Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Wednesday, March 1, 2000

Up the Trail, part three

Cowboys who had been on the trail for months grew excited as they left Indian Territory and crossed into Kansas. They would soon see houses and women, one wrote, "and both were good to look at.''
   First they had to deal with Kansas "sodbusters'' who did not like trail herds coming near their farms, even though they picked up cow chips for fuel in a land where trees were scarce. Farmers would set the prairie afire, with a firebreak around their land, to burn off the grass and force trail-drivers to take another route. For their part, cowboys were contemptuous of "nesters" who spent their days looking at a mule's tail. One wrote that every nester he ever saw "was always riding an old mule barebacked, with bare feet, and carrying a double-barreled shotgun.''
   But the trail-drivers were near the end of the road where the cattle would be sold and the hands paid off. On reaching the outskirts of Newton, Hays, Dodge City, Wichita, or Abilene, herds were held outside town until the buyers looked them over. After they were sold, the longhorns would be put into the first pens they had ever seen until they were shipped on railroad cattle cars to eastern slaughter houses.
   Cowboys, with pockets full of money, would take a bath with lilac soap, have their hair cut and slicked down with tonic, and have their beards and mustaches blackened. They would buy clothes and fancy boots, the kind with pull-up straps they called mule's ears. Then they would stroll around the town, gazing on houses and women.
   Newton, Kansas, prepared for the coming of trail-herders in June. Gamblers, saloon men, "working girls'' all arrived and the dance houses - which were saloons and houses of prostitution - opened. In 1871, a cowboy described Newton as "one of the worst towns I ever saw. Every element of meanness on earth seemed to be there. While in this burg, I saw several men killed.''
   Newton's cowboy era lasted from 1871 to 1873. The trade moved to Dodge City when the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe reached there, which soon became a clapboard boomtown.
   One cowboy described his arrived in Dodge City: "As soon as I could get loose from the herd, I took a bath in the Arkansas River, went to a barber shop, got my face beautified, put on some new clothes, and went forth to see the sights in the toughest town on the map - and I saw them. At the first saloon, a girl came up, put her hand under my chin, and said, 'Oh, you pretty Texas boy, buy me a drink.' "
   One night, another wrote, "as I walked up to the front door of a dance hall, I saw a man standing with a gun in hand. Inside, two men had just stepped up to the bar to take a drink; he shot one of them through the head, got on his horse and rode off. The music stopped until the floor was scrubbed and everything was soon going again as if nothing had happened.''
   In a "ride-by'' shooting in Dodge in 1878, a girl named Dora Hand was killed while she slept and the suspect was a cowboy named James Kenedy, son of South Texas rancher Mifflin Kenedy. James rode out of town after the shooting, but he was caught by a posse that included Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. Kenedy was brought back to the Dodge City jail, but his father showed up, money changed hands, it was said, and charges were dropped. Whoever killed Dora Hand was never convicted of the crime.
   Abilene, like Dodge City, also did a roaring trade that catered to Texans. The town's main street was Texas Street and saloons had Texas names, the Alamo, Longhorn, and the Bullhead.
   "While we were in Abilene,'' one wrote, "a man was drinking at the bar in a saloon, and somebody fired in from outside, the bullet striking him in the mouth and killing him instantly.''
   The cowboys, after months of being on the trail, would spend their money getting "roostered-up'' and then shoot up the town, an activity called "waking the old man,'' meaning the sheriff.
   On the way back to Texas, cowboys would nurse hangovers and memories, sometimes riding over the same trail and telling each other of the experiences on the way up. They would arrive in South Texas in the fall, dressed up in store clothes, and looking "as though we were 'somebody come' sure enough.''
   One cowboy said after his first trail drive that he would never forget the feel of the saddle, the pull of the weight of the six-shooter on his belt, or what a blessing on a rainy night was that old yellow slicker called fish.
   (Sources: "The Trail Drivers of Texas,'' compiled by J. Marvin Hunter; Caller-Times archives; "Western Words'' by Ramon F. Adams; "History of the Cattle Industry'' in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly; "Miracle of the Chisholm Trail'' by Henry B. Jameson; "The Cattle Trailing Industry'' by Jimmy M. Skaggs; 125th commemorative edition of the Newton Kansan, among other sources.)
  

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