The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
and other leading concerns of his town. He may be a member of the Legislature, or sheriff of his county, or candidate for higher office. His family may have a son in college, a daughter in the art school of a distant city. The ranch itself, if discovered, may be simply a vast and partly tilled farm, with white-painted buildings, with busy tenantry, and much modern machinery in intelligent use. This would be accurate description of a ranch in the South to-day. But it would be accurate only in particular, not in general, and it would never satisfy the inquirer who knows something of what ranch life once was and is to-day in ft wide and wild portion of the Western region.
If we sought to be more general in the outlook for a ranch fit to be called typically Southern, we should certainly have much latitude afforded us. Suppose it to be in the Indian Nations, taking it at that time before the Indians had grown wise in their day and generation, and before the United States Government had evicted many of those opulent tenants, the cattle men of the nations. Let us picture our ranch as lying along some timbered stream, such as the Cimarron, which flows just above the "black-jack" country of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Here the land lies in long swelling rolls and ridges, with hills of short oak scrub, and wide intervals of prairie. Into the main stream of the river flow many smaller tributaries, and among these are some little creeks heading back among the hills in fresh, unfailing springs, whose waters flow always sweet and abundant throughout the year. Fancy some such little nook, well up in the hills, a half mile from the river, and in imagination surround it with the forest trees which should grow at such a spot. Well down the hillside, sheltered alike by the hill and by the forest from the cold winds which come from the north in winter, stands the ranch house. It is made of logs, much in the style of the lumberman's log house in the pine woods, except that the structure is more careless and less finished. The door is made of a single thickness of unplaned and unmatched boards. It hangs loose upon its rough wooden hinges, and its lock is a rude wooden latch the string whereof literally hangs upon the outside. Wide cracks are open about the edges of the door and about the windows and between the logs at the sides and ends of the room — for there is but one great room in the ranch house proper. Along the wall of this vast apartment are built sleeping bunks, similar to those used by the cabin dwellers of the pine woods. There is little furniture except a rough table or two, and a few stools or broken chairs. The clothing of the men lies under the bunks or hangs on pegs driven in the wall; for trunks, wardrobes, or private places for individual properties are unknown and unnecessary. The saddles, bridles, ropes, and other gear hang on strong pegs in the covered hallway or open-front room which connects the ranch room with the cook house. This connecting room or open hall is also the lounging place of the many dogs and hounds which make part of the live stock of the place. These dogs are used in the constant wolfing operations, and are a necessity on the ranch, but with them a continual feud is waged alike by the cook from whom they steal, and the foreman with whom they continually endeavour to sleep at night — this by reason of an affection much misplaced; for the foreman is a man of stern ideas of life. The cook house is also the dining hall, and here the same rude arrangements prevail as in the main apartment. There is a long pine table, two or three long wooden benches, perhaps a chair or two. There is a good cook stove, and the dishes are serviceable and clean, though not new or expensive. The cook has his bunk in the kitchen, and is left alone in his own domain, being held a man with whom it were not well to trifle.
The country of the Nations Has a climate hot in summer, though not extremely cold in winter, except for occasional cold storms of wind and snow. Such a storm is called a "norther"; by which we may know that we are upon a Southern ranch or one manned by Southern cowmen. In the North the same storm would be a "blizzard." On this range shelter for the cattle is never considered, and they fare well in the timbered hollows even in the roughest weather. Hay is of course something little known. It is a wild country, and game is abundant. The nearest railway point is one hundred miles to the north, let us say, at least at the time of our visit. The ranchmen do not see civilization more than once a year. They are lonely and glad of the company of an occasional deer hunter who may blunder down into the forbidden Indian lands. All men are welcome at the ranch, and no questions are asked of them. Every visitor goes to the table without invitation, and there all men eat in silence. One has seen at such a meal a hunter, a neighbouring ranchman bound for his place fifty miles below, and two suspected horse thieves, bound for some point not stated. No questions were asked of any of them. In this region, where news is the scarcest of commodities, the idea of gossip is unknown. The habit or the etiquette of the cowboy is not to talk. He is silent as an Indian. The ranch boss is the most taciturn of all. The visitor, when he comes to take his departure, if he is acquainted with the ways and the etiquette of ranch life, does not think of offering pay, no matter whether his stay has been for days, weeks, or months. If he be plainsman and not "pilgrim," no matter whether he be hunter, ranchman, or horse thief, he simply mounts, says "So long," and rides away. The taciturn foreman says "So long," and goes back to work. The foreman's name may be Jim, never anything more, about the place and among his own men. On the neighbouring ranges or at the round-up he is known perhaps as the "foreman on the Bar Y." Some of the cowboys on the Bar Y may be diagnosed to have come from Texas or some Southern cattle country. The foreman may once have lived in Texas. It is not etiquette to ask him. It is certain that he is a good cowman.
This may indicate one phase of ranch life south of our imaginary boundary line. It is, however, not comprehensive, and indeed perhaps not typically Southern. Let us suppose that the traveller has fared far to the south of the Indian Nations into the country along the Gulf coast of Texas. Here he is still on the cattle range, hut among surroundings distinctly different from those of the Indian Nations. The hardwood groves have disappeared and their place is taken by "mottes" of live oaks, whose boughs are draped in the dismal gray of the funereal Spanish moss. There is no word now of swamp or brush or timber, but we hear of chaparral and cactus and mesquite. We are at the southern extremity of the great cattle range. Here the cattle even to-day are not so large as those of the North. They run wild through a tangle of thorn and branch and brier. For miles and leagues — for here we shall hear also of "leagues" — the wilderness stretches away, dry, desolate, abominable. Water is here a prize, a luxury. A few scanty streams trickle down to the arms of the salt bays. Across some such small stream the cattle man has thrown a great dam, costing perhaps a small fortune, and built by an engineer not afraid to use masonry, for he knows what the sudden Southern floods may mean. Thus is formed a vast "tank," at which the cattle water, coming from unknown distances to quench a thirst not stayed completely by the cactus leaves whose thorns line their mouths as they do those of the wild deer of the region. These tanks are the abode of vast swarms of wild fowl which come in from the sea. About them crowds all the wild game of the country. In the mud along their trampled banks one sees the footprint of the cougar, of the "leopard cat," of the wild deer, the wild turkey, the wild hogs, and peccaries, all these blending with the tread of the many wading or swimming birds which find here their daily rendezvous. Sometimes such tanks run far into the open country back of the "wet prairie," as the sea marsh is generally called, and again they may run close down to the salt bays which make in from the Gulf. Sometimes this artificial water supply of the ranch is supplemented by a few natural lagoons of fresh water, which rarely go entirely dry. These lakes or lagoons or broken pond holes may run for miles through the swales in the coast forest — a forest the most forbidding of any in this whole great country in its ominous gray desolation of twisted trees covered with great festoons of that devil's decoration, the Spanish moss. It is a thirsty land, this of the brooding Southwest, this land of warmth and plenty, where life grows swiftly and is swiftly cut down. Here the cattle mature and breed more rapidly than in the North. They range over many miles of country, many of them forever unknown and uncounted, for the round-up in no part of the Western range is more trying than in the pathless thorny chaparral, where the rider can see but a few yards about him and where no general view is ever possible. Water is the one needful thing, and water is the loadstone which draws to view the cattle man's wealth as nothing else could do; for the cattle must drink.
They must drink, even though the suns of summer dry up the water pools till they are but masses of slime and mud, till they are worse than dry — till they have become traps and pitfalls more deadly than any that human ingenuity could devise. Into these treacherous abysses of bottomless and sticky mud the famished creatures wade, seeking a touch of water for their tongues. Weakened already by their long thirst, they struggle and plunge hopelessly in their attempt to get back