A TEXAS RANGER: True Story of the Leander H. Mcnelly's Texas Ranger Company in the Wild Horse Desert. Napoleon Augustus Jennings
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up through the Indian Territory to Kansas, where they would sell them. The cattlemen did not necessarily confine themselves to driving their own cattle, but would take those belonging to others as well. They were supposed to keep a careful record of all such cattle they had taken up and sold, and to make a settlement at a “stock meeting” every three months. As a rule, the cattlemen were not any too honest in keeping their records, and the stock meetings were in the nature of a farce. Very little money ever changed hands. The owner of a brand would meet the owner of another and say to him:
“Jim, I took up twenty-one o’ your cows an’ sold ‘em. I’ll give ye an order to take up twenty-five o’ mine if ye ain’t took up any lately.”
“Well, I did round up sixteen o’ your ‘B T’ brand,” the other would reply, “so I reckon we can fix up the difference all right.”
The chances were that both men were lying outrageously as to the number of cattle each had sold belonging to the other, but as all were doing the same thing, it was pretty thoroughly understood that the smartest man in gathering stock was the one to come out ahead.
Under no circumstances would a cattleman ever kill any of his own stock for beef. He invariably hunted up for that purpose some brand which did not belong to him, and it was an unwritten law that cattle killed for beef should not be accounted for at the stock meetings. Some of the large cattle owners actually advertised in the little county newspapers the brands which they wished other ranchmen to use for beef.
I am riot exaggerating when I say that at that time in Texas ten times more cattle were stolen every year than were bought and sold. A man would acquire possession of a few cattle of a certain brand and would forthwith gather all cows and steers of all brands he could round up, drive them to Kansas, and sell them. Very often there were fights about the cattle and, as every man carried a six-shooter in that country, “killings” were of somewhat frequent occurrence. Still, there was a difference between a regular cattleman and a common cattle thief. The former always was the legal owner of at least one brand; the latter owned none at all.
My predicament at being thrown on my own resources among these rough-and-ready frontiersmen was, as may be imagined, a serious one. I was desperate. I hung around the stable where a good many of the stockmen put up their horses, and asked one after the other if he did not wish to employ me. I was not the sort they wanted, however, and I met with no success. I had about given up hope when the proprietor of the stable came to me and asked me if I didn’t want to go out into the yard and draw water from the well for the horses. He said he would give me a dollar if I would draw water for two hours.
I had never done any hard work in my life, but I jumped at the opportunity that time. The yard was filled with horses, and close to the well was a trough for their use. They crowded around the trough and fought to get the water I drew from the well in buckets and poured into it. My position was dangerous and I fully realized it; in fact, I probably magnified it, for I was unused to being with horses.
I worked hard, however, and to such good purpose that in half an hour I had exhausted the well. The stable-man acted handsomely. He paid me the dollar, although I had worked but half an hour. Later in the clay I worked again for him, and that night he let me sleep in his hayloft.
For two weeks I worked around the stable and at other odd jobs in the little town, chopping wood and doing anything I could get to do, and I managed to make a bare living, but no more.
Then it was that I first met John Ross. He was a big-hearted, bluff Scotchman, with a bright red beard and the broadest of Scotch accents. He had come to Texas from Glasgow and had married a young San Antonio girl of good family, the granddaughter of Jose Antonio Navarro, one of the heroes of the Texas revolution. To this day, I look back with feelings of deepest affection and gratitude to these good people, for they were father and mother to me when, as a youth, I was alone in Texas and friendless.
Ross entered into conversation with me in Pleasanton and said he would take me to his ranch on the Atascosa Creek, about eighteen miles from Pleasanton, and give me work. He said he could not afford to pay much at first, but would give me board and lodging and enough to keep me in tobacco. He took me to the ranch in his wagon.
The first day he set me to work digging post holes for a new fence he was building; but he was not a hard master, and when he saw I was getting tired he sent me to the creek to catch some catfish, a form of labor which was much more to my taste.
I helped Ross on his farm for three months, and gradually became used to harder work than I had ever supposed I could stand. It even became easy for me to get up before daylight and to go to bed with the chickens. My muscles hardened, and I learned how to use them to the best advantage, not easy knowledge to acquire when one is city bred and has lived an idle life.
At the end of three months Ross told me he had decided to go to Laredo, a town on the Rio Grande about one hundred and twenty miles south of his ranch. He said that he was going to cultivate a market-garden there, and that if I could raise about three hundred dollars he would take me in as a partner. I wrote to my father that I had a fine chance to go into business, and he kindly sent me the three hundred dollars by return mail, together with a letter filled with loving advice. I fear I did not appreciate the advice nearly so much then as I do now, looking back from the standpoint of a man of experience. This is a veracious tale, however, and I am in duty bound to tell exactly what became of that money.
We started for Laredo early one morning in January 1875. In the big covered farm wagon were Mrs. Ross and “Tommy,” the baby, the same who lately won distinction in a Texas Ranger company by hunting down desperate characters near Corpus Christi. Will Ross, John’s brother, rode on horseback, as did I. I had about all the money in the outfit. We were fairly well armed, for the country was not free from Indians at that time and their raids from Mexico were quite frequent.
Never shall I forget that trip to Laredo, for I suffered much on it, physically and mentally. The weather was very trying for one so new to the country as I. The days were extremely warm and the nights uncomfortably cool. During the day the sun blazed in the heavens and his rays beat down on our heads with tropical force, but no sooner did the shades of night come on than the air grew icy cold, and before morning it was freezing. Two hours after the sun arose the next day, the terrible heat began again. To add to the discomfort of these extreme changes in temperature, water was very scarce and rattlesnakes extremely plentiful.
It was on this journey that I first experienced a Texas “norther.” It came upon us early one afternoon. Will Ross and I were riding about a mile ahead of the wagon. We were coatless, and our shirts were open at the throats, for the heat was stifling. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, an icy wind swept across the prairie from the north. It chilled us, through and through, in a few seconds.
“Hello! a norther’s coming,” said Will Ross. “We’d better go back and get our coats.”
We turned back to the wagon, but when we attempted to ride in the teeth of that terribly cold wind, we suffered so that we gave up the attempt. We dismounted and stood in the lee of our horses until the wagon came lumbering up. Then we bundled into our coats and overcoats and rode on to a creek, a mile or so ahead. There, under the shelter of one of the banks, we built a great fire and went into camp, to remain until the norther should blow itself out. This, Ross knew from experience, would be in two days.
A norther invariably blows from the north for twenty-four hours. Then it comes back, almost as cold, from the south for twenty-four hours more. The third day there is no wind, but the cold continues, gradually abating until, on the fourth day, the temperature is what it was before the norther came. I have been in New Hampshire when the thermometer marked forty degrees below zero; I have passed a night, lost in a snowstorm, in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado; but never have I suffered so from the cold as I have in a Texas norther. One’s blood gets thin in a warm climate, arid it is not so easy to resist cold as in Northern latitudes. Not infrequently thousands of cattle will die, frozen to death, in a Texas norther. During the winter months the northers sweep over Texas about once in every two or three weeks.
Lawrence Christopher Criss, an old Texas guide and buffalo hunter, is responsible for the following