Cattle Kings of Texas

C. L. Douglas

Description

This book comprises a fascinating and authentic look into the lives of some of the richest and most private ranches in Texas. This is a book that will greatly appeal to anyone with an interest in the historical singularity that is Texas, offering its readers a unique insight in to the ''real world'' of Texas ranch life and the ever-fading tradition of true ranching that made it what it is today. Many antique books such as this are increasingly rare and costly, and it is with this in mind that we are proud to be republishing this text here complete with a new introduction on the subject.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 16 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528760744
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CATTLE KINGS of TEXAS
By
C. L. D OUGLAS

Published by
Cecil Baugh
D ALLAS
T EXAS
COPYRIGHT 1939
By
C ECIL B AUGH
All Rights Reserved
Published November, 1939
Reprinted December, 1939
Dedicated to
T AD M OSES AND H ENRY B ELL
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With the presentation of this book I wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance given me in its compilation by the following:
The Cattleman Magazine, official publication of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, for the encouragement and technical advice offered by its editor, Mr. Tad Moses, Secretary Henry Bell, and Mr. Bell s predecessor, the late Berkeley Spiller.
J. Frank Dobie, for his interest and assistance with material relating to Shanghai Pierce and other Coastal Cattle Kings.
John Mackenzie, manager of the Matador Land and Cattle Company, for helping with material otherwise unavailable. Likewise Phil Maverick, John Hendrix, J. Frank Norfleet, W. D. Smithers and Erwin E. Smith.
Miss Harriet Smithers, archivist in the state capitol building, for assistance in research.
And, in particular, those last connecting links with pioneer cattle days who had a tale to tell and gave me opportunity to hear it-Ab Blocker of Big Wells, Col. R. P. Smythe of Plainview, the late Mrs. George Reynolds of Fort Worth, the late Ike Pryor of San Antonio, the late A. P. Borden of Mackey, Jake Rains of the SMS, Willie Le Bauve, and others.
C. L. D OUGLAS
FOREWORD
In the subconscious thought of the world Texas typifies the cowboy-the last cavalier . At the very base of the tap root of Texas weal is the cow. As has been said

Other states were carved or born,
Texas grew from hide and horn.
When Austin s colonists turned to cattle raising they found, between the Rio Grande and the Red, the greatest cow-pasture known to man. Nature understands no blackouts; heifer calves became cows, they had calves and their calves produced and reproduced, wild and free and highly prolific in the prelude to the most romantic era of American history-the decades of the trail drives.
Of the South, overwhelmed by superior force and greater means but not ravished by civil war, bankrupt but bulging with cattle valueless at home for want of a market but worth a score and ten in the North, Texans drove their only asset to the rail heads of Kansas and to the empty prairies of the West. Hills that for centuries had known only the bellow of the buffalo and the yell of the redman became the sounding board for the moo of the Texas cow-the only tide of our civilization that flowed from South to North.
Trail herds went North and cow-dollars came South to build the Texas we now know. Foreign money begged for a taker and the boom was on. Sod-busters, barbed wire and the windmill underwrote the doom of the open range. Out went glamour but in came better beef sires, greater range utilization and efficiency in operation. The old Texas cowman measured his kingdom in size; his 20th Century counterpart in vaulation-he sought to improve what his fences enclosed.
By and large, Texas is a land of powerful contrasts. She sprawls over ten degrees of latitute and there is an average temperature difference of 20 degrees F. from north to south. Rainfall varies from more than 50 inches on the east to less than 10 on the west. Of her landed area of 262,398 square miles, economists estimate that 70 per cent is devoted to grazing, and for all time to come over 50 per cent will nurture the best all-around and cheapest beef producer-grass.
Texas was the natural theatre of existence for the old cattle king.

The King is dead Long live the King!
T AD M OSES
Editor, The Cattleman Magazine
CONTENTS
P ANORAMA
The First Beef Barons Roamed the Banks of the Jordan
D ON M ARTIN DE L EON
Spanish Rancheros cleared way for American Stockmen
G RIMES AND THE T RESPALACIOS
Texas Costal Plains cradled the Cattle Industry
K ING OF THE S EA L IONS
Shanghai Pierce- as uncouth as the cattle he drove, but at heart, one of the best men in this or any other land
T HE M AVERICKS OF M ATAGORDA
How the term maverick originated
T HE S ANTA G ERTRUDIS : K ING AND K ENEDY
They created a buffer state between two nations
B OS I NDICUS
How Abel Borden, Shanghai Pierces Nephew, brought India s Sacred cattle to America
T HE J INGLE -B OB K ING
How John Chisum fought Apaches and Thieves to found a 200-mile Cattle Empire
B OSS OF THE P ALO D URO
The JA Ranch of today stands as a monument to a man who faced frontier perils
T HE O DYSSEY OF O LIVER L OVING
The Saga of the man who blazed the trail to outside markets in the Fifties
A C ATTLEMAN IN THE P UPLIT
Parson Slaughter fought Indians, branded calves, and preached with a pistol in his belt
R EYNOLDS OF THE L ONG X
Carved out an Empire in the trans-Pecos in midst of gun smoke and Indian raids
A N A NDROCLES OF THE P LAINS
How the gift of a gun to an Indian saved the life of a Cattleman from the fate of a white prisoner
B UGBEE OF THE Q UARTER C IRCLE T
He scooped a dugout in the plains and from it built a 450,000 acre cattle kingdom
A C ALF S TARTS A K INGDOM
Henry Campbell, founder of the great Matador, left a lasting mark on the Llano Estacado
M ACKENZIE OF THE M ATADOR
A cowman from Scotland assumes management of Matador from Campbell, organizes 10,000,000 acre Brazilian cattle kingdom, but returns to his old love the Matador
I KE P RYOR OF THE 77
From plowhand to cowhand, an orphan boy becomes one of the major kings and ace trail, drivers of the Nueces
T RAILS AND T ROUBLES
Longhorns-From Texas on the hoof to the Platters of the World
B ARB D W IRE AND THE F RYING P AN
Sales from the profits of new-fangled Devil Rope started ranch which caused the moving of an entire city
T HE H ALL B ROTHERS -E MPIRE B UILDERS
They bossed the Cimarron range and gathered the loose ends of the prairies to build their empire
P ROTECTION M EN
Fast thinking, quick drawing, straight shooting-they were the nemesis of cattle thieves and an important factor in private law and order
T EN IN T EXAS
The largest state capitol in the United States was built by the XIT ranch in exchange for 3,000,000 acres of land
D. W AGGONER AND S ON
-A man who doesn t admire a good beef steer, a good horse, and a pretty woman . . . well, something is wrong with that man s head -Tom Waggoner .
B URK B URNETT OF THE F OUR S IXES
A friend of Chief Quanah Parker, he was king of the Kiowa and Coma che country
C OWTOWNS AND C OWBOYS
How the range riders went to town and of what transpired when they arrived
Photograph by W. D. Smithers
Changing range-as in the days when Lot took the Jordan Valley and big Abe the Canaan prairies
Panorama

A BRAHAM AND L OT SPLIT THE RANGE

L ONGHORN
The First Beef Barons Roamed the Banks of the Jordan
T HERE had been trouble on the Jordan range. Bad blood had arisen between the punchers of the Lazy A and the boys of the LOT, and something had to be done about it if the country west of the river was to escape one of those bloody cattle wars which inevitably send prices tumbling to hide and tallow levels.
The feud had been long smouldering, its historical origin lost even to the memory of the oldest line-riders, but in recent weeks the situation had gone steadily from bad to worse. Pasture was plentiful and the water good; the steers were fat and the ponies sleek; but in all this broad and smiling land there could be no peace while the hands of the two top outfits were at each other s throats like hungry wolves. The range just wasn t big enough for both . . .
Big Abram, boss of the Lazy A, realized this as he jogged over to the headquarters of the LOT. The old man was sick and tired of the whole belligerent business. He had tried, time and again, to patch up differences, and so had the boss of the other herd, but in vain-for cowboys will be cowboys.
Big Abram muttered beneath his breath. He wasn t one to let a passel of brawling vaqueros wreck a well-established business, and this time he would thresh it out with Old Man Lot once and for all-yes, by ganny, if he had to split the range to do it! He, Big Abram, would show them who was law and order west of the Jordan!
Lissen here, Jim, he said, as he reined in at the corral of the rival camp, th boys have been scrappin again and something s gotta be done. Why, only yesterday down in that back pasture . . .
Git down, Abe, and rest your saddle, said Old Man Lot by way of greeting. Git down an we ll talk things over. I been figurin some myself. Been sorta thinkin about driving down t wards Sodom.
Throughout the hot summer afternoon they sat in the shade of the corral, fanned flies, and talked; and, after weighing each problem carefully, came at last to an agreement with Lot taking the Jordan Valley and Big Abe the Canaan prairies.
And thus, in the days of Genesis, the first cattle range was split and the first of the cattle kings made their appearance . . . beef barons whose work would be to fill the mouths of a world just learning the taste of a sirloin steak; men whose herds, in later years, would cause the psalming David to sing of the cattle upon a thousand hills.
But compared with those to come in centuries yet unborn these early ranching kings were pikers. For, as the map of the world spread in fanciful whorls toward the west, the livestock industry kept pace through an evolutionary process which as a matter