by Donna Ingham
But I’m here to tell you, folks, that McMurtry didn’t just make that up. Because something very much like that really did happen once to a couple of old boys from Texas right after the Civil War.
Only the fellow who got shot up by the Indians was named Oliver, and he and his partner, Charlie, were trailing a herd up from Texas to New Mexico. See, Oliver and a cowboy named “One-Armed” Bill Wilson had decided to ride out ahead of the herd and go on up to Santa Fe to do a little negotiating. Now, mind you, they’d swung way out west along the Pecos River so as to avoid the Comanche country upward through the Texas Panhandle, but the Comanches found them anyway and set out after Oliver and One-Armed Bill. The two men took cover along the banks of the Pecos, but in the fracas Oliver got wounded in his arm and side. Oliver knew after that he wasn’t much good for traveling, so he insisted that One-Armed Bill make a run for it and try to get back to the crossing where Charlie would be coming with the herd.
“Stay close to the riverbanks, Bill,” Oliver said, “and get to that crossing and tell Charlie what happened.”
So One-Armed Bill Wilson did that. He traveled at night, following the Pecos River, where they’d taken refuge, and staying close to the banks all the way back down to the crossing. He hid out in a cave until Charlie got there with the herd.
When Charlie heard about the ambush, he left the herd and rode all night to get to where Oliver was. Only Oliver wasn’t there anymore.
You see, after he’d waited a couple of days, Oliver had decided that if he didn’t bleed to death, he might just starve to death since he hadn’t eaten anything for days by this time. So he started upstream along the river, trying to make it to the crossing himself. But weak as he was, he pooped out pretty quick and made it only as far as some shade under a chinaberry tree. He leaned himself back against the trunk of that tree, and that’s where three men found him. Those three men had a wagon, and Oliver asked them if they would take him into Fort Sumner, the closest town across the New Mexico line.
“Sure,” the men said, “we’ll take you—for $250.”
Well, Oliver had the $250. He paid them, and they hauled him to Fort Sumner and got him to a doctor.
When Charlie found out that Oliver was alive after all and where he was, Charlie left that herd again and rode hell-bent-for-leather straight to Fort Sumner and the bedside of his friend and partner. Meanwhile, gangrene had set in, and Oliver’s wounded arm had to be amputated right above the elbow. Later an artery came untied and had to be retied, and Oliver’s condition just went from bad to worse after that. He knew his time was near.
So when Charlie got there, Oliver said, “Charlie, I have two things to ask of you. First of all, I need for you to continue our partnership for two more years so as to settle all my debts and to make sure my family is taken care of.” Of course, there wasn’t much in the way of life insurance back in those days.
“And Charlie, I don’t want to be buried here at Fort Sumner. I want to be buried in my home cemetery back in Weatherford. Take me home, Charlie. Take me home.”
So Charlie promised. Now, mind you, there wasn’t a lawyer in that room, and they didn’t sign any pieces of paper because those were the days—we’d like to think anyway—when a man’s word was his bond.
Then Oliver died, and they buried him there at Fort Sumner. Because, remember now, Charlie still had all those cattle he had to trail on up north and sell off. It took him five months to do that, from September to the next February, but he came back. And when he got back to Fort Sumner to fetch Oliver home, he had his cowboys fashion a kind of metal cylinder. They dug Oliver up, slipped his coffin into that cylinder, packed all around it with powdered charcoal, sealed the ends as best they could, and loaded it on a wagon. The charcoal, of course, was to keep the smell of death from hovering over that wagon as Charlie took Oliver home. They made it without incident, and Charlie saw to it that Oliver was buried in his home cemetery there in Weatherford with full Masonic Lodge services.
For the next two years, Charlie was back in Weatherford every little bit—making sure that Oliver’s debts were paid off and that Oliver’s family was taken care of. Altogether, Charlie paid out half of $72,000 in accumulated trail earnings. Charlie kept his promises.
And that story is worth telling, even in a somewhat fictional form by writers like Larry McMurtry. But mostly we need to tell the real story about the real people to whom it happened—Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight.
Together they blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail, one of the first cattle trails out of Texas, and Goodnight went on to blaze four more trails before he was done. So they’re important historically, for sure. But, even more importantly, their story illustrates the lengths to which someone will go when he has promises to keep, even if he has miles to go before he sleeps.
Old Blue
According to biographer J. Evetts Haley, legendary rancher and trailblazer Charles Goodnight “would as soon that his own exploits were forgotten, but he was downright anxious that Old Blue be written up in history.” Both Haley and folklorist J. Frank Dobie have told their own tales about Goodnight’s lead steer. Here’s mine.
You know, the thing that is so remarkable about Old Blue is that he was almost like a cat—he had so many lives. Only he wasn’t a cat, he was a longhorn—a Texas longhorn. He was born down on the Nueces River, near the Texas Gulf coast, back in the spring of 1870. He got his name, of course, from the color of his hair—kind of a streaky blue. Longhorns, you see, don’t have to be any particular color like the red-haired, white-faced Herefords or the black Angus. No, a longhorn can be might near any color—black or brown or white or red or that yellow we call dun. Or longhorns can be brindled or paint or smoky or speckled or blue.
Now they say Blue’s mother was pretty wild, but from the start Blue showed a real gentle disposition. When he turned three, he was put in a herd going west to New Mexico over the Goodnight-Loving Trail. And that’s kind of interesting because eventually Blue was going to wind up belonging to Charles Goodnight, who helped blaze that trail and several others while he was at it, but that comes later in the story.
Well, the first two of Blue’s lives got tested right there on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, which ran up to and along the Pecos River. It was quite a challenge, that trail was, in that 96 miles of it were without water for man nor beast. And when they did get in sight of the Pecos River—after two days and three nights in the desert, more or less—the cattle were going to be mighty thirsty, and they’d bolt for the first water they saw. All too often that turned out to be the alkali lakes east of the river, and if they got there and drank that water, why they’d poison themselves to death. So if the cowboys hadn’t known how to manage this particular herd Blue was in, he might have died right there. But the cowboys did know how to manage, so Blue and the rest of the herd didn’t die. That’s one.
Well, they hadn’t even gotten away from the Pecos River yet when they had to contend with the Comanches who swooped down on them right there above Horsehead Crossing, stampeded the cattle, and got away with 600 head or so. But they didn’t get Blue, so that’s two. No, he and the rest of the remaining herd made it another 100 miles and were sold to John Chisum at the Bosque Grande Ranch.
The next fall it was the Apaches out after cattle, and this time Blue had a pretty close call. One morning, as a matter of fact, a cowboy found Blue with an arrow in his side. But, lucky for him, the cowboys cut that arrow out, and the sore healed up pretty quickly. Blue didn’t seem to be much the worse for it. That’s three. He was turning out to be a pretty tough old longhorn, all right.
It was the next spring that Charles Goodnight bought Blue and 5,000 more steers from John Chisum, divided them into two herds, and trailed them up to the Arkansas River above Pueblo, Colorado, where Goodnight had a ranch at that time. Blue went in the first herd. He was a grown steer now, four years old. Oh, he’d seen a lot of the world by this time and was
trail hardened, and it turned out he was a born leader. Every morning he took his place at the head of that herd, and he kept it. He was powerful and sober and steady, and he seemed to understand the least little motion of the “point men” and sure ’nough helped guide that herd. Why, they said he was worth a dozen men out on the trail.
And by doing that he probably saved his life again. What are we up to now? Four? Because, you see, instead of sending Blue up to feed the Indians at some agency in Wyoming, as he was doing with the other steers, Goodnight cut Blue out of the herd and kept him right there on his Colorado ranch.
Then danged if the cattle thieves didn’t come along and make off with Blue that winter. Goodnight thought he was a goner for sure. Fortunately, though, it was Goodnight himself who was out tracking a little bunch of strays through the snow when he found Blue and about a dozen other steers in a make-shift corral hidden in the middle of a thicket. Nearby was a pile of hides peeled from some of the stolen cattle, but, once again, Blue had escaped. That’s five. This time he escaped being butchered and having his hide taken off.
Well, by the summer of 1876, Goodnight had decided to move back to Texas. He was going to start a ranch in the wide Texas Panhandle, where as yet no white man had settled. So with six cowboys he rounded up 1,600 head of cattle and pointed the herd for Palo Duro Canyon. And in the lead was Blue.
Palo Duro Canyon is called the Grand Canyon of Texas, the second largest canyon in the United States. A great twisting gash across the rolling plains, it’s 120 miles long and as much as 20 miles wide. The Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River flows many hundreds of feet below the tops of its bluffs. Between the high canyon walls—within the canyon itself—are hills and mesas and valleys just covered with brush and grass. So Palo Duro had water and forage, and those high walls offered some protection from the harsh Panhandle winters.
The only problem was they had to get down in it. The Goodnight cowboys drove Blue and his herd single file down a trail that had been used by the Indians for centuries, but they had to unload their wagon, with enough provisions for six months, take the wagon apart, and carry the parts down on mules. That took two days. Then they had to put the wagon back together, load it up, and drive it downstream.
Meanwhile, working up ahead of the herd, Goodnight and his men had to drive the buffalo—about 10,000 of them—out of that part of the canyon where Goodnight wanted to put the cattle. Then some of the cowboys rode herd to keep the buffalo out and the cattle in the valley while the others built a cabin out of cedar logs, the first ranch house in what would become twenty-six counties.
The Comanches, of course, were used to camping in Palo Duro Canyon, and a hungry band of them rode in one day wanting beef, they said. And Goodnight saw to it that they got beef. But not Blue. So Blue was spared again. That’s six.
Meanwhile, Goodnight entered into a partnership with an Englishman named John Adair and within the next ten years put together a ranch that controlled a million acres of land and upwards of 75,000 cattle. Since Adair put up most of the money, they used the JA brand and called it the JA Ranch.
The nearest market for the JA cattle was Dodge City, Kansas, 250 miles to the north, and that was also the nearest railroad station. At that time there was nary a fence to be crossed between the Palo Duro and Dodge City. When the JA Ranch was two years old, a herd of 1,000 fat steers broke the first cattle trail out of the Panhandle bound for Kansas.
Blue was in the lead, as always. But this trip was different. Always the innovator, Goodnight decided to try something. He’d already invented the chuck wagon; now he was going to trying having him a bell steer. Lots of ranchers drove horses with a bell mare to lead. He figured it ought to work with cattle, too. So he rigged a clean, fresh collar with the smell of new leather and put a shiny new bell on it.
Blue not only tolerated it, but seemed right proud to wear the bell, and soon the cattle learned to follow its clear clanging. So it wouldn’t ring during the night or when the cattle were grazing, the cowboys had rigged a little strap to tie up the clapper.
When he was off duty, Blue believed in taking life easy. Thinking himself something of a privileged character around the camp, he’d walk right in amongst the pots and pans and eat pieces of bread or prunes or anything the cook would give him or anything the cowboys could steal from the cook to give him. He became a great pet. Sometimes the cowboys would just hobble him and let him graze with the saddle horses, or they might stake him out on a long rope, as he preferred to bed down away from the other cattle he’d been leading around all day.
Come morning, though, Blue would nose his way out toward one of the point men, who would loosen the clapper on the bell. Then off he’d go again, headed north.
When that first herd from the Palo Duro reached the Cimarron River, it was on a rampage. But Blue just shouldered into it, and after him trailed the 1,000 JA cattle. He left it up to the cowboys to get the chuck wagon across.
When they got to the Arkansas River, then, just south of Dodge City, oh, a cold December wind was blowing, and the north sky was black. The cowboys left their horses saddled when they made camp that night because they expected trouble before daylight. Sure enough, about midnight a storm of sleet and snow moved in and hit the herd. The cattle wanted to drift, but the cowboys mounted up and became a kind of drift fence themselves. They held those cattle like a wall.
At daybreak the trail boss said, “Untie Old Blue’s clapper, and let’s take the river.” The water by now was frozen out from the river’s banks, but, with Blue in the lead, the steers broke through the ice and swam the icy current. When they reached the other side, they were invigorated. They felt like running, and faster and faster they crowded Old Blue. One thousand cattle: that’s 2,000 of those big old longhorns clacking and 4,000 hooves pounding. The frozen ground fairly shook, and Blue could have been trampled. But he wasn’t. That’s seven. Because Blue had the speed of a race horse himself, and, still at the head of his herd, he led them straight for the gate that opened into the big shipping pens. Before noon they were all loaded and on their way to Chicago. All, of course, except Old Blue.
Blue stayed with the remuda and ate hay with the horses while the cowboys celebrated in Dodge City. The next morning they loaded the wagon with chuck and sacks of shelled corn, and on the road home Old Blue got some of that corn. He liked it, too.
After that first trip up the trail as a bell steer, Blue’s occupation for life was settled. For eight years Old Blue kept leading herds, some years making two trips to Dodge City. All told, probably 10,000 head or more of the JA cattle followed him and his bell from the Palo Duro to Kansas, and he continued to make himself useful until he died at age twenty.
As a kind of testimony to this longhorn survivor, the JA cowboys nailed his horns up over the ranch house door. And Goodnight was quick to tell the stories about his legendary bell steer that had at least seven lives.
Mollie Bailey Was a Spy
Texas women are noted for being strong and independent— proactive, as we say nowadays. Mollie Bailey fit that mold more than a century ago. Known as the “Circus Queen of the Southwest,” she is most remembered for the Bailey Circus she toured with in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But during the Civil War she distinguished herself in quite another way.
Yes sir, Mollie Bailey was a spy. Oh sure, for most of her life she ran a circus, but for part of her life she was a spy.
She was born on a plantation in Alabama in the fall of 1844, and by the time the Civil War broke out she was seventeen years old and already married to Gus Bailey, a musician who had grown up in his daddy’s circus.
Gus enlisted in the Confederate army there in Alabama and got transferred to a regiment in Hood’s Texas Brigade the next winter. Mollie volunteered to go along as a nurse. And that’s when she got to be a spy.
She heard that some of the Arkansas soldiers were in need of quinine—that bit
ter medicine that was nevertheless very useful in treating malaria. So she said she’d take it to them, even if she had to go through enemy lines. She was a woman on a mission.
Mollie was pretty smart, too. She figured out a way to hide that quinine so that even if she did get stopped by some of the Union soldiers, they’d never find it. You know, we talk about Texas women having big hair. Well, she made herself some really big hair. She brushed and brushed and brushed her hair up from her forehead and up, up, up on top of her head in what they called a pompadour back in those days. Then she took that powdered quinine and wrapped it in small packets and then hid the packets in her hair.
The Confederate officer in charge said, “Well, depend on a woman to think up a good scheme like that.” Sure enough, it worked. Mollie got the quinine delivered and returned safely.
Another time she did some real spying. That is, she walked right into an enemy camp and listened in on conversations to get valuable information for the Rebels. She managed to do that by making herself up to look like an old woman.
She turned her mouth down real sour-like and kind of hunched her back up and stooped her shoulders over and began hobbling around. When she talked, her voice sounded old and scratchy.
“Cookies—I’ve got cookies. Do you want any cookies today?” Pretending to sell sweets, she passed among the Union soldiers, listening to every scrap of their conversations until she had all the information she needed to report what they were up to and where they were going. When she’d hobbled away far enough from that camp to be in Rebel territory again, she straightened herself up and ran just as if she were in her twenties—which, of course, she was.
Now, she couldn’t have done all that if she hadn’t been something of an actress, a performer. But that she was. From the time she was a little girl, she liked putting on shows. She would get her sisters to help, but Mollie was always the director and the star. And she was quite a mimic. Behind their backs she would walk like the servants or like visitors to the house or just about anybody. And she’d try to talk like them, too.
