to a dance in san antonio, and there are always people coming out from town to remain a day or two. the more successful of these ranches are like english country-houses in their free hospitality and in the constant changing of the guests.

many of these about san antonio are owned, in fact, by englishmen, although a record of the failures of the english colonists of good family and of well-known youths from new york would make a book, and a very sad one. there was a whole colony of english families and unattached younger sons at boerne, just outside of san antonio, a few years ago; but they preferred cutting to leg to cutting out cattle, and used the ponies to chase polo balls, and their money soon went, and they followed. some went to england as prodigal sons, some to driving hacks and dealing faro, and others into the army. a few succeeded, and are still at boerne, notably a cousin of thomas hughes, who founded the ill-fated english colony of rugby, in tennessee.

of the new york men who came on to san antonio, the two jacob boys are more frequently and more heartily spoken of by the texans than almost any other eastern men who have been there. they did not, as the others so often do, hire a foreman, and spend their days in the san antonio club, but rode the ranch themselves, and could cut out and brand and rope with any of those born on a range. their ranch, the santa marta, still flourishes, although they have become absentee landlords, and have given up chasing wild steers in texas in favor of the foxes at rockaway.

a ranch which marks the exception in the rule of failures of our english cousins is that of alfred giles in kendal and kerr counties. it covers about thirteen thousand acres, and a very fine breed of polled angus cattle are bred on it. indeed, the tendency all over texas at present is to cultivate certain well-known breeds, and not, as formerly, to be content with the famous long-horned steer and the texan pony. mr. giles’s ranch, the hillingdon, looks in the summer, when the imported scotch cattle are grazing over it, like a bit out of the lake country. walnut, cherry, ash, and oak grow on this ranch, and the maidenhair-fern is everywhere, and the flowers are boundless in profusion and variety.

the coming of the barb-wire fence and the railroad killed[136] the cowboy as a picturesque element of recklessness and lawlessness in south-west texas. it suppressed him and localized him and limited him to his own range, and made his revolver merely an ornament. before the barb-wire fence appeared, the cattle wandered from one range to another, and the man of fifteen thousand acres would over-stock, knowing that when his cattle could not find enough pasturage on his range they would move over to the range of his more prosperous neighbor. consequently, when the men who could afford it began to fence their ranges, the smaller owners who had over-bred, saw that their cattle would starve, and so cut the fences in order to get back to the pastures which they had used so long. this, and the shutting off of water-tanks and of long-used trails brought on the barb-wire fence wars which raged long and fiercely between the cowboys and fence men of rival ranches and the texas rangers. the barb-wire fences did more than this; they shut off the great trails that stretched from corpus christi through the pan handle of texas, and on up through new mexico and colorado and through the indian territory to dodge city. the coming of the railroad also made this trailing of cattle to the markets superfluous, and almost destroyed one of the most remarkable features of the west. this trail was not, of course, an actual trail, and marked as such, but a general driveway forty miles wide and thousands of miles long. the herds of cattle that were driven over it numbered from three hundred to three thousand head, and were moving constantly from the early spring to the late fall.

no caravan route in the far eastern countries can equal this six months’ journey through three different states, and through all changes of weather and climate, and in the face of constant danger and anxiety. this procession of countless cattle on their slow march to the north was one of the most interesting and distinctive features of the west.

an “outfit” for this expedition would consist of as many cowboys as were needed to hold the herd together, a wagon, with the cook and the tents, and extra ponies for the riders. in the morning the camp-wagon pushed on ahead to a suitable resting-place for the night, and when the herd arrived later, moving, on an average, fifteen miles a day, and grazing as it went, the men would find the supper ready and the tents pitched. and then those who were to watch that night would circle slowly around the great army of cattle, driving them in closer and closer together, and singing as they rode, to put them to sleep. this seems an absurdity to the eastern mind, but the familiar sounds quieted and satisfied these great stupid animals that can be soothed like a child with a nursery rhyme, and when frightened cannot be stopped by a river. the boys rode slowly and patiently until one and then another of the herd would stumble clumsily to the ground, and others near would follow, and at last the whole great herd would be silent and immovable in sleep. but the watchfulness of the sentries could never relax. some chance noise—the shaking of a saddle, some cry of a wild animal, or the scent of distant water carried by a chance breeze across the prairie, or nothing but sheer blind wantonness—would start one of the sleeping mass to his feet with a snort, and in an instant the whole great herd would go tearing madly over the prairie, tossing their horns and bellowing, and filled with a wild, unreasoning terror. and then the skill and daring of the cowboy was put to its severest test, as he saw his master’s income disappearing[140] towards a cañon or a river, or to lose itself in the brush. and the cowboy who tried to head off and drive back this galloping army of frantic animals had to ride a race that meant his life if his horse made a misstep; and as the horse’s feet often did slip, there would be found in the morning somewhere in the trail of the stampeding cattle a horrid mass of blood and flesh and leather.

do you wonder, then, after this half-year of weary, restless riding by day, and sleepless anxiety and watching under the stars by night, that when the lights of dodge city showed across the prairie, the cowboy kicked his feet out of his stirrups, drove the blood out of the pony’s sides, and “came in to town” with both guns going at once, and yelling as though the pent-up speech of the past six months of loneliness was striving for proper utterance?

the cowboy cannot be overestimated as a picturesque figure; all that has been written about him and all the illustrations that have been made of him fail to familiarize him, and to spoil the picture he makes when one sees him for the first time racing across a range outlined against the sky, with his handkerchief flying out behind, his sombrero bent back by the wind, and his gauntlets and broad leather leggings showing above and at the side of his galloping pony. and his deep seat in the saddle, with his legs hanging straight to the long stirrups, the movement of his body as it sways and bends, and his utter unconsciousness of the animal beneath him would make a german riding-master, an english jockey, or the best cross-country rider of a long island hunting club shake his head in envy and despair.

he is a fantastic-looking individual, and one suspects he wears the strange garments he affects because he knows they are most becoming. but there is a reason for each of the different parts of his apparel, in spite of rather than on account of their picturesqueness. the sombrero shades his face from the rain and sun, the rattlesnake-skin around it keeps it on his head, the broad kerchief that he wears knotted around his throat protects his neck from the heat, and the leather leggings which cover the front of his legs protect them from the cactus in texas, and in the north, where the fur and hair are left on the leather, from the sleet and rain as he rides against them. the gauntlets certainly seem too military for such rough service, but any one who has had a sheet rope run through his hands, can imagine how a lasso cuts when a wild horse is pulling on the other end of it. his cartridge-belt and his revolver are on some ranches superfluous, but cattle-men say they have found that on those days when they took this toy away from their boys, they sulked and fretted and went about their work half-heartedly, so that they believe it pays better to humor them, and to allow them to relieve the monotony of the day’s vigil by popping at jack-rabbits and learning to twirl their revolver around their first finger. of the many compliments i have heard paid by officers and privates and ranch-owners and cowboys to mr. frederic remington, the one which was sure to follow the others was that he never made the mistake of putting the revolver on the left side. but as i went north, his anonymous admirers would make this same comment, but with regret that he should be guilty of such an error. i could not understand this at first until i found that the two sides of the shield lay in the northern cowboy’s custom of wearing his pistol on the left, and of the texan’s of carrying it on the right. the northern man argues on this important matter that the sword has always been worn on the left, that it is easier to[144] reach across and sweep the pistol to either the left or right, and that with this motion it is at once in position. the texan says this is absurd, and quotes the fact that the pistol-pocket has always been on the right, and that the lasso and reins are in the way of the left hand. it is too grave a question of etiquette for any one who has not at least six notches on his pistol-butt to decide.

although mr. kleberg’s cowboys have been shorn of their pistols, their prowess as ropers still remains with them. they gave us an exhibition of this feature of their calling which was as remarkable a performance in its way as i have ever seen. the audience seated itself on the top of a seven-rail fence, and thrilled with excitement. at least a part of it did. i fancy mr. kleberg was slightly bored, but he was too polite to show it. sixty wild horses were sent into a pen eighty yards across, and surrounded by the seven-rail fence. into this the cowboys came, mounted on their ponies, and at mr. kleberg’s word lassoed whichever horse he designated. they threw their ropes as a man tosses a quoit, drawing it back at the instant it closed over the horse’s head, and not, as the beginner does, allowing the noose to settle loosely, and to tighten through the horse’s effort to move forward. this roping was not so impressive as what followed, as the ropes were short, owing to the thick undergrowth, which prevents long throws, such as are made in the north, and as the pony was trained to suit its gait to that of the animal it was pursuing, and to turn and dodge with it, and to stop with both fore-feet planted firmly when the rope had settled around the other horse’s neck.

but when they had shown us how very simple a matter this was, they were told to dismount and to rope the horses by whichever foot mr. kleberg choose to select. this was a real combat, and was as intensely interesting a contest between a thoroughly wild and terrified animal and a perfectly cool man as one can see, except, perhaps, at a bull-fight. there is something in a contest of this sort that has appealed to something in all human beings who have blood in their veins from the days when one gladiator followed another with a casting-net and a trident around the arena down to the present, when “peter” poe drops on one knee and tries to throw hefflefinger over his shoulder. in this the odds were in favor of the horse, as a cowboy on the ground is as much out of his element as a sailor on a horse, and looks as strangely. the boys moved and ran and backed away as quickly as their heavy leggings would permit; but the horses moved just twice as quickly, turning and jumping and rearing, and then racing away out of reach again at a gallop. but whenever they came within range of the ropes, they fell. the roping around the neck had seemed simple. the rope then was cast in a loop with a noose at one end as easily as one throws a trout line. but now the rope had to be hurled as quickly and as surely as a man sends a ball to first base when the batsman is running, except that the object at which the cowboy aims is moving at a gallop, and one of a galloping horse’s four feet is a most uncertain bull’s-eye.

it is almost impossible to describe the swiftness with which the rope moved. it seemed to skim across the ground as a skipping-rope does when a child holds one end of it and shakes the rope up and down to make it look like a snake coiling and undulating over the pavement.

one instant the rope would hang coiled from the thrower’s right hand as he ran forward to meet the horse, moving it[148] slowly, with a twist of his wrist, to keep it from snarling, and the next it would spin out along the ground, with the noose rolling like a hoop in the front, and would close with a snap over the horse’s hoof, and the cowboy would throw himself back to take the shock, and the horse would come down on its side as though the ground had slipped from under it.

the roping around the neck was the easy tossing of a quoit; the roping around the leg was the angry snapping of a whip.

there are thousands of other ranches in the united states besides those in texas, and other cowboys, but the general characteristics are the same in all, and it is only general characteristics that one can attempt to give.