Michener, James A.

by Texas

  He said goodbye to this gallant woman with whom he felt so strong an affinity, then turned his horse toward San Antonio. The open range would see him and his breed no more.

  It was known among the neighbors around the square as 'the year Earnshaw and Emma had their battle.' There was no open brawling, of course, and bitter words were certainly avoided, but the differences were profound, and pursued vigorously. When the year ended everyone, including the two participants, understood better what values animated these two diverse frontiersmen.

  The Battle of the Bull, as it was called, was a complicated affair. Back in 1880, when Alonzo Betz, the demon barbed-wire salesman, gave his night-long demonstration of how his wire could discipline the biggest Longhorns, Emma had been surprised that her bull Mean Moses had allowed the fragile wires to restrain him. Indeed, it had been mainly his surrender that had established the reputation of Betz's wire as 'master of the range.' Emma could never explain her bull's cowardly behavior, and several times she voiced her disgust.

  When Betz's new fences had surrounded a major portion of the Rusk lands, and when the expensive Hereford and Shorthorn bulls imported from England were safe inside to cross with the Longhorn cows, Earnshaw implored his wife to get rid of her Longhorn bulls so that all the Rusk cattle could be improved, but the use of this word irritated Emma: "What's improvement? Turning strong range cattle into flabby doughnuts?'

  Patiently he had explained that the purpose of raising cattle was to produce as much edible beef as possible, in the shortest time and with a minimum consumption of expensive feed: The payoff on thy cattle, Emma, is what they sell for at Dodge City.'

  She said: i thought the important thing about cattle was that they were just that, cattle as God bred them, not man.'

  'It seems blasphemous to bring God into this.'

  'No, it seems like common sense. When I look at Mean Moses...'

  'That's a very unfortunate name for an animal.'

  'Well, he is mean, and he does lead the others, and in a way I love him.'

  'How can thee say that?' and she replied: 'I just said it.' What she did not say was that she prized her big, stubborn bull because he, like her, had survived on the Texas plains. She did not in any sentimental way identify with the bull, nor see him as her surrogate, but she did like him and did not propose to see imported bulls elbow him off her land.

  The arguing Rusks had agreed to leave Mean Moses outside the barbed-wire enclosures, free to roam as always, and to range with him, a dozen cows and another bull, breeding in the thickets, their calves going unbranded from year to year, with the herd never increasing fabulously the way the tended cattle did, but with a new bull moving in now and then to give renewed vigor. As a result, the Rusk ranch always had out in its barren wastes a solid residue of Longhorns. In the rest of Texas the breed was dying out, upgraded year after year into the fine cattle so highly prized by the Northern markets, but in Larkin County, Mean Moses and his harem had kept it alive.

  A great Longhorn was something to behold, for almost alone among the world's cattle it could produce horns of the most prodigious spread, branching straight out from the corners of the head, then taking a thrilling turn forward and a breathtakingly graceful sweep up and out. 'The Texas twist,' this was called, and when it showed in full dignity, men said: 'That one wears a rocking chair on its head.' Men who no longer raised Longhorns were apt to grow maudlin when they encountered on some friend's ranch a beast with really magnificent horns.

  The peculiarity of the breed was that only steers and cows produced the great horns, and even then, only occasionally; some unexplained sexual factor caused their horns to grow very large in the first place, and then to take that Texas twist as they matured. A Longhorn bull never showed the twist and only rarely produced horns of maximum size. What horns he did produce were apt to be powerful, straight weapons trained to protect and, if need be, kill, not much different from the horns of a good bull of whatever breed.

  So the famed Texas Longhorn of cartoon and poster showing fierce, beautiful-looking horns was always either a castrated male or a cow. Mean Moses, for example, had horns which came out sideways from his head and absolutely parallel to the ground for a distance of about eighteen inches on each side. Then they turned forward, as if controlled by a T-square, ending in very sharp points. Fortunately for the people who had to work him, he had a placid disposition, except when outraged by the misbehavior of some other Longhorn; then he could be ferocious.

  In the early years of barbed wire and imported bulls, Mean Moses had stayed off by himself with his Longhorn cows, hiding his yearly calves in forgotten arroyos and testing his saberlike horns on any wolves that tried to attack them. Four or five times he had stood, horns lowered, when wolves attacked, and with deft thrusts had on each occasion impaled some luckless wolf and sent the rest off howling.

  Emma sometimes saw her proud bull only three or four times a season, and when she did she was curiously elated to know that he still roamed the range. As she studied the vanishing Longhorns she noticed several things which renewed her determination: The cows never need assistance in giving birth. Sure, Earnshaw's pampered breeds bring in more money, but Earnshaw pays it out for cow doctors at birthing time. And my Longhorns can live on anything. That bad winter when the Herefords died of freezing and starvation, come spring, there my Longhorns were, walking skeletons but alive. Three weeks of good grass, they were ready to

  breed. And what did they eat during the blizzards? Anything they could chew, just anything they could find in the snow—cactus, wood from old fence posts, sticks. What wonderful animals.

  Things might have continued this way had not Earnshaw, always seeking to improve his wife's herd, instructed his Mexican helper Gonzalez to 'round up that last bunch of cows running wild and bring them within the fence to be properly bred.'

  'Okay, boss.' The roundup was not easy, but with the expert help of the two black ranch hands it was accomplished. Mean Moses was deprived of his harem; the cows would be bred to the good bulls; and within three generations even the lesser characteristics of the famed Longhorn would be submerged in the preferred breeds that were developing.

  Emma Rusk did not approve of this decision: 'Earnshaw, we don't have to use every cow on the range in your experiments. Let Mean Moses and his cows stay out where they've always been.'

  'Emma, thee either breeds cattle properly or thee doesn't breed at all. The utility of the Longhorn is diminishing . .'

  'Those cattle have their own utility, Earnshaw. Play God with your English cattle. Leave mine on the range.'

  'Thee will never have first-class cattle . . .'

  'I don't want first-class cattle. I want the cattle that grew up here.'

  She lost that argument, as did the half-dozen owners in other corners of Texas who struggled to keep the breed alive; like Emma, they were submerged in the sweep of progress. But if Emma was powerless to protect the rights of Mean Moses, the bull was not. During the famous trial of the barbed wire, Moses had been tempted only by a stack of hay, and the pricks of the barbs were sufficiently irritating to fend him off, but now the essence of his being was insulted: his cows had been taken from him, and this he would not tolerate.

  Among the two dozen Longhorn cows imprisoned behind barbed wire so that the English bulls could breed them was an extraordinary lady called Bertha, widely known for two virtues: she gave birth to a strong calf each year, and some aberration had allowed her to produce the damnedest pair of horns ever seen in Texas. It must have been a sexual deformity, for her great horns started out flat like a bull's, and when the time came for them to take the Texas twist, they remained flat but turned in a wide sweep right back in huge semicircles till they almost met a few inches in front of her eyes. As John jaxifer said when he drove her inside the barbed wire: 'You could fit one of them new bathtubs inside her horns.' His description was accurate, for the immense sweep

  of the horns and their smooth curve back to form an ellipse did take
the outline of a gigantic bathtub.

  It would be preposterous to claim that Mean Moses was in any way attached to Bathtub Bertha; he bred all cows indiscriminately and in a good year he could handle about two dozen, but it did seem, year after year, that he did his best job with Bathtub, for the speckled cow produced an unbroken chain of excellent calves, often twins, and it seemed likely that when Moses died, one of her young bulls would take his place as king of the herd. At any rate, when Moses lost Bathtub and his other cows it was not in the breeding season, so he felt no impetus to join them, but as the season changed he began to feel mighty urges, and when visceral feelings took charge he was impelled to act.

  Sniffing the air for scent of his cows, he lowed softly and started in a straight line toward them. Down steep ravines and up their sides he plowed ahead, across arroyos damp from recent rains, and up to the first line of barbed wire he came. Pausing not a moment, he walked right through the three tough strands, pushing them ahead of him till his power pulled loose the posts, making them fall useless.

  Ignoring the gashes the barbs had inflicted across his chest, he plowed on, and when he reached the second fence, he went through it as easily as the first. Finally he came to where the three concentric fences protected the valuable bulls, and here, close to where his cows were, he simply knocked down the barbed wire, disregarded the wounds that were now pumping blood, and looked for the master bull who had usurped his cows. Head lowered, mighty horns parallel to the earth, he gave a loud bellow and charged.

  'Boss! Boss!' Gonzalez shouted as he cantered in next morning with the rising sun.

  'What is t?' Earnshaw asked, slipping into his trousers.

  'Something awful!'

  The Mexican deemed it best not to explain during the ride out to the tank, and when Earnshaw reached the fences he had so carefully constructed he stopped aghast. Some titanic beast had simply walked through them, laying barbs and posts alike in the dust. It had then apparently turned around and walked back, leaving a trail of blood but taking all the Longhorn cows with it.

  'What happened?'

  'Mean Moses.'

  And then Earnshaw spotted the real tragedy, for in a corner of the corral, his side ripped open in a bloody mess, lay the wounded Hereford for which Earnshaw had paid $180. Trembling, Rusk

  hurried back to town, where he informed his wife: 'Thy bull has gored my bull.'

  Emma, who appreciated the increase in her herd which her husband had supervised, was distraught at the damage to Earnshaw's prize English bull, but when she saw the leveled fences and realized the power which had thrown them down, that primitive power of the open range of which she had once been a part, she exulted.

  'Let Mean Moses go, Earnshaw. He was meant to be free.' So, because of her stubborn defense of her stubborn bull, one corner of Texas was able to keep alive the Longhorn strain. When Mean Moses died, she selected his replacement, a fine young bull sired by Moses out of Bathtub Bertha. This Mean Moses II proved to be almost as good a bull as his father, and in time VII, XII and XIX of other bloodlines would be recognized as the premier bulls of their breed. Emma Larkin's love for the integrity of her animals had ensured that.

  On a cold, blustery morning in March, Banker Weatherby sent one of his five clerks to fetch Earnshaw Rusk, and when the summons came, the Quaker had a moment of queasiness. For some time now he had suspected that Clyde Weatherby had taken the railroad funds the Fort Garner merchants contributed and the acres which he, Rusk, had thrown into the kitty, and had spent them not on opinion-makers in the Wichita Falls-Abilene area but on himself, and he supposed that Weatherby was now either going to confess his malfeasance or ask for more funds. He'll not get another cent from me, Rusk swore as he crossed the area leading to the bank.

  But when he walked into Weatherby's office, Rusk found that Simpson was there, the saloon keeper, Fordson and three others, and when all were seated, the banker threw a map before them and shouted: 'We've done it! I promised you a railroad, and we're getting one.'

  The details as he explained them were complicated beyond the comprehension of ordinary men, and both Rusk and Simpson lost the trail early, but it was a standard Texas operation: 'Five different railroads are involved. From the F.W.&D.C. in the north, a spur will come south to be built by a new line, the Wichita Standard. From Abilene north will come a second spur, also built by a new line, the Abilene Major. What will unite them? A third spur built by us, the Fort Garner United Railway. President? Your humble servant. Secretary? Earnshaw Rusk.'

  The men cheered, then they danced, then some wept and others

  sent out for beer and champagne. The five clerks were invited in to hear the good news, and they danced too. Rusk sent for his wife, and others did the same, and soon it seemed that an entire town was dancing and shouting and celebrating the fact that it had been saved.

  'The railroad's coming!' men shouted, and some set forth on horseback to inform ranchers whose support had helped achieve this miracle. At the height of the festivities, Weatherby was still trying to explain to the directors of Fort Garner United how the complexities would be resolved: 'When we get our line built, we'll sell out to Abilene Major, which will then join with Wichita Standard. Then they'll both sell to F.W.&D.C, which I'm assured has arranged to sell out completely to a huge new line to be called Colorado and Southern, and I know for a fact that Burlington System will some day buy that. So we'll wind up with baskets full of Burlington stock.'

  It was a standard Texas operation, but no one was listening.

  Emma had assumed that when her husband finally got his railroad he would relax, but Earnshaw was the kind of Pennsylvania Quaker who had to be engaged in a crusade of some kind or he did not feel alive. Now, in his fifties, with a railroad under his belt, he was determined that Larkin, as the county seat of Larkin County, should have a courthouse of distinction, and he channeled all his considerable efforts to that end.

  As secretary of a functioning railroad, he carried a pass which entitled him to ride free across the face of Texas, and he found boyish delight in traipsing from one county to the next inspecting courthouses. On these pilgrimages he began to identify a group of excellent buildings obviously designed by the same daring, poetic architect whose thumbprint was unmistakable, and he wrote to his wife:

  No one can tell me his name, but he builds a courthouse which looks like the embodiment of law. He likes towers and turrets, and so do I. He likes clean, heavy lines, and as a Quaker trained in severity, so do I And he displays a wonderful sense of color, which is remarkable in that he works in stone. He is the only man in Texas qualified to build our courthouse, which I want to be a memorial to thy heroic family.

  At the town of Waxahachie, where the finest courthouse in Texas was under construction, a marvelous medieval poem in stone and vivid colors, he learned that the architect's name was James Riely Gordon, and he found that this genius was then working at Vic-

  toria, the distinguished city in the southern part of the state, so he made the long trip there and met the great man. To his surprise, Gordon was only thirty-one, but so masterful in his courtly manner, for he had been born in Virginia and had acquired a stately style in both speech and appearance, that he dominated any situation of which he was a part. He liked Rusk immediately, for he saw in the serious Quaker the kind of man he respected, straightforward and dependable.

  Yes, he would be interested in building his next courthouse in Larkin County because he wanted a real showcase in the West. Yes, he believed he could do it on a reasonable budget. Yes, he would try to preserve the existing stone buildings about the old parade ground. But when he saw the cramped dimensions on the plan Rusk showed him, he protested: 'Sir, I could not fit one of my courthouses into that cramped space. My courthouses need room to display their glories.' And with this, he jabbed at the commander's quarters, the flagpole, and the infantry quarters of Company U on the other side: 'Too constricted. To be effective, a courthouse needs space.'

  Rusk, not n
oted for laughing, broke into chuckles of relief: 'Mr. Gordon! This is an old diagram, not a map. Merely to show you where the fort buildings are. The parade ground is very wide. Five times wider than this.'

  'You mean . . .' With a quick pencil the architect drew a sketch representing Fort Garner as Rusk was describing it, with the splendid parade ground spaciously fitted among the stone buildings, but before he could react to this new vision, Rusk spread before him six photographs showing the handsome stonework in the houses and the infantry quarters.

  Gordon was enchanted: 'You mean, I would have all this space and these fine buildings as a background?'

  'That's why I've sought you, sir. We have a noble site awaiting your brilliance.'

  'I'll do it!' Gordon cried, and he made immediate plans to follow Rusk west to meet with the officials of Larkin County, but before Earnshaw departed, Gordon warned him: 'I shall design the courthouse. You shall pay for it. Before I reach Fort Garner, I want all the finances arranged and assured. I refuse to work in the dark.'

  'How much will you need?'

  'I was working on some ideas last night. Not less than eighty thousand dollars.'

  'I don't have it now, but by the time you reach us, it'll be there.'

  All the way home, Rusk sweated over how he was going to persuade the authorities of Larkin County to finance his latest

  dream: Goodness, they'll never approve eighty thousand dollars. Bascomb County next door built their courthouse for under nine thousand.

  By the time he neared Fort Garner he realized that the only thing to do was to convene the community leaders and confess that in an excess of enthusiasm he had committed them to this large debt, and when he faced them in Editor Fordson's office, he began to tremble, but as soon as he outlined the problem, he received surprising support from Banker Weatherby, who would be expected to find the money: The state of Texas, having in mind communities just like ours, has passed a law enabling us to borrow funds for the construction of county courthouses.'