by Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony A Texas Cowboy or
The average losses on a large cattle ranch, where the range is not overstocked, of course, can safely be put down at three per cent. And on small ranches about half of that amount. That will include losses from theft too—now-a-days, since the majority of people consider cattle stealing a crime.
Public opinion is causing lots of the old-time cow boys, or cow thieves, to select other occupations; for, while they remain on the range, it is hard for them to quit their old habits—which at one time were considered cute, as well as legitimate. Those who are slow to take a tumble, are fast landing up behind stone walls. The old-time cow boy will soon be like the buffalo and mustang, a thing of the past; although we predict that the former can be found in the city of Huntsville, in Texas, for a number of years to come. We know of several young, healthy ones, friends of ours, who are now residing there at the State’s expense, and who are liable to live far into the next century, at which time the buffalo and mustang will have become extinct.
PART VII.
Raising cow ponies as a money-making business.
THE COST of raising a three-year old gilding is not any greater than raising a steer of the same age. The only difference is, the former requires closer and better care.
For an example, we will take a young “tender-foot” who has got a capital of $5000.00 to invest in the business.
He should go to south-western Texas as a starting point. There he could, by taking time, and leaving the rail-road towns, where horse buyers generally congregate, buy nice, picked three-year old mares for $15 a head.
Now, we will say you buy 110 head, counting the 10 head for losses on the trail, at a cost of $1,650.00. And six saddle ponies, for you and your two men to ride, until you can have some of the mares broken, at a cost of $150.00 making the total $1800.00. On passing through northern Texas, where the horses are bred up, you should also make a purchase of four young stallions, at a cost of $400.00; making your whole live stock expenditure foot up $2,200.00.
You should, before starting, hire an experienced horse-man-one who wanted a permanent job—to whom you would have to pay about $40 per month. And your other hired hand could just as well be a cheap boy, whose wages would not necessarily be over $15 per month.
You could use one of the saddle ponies for a pack animal, thereby doing away with the expense of buying a wagon, etc.; but in the long run, it would be best to buy a wagon and team, as you would need them around the ranch when you got located. The boy, or cheap hand, could drive the team, as his services would not be needed while on the move; for the only time you would need him, badly, would be while night-herding.
In selecting your range the idea would be to locate, or buy out, a homestead of 160 acres, encircling a spring or head of a creek, thereby giving you a water right for all time to come. The further from any other water the better, as then your range would be larger. For instance if the water was a spring, with water sufficient for three to five thousand head of stock, and no other “living” water nearer than twenty miles, you could count all the grass for ten miles around, yours. And another advantage in having such a range, you could count your stock every time they came to water; and besides they wouldn’t be continually mixing up with other people’s stock.
My advice, to a man hunting such a range as I have described above, would be to go either to the mountains of Colorado, New Mexico or Arizona. Of course there are fine ranges further north, but they are more suitable for maturing, than raising stock.
The first thing to be done after settling on your new ranch would be to discharge your cheap hand, and thereby cut expenses down. And the next thing would be a log house, or dug-out, to live in, and a corral to pen your stock in at night until they became located. By having a corral, and the herd being small, you could save the trouble of night-herding. Of course after they become located you wouldn’t have to watch them, either night or day.
Even if your water right has cost $1000.00, you ought to have enough left to keep your small expenses up until you had some three year-old gildings to sell. But if not, you could dispose of the six saddle-ponies, and ride mares.
Your increase, according to my figures, at the end of five years, counting on some mares not having colts, losses from death, etc., would be 700 head, half of which would be gildings, worth when three year-olds $30 unbroke or $40 broke. If sold while unbroke the whole bunch would net you $10,500.
Your herd would increase very fast the next five years. It takes at least that long to get a ranch on its feet. Besides the value of your range would be doubling itself every five years.
Of course you should put up some hay for winter use. If you did not need it, it would do for the next winter, if properly cured and stacked.
We will mention the fact again that the free and easy day of successfully raising stock in the wild and woolly west without winter feed, is past; and thank the Lord it is! For it is cruel letting stock starve to death.
From where I sit while penning these lines, on this first day of February, 1886, I can look to the southward, into the Indian Territory, and see thousands of poor dumb brutes marching up and down those cursed barbed-wire fences up to their knees in snow, with a blanket of ice an inch thick on their backs, the piercing north wind blowing forty miles an hour, and not a sprig of grass in sight.
Just think of it, ye cattle kings, while sitting in your city palaces roasting your shins before a blazing fire! But methinks you will be reminded of the fact next spring when you come out in your special car to attend the general round-ups. Dead cattle scattered over the range don’t look very nice to the average eastern cattle king.
We think when you turn your faces towards the rising sun next fall you will know that there has been lots of hay put up—especially those on the Plains, or level ranges. From present indications and reports, this winter will cook the goose that has heretofore laid so many golden eggs.
Adios Amegos.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1 7th day of February 1855: as the U.S. Census of 1860 indicates, Angelo (“Charlie”) Siringo was born February 7, 1855. The first edition gave his birthdate as 1856.
2 Caney, Deckrows Point, “Dutch Settlement”: this German settlement of about twelve houses was situated halfway between Caney and Decros Point.
CHAPTER 4
1 “peeler”: a robber or thief.
2 “Jim Crow” barlow: probably a tricky or undependable kind of knife. Siringo uses “Jim Crow” occasionally but never with clear, exact meanings.
CHAPTER 6
1 “Robert E. Lee” and “Natchez”: Siringo refers to the dramatic race in 1870 between these two well-known steamboats on the Mississippi River from New Orleans to St. Louis. The Robert E. Lee made the trip in three days and eighteen hours, thus defeating the Natchez by more than three hours.
CHAPTER 7
1 “Mavricks”: maverick, a name derived from Samuel A. Maverick, a Texas cattleman, that refers to an unbranded cow.
2 “Shanghai” Pierce: Abel Head “Shanghai” Pierce (1834-1900). Cattle rancher. A Virginian in his youth, Pierce came to Texas at age twenty and eventually established his Rancho Grande in Wharton County, Texas, in 1871. His 250,000 acres of land held thousands of head of cattle, including the first of the Brahman breed in the area.
CHAPTER 8
1 sold out their interests: Shanghai Pierce and his brother Jonathan, evidently as the result of difficulties with rustlers, left Texas for Kansas in the 1870s but soon returned and reentered Texas cattle raising.
2 Palacious Point: Palacios Point is located on Tres Palacios and Matagorda bays, about eight miles south of Palacios.
CHAPTER 9
1 W.B. Grimes: a veteran cowman of the Tres Palacios region of Matagorda County, Grimes first hired Siringo in 1872-1873. Then in the mid-1870s Siringo went up the Chisholm Trail with a Grimes herd. The famed cattleman Shanghai Pierce began his career as a cowboy with Grimes in the early 1850s.
2 Kinchlow: Kincheloe, undoubt
edly one of the sons of well-known Texas rancher William Kincheloe (1779-1835).
CHAPTER 10
1 a white man: fair, honest, decent.
CHAPTER 12
1 shot through the knee: Sam Grant, a reputed murderer, shot Siringo through the knee and seemed ready to kill the cowboy, but the chance appearance of one of Siringo’s fellow riders probably saved his life. Another example of Siringo’s laconic handling of dramatic events.
CHAPTER 13
1 Tom Ochiltree: Thomas Peck Ochiltree (1839-1902), Democratic legislator of Texas, and later a U.S. congressman representing the Galveston district.
CHAPTER 14
1 “locoed”: crazy.
2 Jim Crow fire-place: an inadequate or primitive fireplace.
CHAPTER 15
1 Chisholm trail: The Chisholm Trail (1867-1878). This legendary cattle trail linked San Antonio, Texas, with the railroad in Abilene, Kansas. Laid out by cattleman Joseph McCoy, the trail was named after Jesse Chisholm, the Scottish-Cherokee frontier trader and trailer.
2 Bates & Beals: W.H. “Deacon” Bates (?-?) and David Thomas Beals (1832-1910) were foreman and owner, respectively, of the sprawling LX Ranch established in 1877 in the Texas Panhandle. Earlier, Bates and Beals operated a ranch on the Arkansas River in Colorado.
CHAPTER 16
1 Tascosa: Tascosa, Texas. Located on the Canadian River in Oldham County, Tascosa was settled soon after the Civil War and became a center for Hispanic pastores and their flocks of sheep. In the mid- 1870s, the LX and other cattle ranches dominated the area. Here Siringo met Billy the Kid for the first time.
CHAPTER 17
1 Staked Plains: The Llano Estacado, or Staked Plains, is a high mesa running from northwest Texas to northeast New Mexico. Escarpments mark the northern, eastern, and western boundaries of these notable tablelands.
2 a man by the name of Moore: W.C. “Outlaw Bill” Moore (?-?), LX ranch manager, was an experienced cowman and quite possibly a thief. He may have been rustling LX stock even as he served Bates and Beals. Siringo seemed to respect Moore’s knowledge of the range, however.
CHAPTER 18
1 Billy the Kid: Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, William H. Bonney (1859?-1881). This notorious New Mexican outlaw and rustler first arrived in 1878 in the Texas Panhandle, where Siringo met him at the LX Ranch. Later, Siringo helped pursue Billy the Kid, but they never met again. Siringo wrote a brief book about the Kid: History of “Billy the Kid” (1920).
2 Tom O‘Phalliard and Henry Brown: Tom O’Folliard (1858-1880) and Henry Brown (1857-1884) sometimes accompanied Billy the Kid on his rustling raids in Texas and New Mexico. O‘Folliard was gunned down at Ft. Sumner, and Brown was shot in Kansas after an unsuccessful bank robbery.
3 “bloody Lincoln County war of ’78”: Lincoln County, New Mexico (1878). This legendary conflict pitted the John Chisum, Alexander McSween, and John Tunstall forces on one side and Lawrence G. Murphy, James J. Dolan, and their partisans on the other. The civil war raged from February to July 1878 and ended with the violent Five-Day Battle on the main street of Lincoln in mid-July.
CHAPTER 19
1 Colony of Christians… Rev. Cahart: Lewis Henry Carhart (1833-?), a Methodist minister, established a Christian colony in the Texas Panhandle in 1878. Named “Clarendon,” after Carhart’s wife, Clara, the colony devoted itself to prohibition and evangelizing cowboys.
CHAPTER 21
1 Pat Cohglin: Patrick Coghlan (1822-1911), of Tularosa, New Mexico, reputedly bought stolen cattle from Billy the Kid and other rustlers and sold the butchered meat to the army and to Native Americans.
2 Pat Garrett: Patrick Floyd Garrett (1850-1908), after early years in the Deep South, arrived in Texas in 1877. Two years later he moved to Lincoln County, New Mexico, where he eventually became sheriff. He captured Billy the Kid in December 1880 and then killed the outlaw in July 1881.
3 White Oaks: White Oaks, New Mexico, quickly boomed as a mining town in the 1870s and 1880s and may have mushroomed to three thousand inhabitants in its heyday.
4 Greathouse ranch: the ranch and trading post, about forty miles north of White Oaks, of James Greathouse (?-1880), who probably worked with Billy the Kid and Pat Coghlan in a rustling ring that linked west Texas and eastern New Mexico.
5 a negro: Siringo shared many of the negative racial attitudes of his day toward Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, and persons of Spanish/Mexican heritage.
CHAPTER 22
1 Los Potales: Los Portales, located about fifty miles southeast of Fort Sumner, was reputedly the hangout of Billy the Kid and his gang.
CHAPTER 23
1 Mr. Peppen, or “Old Pap”: George Warden (“Dad”) Peppin (1841?-1904) participated in the Lincoln County troubles of the 1870s and 1880s.
2 “Greasers”: a late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century racist word referring to persons of Mexican heritage.
CHAPTER 24
1 A.T. and S.F.R.R.: Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad.
2 giving me “taffy”: to flatter, to mislead.
CHAPTER 25
1 John W. Poe: John William Poe (1851-1923), former Texas and U.S. marshal, accompanied Pat Garrett in their successful pursuit in 1881 of Billy the Kid in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico.
2 Catron and Waltz: Thomas Benton Catron (1840-1921) and his brother-in-law Edgar Walz, ranchers and financiers, supported L.G. Murphy and J.J. Dolan in the Lincoln County troubles.
3 John Chisholm: John Simpson Chisum (1824-1884), Texas and New Mexico cattleman, played a major role in the struggles in Lincoln County, New Mexico, in the 1870s and 1880s.
4 Capt. J.C. Lea: Joseph C. Lea (1841-1904), an ex-Confederate, arrived in New Mexico in 1876. He later owned large holdings in the Roswell area and helped launch efforts to capture Billy the Kid.
CHAPTER 26
1 “Ash” Upson: Marshall Ashman “Ash” Upson (1828-1894), a journalist and incessant wanderer, was a lifelong friend of Pat Garrett and ghost wrote much of Garrett’s The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (1882).
2 Toyah: Toyah, Texas, took its name from an Indian word meaning “flowing water.” The oldest townsite in Reeves County, the settlement began in the early 1880s. The first train arrived in 1881, with a tent town of saloons and restaurants springing up soon thereafter.
CHAPTER 27
1 The “Kid‘s” first man: Modern scholarship discounts most of what Siringo says in this and the following four paragraphs.
2 The “Kid”… rode into Lincoln: Contrary to what Siringo says, Billy was riding with John Tunstall when he was murdered.
3 Col. Dudly: Nathan A. M. Dudley (1825-1910) was in command of Fort Stanton in 1878 and sent forces to Lincoln at the height of the Lincoln County War.
4 Bell fell dead: Siringo’s account of Billy the Kid’s escape differs in detail from that presented in the well-researched works of Frederick Nolan and Robert Utley.
5 Peet Maxwell: Pete Maxwell (1848-1898), the oldest son and heir of the well-known New Mexico rancher Lucien Maxwell, inherited the Fort Sumner site from his father. Lucien had purchased the fort from the government after it closed as a federal installation.
6 “Who in the h—l is in here?”: Most dependable sources argue that Billy spoke in Spanish to Pete Maxwell, asking ”¿Quien es, quien es?“—Who is it, who is it?
CHAPTER 30
1 pretty little fifteen-year old: Mamie Lloyd Siringo (1869-1890) was Siringo’s first wife and the mother of his daughter Viola.
ADDENDA
1 Addenda: This thirty-page section appeared for the first time in this, the second, edition of A Texas Cowboy.
2 “ramutha”: remuda, a collection of replacement saddle horses, for open-range cattle ranches or for a trail drive.
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