The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
but in many parts of the cattle country to-day the associations ask every one else to do his branding in the presence of his associates in business; this rule subject to local variations.
Thus we see that the old Spaniard's idea has travelled very far in its widened applications and its extension of usefulness. Indeed, it goes yet further in its bearings upon the trade. As the brand is lifelong in its nature, so is it lifelong in its usefulness. The beginning of an animal's life is upon the range; its end is in the markets of the East, in the stock yards of the great cities. At each great live-stock market — such as Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, etc. — each cattle association of the States and Territories where range cattle are shipped now has a special officer, known as a brand inspector, who has such help as he needs in his work. Whenever a car load of ranch cattle comes into the market, it is viewed by the proper inspector, who examines the cattle to see if they are branded in uniform manner. Suppose the brand of the shipper is IXL, and that among these IXL cattle there are found two steers branded AXL. The inspector at once asks where the latter came from, and if the shipper can not explain at once how they came to be with his cattle, he is subjected to rigid examination, which may lead to his prompt arrest by the inspector. Unless satisfactory answers can be made to such questions, the suspected animals are taken away from the rest of the shipment and sold by the inspectors. The money from such sale is sent at once, not to the owner of the IXL cattle, but in due routine to the owner of the AXL brand. The whereabouts of the latter is very likely easily discovered by reference to the State Brand Book; but if he can not be found, and no representative secured to accept this money sent him from the inspector, the proceeds are finally given to the treasurer of the State association, to be applied to the good of the whole cattle industry of the State. Here again is a very powerful example of the idea of justice, and a very good instance of the fact that the old Spaniard builded far better than he knew.
The cattle trade with all its ramifications has never gone, and can never get any further than the possibilities of the old Spaniard's marks and brands. These tokens of ownership remain to-day the expression of a sentiment of integrity and of a wish for common justice. The outdwellers of the plains have as high a standard of commercial honour as obtains in the most intricate banking system of the cities. Not Wall Street nor the Board of Trade ever inculcated principles more rigid or of more worth. But, as a house is no better than its servants, and as no law is stronger than its executive measures, so is the cattle trade no better than the cowboy. He is its head executive and its working manager, and upon his personal qualities of hardihood and honourableness depends the success of every venture in the wild unfettered business of the range. It is the cowpuncher who first brands the calf when it becomes the property of his ranch. He is perhaps foreman of the ranch which raises it. He may pull it out of the bog hole where it would perish. He may protect it against theft. He may drive it to a range where it can better live. He is perhaps captain of the round-up which "throws it over" to its proper range if it has strayed. He may assist on the drive which takes it to the market after the beef round-up, or he may even go with it to the distant city. The very brand inspector who examines it there as the rules of justice require is certainly no man who got his place through political preferment, but is some old cowboy, trained by long years of experience to catch quickly the brand upon any living creature. He practises his trade here in the cattle pens of the city, but he learned it out there on the range, where the earth was very wide and gray, and where the sky was very wide and blue, bending over him with even arch on each hand alike, as wide and as blue for one man as for another.
CHAPTER VII
FREE GRASS AND WATER FRONTS
Fortunate indeed must have been our ancient ranchero, the first cowman of the West. Before him lay an untouched world, vast, vague, and inviting. What must have been to him the whispers that came across the plains? Did the spirits say nothing to him of the mysterious, the unexplored? Did no wild bird, winging high over this calm and smiling country, carry to him some hint of that which lay beyond? Was there not some voice whispering in the grasses telling him of things yet to be? Did there not come to him out of that vague, alluring, compelling Unknown some unseen, shadowy, irresistible beckoning? We know of the tasks of those first travellers, but what do we know of their impulses? Perhaps they dared go forward because they dared not do otherwise.
To the imagination of the old Spaniard this unknown country was not a land of cattle, but a land of gold. His thought was always upon gold, and all else was incidental. He looked out over the range of these "cattle of deformed aspect," as Coronado called the buffalo, and he figured to himself that somewhere out in that vast wind-swept solitude there must lie the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, whose streets were of solid gold, and whose edifices were all builded in that same precious metal. Coronado — bold soul! — had this thought ever in his mind as he pressed on in his march from Mexico to the Missouri Kiver, the first man to cross the American cattle plains. Always he thought to see the towers arise beyond, out there in the blue and gray horizon. Nay, in his dreams by night he must have seen these cities. In his dreams by day he must have seen them, rising, beckoning, eluding, evading, the wraith of his cherished hope. On and on, far across the red mesas of New Mexico, across the white flats of Texas, the gray plains of Kansas, he pressed, until he stood at the banks of the great Missouri, boundary to-day of the cattle range, a disappointed but still believing man. He turned back — he and all his men on foot — and crossed the great range again on his return to Mexico, seeing many thousands of these cattle of "deformed aspect," but not finding the cities of Cibola. Yet behind him, as they had been before him, there arose and danced on the air, waving, beckoning, these cities of gold. To their beckoning have come since then the thousands of the world. The gold that built their structures lay under Coronado's feet as he walked those many weary leagues, this glorious and still remembered soldier of another day.
All the gold of the cattle range lay before the first ranchero, all the untouched resources of an empire. All the range was "free grass" then, and the Spaniard grumbled because it was not all free gold. Alas! for those days, and ah! for one more country anywhere upon this globe which shall for one moment compare with that West which lay before the first cowman on the range!
For a century or two it was still free grass. Since all the earth lay open to everybody, what need to fence a portion of it? If a neighbour came from a hundred miles away, was he not welcome? His cattle would not come so far, but would stay nearer to the range where they were horn. But after a time there began to be more people and more cattle. Some strong-legged hidalgo, who had walked a thousand leagues or so and made some hundreds of Indian converts by the simple process of cutting off their heads, had for this high service to the Crown and Church gift made to him of some great grant of land. The sovereign granting this land to his beloved subject had no idea where it was, and neither had the subject. He came to America with a parchment entitling him to enter into possession of so many miles of land, beginning at a stone and running to a tree, and this was description good enough so long as no one cared. The hidalgo was pretty sure to locate his grant upon the best water he could find, for in that dry and desert country water was something of the most constant concern. The man who went on a journey took with him certain skins of water, lest he should find none on the way. A little rio, a living spring, a tank that never failed — these were the things which determined the locations of haciendas and of towns. The families which were later to be the great and wealthy ones were those lucky enough to get in upon the shores of some large river such as the Rio Grande. Less fortunate was he who had but a tiny spring which flowed a feeble rivulet over the thirsty soil.
There came a time when the cattle of some adjoining rancho trampled the spring of some old ranchero, who in wrath laid down a few crooked cedar boughs about the spring, and thus built the first fence upon the range. As this old ranchero had his sheepskin grant, and as he, moreover, perhaps had a body of men trained and paid to fight for him, he was no doubt allowed to leave his fence as he had placed it, and the cattle went elsewhere to drink. Their owner in turn fenced off for himself a bit of water, building a fine large fence of cedar limbs, bound well together with strips of rawhide. And so this went on, generation after generation, each generation needing more range and more water, though still the generous West had enough