Cattlemen Read online

  SHE came first in a mirage, behind a long string of glorious although worn and impatient horsemen, moving out of the heat and shimmer of the west. By comparison she and the rest of the cattle herd seemed without significance, a little like the great humpbacked wild cows of the Plains, but smaller, longer of horn, and almost lost in the plume of dust raised by the riders up ahead. Like every mirage, this one, too, was actual somewhere, a great expedition crossing the high gray tableland between the river of the Pecos and the far curving of cap rock that fell eastward, cut by many snake-head canyons from whose red rock the east-flowing streams were born.

  The Indian runners and their signaling had spread warning of these pale-faced, black-bearded men riding their big horses and carrying sharp and dangerous weapons of iron, and the noise-making fire sticks that had helped destroy whole Indian pueblo cities. Many of these white men were protected against arrow and spear heads of stone by their hard clothing that shone like silver and one, the leader, rode in a garment yellow as the late winter sun on ice, like the glistening yellow pebbles sometimes found in streams and in the mountains—the oro, the gold that the pale faces sought and demanded, demanded in whole cities.

  These things the runners told, advising the other Indians to scatter or retreat to the canyons, but none of them seemed to mention what was to be more important here than any fire stick or improbable city of gold—the tame and manageable cows that followed behind the bearded men.

  This second season on the trail Coronado had cut his cattle herd to 500 head, those in front still the stronger young cows, their leader a long-bodied, well-horned four-year-old, her coat the color of sun on heat-bleached earth, the dark spots on face and rump like leaf shadows, here where no leafed plant seemed to grow. The cattle she led were of many colors, from white through yellows, reds, browns, and blacks, spotted, mottled, and brindled, too, grown and yearlings, all dusty soon after their swim across the Pecos.

  These cattle with Coronado were brought out of Mexico not for breeding but for eating, both young and old, a walking commissary, their skins to furnish material for the coarse shoes and the riatas, for the sacks and pouches and the hundred leathern things of the expedition on the trail.

  Now they were well east of the Pecos and the Spaniards rode harder, aiming for a swift and, it was hoped, a short journey. Far behind them the cows were urged along by the Indians, ally and captive. Here and there the spotted lead cow and the rest managed to grab a few mouthfuls of vagrant grass in some low spot, around some dried water hole, the cattle bawling less as they grew leaner, the dust settling upon them until they were more and more the color of the dead upland.

  For days east of the Pecos there seemed not a rock, not one bit of rising ground, not a tree or shrub or anything to guide the eye across the heated, mirage-hung plain; no sign of water, not even a sight of the Indians who spied out the progress of these men of bloodshed. So faint was the trail of the entire expedition that a man sent back to pick up a piece of lost baggage had to pile up cow dung and a few whitened bones so he could find his returning way over the baked earth. It became increasingly difficult to hold the thirsting horses, even with the bloodied Spanish bits. The hoarse bawling of the cattle was lost as their tongues swelled and hung out. For all the angry threats and sword blows from their masters, the herders let the cattle break into hard, awkward gallops at the least smell of water, caught from far off, the lead cow a true daughter of the arid uplands of Spain, missing nothing. And when the herd reached the few gray water holes, the cattle could not be held back but plunged in, trampling those in front into the mud, or drinking too much of the alkali waters and sickening, perhaps staggering off to die alone.

  Finally the land began to change as subtilely as the haze upon it, with shy little clumps of shaggy or varnished blooming plants—yellow, perhaps, or cactus red, and finally the strips of blue flowers, blue as narrow lakes, or fallen sky. Here and there a deep gash cut the dead earth, perhaps with red-streaked canyon walls, and a clump of dusty cotton-woods or scrub oak at the bottom. Sometimes there were trails now, narrow as two hands, radiating from the dry water holes and the canyons, the paths of the humpbacked cows, the Indians said.

  Now the droppings of these buffaloes grew plentiful, and very well cured for hot evening fires. They found places where Indians had fled, and came upon some in skin shelters, with meat drying, their burden-bearing dogs standing to bark at the cattle herd, or the silent ones coming to run among them, nipping at their heels, sending them into a scattering stampede. But they did not run far, gathering in a green pocket to feed, cropping swiftly as they had learned to do whenever there was grass. Plainly there had been early water and grass here, perhaps back in March, enough so the cattle of Coronado could have lived well. There were curious holes that the Indian guides called buffalo wallows, dry as cracking stone now, but also filled with water once.

  The eighth day from the Pecos the Spaniards heard a far roaring for an hour or so and then, when their cattle were much disturbed, trying to run that way, the whole expedition was suddenly surrounded by a dark and moving herd of monsters that browsed in their swift walk, every direction black with the grunting, snuffling, great-bodied buffaloes. Coronado's men tried to push past the tossing, shaggy heads, but while those down-wind ran off in thunderous speed, their thin, plume-ended tails up, those coming through ahead moved straight on, blocking the way as though the Spaniards did not exist.

  There was trouble with the cattle herd now, suddenly lonesome for even these strange relatives. The roaring and fighting of the wild buffalo bulls excited them, too, set up a bellowing, particularly among the male yearlings that had escaped the butcher's knife and were now growing into ambitious young bulls. A thinly-covered wildness was suddenly laid bare among these cattle, particularly in those that had been gathered from the early stock gone free in the northern settlements of Mexico.

  After the first herd the Spaniards were never far from buffaloes or the nomadic Indians who slipped up in small parties to kill the less wary with bow and lance or to stampede a few over some canyon wall with whooping, flapping robes or perhaps with fire. By now the expedition had reached the great cap rock that ran into the horizon both north and southward, the bluff line cut by many canyons like the claw marks of some gigantic bear reaching for his prey. Deep in one of these wide gashes, between the red and purplish canyon walls, flowed a clear, glistening stream, through bottoms that were green and flowery and spacious enough for all the Spanish stock for weeks.

  There was a little skirmish with warriors from the Indian village in the canyon but Coronado whipped them easily and settled there for several days to rehabilitate his worn men and stock. But the cattle had to be watched carefully against the curious and thieving Indians who drove off several head while the herders dozed.

  One afternoon a great dark cloud came rolling out of the arid west, with a terrifying roar of wind and crashing thunder. Indians and whites, too, fled up the canyon walls as the sky opened, the hailstones large as nuts, some large as Spanish oranges, and driven by the powerful wind into every overhang of rock, chopping into the soft layerings. The lightning was a constant flashing of yellow, and rose and violet, the thunder shaking the bleeding red walls. The terrified horses plunged and fought their picket ropes until most were free and bolting up the steep sides of the canyon to escape the fury trapped and echoing there. A few of the officers' horses were shielded a little by the bucklers and helmets that the slaves managed to hold over them, but hardly one of the rest escaped some injury from the storm or the panic. The soldier tents were swept away, even the armor dented.

  Although farther back in the narrowing, more protective canyon, the meat animals had stampeded, too, with many sheep killed, and the foolish cattle running far through the branching canyons and breaks, some broken or dead from plunges over precipices and into deep arroyos, the herd altogether so scattered that none could be certain all the live ones were eventually found.

  From there Coronado turn
ed southward, now and then crossing deep-cut springs and small streams that perhaps died in the sand farther on, rarely with water enough to satisfy the large herds still left to him. Forage, too, was short and more cattle became hoof-worn, even the spotted lead cow. Worse, Coronado could hear no word of the golden cities from the Indians anywhere, although one man remembered white travelers who had been through here; not like these riders in iron and gold, with the herd of spotted cattle following, but three white men and one black, walking, all poor and very, very hungry, years ago.

  Ah, yes, the lost Cabeza de Vaca, The Head of a Cow, who, with his fellows, had wandered seven years through the wilderness afoot. It was he who had brought them much news of the rich and wondrous cities that lay beside a great river. Coronado heard the old Indian's story with concern. If De Vaca passed here, then the golden cities must be back north, farther north even than the Canyon of the Storm. But the men of the army were sullen and hungry, the corn all gone, and only meat left, buffalo or the gaunted sheep and stringy cattle. Even the horses were rough-coated and bony, a disgrace to any well-born Spaniard. The general was determined to go on, but he must move faster, lighter. He selected around thirty horsemen, half-a-dozen strong foot soldiers, one of the blue-robed friars, an untrusted guide, and some Indians, and so struck northward for Quivira. Reluctantly the army and the rest, the herdsmen, too, saw him go and then did as ordered—started back across the burning plain of summer to the Pecos and the corn-growing pueblos of the upper Rio Grande. They went reluctantly, many looking northward to where their general and the more fortunate ones had vanished into the hazy, shimmering horizon, this time surely on the trail of the golden Quivira.

  As had happened before, a footsore cow could be forgotten this hurried, unhappy morning. In a gnarled and thorny thicket of mesquite and cactus back from the waters of the Colorado of the South, the spotted lead cow stood hidden, motionless. Once she was drawn to follow the herd she had led so long, but she was very lamed and had escaped the butchers only because there was plenty of fat and tender buffalo for their gleaming knives. Perhaps she lifted her head to bawl her concern, but even the smell of the departing herd was gone with the shifting wind. She snorted the dust from her dewed nostrils and the moment of loneliness dropped from her, as all things would drop from her in their ripening time, the ticks that were so much a part of her Spanish kind, and the calf she bore.

  After a while a cud ran up her throat and slowly her jaw began to move from side to side, her eyes closing, her tawny hide like the sun on the dusty, drouth-faded prairies she had crossed, her head and flanks spotted as with leaf shadows there among the thorns and cactus.

  It is assumed that there were few if any survivals from the cattle that escaped the herd Coronado brought to Texas, but those he left behind exhausted in northern Mexico propagated very fast, so fast that twenty-five years later they had increased to wild herds numbering in the thousands. They and the earlier stock that had strayed from the northern Mexican settlements found America even more compatible than their old homeland. In 1555 seventy or eighty bulls were brought from these far reaches to Mexico City for the bullfights, some of them twenty years old, cimarrones, outlaws that had never seen a man, at least no white man.

  Naturally the region that grew millions of buffaloes could be expected to prove a fine seed bed for the much more adaptable and varied horned immigrant from Spain, one so much a part of those peoples that Cortes called his splendid palace Cuernavaca—Cow's Horn. But Mexico had problems far south of the Rio Grande, including a serious uprising, silver mine booms, and new settlements to be built and controlled. Finally, forty years after Coronado's journey, a whole rash of explorers and colonizers, official or surreptitious, started north, some to seek out Quivira or at least gold, more to spy on the French said to be encroaching from the regions beyond the Mississippi.

  Then in 1598 Juan de Onate put 7,000 head of livestock and a million dollars into a self-supporting colony in New Mexico, the first on what was to become United States ground. Hard behind him came the Franciscans and Jesuits, to plant their missions that were economic and defensive institutions as well as spiritual. Thousands of Indians were gathered to these as neophytes and grounded not only in the Faith but in the arts and crafts of the vineyard and the pasture as well. They were taught to grow and handle cattle on the choice ranges of the padres, to ride that new creature, the horse, like centaurs in their herdings and so become the first vaqueros—developing the equipment and the techniques for a whole new life and livelihood.

  From Coronado on animals escaped the traveling herds and strayed from the unfenced pasturages. Often they were scattered by Indians who hunted them for the sport of killing the curious creatures and, where there were no buffaloes, for meat and to trail along with the village, a wondrous servant to the Indians who knew the stubborn resistance of even the buffalo calf to the lead thong or the herder's urgings. These spotted cattle of the white man were more manageable than even the pack dogs.

  The escaped cows learned to follow the shrinking waters of the summer heat as the buffaloes did, saving themselves by their cunning from all but the whipping of winter storms. Before these they drifted southward, humped up and shivering, while the buffaloes faced the northers and grew thick and matted wool on their heads and forequarters against the cold. The great drouth of the middle 1660's was severe enough to drive the game, particularly the buffalo herds, from vast stretches of their customary range. The hunting Indians of the region found it easier and more exciting to fall upon the tamed Indians who grew corn and beans, melons and fruits in large fields and gardens, as well as cattle for the missions. They swept off the mission horses and, mounted, rode wild as the wind, stampeding the herds of the padres in every direction. They started regular raids across the Rio Grande to drive off the horses and cattle of the Mexicans. In the flight back an occasional wild-eyed cow broke for the brush or sneaked away to hunt out her home pasture, or her calf that had been killed because it could not keep up. These were seldom pursued, their number augmented by occasional stampedes of small herds, perhaps by the smell of a cougar hunting in the night or by thunder and wind and hail. These cattle took to the breaks and the brush, hiding by day, grazing in the night and early morning —soon as wild as the spotted and black cattle reported very early in the Texas country, perhaps descendants of those lost by the first explorers, even if not from the lead cow of Coronado and others of his herd.

  All these years the pueblo Indians of the New Mexico region had suffered inhuman treatment from the Spaniards—the soldiers, colonists, and the secular authorities. Many lived in rank slavery despite the orders of the king and the protests of the missionaries. Finally the only thing the Indians had lacked—a leader—appeared, and in 1680 the whole pueblo region was suddenly aflame. Great herds of cattle were whooped away as the Spaniards were driven out, the missions emptied and destroyed, the tame Indians scattered. Then, when there was little left in the pueblo country worth the raiding, the tamer Indians of west Texas suffered almost continuous attack from the wilder tribes. Finally, in desperation, the victims sent delegations under baptized natives to the Spaniards, asking them to return to their old region, to bring back the trade, and the protection.

  Although the first little missions in Texas seem to have been established down on the Rio Grande by refugees from those farther up, they probably had some cattle. The first herd of any importance into Texas, however, seems to have been the seed stock brought by Alonso de Leon and his missionaries in 1689. He was sent against the French who had been pushing into east Texas. Some say that at every river from the Rio Grande to the Louisiana border he turned loose a bull and a cow, a stallion and a mare. Certainly the first missions established on the Neches River in 1690 had a seed herd of 200 cattle, which the Indians scattered as fast as they multiplied, and faster. Most of the wild game seemed to vanish, too, and in three years the missionaries were reduced to eating crows. By then the French menace had lessened and the missions and t
he scattered stock were all abandoned. These cattle became the breeders of the great wild herds that increased so fast it was almost an explosion in the hospitable brushy river bottoms. It was 1716 before the Spanish established permanent missions and colonies in Texas and long before that cattle and horses were running loose by the thousands in the Neches region, with wild cattle thick in the brush of the Trinity River bottoms, too—cattle that were fast and very fat. There were black bulls among them, as black and glistening as court satin—Castilian bulls grown larger, rangier, their legs and horns both lengthening, it seemed.

  The new missions were strung from the region of the French threat westward to the upper San Antonio River, the latter soon the center of settlement. When the Indians once more harried the padres out of the eastern missions they also moved to the San Antonio.

  Gradually stock raising became almost the only civilian occupation despite the government's attempts to compel farming. The most prolific ranches in Texas were, however, around the Goliad missions, farther down the San Antonio River. By 1770 the Mission of Espiritu Santo claimed to have 40,000 cattle, branded and unmarked, between the Guadalupe and the lower San Antonio. It was assumed, without anybody trying to prove it, that the unbranded could be gathered in a roundup of those with brands, in contrast to the uncontrollable cimarrones, the true wild ones.

  As long as Louisiana was French, export of cattle and hides was banned to that region and with Mexican markets much too far, the herds were worth very little. At Espiritu Santo and Rosario bulls were prized mostly for the fiestas. There were no matadors or bull rings but there were always the "Days of the Bulls," with bull-tailing, bull-roping, and riding. If an animal was to be castrated, it was more exciting and more dangerous to wait until he was grown and then run him down and rope him as a wild one on the prairie. This method produced many new cimarrones, bulls that took up with the cattle born to the brush.