Charles A. Siringo
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Dedication
Preface.
CHAPTER I. - My Boyhood Days.
CHAPTER II. - My Introduction to the late war.
CHAPTER III. - My First Lesson in Cow Punching.
CHAPTER IV. - My second experience in St. Louis.
CHAPTER V. - A New experience.
CHAPTER VI. - Adopted and sent to school.
CHAPTER VII. - Back at last to the Lone Star State.
CHAPTER VIII. - Learning to rope wild steers.
CHAPTER IX. - Owning my first cattle.
CHAPTER X. - A start up the Chisholm Trail.
CHAPTER XI. - Buys a boat and becomes a sailor.
CHAPTER XII. - Back to my favorite occupation, that of a wild and woolly Cow Boy.
CHAPTER XIII. - Mother and I meet at last.
CHAPTER XIV. - On a tare in Wichita, Kansas.
CHAPTER XV. - A Lonely trip down the Cimeron.
CHAPTER XVI. - My first experience roping a Buffalo.
CHAPTER XVII. - An exciting trip after thieves.
CHAPTER XVIII. - Seven weeks among Indians.
CHAPTER XIX. - A lonely ride of eleven hundred miles.
CHAPTER XX. - Another start up the Chisholm trail.
CHAPTER XXI. - A trip which terminated in the capture of “Billy The Kid. ”
CHAPTER XXII. - Billy the Kid’s capture.
CHAPTER XXIII. - A trip to the Rio Grande on a mule.
CHAPTER XXIV. - Waylaid by unknown parties.
CHAPTER XXV. - Lost on the Staked Plains.
CHAPTER XXVI. - A trip down the Reo Pecos.
CHAPTER XXVII. - A true sketch of “Billy the Kid’s” life.
CHAPTER XXVIII. - Wrestling with a dose of Small Pox on the Llano Esticado.
CHAPTER XXIX. - In love with a Mexican girl.
CHAPTER XXX. - A sudden leap from Cow Boy to Merchant.
ADDENDA.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
A TEXAS COWBOY: OR, FIFTEEN YEARS ON THE HURRICANE DECK OF A SPANISH PONY
Charles Angelo Siringo was born in Matagorda County, Texas, in 1855. After a nomadic boyhood, he signed on as a teenage cowboy for the noted cattle king Shanghai Pierce. Later, as a cowboy detective for the Pinkerton Agency, he spent two decades chasing outlaws, infiltrating radical unions, and hunting down murderers. He was an acquaintance of the notorious gun-slinger Billy the Kid. He died in Hollywood in 1928.
Richard W. Etulain is Professor of History and director of the Center for the American West at the University of New Mexico. A specialist in the history and literature of the American West, he has authored or edited more than thirty-five books. He also edits eight series of publications on the American West and recent U.S. history. Among his recent publications are Re-imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art (1996); Portraits of Basques in the New World (coeditor, 1999); Does the Frontier Explain American Exceptionalism (editor, 1999); Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry (1999); and The Hollywood West (coeditor, 2000). Professor Etulain is past president of both the Western Literature and Western History associations. He is currently at work on a biography of the legendary westerner Calamity Jane.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
First published in the United States of America
by Siringo & Dobson, Publishers 1886
This edition with an introduction by Richard Etulain
published in Penguin Books 2000
Introduction copyright © Richard W. Etulain, 2000
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Siringo, Charles A., 1855-1928.
A Texas cowboy, or, Fifteen years on the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony /
Charles Siringo; edited and with an introduction by Richard Etulain.
p. cm.—(Penguin classics)
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN : 978-1-440-67268-2
1. Siringo, Charles A., 1855-1928. 2. Frontier and pioneer life—Texas.
3. Cowboys—Texas—Biography. 4. Texas—History—1864-1950.
5. Texas—Biography. I. Title: Texas cowboy. II. Title. Fifteen years
on the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony. III. Etulain, Richard W.
IV. Title. V. Series.
F391.S624 A3 2000
976.4’06’092—dc21
[B] 00-031363
http://us.penguingroup.com
INTRODUCTION
Charlie Siringo lived life at a gallop. After a nomadic boyhood, he signed on as a teenage cowboy for the noted cattle king Shanghai Pierce. Later, as a cowboy detective for the famed Pinkerton’s Agency, he spent two decades chasing outlaws, infiltrating radical unions, and hunting down murderers. Even in his last decades Siringo kept on the move, ranching, consulting, and hanging out with movie cowboys in Hollywood.
Yet even this high-speed, frenetic life allowed Siringo time to write. In 1885, after he had retired from cowboying and had become a merchant in Kansas, he published his first book, A Texas Cow Boy or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony. Sensationally successful in sales, this classic account of cowboying prepared the way for Siringo’s five later books dealing with his experiences on the open range and as a Pinkerton detective. A man of abundant energy and courage, Siringo lived a chock-full life and put his personal brand on written accounts of his intriguing life.
A Texas Cowboy sold remarkably well. First issued in 1885 by M. Umbdenstock and Company, a Chicago printer, Siringo’s cowboy autobiography reappeared the next year in a second edition (the edition in hand), with a thirty-page addendum. Within the next decade, Rand, McNally and Company issued another inexpensive version of Siringo’s first book. On the eve of the World War I, J. S. Ogilvie published still another cheap paper edition. Although Siringo may have exaggerated in claiming that A Texas Cowboy sold “nearly a million copies,” sales were at least several hundred thousand.
What has attracted so many readers to A Texas Cowboy and kept it nearly continuously in print for more than a century? The subject matter? Undoubtedly. The author’s knack for story-telling? Clearly. The notoriety of cowboys and the outlaw Billy the Kid? Obviously. The pull of a Wild West that intrigued so many Americans in the late nineteenth century? Surely. The attractions were several, and they continue to this day.
Siringo’s popular account of his early range life also appealed to thousands of readers because it conveyed the kind of story they had come to anticipate about the West. From the frontier exploration narratives and James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-stocking novels of the early nineteenth century to the dime novels, Local Color stories, and Wild West shows of the second half of the century, audiences expected lively western stories, full of adventure
, action, and courageous characters. From beginning to end, Siringo’s A Texas Cowboy fulfills these expectations.
Siringo’s story falls into four divisions. The first chapters detail his carefree boyhood on the Texas coast and his early experiences in the upper Midwest and along the Mississippi. The second section commences with his early-teen experiences as a cowboy and his first trips up the Long Trail. The final chapters treat Charlie’s work on huge west Texas ranches and his pursuit of Billy the Kid and cattle thieves in New Mexico. The original version (1885) ended with Charlie’s marriage and his new job as a cigar and ice cream merchant in Caldwell, Kansas. This revised edition (1886) added a fourth section, a thirty-page, tongue-in-cheek discussion of the costs of raising cattle and horses and the frequent mistreatment of cow ponies on Texas ranches.
Charlie Siringo probably devoted little thought to the organization of his story. Instead, in A Texas Cowboy, as well as in nearly all of his later writings, Charlie serves as a campfire story-teller, spinning yarns about his range experiences. One anecdote quickly leads to another. Although Siringo seems driven to tell what happened in his boyhood, his early cowboy days, and during his pursuit of Billy the Kid, he shows scant interest in considering the significance of these pell-mell events.
Yet Charlie’s dozens of stories, strung together like so many notches on a pistol grip, tell much about Siringo and cowboy life on the southern plains. Charlie’s life followed a familiar pattern. Because of the early death of his father and the chaos of the Civil War, the youthful Siringo lived a wandering, nomadic life, gathering up experiences like a carefree Huck Finn of the cow country. Narrating these preadolescent years two to three decades after their occurrence, Charlie speaks of incessant activity, punctuated with numerous moves, boyhood jobs, hunger, and journeys to new places. Nothing lasts very long. Charlie lands a job for a few days or even attends school for a space of weeks, but conflicts with other boys, bosses, and teachers launch him on the road again. Restless and undisciplined, Charlie wanders up and down the Mississippi and then returns to his home near the Texas coast.
Even before he becomes a teenager, Charlie has learned to ride, to round up the mavericks (unbranded cattle) that roam through nearby plains and thickets. Then, as a sixteen-year-old, he signs on with the famed Abel H. (“Shanghai”) Pierce, whose Rancho Grande spread along the Gulf Coast country. Here, Charlie’s narrative overflows with descriptions of cow country matters. Rounding up wild steers, riding a rough string of half-wild ponies, and trying to catch enough sleep in the saddle—all these and other tales crowd Charlie’s pages.
If one squeezes these early experiences on the open range and on the trail north, they reveal a good deal about Charlie Siringo. First of all, he had trouble sticking with any job. Crowd Charlie some or show him another job with more adventure—or better pay—and he rode away with the new outfit. He had even more difficulty keeping his wages. After earning $114 as his share for skinning hundreds of dead cattle, Siringo, admitting that he “never had so much money in all [his] life,” immediately bought a $27 saddle. Earlier, a month’s paycheck “went for a fancy pistol, the next, or at least part of it, for a pair of star topped boots and all of the balance on ‘monte,’ a Mexican game.” Throughout these early cowboy years, Charlie was singularly successful in living beyond his income. His taste for gaudy clothes and expensive gear and his itch to gamble, especially in “bucking” a game of monte, were his financial ruin. Without saying why, Charlie tells us he “grew restless” and that even among his friends “no one knew where [he] was going.”
Siringo’s narrative picks up speed when he recounts his trail-driving experiences northward to Kansas cow towns. These are the most familiar sections of A Texas Cowboy. The popularity and lasting influence of Charlie’s story are not surprising. He was the first working cowboy to provide readers with an “I was there” account of the epic story of the long drive.
Characteristically, Siringo never provides a well-organized, in-depth treatment of a single trip up the Chisholm Trail. Instead, he gathers vignettes of people and dramatic actions from several trips he took from Texas to the railheads in Kansas. Emphasizing the hard, tiresome, and dangerous work, Charlie lards his tale with storms, stampedes, and other narrow escapes. Readers are also given brief glimpses of Indian threats, alarming river crossings, and the glorious blowouts at the end of the trail. On one occasion when Siringo traveled to Chicago to settle up with his employer, he found the meal expenses at the prestigious Palmer House, he says, “too high for a common clodhopper like myself.”
Charlie’s move to a new, sprawling ranch in west Texas near the end of the 1870s illustrates a transformation that was taking place in western cattle ranching. Although some cattlemen continued to drive their yearly herds north for nearly another decade, others, including the famed rancher Charles Goodnight, pushed westward to open up gigantic spreads in the Texas Panhandle, often near the New Mexico border. Siringo became part of this move when he hired on with David T. Beals and W. H. (“Deacon”) Bates’s LX ranch in 1877. For the next six years, Charlie worked for the LX, sometimes on the home range in west Texas but as frequently trailing herds eastward or pursuing rustlers over the line in New Mexico.
Charlie’s stories about his LX experiences make up nearly half of A Texas Cowboy. The ranch owners, deciding that Siringo knows how to put his cinch on other cowboys and can be depended on, add to his responsibilities. He drives herds east and west and, later, heads into New Mexico to round up rustlers stealing from Texas ranchers and selling their beef in the Southwest or in northern Mexico. Obviously, in these happenings Charlie was living out the western myth and the American Dream: riding free on the frontier and slowly making his way up the cattle country ladder of success.
After several cattle-trailing trips eastward, Charlie returned to the LX in mid-summer 1880. With early fall branding completed, Siringo rode out to scout the range for unbranded cows and calves. Then, unexpectedly, his foreman called in Charlie and told him to prepare for a trip to go after rustlers. He was to trail after Billy the Kid, who Charlie wrote, “had stolen… a lot of cattle” and driven them into New Mexico.
Billy the Kid (also known as William Antrim and Billy Bonney), the notorious outlaw, fascinated Charlie Siringo. His first published essay may have dealt with Billy, and eventually he wrote more about the Kid than about any other frontier figure. Billy and events linked to him occupy nearly all the final ten chapters of the 1885 version of A Texas Cowboy. The Kid also appears in Siringo’s Lone Star Cowboy (1919) and in a revised edition of Riata and Spurs (1927). In 1920 Siringo also whipped out a brief book, History of “Billy the Kid,” which is devoted entirely to Billy’s life.
Siringo knew Billy firsthand. The two young cowboys—Charlie was the older by about four years—met on one occasion. In the fall of 1878 Billy and his gang, whom Charlie called a “jovial crowd,” came to west Texas “to dispose of a herd of ponies he [the Kid] had stolen from the ’Seven Rivers warriors’ in Lincoln County, New Mexico—his bitter enemies.” During the three or four weeks that Billy and his cronies camped near the LX Ranch, he and Charlie became well acquainted, chatting on several occasions and perhaps exchanging gifts.
Charlie probably identified with some of the Kid’s experiences. In fact, several similarities linked these wanderers. Both were nomads, searching for livelihoods and roots. Both worked on either side of the law, even though Billy won his spurs in his last years on the far side and Charlie on the near side in his final years. Both also gloried in, during their early days, lifestyles outside institutional restraints. Not surprisingly, then, Charlie Siringo seemed drawn to Billy’s nose-thumbing individualism. In his teens, Siringo had experienced much the same kind of life as the Kid.
Some of Charlie’s identification with Billy helps explain his curious actions in pursuing the Kid. Although Siringo did not participate in most of Billy’s illegal activities, he also seemed disinclined to drive the Kid out of New Mexico or to make sure he w
as locked up for his rustling. When cowboys from Texas ranches near Tascosa began closing in on Billy and his crowd near the end of 1880, Siringo chose not to join Pat Garrett’s posse of riders. Charlie’s explanation that his LX bosses specifically instructed him to recapture stolen Texas cattle and not to chase after Billy lacks full credibility since many of the Kid’s pursuers were convinced he had with him those stolen cattle. At this point—and later—Charlie also hesitated to dismiss Billy as a calloused thief and hard-hearted murderer.
When Charlie wrote in the opening line of his preface that his “excuse for writing this book is money—lots of it,” he undoubtedly realized that many buyers of his book would be intrigued with Billy the Kid. Siringo went out of his way to prepare a separate section—chapter 27, “A True Sketch of ‘Billy the Kids’s’ Life”—to capitalize on the mushrooming interest in that infamous outlaw. Evidently gathering information from acquaintances of Billy and other eyewitness accounts of the Kid’s capture, escape, and death in 1880-1881, Charlie fashioned a lively if error-ridden minibiography of the gunman. When law-man Pat Garrett’s account (much of which was ghostwritten by journalist Ash Upson) The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (1882) failed to circulate widely, largely because of the book’s inexperienced Santa Fe printer, Charlie’s story of Billy the Kid became the most familiar account of the New Mexico outlaw. Until, that is, Siringo’s book of 1920 and Walter Noble Burns’s best-selling romantic biography, The Saga of Billy the Kid, appeared in 1926. For nearly two generations, readers relied on Charlie’s accounts of Billy the Kid.
The next three years were an important transition period in Siringo’s life. In 1883, he married teenager Mamie Lloyd (whom he had known only one week), hung up his spurs, and opened his cigar and ice cream store in Caldwell, Kansas. In a burst of activity, he wrote A Texas Cowboy (1885) and the next year completed this revised version of his book. In 1886 he also took a position with Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, where he remained until his resignation in 1907. In quick fashion, Charlie left one occupation, tried another, and settled on still another. He also married, became a father, and produced a book that eventually sold hundreds of thousands of copies.