A River of Horns

by Peter Grant

  “Yeah,” Tyler said softly, gazing at the map. “People are already doin’ something like that with herds o’ cattle in Kansas. Iffen they can’t get the price they want for ’em when they come up from Texas, they graze them through the winter on open range, sometimes in Kansas, sometimes as far away as Colorado. They bring ’em back to the railhead the next summer, in the hope of gettin’ better prices. Go on. This is startin’ to sound interestin’.”

  “I didn’t know about the over-wintering herds,” Walt admitted. “Anyway, while your hands drift the cattle slowly north through the Panhandle, eatin’ an’ gettin’ bigger as they go, you can scout out the best places for a ranch. By early 1876, our cows should be near the Canadian River in the north-east of the Panhandle.” Walt pointed it out on the map. “That’s the area where I reckon we should ranch. There may be better places further south, but I figure we want to be as close as we can get to the railhead. It makes for much shorter trail drives. What’s more, when other ranches fill up the Panhandle, they’re gonna fuss with each other every time they drive cattle to the railhead, arguin’ over whose grass an’ water they’re eatin’ an’ drinkin’. If we’re already north of them, we’ll just have to keep ’em off our land, not stay off theirs.”

  “You’re right. There’s been shootin’ wars afore between ranches over that.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that. We’ll try to fix it so our our ranch site is surveyed quickly. We can leave some cowhands, with a good man in charge, to guard it an’ stop others squattin’ on it.”

  Tyler said, “There’s another big advantage to gettin’ there early. You know what a ‘senior water right’ is?”

  “Yeah. The first to buy land in an area has first claim on water flowin’ into and through it.”

  “That’s right. If we’re the first to buy land along the Canadian River, we’ll have senior water rights over all other ranches along it, in Texas at least. That’s worth a lot, in a dry year.”

  “Sounds good to me. All right. Come spring, you’ll drive our cattle to Wichita or Dodge City in Kansas. You’ll have a head start over all the cattle drives from central and eastern Texas, because you’ll be a long way further north than they are. You’ll be on the move before they’ve finished their spring roundups and gathered their trail herds, and you’ll have much less distance to cover.You’ll get to the railhead with the first cattle of the new season. Don’t the first herds get the best prices?”

  “They sure do,” Tyler agreed, excitement in his voice. “Eastern cities will have used up all last year’s beef, an’ they’ll be cryin’ out for fresh meat. I’ve heard of prices as high as thirty-five, even forty dollars per head for the first few herds of the season, iffen they’re top quality cattle. Later herds’ll get twenty to twenty-five a head, or less if there’s a glut on the market, like this year – a lot o’ herds are fetchin’ less’n twenty. O’ course, they sell for more in the Chicago stockyards, but we don’t drive ’em that far.”

  “All right. You’ll arrive with our cattle in time to get the best prices. By then most will be three to four years old or more, big enough to sell. You’ll have driven them slowly all the way, lettin’ them eat an’ drink their fill for a whole year, so they’ll be in peak condition. We’ll also gather every head of unbranded stock we find on our journey north, and road-brand them with our spread’s mark. We might get another few hundred head that way, if we’re lucky. If we sell, say, ten thousand head of cattle, at thirty-five dollars a head, that gives us three hundred fifty thousand dollars. Even if we get only thirty dollars a head, that’s three hundred thousand. Our expenses – buyin’ the cows and horses, hirin’ cowhands, and payin’ all the costs for about a year – will be sixty to seventy thousand. That means a profit of at least two hundred thirty thousand dollars, even at the lower sale price – maybe better’n that. That’s more’n enough to fund our ranch.”

  There was a long silence as Tyler and Colleen stared at the map, then at him. At last his wife found her voice. “Walt, it seems almost too good to be true. Why hasn’t anyone else thought of this, or done it already?”

  “They have, honey. That’s how many of the trail drives from south an’ central Texas started after the War.”

  Tyler nodded his agreement. “He’s right, Colleen. A lot o’ cattle outfits in Texas started out as a man with a dream and a few cowhands. He chased mavericks out o’ the brush and branded ’em, grazed ’em on open range while he gathered enough to form a herd, then drove ’em north. When he came back with his profits, he used the money to buy land and start buildin’ up his own herd on his own land, and expanded as he earned more money. Walt’s planning to do the same sort o’ thing, but with Mexican cattle ’stead o’ mavericks.”

  “Oh,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense, then.”

  Walt continued, “It ain’t been done from west Texas before because the Comanche an’ Kiowa have been there. It’s been too dangerous. Also, we know about Mexican cattle prices, and the value of gold dollars there, because we were down there earlier this year; but a lot of others don’t know it. After we made plans for the future of Ames Transport and our horse ranch, I used all we learned doing that to look at Tyler’s idea. This is what I came up with.”

  She looked at their guest. “What do you think, Tyler?”

  The Texan took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’ll tell a man, Walt, you don’t think small! You do understand there are real big risks? For a start, most Mexican cattle are a mite smaller than Texas longhorns. They’ll fetch a dollar or two less per head. If we hit a bad winter, with blizzards an’ all, we’ll lose a lot of cows, an’ more every time they stampede on the way north – and they will, there’s no way to avoid that, no matter how careful you are. Cow thieves an’ Injuns may try to steal some. We may find very few mavericks, unbranded cattle, to add to our herd. We might get to the railhead with only seven or eight thousand head.”

  Walt shrugged. “Then we’ll get less money, but maybe still enough. If we arrive with only seven thousand cattle, and we get, say, thirty dollars a head, that’ll still gross two hundred ten thousand dollars. After expenses, we’ll have about a hundred fifty thousand. If worse comes to worst, and you lose three-quarters of the cattle, we should still make enough to get back the money we’ve spent, so we won’t be stony broke.”

  “Danged if you ain’t right!” Tyler’s expression relaxed. “I reckon we’ll have to pay ’bout fifty cents an acre for virgin, undeveloped territory in the Panhandle; maybe a bit more or less. If we spend up to fifty thousand on land, we’ll own up to a hundred thousand acres with water rights, which’ll let us control another hundred thousand or so dry acres around them.”

  Colleen exclaimed in shock, “A hundred thousand acres? That’s more than a hundred and fifty square miles!”

  “It sure is,” Tyler rejoined with a grin, “and we’ll control as much again around it. We’ll need it all, too. Don’t forget, the grazin’ ain’t as good there as it is further north or east. We’ll run no more’n one cow per ten acres, maybe as low as one in twenty in dry years. We’ll need at least twenty thousand dollars for startup costs like buildings, drillin’ wells for cattle tanks, Halladay windmills to pump up the water, plus a crew of cowhands and a blacksmith, wrangler an’ cook. Even a hundred thousand won’t be enough for all that. We may have to start slower an’ smaller.”

  “Not so fast,” Walt warned. “I’ll want to withdraw some of our profits on the cattle, because I’ll have invested all our spare cash in this venture. I’ll need the money to run our other businesses. I reckon you should take some out, too, to give yourself a reserve. You’re right, though. If we invest fifty thousand apiece in the ranch, that should be a good start. If we make enough money on the cattle, we’ll put in seventy-five or a hundred thousand each, and buy a bigger spread an’ more cows.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Tyler agreed. “I gotta hand it to you, Walt. This is a helluva plan!”

  “It
looked good to me, but I’m no cattleman, and I’ve never made a cattle drive. D’you reckon it can be made to work?”

  “Yeah, I reckon so. I’ll have to boss the whole drive, of course.”

  “Of course. What will you need?”

  “I’ll need a trail boss to handle each o’ the smaller herds. Each herd will need fifteen to eighteen cowhands, a cook and his louse – that’s his assistant,” he explained as he noted Colleen’s astonished look, “a chuckwagon an’ bedroll wagon, a wrangler and a nighthawk to look after the remuda, and two or three scouts to find the best grazin’ an’ water, watch out for trouble, and keep each herd in touch with me an’ the others. I’ll also need a floating outfit of up to a dozen good men. They’ll replace injured cowhands, and ride between herds to help out if they hit trouble, like Injun raids or cattle rustlers or stampedes or high water. We’ll need a remuda of up to ten horses per man, ’cause they’ll work real hard all year long without a let-up. I got some already, o’ course, but not near enough. Our biggest problem is gonna be supplies. There ain’t no towns for most of our journey – only a few Army forts.”

  “I reckon that’s where I come in,” Walt told him. “I own Ames Transport. I’ll get supplies to you. I’m not sure yet whether to send a lot of supplies all at once, or set up a resupply point somewhere, or put wagons where you can meet them as you need them, maybe at Army forts. I’ll have to figure out which will cost less. I can already see I’m gonna have to buy more ox-wagons and their teams. They can haul more than horse- or mule-drawn wagons, and their slower speed won’t matter if the herd’s also movin’ slowly. When the ranch gets goin’, they can haul building materials and more supplies to you until a town starts up nearby.”

  “Great! Without someone like you doin’ that, this whole plan would be impossible.”

  “No less impossible without someone like you to handle the herds. Let’s say we’ll make a good team. How much d’you think we need to budget for supplies and expenses?”

  Tyler thought for a moment. “I reckon on a dollar per head of cattle for a two to three month drive, but this’n’s gonna last for a year or more. I’d say three to four dollars per head.”

  Walt grimaced. “That’s thirty to forty thousand dollars. We can’t afford that. We’ll have to bring it down. I’ll see about buying supplies wholesale, all at once. That should help a lot.” He thought for a moment. “There’s another thing I can do. Instead of making our future ranch buy the extra wagons, I’ll buy them on Ames Transport’s account. I’ll charge the ranch our normal freight rates, less ten percent. That’ll save a lot of money. I’ll also carry as many of those costs as we can until the cattle are sold, then get them back out of our profits. Are you okay with having the ranch ship all its freight through Ames Transport, giving it more business in return for that deal?”

  “I sure am. It’s fair all round. Now, to buy the ranch, we’ll need to sell our cattle as early in 1876 as we can. If we’ve got the money by May at the latest, I can head back to Texas and buy our land before the rush starts.”

  “Good. While you do that, you can send your men back to the Mexican border to buy more young cattle cheaply, and drive them north to our ranch. They’ll be the start of our permanent herd. I’ll ship them supplies as before.”

  Tyler shook his head firmly. “That ain’t the best way to do it. You realize our cowhands will spend more’n a year workin’ on this drive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’ll be real hard on them. They’ll be sleepin’ under the stars all year round, in blazin’ heat or freezin’ cold, with no hot baths or proper beds, eatin’ chuckwagon food twice a day. They’ll have to carry summer an’ winter gear. We may have to buy extra for them.” Walt nodded, and made a mental note. “They sure won’t want to go straight back to the Mexican border to do it all over again. They’d sooner quit.”

  Walt grinned reluctantly. “If I were in their boots, I daresay I might feel that way too.”

  “Yeah – me too! To get around that problem, what if we buy fifteen thousand head o’ cattle at the start, ’stead o’ ten? We can drive ’em north in five herds of about three thousand head each. When we find our ranch, we’ll leave four or five thousand cows an’ the best bulls there. Most longhorn cows two years an’ older will produce a calf every year, regular as clockwork. We’ll take the rest of the cattle to the railhead an’ sell ’em.”

  Walt thought for a moment. “Sounds good, but will sellers bring us that many cattle? What if there aren’t enough near the border?”

  “We’ll have to send people further into Mexico to spread the word. We’ve got time to arrange that. Mebbe your friend Pablo can help us.”

  “Good idea. We can offer him a finder’s fee per head. The more cattle he gets us, the more we’ll pay him when they’re sold. Next problem is, how much more money are we talkin’? I figured ten thousand head would cost us up to thirty thousand dollars at Mexican prices. Fifteen thousand head will cost half as much again – forty-five thousand dollars. That’ll also mean more hands to hire an’ more supplies to buy. Sixty thousand dollars won’t be enough. I reckon we’ll need at least eighty thousand to make the whole thing work, plus twenty thousand or more in costs to be paid later, out of our profits. Can you come up with half that? Right now, I can’t.”

  “Neither can I,” Tyler admitted, “but I still think we should try, even if we have to take out a bank loan. It’ll work a whole lot better than doin’ that long trail drive two years runnin’.”

  “I can’t argue with you there. It’s just that pesky money.”

  Colleen stirred. “What about our profit from the grubstake money for Pablo, dear?”

  Walt blinked. “I planned to use that for other things, but maybe…”

  “What grubstake money is that?” Tyler asked.

  “When Pablo said he wanted to go into business for himself, buyin’ more remounts for the Army, I offered to grubstake him with ten thousand dollars this year,” Walt explained. “I’ve already set it aside. We’ll split the profits. He’s contractin’ the same way I did, for payment in gold, rather than US Government drafts that have to wait three to six months to get paid out.”

  “That’s right,” Colleen said. “He was going to wire our share to Walt through Wells, Fargo. We expected to get back our ten thousand investment, plus ten to fifteen thousand more, depending on how many remounts the Army needs this year. Since they’re at war now, we reckon they’ll need at least several hundred.”

  “Mebbe a thousand or more,” Tyler guessed.

  “Perhaps. If we use twenty thousand dollars of that money for this cattle drive, would that give us enough money?”

  “It’d get us to eighty thousand,” Walt said. “Trouble is, I’d been relyin’ on that money to build our new houses, here in Pueblo and out at the ranch. It’d also give us more security in our businesses up here. If we invest it in the cattle drive, along with the rest of our savings, we won’t have enough in reserve to cope with a big problem if one comes along.”

  “I understand, darling, but I think Tyler’s right. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it properly. It’s a gamble, I know, but so far your gambles have worked out pretty well in the long run. I’m willing to take the chance that this one will, too. Our new houses can wait a year or two. We’ll live here, and go on using the little apartment out at the ranch for visits there.”

  Walt smiled at her. “Thanks, honey. If we do that, and if Pablo’s plan works as well as ours did last time, Tyler could go to New Mexico via El Paso, and collect the money from him. It’ll be in gold, too, so he could use it to buy cattle right away.”

  “But that’d mean you’d put in more than I could,” Tyler objected. “We wouldn’t be equal partners any more.”

  Walt shook his head. “This is just the startin’ venture we’re talkin’ about, not the ranch itself. At the end of the drive, we’ll each get back the money we put in, and then divide the profits according to our share of the initial s
eed money. Once we’ve done that, we’ll go fifty-fifty on how much we invest in the ranch. We’ll still be equal partners in that venture.”

  “Oh! I get it. So…” Tyler’s eyes took on a far-away expression as he calculated. “If we make, say, two hundred fifty thousand dollars after expenses, you’d get back, say, fifty thousand as your share of the seed money, and I’d get back thirty. That’d leave us with a hundred seventy thousand. I’d get three-eights of that, and you’d get five-eights. That’d give me a total of more’n ninety thousand dollars. I could put a chunk o’ that into the ranch – say, seventy-five or eighty thousand. You’d match it, makin’ us equal partners. We’d also have five thousand cattle on our ranch, already bought an’ paid for, and jointly owned. Does that sound right?”

  “It does to me,” Walt agreed. “Even if we don’t get as much as we hope, I want you willin’ and eager to work hard on the ranch. You won’t be, if you’re not a full partner; so, even if things go badly and you don’t have seventy-five or eighty thousand, we’ll still form the partnership based on how much you can afford to put in and I can match, fifty-fifty, equal all the way. If need be, I’ll lend the partnership the extra money it needs, but as a loan, not as a bigger share than yours, and at low interest. The ranch can pay it off over five years.”

  Colleen added, “What’s more, doing it like this, we won’t be beholden to a bank for a loan for either the cattle drive or the ranch. There’ll be no risk of a bank taking everything away from us if things went badly.”