'^n
THE MODERN COWBOY FOLKTALE IN WEST TEXAS
REBECCA JAN BRIGHT CARNES, B.A.
A THESIS
ENGLISH
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
Accepted
August, 1989
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my appreciation to Dr.
Kenneth Davis and Dr. Jack Wages, the members of my thesis
committee, who gave so generously of their time and
expertise during the months I worked on this project.
Their comments and suggestions were invaluable.
11
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ii
CHAPTER
I.
INTRODUCTION
1
II .
THE FOLKTALE
5
The Genres and Characteristics
of the Folktale
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII .
6
The American Folktale
12
The Cowboy's Cultural Values
16
The Cowboy Folktale
21
HISTORICAL LEGENDS
27
PERSONAL LEGENDS
45
Historical Legends
46
Family Legends
58
ROPING YARNS
62
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES
72
Tales of Prowess
74
Hard Luck Stories
78
MERRY TALES
84
Pranks and Personal
Experience Tales
Jokes and Fictional Anecdotes
111
84
96
VIII.
ANIMAL TALES
Cattle
113
Horses
120
Animals:
IX.
X.
112
Domestic and Wild
124
Snakes
129
WEATHER WINDIES
139
Superstitions and Folk Wisdom
140
Wind, Rain, and Sun
143
THE COWBOY TALE:
WEST TEXAS STYLE
153
Narrative Techniques
153
Story Types
159
WORKS CITED
167
APPENDICES
A.
BIOGRAPHIES OF RACONTEURS
172
B.
INDEX OF STORY MOTIFS
179
IV
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Vanishing Breed?
They call 'em a vanishing breed.
They write books and take pictures
and talk like they're dyin' out.
Like dinosaurs goin' to seed
But that's my friends yer talkin' about
Some say they're an endangered species
Destined to fade into footnotes
like ropes that never get throwed.
To that I reply, "Bull Feces!"
They're just hard to see from the road.
(Black 8)
As Baxter Black points out in his poem "Vanishing
Breed?", people have been claiming that the cowboy is a
dying breed for the past hundred years.
His demise was
predicted with the end of the open range era as a new
century dawned.
He would be killed by barbed wire and
small operations just as surely as the growing network of
railroads killed the long trail drives.
Later, the
mechanization and depression of the 1930s and the manpower
shortage during World War II were supposed to be his death
knells.
Yet the cowboy survives, though droughts,
depressions, and government aid (or hindrance).
He has
changed with his times, but he is alive and well, in spite
of people mourning his imminent death.
1
According to Paul Patterson, the cowboy himself is
often in the forefront of mourning
for what us ed to be and what still ought to be
Ab Blocker mourning the passing of the long,
longhorn tr ails; Bob Beverly mourning the
passing of the open range; my brother John
mourning th e breaking up of big outfits into
smaller one s; and finally myself lamenting the
chuck wagon 's replacement with a chuck truck,
which was, in turn, replaced by pick-ups
hauling vit ties from the house. And, finally,
woe is me, seeing Dairy Queens taking over.
("Old-Time Cowboy" 75)
A number of people did exhaustive research into cowboy
lore in the years between 1930 and 1960, in a rush to
interview the last of the old cowboys before the breed died
out entirely.
Practically nothing, however, has been done
in the almost thirty years since then.
for another study.
The cowboy is due
A number of changes have occurred in
his environment since 1960, in addition to the Dairy Queen
replacing the chuck truck.
employing fewer men.
The ranches are now smaller,
Finances are as tight as always, yet
the cowboy is more likely to be married than his earlier
counterparts.
Women are slowly infiltrating the culture,
not only as wives but as cow hands and ranchers.
The
modern cowboy is more likely to live in a tenant house than
a bunkhouse, but television and improved transportation
m ake him less isolated.
Mechanization expands his work to
include horses, pickup trucks, electric pumps, and in some
cases even helicopters or feed trucks.
He spends less time
on horseback and more time doctoring cattle, fixing fences,
and repairing windmills.
Some cowboys may even work in a
feed lot rather than on a ranch, but the occupation still
endures.
The occupational lore survives as well, though
occupational lore and regional lore often merge until it is
sometimes difficult to tell the two apart.
This study concentrates on the cowboy folktales of
West Texas, specifically those found in the Panhandle and
South Plains.
Armed with a tape recorder, the collector
visited an ever-widening circle of relatives, friends,
acquaintances, and friends of acquaintances.
The resulting
stories are a sampling of what is currently in oral
circulation in the cowboy culture of the region.
Some
stories were also collected at the National Cowboy
Symposium and Celebration at Texas Tech University on June
2-4, 1989.
The symposium stories are more polished
performances than the stories collected informally in
someone's living room.
Almost all the symposium tales are
humorous, and they are more closely linked to the literary
tradition and to printed versions of tales than are the
stories collected in the field; however, the symposium
material is included because many of the topics and
narrative techniques are common to the culture.
All stories have been transcribed from the tapes, word
for word.
For the sake of clarity, dashes (--) are used to
4
indicate the natural pauses and hesitations that are part
of the raconteur's speech, while ellipses (...)
that a portion of the story has been omitted.
indicate
Even though
the stories are often long and rambling, ellipses are rare
because the story structure is an important consideration
for any folklorist, as is the raconteur's vocabulary and
syntax.
The purpose of this study is to collect, preserve and
analyze representative folktales currently circulating in
the cowboy culture.
Though the general information about
the characteristics and genres of the folktale and comments
on unique characteristics of American and cowboy lore are
included, the stories themselves serve as the main focus of
the study.
Consideration is also given to the different
genres of cowboy tales and the common structural elements
of the stories.
Finally, appendices provide a short
biography of each of the raconteurs and a motif-index of
tale types arranged according to Stith Thompson's
Motif-Index of Folk Literature and Ernest Baughman's Type
and Mot if-Index of Folktales of England and North America.
The stories collected for the study provide a
representative sampling of the oral traditions within the
cowboy culture of West Texas.
CHAPTER II
THE FOLKTALE
The folktale is one of the earliest forms of
storytelling, predating the written word and the subsequent
literary endeavors.
The earliest European literature has
direct links to the oral tradition, as evidenced by the
strong folk elements in the works of Homer, Chaucer, and
the Beowulf poet.
In fact. Homer not only based his
stories on oral myths, his poems were composed orally,
also.
In his book Ln Search of the Trojan War, Michael
Wood claims that "in the ancient world it was... accepted
that Homer composed without the aid of writing--that is, he
was an oral poet" (123).
Homer's epic poems are some of
the earliest recorded versions of oral narrative.
Their
survival offers only one small bit of evidence of the
remarkable memories of storytellers and their part in
preserving the stories, history and traditions of various
peoples.
The folktale serves many purposes in both ancient and
m odern cultures.
It entertains and teaches; it transmits
cultural values and gives listeners a sense of history and
"roots."
In primitive and semi-literate cultures, the
folktale educates without benefit of books or universities;
therefore, for many years, it fell under the aegis of the
"common folk"--the poor, the superstitious, the uneducated.
For this reason, it was ignored as an academic study for
many years.
The German Grimm brothers were the first to show
interest in collecting and studying folktales.
They
collected old "fairy tales" and published more polished
versions of them in 1812 in their book Kinder-und
Hausmarchen (Thompson 459). Other Europeans soon joined
the ranks of folklorist, and the folktale came under
serious academic survey.
The Genres and Characteristics
^f~the Folktale
Because the study of the folktale began during the age
of enlightenment, it should not be surprising that modern
folklorists often have a scientist's fascination with
labeling and classifying tales, though folktales often
refuse to fit into any neatly labeled category.
They
insist on overlapping and creating new categories as oral
traditions change and grow to reflect modern cultures.
According to the Aarne
system of classification, folktales
are divided into three principal groups:
animal tales.
regular folktales and humorous tales (Thompson 418). Each
group can be sub-divided into more specific
classifications.
For example, the ordinary folktales can
be "divided into magic or wonder tales, religious stories,
romantic stories, and those dealing with the stupid ogre"
(Thompson 419).
Stith Thompson divides the folktale into nine genres.
First is the marchen or fairy tale, a story "of some length
involving a succession of motifs or episodes...[which] moves
in an unreal world without definite locality or definite
characters and is filled with the marvelous" (8). Examples
of this tale type would include the traditional fairy
stories such as Cinderella, Snow White, and Jack and the
Beanstalk.
In the novella, "action occurs in a real world
with definite time and place, though marvels do appear"
(8); stories such as Arabian Nights and Sinbad fall into
this category.
Next are the hero tales, "clusters of tales
relating the superhuman struggles of men like Hercules or
Theseus against a world of adversaries" (8). The sage, or
local legend, "purports to be an account of an
extraordinary happening believed to have actually
occurred...a legend which has attached itself to that
locality, but which will probably also be told with equal
conviction of many other places" (8). The explanatory tale
is a local legend that "explains the existence of some hill
J"
8
or cliff or...river...[or] animals, plants, the stars and
mankind and his institutions" (9). A myth is a tale of
religious significance that is "laid in a world supposed to
have preceded the present order" (9). Animal tales are
"usually designed to show the cleverness of one animal and
the stupidity of another" (9). The most popular animal
tales in the United States are probably the Uncle Remus
stories about Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox; however, another
well-known division of animal stories are the fables,
animal tales "with an acknowledged moral purpose" (10).
Finally, the folktale may take the form of jests and short
humorous anecdotes, such as numbskull tales or stories of
deceptions or obscene situations (10).
Folktales are further classified by their motifs, the
small elements of a tale that persist and reappear in other
stories.
Any serious folklore student soon discovers that
there are many striking resemblances between tales from
different locations and different eras; Stith Thompson and
several other scholars have categorized, logged and
recorded these motifs from countless tales.
According to
Thompson, most motifs fall into three classes.
The first
is determined by the "actors in a tale--gods, or unusual
animals, or marvelous creatures like witches, ogres, or
fairies...the favorite youngest child or the cruel
stepmother" (415).
Other motifs are "items in the
^
background of the action--magic objects, unusual customs,
strange beliefs" (415).
The final and largest category are
motifs based on a single incident or event within the
story.
These are often called tale types.
Motifs contained in the popular tale Cinderella
provide examples of the different types of motifs.
The
actors include a traditional evil stepmother (shared with
Snow White and many other marchen heroines), a fairy
godmother, and an abused heroine.
Other motifs would
include the glass slipper and the marriage test (the prince
will marry whomever the glass slipper fits).
Finally, the
weakest one in the group turns out to be the victor.
Each
of these elements or motifs can be found in variations in
other tales.
Not only are certain motifs common in a number of
different stories, but there are also some characteristics
which are common to almost all folktales, no matter how
they are classified.
Danish folklorist Axel Olrik defined
the characteristics of the folktale in a 1908 paper he read
before an interdisciplinary congress in Berlin (Dundes
129).
His "Epic Laws of Folk Narrative" have withstood the
test of time and are still used to define the nine standard
characteristics of the folktale.
The first two laws deal with the framework of the
tale; Olrik calls them the Law of Opening and Closing, and
10
the Law of Repetition (131-132).
Stith Thompson gives an
excellent summary of these two laws in his book The
Folktale.
He says:
"A tale does not begin with the most
important part of the action, and it does not end abruptly.
There is a leisurely introduction; and the story proceeds
beyond the climax to a point of rest or stability" (456).
Repetition is also omnipresent in folktales.
A character
will repeat the same speech or the same action, usually
three times, though in some cultures repetition is fourfold
since the number of repetitions is tied to the religious
symbolism of the culture.
The repetitions not only give
the story suspense, but fill it out and afford it body
(Thompson 456).
The next four laws deal with the characters who
inhabit the tale; Olrik called them the Law of Two to a_
Scene, the Law of Contrasts, the Law of Twins, and the
Importance of Ini tial and Final Position (135-136).
Olrik
believes that usually, there are only two people in a
scene.
If there are more, only two of them are active at
any one time.
These two people will have contrasting
personalities or characters--good and bad.
Occasionally,
two people, usually twins, may appear in the same role, but
when this happens, both characters are represented as small
and weak.
Finally, the underdog is usually the eventual
11
victor; the smallest, weakest, or youngest normally
triumphs at the end of the tale.
Olrik's last three laws deal with the simple structure
of the folktale.
The tale focuses on the leading
character, and the characterization is as simple as
possible. "Only such qualities as directly affect the story
are mentioned: no hint is given that the persons in the
tale have any life outside" (Thompson 456). The plot is
also simple.
"One story is told at a time.
The carrying
along of two or more subplots is a sure sign of
sophisticated literature" (Thompson 456). Finally, every
aspect of the tale--plot, character, description--is
handled as simply as possible, and "no attempt is made to
secure variety" (Thompson 456).
As these laws suggest, the framework of the tale
comprises a definite beginning, middle, and end.
Listeners
expect standard openings such as "Once upon a time" as well
as standard endings such as "And they lived happily ever
after."
According to Linda Degh, these elements "prepare
the atmosphere for the acceptance and enjoyment of the tale
action, and by providing a happy ending guide the audience
back to everyday reality" (61). The raconteur may also
insert interjections in the middle of the story, asking
questions to draw in the readers' response, questions such
as "What do you think happened next?" or "Now, what do you
^
12
think of that?"
Degh believes that these "personal
intrusions by the teller form a third formulaic bridge
between the reality of the performance scene and the
fantasy of the told narrative" (61).
The American Folktale
As the tale traveled across the sea to the United
States, certain changes occurred.
Strong European,
especially British, roots are evident in American folklore.
For example, the marchen and novella which are popular in
continental Europe are rare in both England and the United
States (Dorson, Selected Essays 81). Both countries depend
largely on shorter narratives and legends for the bulk of
their oral tradition, yet the legends differ in character
and content.
The British legends depend on supernatural
beings--ghosts, elves, and bogles, but these stories are
rare in the United States (Dorson, Selected Essays 81).
Instead, the American setting has supplied three special
themes for its folk narrative--the land itself, the
Indians, and the hazards of life in a wilderness (Dorson,
American Folklore 9 ) . Our earliest national folklore
focuses on natural history, on unusual beasts, and on the
evil lurking in unexplored forests.
Early raconteurs often
delighted in telling of the terrors of the untamed,
unexplored land.
These tales grew into legends that are
13
different from their British counterparts.
One immigrant's
explanation for the change in subject matter is that
"spirits cannot cross the ocean" (Dorson, Selected Essays
82).
Also, in Colonial times, the dark forests and
wilderness areas of the United States were probably just as
spooky and mysterious as the haunted castles and
supernatural forest-dwellers of England.
American folklore draws on natural history as a source
for legends, but it owes much to the frontier experience as
well.
Even now, a hundred years after the frontier has
disappeared, American legends revolve around early settlers
in each region and around their battles with Indians, each
other and nature.
Also, hero tales in the United States
are far removed from Theseus or Hercules.
Though the
American hero performs feats of amazing strength, unlike
his European counterparts, he always rises from the ranks
of the common man.
Even in folklore, Americans insist on
Jacksonian democracy.
Because of rough living conditions
on the frontier, Americans hold strength, endurance and
physical virtues in higher esteem than intelligence;
therefore, the popular hero "glorifies brawn and muscle in
contrast to mind and intellect" (Dorson, American Folklore
201).
American popular heroes such as Davy Crockett are
often real people who have generated exaggerated tales, yet
Crockett's bigger-than-life exploits when killing bears and
14
Indians on the frontier and his dying a martyr's death in
the Alamo reflect the spirit of his times and show the
qualities that appeal to the popular imagination.
The bigger-than-life, exaggerated tale is not a
uniquely American form of lore, but the United States
claims the tall tale as its own.
The association is so
strong that many uninitiated people equate the tall tale
and folklore, using the terms interchangeably.
This form
of oral narrative also owes much to the frontier
experience.
Richard Dorson believes that "the
free-and-easy masculine society of the frontier and the
back country relished tall tales of hunting, fishing,
changeable weather, fast-growing crops, mythical animals
and the reversal of natural laws" (Selected Essays 174).
The backwoodsman told tall tales or "lied" for a number of
reasons.
Mody Boatright claims that the frontiersman "lied
in order to satirize his betters; he lied to cure others of
the swell head; he lied in order to initiate the recruits
to his way of life.
He lied to amuse himself and his
fellows" (Folk Laughter 87).
There are various explanations for the popularity of
the tall tale on the American frontier.
Some claim that
the backwoodsman bragged to cover his own lack of selfconfidence and lack of breeding.
Others claim that the
tall tale was a result of the frontiersman's exuberant
self-confidence and love of life, but neither explanation
^
15
is necessarily true or complete.
To understand the
phenomenon, the folklorist needs to have a sense of
history.
Conditions on the frontier were usually rough and
primitive, and those who visited from Europe or "back East"
often ridiculed the lack of "civilization" and gentility in
the region.
Those on the frontier did not hold genteel
customs and other such frippery in high esteem, and they in
turn boasted of their primitive conditions, often claiming
that things were worse than they actually were in order to
give the outsider what he wanted.
The backwoodsman created
an environment that was a caricature of the "dude's" vision
of the West.
Mody Boatright puts it best when he says that
tall tales were "a notification of the repudiation of the
values of the outsider....The frontier braggart assumed the
role expected of him; but in exaggerating it to comic epic
proportions, he satirized it" (Folk Laughter 32).
The brags and attitudes have outlasted the frontier
experience.
For example, most people have a certain image
of Texas, formed from watching westerns at the movies and
on television.
E.P. "Andy" Anderson, formerly of Hereford,
found that he had to live up to this expected image when
his family moved from Minnesota to Dallas in the 1960s.
When he returned to Minnesota to visit, his friends asked
him what Texas was like.
believe him.
He told them, but they would not
So he began making up stories about riding
16
his horse to school and witnessing shootouts in the
downtown area.
"truth."
His friends believed these versions of the
Years later, Anderson still retells the story and
chuckles over it.
He has picked up on the frontier
attitude and pokes fun at his old friends by making fun of
himself.
The Cowboy's Cultural Values
The move from the American frontier to the cowboy's
West was an easy one.
the frontier values.
The cowboy culture retains many of
Even in modern times, the ranch
culture is rural and far-flung.
The cowboy is independent
and self-reliant, and every man is judged by what he does
or how skillful he is, not by who his parents are, how
well-educated he is or how much money he has.
The modern
cowboy shares these traits with his frontier ancestors.
The cowboy's attitude toward money is shaped by his
frontier heritage.
Cash was scarce on the frontier and is
almost as rare for the working man in the more modern rural
cultures.
Materialism has never had a strong hold on the
cowboy; anybody who is tempted by mammon is soon lured away
from the ranch to a more lucrative profession.
Because he
never had much anyway, money has never meant a great deal
to a cowboy.
According to Ramon F. Adams, a cowboy "would
work hard for thirty dollars a month, then spend it all
with his characteristic freeheartedness in an hour of
17
relaxation.
All he was seriously concerned about was
plenty to eat, a good horse to ride, a saddle for his
throne" (Cowboy Lingo 149). Stan Hoig's anecdote about a
cowboy and his money illustrate this attitude:
A cowboy
went into town with fifty dollars in his pocket and
returned home the next day flat broke.
He explained that
he had bought a round of drinks for everyone in the saloon,
then bought himself a fancy steak dinner, spending about
thirty-five dollars in all.
When a friend asked him what
had happened to the rest of his money, "the cowboy
scratched his head thoughtfully.
'Durned if I know, boys.
I musta spent that other fifteen dollars foolishly!'"
(181).
Even today, cowboys live in relative poverty,
passively accepting low wages.
According to John Erickson,
there are several reasons for this attitude, but mainly the
cowboy is naive about money.
His attitude is that "if the
boss could pay me better, I know that he would" (Modern
Cowboy 217).
Stan Hoig believes that the cowboy's attitude about
money
was instrumental in the creation of what was
known as the "range code" which allowed ranch
folks to trustingly leave their doors
unlocked.... It was an accepted custom for a
cowboy to stop at an unattended ranch house,
enter, and help himself to the food. (180)
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18
The attitude and custom prevailed until about 1970.
In the 1960s, the late Gordon Bright had a houseboat on the
Nueces River.
The boat was well-stocked with foodstuff and
was left unlocked at all times.
People often used the
houseboat and helped themselves to the food, leaving
replacements the next time they came by or leaving money to
pay for the goods.
The food and money were never stolen,
and the boat was never vandalized, except by nature when a
flood washed it downstream.
Unfortunately, even country
folks had to start locking up in response to a rash of
rural burglaries, but the basic attitude toward money
remains.
Another interesting cultural trait of the cowboy is
his inventive use of language.
According to Erickson, the
cowboy "makes the simple act of talking a pastime and a
form of entertainment" (Modern Cowboy 53). Erickson
mentions one expression of contempt that is fairly common
in West Texas:
"I'd like to buy him for what he's worth
and sell him for what he thinks he's worth" (53). Other of
Erickson's expressions are less well-known, but equally
colorful.
One cowboy said of his son, "If you put a dollar
bill in one pocket and a wildcat in the other, I don't know
which one would get out first" (53). Or a cowboy
complaining about his horse might say, "You couldn't get
him out of a walk if you tied a rake to his tail" (54).
y
19
Paul Patterson gives another colorful example in "The
Old-Time Cowboy Inside Out":
He complains of the different
types of modern cowboys, including the asphalt cowboy.
Patterson then goes on to explain that people should not
confuse an asphalt cowboy with an "ass-fault" cowboy.
He
says, "Your asphalt cowboy is the one jockeying the
eighteen-wheelers up and down the asphalt; whereas you
ass-fault cowboy is the one making an ass of himself on his
CB radio, and it's nobody's fault but his own" ("Old-Time
Cowboy" 77).
Colorful range language has been a part of the culture
for quite a few years.
Hoig comments on it in a book
published in the 1950s.
He says that the cowboy is "a
master at amusing, picturesque phraseology which employed
similes and metaphors drawn from range life" (35). For
example, someone who is upset might squeal "like a pig
under a gate" (Erickson, Modern Cowboy 54). Authors who
came from the cowboy tradition make good use of these
similes and metaphors.
San Angelo writer Elmer Kelton uses
some especially colorful similes in the narrative of his
novel The Day the Cowboys Quit: someone spoke with "sarcasm
bitter as gypwater" (11); something was "beginning to
irritate...like gravel in his boots" (39); when someone
spoke, "the words came slowly, like a calf dragged out of a
herd at the end of a rope"(68); and someone's tone of voice
20
"was like a hoof rasp going to the quick" (106).
In The
Man Who Rode Midnight, there is a woman whose "glare would
wilt Johnsongrass" (10) and a man who "could lay a chill
over a Fourth of July barbecue" (48).
Metaphorical
allusions also call up images of range life:
when the
striking cowboys in The Day the Cowboys Quit are unable to
make a decision about their demands, someone decides to do
something "to get this wagon out of the mud" (90); when
speaking about one of the Eastern ranch investors, the
cowboys admit, "in Selkirk's place, we'd kink our tails a
little bit ourselves" (101).
The use of language also reflects the cowboy's dry
sense of humor.
The cowboy can often tell a joke without
cracking a smile.
It is sometimes difficult to tell just
from looking at a man's face whether he is serious about
what he says or just "funning you."
Humor is expressed in
language, jokes, pranks, tall tales, and personal
anecdotes.
According to Stan Hoig, humor reflects the
cowboy's "pastimes, his pleasures, his complaints, his
reactions to the circus of creation that even in its tragic
moments seemed to hold some amusement for him" (22). For
the cowboy, humor serves as a form of release from the
stress of daily living, for conditions are often difficult.
Hoig believes that "without an ability to laugh at troubles
and hard times, the cowboy could never have withstood the
x_
^y
21
pressures piled on him in a world of strenuous work and
violent action" (23). It should not be surprising that
humor is one of the strongest elements in the cowboy's oral
traditions.
The Cowboy Folktale
The cowboy tale has been shaped and made different
from its European ancestors by its travel over the sea and
across the expanding American frontier.
Only five of
Thompson's nine tale types survived the journey; the
marchen, novella, myth and fable have no place in cowboy
traditions.
The explanatory tale exists but is rare.
The
most popular type of explanatory tale concerns place names.
Also, one occasionally hears stories explaining the
existence of plants in certain regions.
For example, as a
child, the author heard a tale explaining how mesquite
brush came to Texas:
Once there was no mesquite in Texas,
but when the Spanish moved cattle into the region, they
brought along mesquite beans to feed them.
trailed northward, the seeds were scattered.
As the cattle
The plants
took root and multiplied until they were the dominant form
of vegetation in the region.
In addition to plant stories,
certain legends about animals remain, such as.stories of
how the mockingbird got its songs or how it got white
feathers on its wings, but most people learn these animal
^
11
stories from books rather than from the oral tradition.
Though many people know of these explanatory tales, they
are not particularly popular and are not repeated often in
story-telling sessions.
The four remaining tale types are all popular in
cowboy oral tradition.
Local legends, a curious blend of
history and folklore, hold a fascination for almost all
rural people.
These tales are specific to a region and
change from place to place, but certain topics provide
common motifs for these legends.
The stories usually deal
with early settlers in the area and the hardships they
faced.
Stories of encounters with Indians are popular, as
are stories of encounters with dangerous white men--horse
thieves, outlaws, and rowdy cowboys or soldiers.
In some
stories, nature is the adversary; people face floods, grass
fires, and drought.
Finally, some stories appeal to the
imagination because of an unusual incident (such as
shooting a white buffalo) or because of an unsolved
mystery.
Some of the hero tales, or personal legends, are
closely tied to historical legends since the tales revolve
around historic figures.
Unlike other regions and
occupations, the cowboy hero tales never centered around
any one person; instead, the tales are specific to a region
and usually concern early settlers of outstanding
23
character--good and bad, hero and villain.
The stories
that circulate orally tell of a few outstanding incidents
in the heroes' lives.
Another form of hero tale is popular
as well, the anecdotal story.
The raconteur usually uses
real or made-up names in these stories, but the focus is on
the tale itself.
These tall tales appear in various
regions and different time periods with different names
plugged in or sometimes with no names at all, only the
motifs and general plot-lines remain the same.
The Western animal stories, like the animals they
represent, are a totally different breed than the European
tales where one animal outsmarts another.
The southwestern
coyote-as-trickster tales do deal with the coyote's
cleverness, but most animal tales deal with encounters
between humans and animals rather than with dealings
between animals.
The cowboy tells stories about the
domestic animals he works with and about the animals
indigenous to the region--snakes and to a lesser degree
coyotes, skunks, deer, bear, jackrabbit and panther.
tales take on two major forms:
These
the personal experience
tale in which the raconteur recounts a true story of his or
a friend's experience with animals; and the anecdotal or
tall tale about wild animals in the region.
The jest or humorous story is probably the most
popular genre of cowboy tale, and it often spills over into
24
other genres, such as animal or hero tales.
According to
Stan Hoig, range humor grows out of real, everyday
happenings and is "based on some elemental fact of cowboy
life" (22). These stories fall into three basic
categories:
tales.
jokes, tall tales, and personal experience
Obviously, the lines between these categories often
blur, and a story could reasonably be classified and put
into more than one genre or sub-category.
Because of their prevalence in the past, tall tales
might deserve a category of their own; however, they are no
longer as popular as they once were, and they fit into
other sub-categories.
These stories are basically comedies
of exaggeration which are told for entertainment, and no
one is really expected to believe them.
According to J.
Frank Dobie in the preface to Tall Tales from Texas Cow
Camps, the tall tales "express a way that range
foik...cartooned objects familiar to them like
rattlesnakes, sand storms, jack rabbits, the expanding and
contracting powers of rawhide, the suddenness of Texas
northers...and other things" (viii).
In the introduction
of the same book, Boatright goes on to explain that the
favorite subjects for "windies" were fauna, especially the
rattlesnake, imaginary animals, weather, and "narrow and
ingenious escapes and hair-raising adventures" (xx-xxii).
25
In contrast, the personal experience tales deal with
supposedly true, humorous happenings.
They should be
unique for each person, but they are not.
Common themes
and motifs appear in these stories, even when the
raconteurs live in different towns and do not know each
other, and even when the subject concerns something that
really happened to the storyteller.
This phenomenon can be
explained by the fact that certain incidents are fairly
common among people who share an occupation and a region.
Because of their common cultural background, these people
share a sense of what is funny as well, so they remember
and retell certain similar stories.
The personal experience story has grown into a new, or
only recently legitimate, genre of folktale.
The humorous
tale, or merry occurrence, is only one branch of this
popular genre.
According to Linda Degh, the other two
categories of true experience stories are the happy
occurrences (such as the lucky break or narrow escape) and
the sinister occurrences, such as crimes and mysterious
tragedies (78).
Degh goes on to explain that "these
stories grow out of reminiscences of the past, and events,
hearsay, rumor, gossip, and personal experiences of the
present" (78).
In the cowboy culture, these stories
usually deal with jokes or pranks, stories of prowess and
skill, and to a lesser degree, stories of hard times.
26
The bulk of the cowboy folktales fit into one of these
six tale types:
the explanatory tale, the local historical
legend, the hero tale or personal legend, the animal tale,
jests and humorous anecdotes, and personal experience
tales.
The stories reflect the cowboy's sense of humor.
They explore the cowboy's regional history, his land, his
people, his work, and the animals he works with and lives
beside.
Taken together, these tales reveal a great deal
about the modern cowboy and his cultural values.
CHAPTER III
HISTORICAL LEGENDS
Historical legends are bits of local history, grounded
in truth, that have passed into the oral culture.
They can
be distinguished from oral history in several ways.
First
of all, oral history must be reported by someone who
witnessed a particular incident or participated in it;
historical legends delve further into the past and are
reported and repeated by people who did not witness the
event but who heard about it through various sources that
can supposedly be traced back to a participant.
Secondly,
oral history must contain certain consistent, verifiable
facts, much like a history book; historical legends exist
in myriad versions and change with each teller.
The story
is the major concern rather than historical veracity.
Historical legends are a largely unexplored area of
folklore, yet they are a dominant subject for cowboy
storytellers.
Printed sources seldom mention this aspect
of cowboy lore, but there are indications that the stories
have been in circulation in the cowboy culture for many
years.
For example, one legend that has been widely
27
28
circulated and debated throughout the state of Texas is the
story of William Travis drawing a line on the ground and
asking the men of the Alamo to step over it if they were
willing to remain and fight, even though they faced certain
death.
Every schoolchild in Texas hears the story, whether
as fact or legend, and the dramatic incident is always
included in movie versions of the Alamo battle.
Debates
about the incident's authenticity have occupied historians
for over a hundred years (as evidenced by Zuber's defense
of the story in the pages of the Southwestern Historical
Quarterly, Volume V, pages 1-11, 263-266; and Volume VI,
pages 67-69).
Veracity aside, the legend has won a secure
place in Texas folklore.
It is, in fact, the most widely
circulated historical legend in the state, and the 1939
Texas Folklore Society Publication is largely devoted to it
and other traditional Alamo stories of questionable
historicity.
Other legends which have a narrower, more local scope
exist in all areas of the country.
According to Jan Harold
Brunvand, "Such occurrences as lynchings, feuds,
sensational crimes, scandals, fires and other natural
disasters, Indian massacres, and labor disputes have
generated legends..." (American Folklore 179). On the
Texas Panhandle and South Plains, the more popular legends
usually deal with Indian battles and the adventures of
29
early settlers in the region.
The legends' exclusion from
formal folklore studies is the result of their local nature
and of the fact that, as Brunvand claims, they are often
viewed as "simply garbled local history of little value"
(American Folklore 179).
These stories attract the cowboy raconteur because
they reflect his roots and give him a sense of his own
place in history.
"finding home."
They provide a sense of belonging or
Most people find "home" through
relationships or through living in one place for a long
period of time.
Cowboys seldom have these ties.
Until
recently, most cowboys were single men who had left family
behind, and even today, cowboys usually move and change
jobs frequently.
So the cowboy often connects himself with
traditions of the past to achieve a sense of belonging.
These stories are also part of the land itself, and
the cowboy feels a close tie to his region and its past.
The values and courage of the early settlers are values
that the cowboy would like to believe still exist in his
own culture.
For instance, the early settlers overcame
their hardships with courage and patience.
Sometimes even
simple acts such as crossing the sandhills near Monahans
proved difficult.
In his book Castle Gap and the Pecos
Frontier, Patrick Dearen recounts a story told by Elizabeth
Mitchell Moorehead.
The story was told by several
raconteurs before it reached Dearen.
He relates:
30
The wagons had narrow tires, and she said they
had to get out all their quilts, fold them, and
put them under the tires so that the mules
could pull," recounted J. Conrad Dunagan of
Monahans, who interviewed her in Pecos in the
1960's. "And when they got over that piece of
quilt they'd run back and get it and take it up
and put it under the wheels for the next
stretch." (115-116)
Other early settlers faced even more spectacular
hardships, and their courage and cunning were invaluable,
as evidenced by one story that Piner Stephens of Randall
County tells:
One man I knew and listened to a lot out in
New Mexico, his name was Williams. He
celebrated his ninetieth birthday, must have
been in '36 or '37, and he came to that part of
New Mexico when he was just seventeen or
eighteen. He and two other boys run off into
New Mexico, and they started them a horse ranch
there on the place where he still lives.
He told about the Shoshone Indians coming
through one time, when it was just him and
those two boys. And they stole all the horses
and left them afoot. Then the other boys asked
him, "Well, what are we going to do?"
And he says, "Why, we re going after them
horses." And they followed those Indians,
trailed them for, I think nearly two weeks 'til
they caught up with them. And they finally
caught up with them and found where they was
camping. They watched them all that day, to
see what they was doing. And at night they'd
bring the horses in, and they had a brush
corral. So when night come and everything'd
get quiet, and they d slip down there and
separate, and when he whistled, they'd rush
into the corral and grab them just any horse
they could and get on him and stampede them.
And take off. And they did. And they got on
the opposite side of where they wanted the
horses to go. And they'd made it up that if
one of them didn't get a horse or got throwed
off, then the others wouldn't come back after
^
31
him, just keep going, just leave him on his
own.
So they went down there and they split up.
And all they had was just a rope. Each man had
a rope around his waist. He thought he'd give
the others time to get set and time to get to
the corral. Then he whistled and they run in
through the horses and just grabbed anything
they could get in the dark. And of course when
they did, they stampeded them, and it was just
an old brush corral, so over the fence they
went. And they run a ways, and the feller
thought he'd see if he was by himself. So he
hollered and both the boys answered back. So
they all three made it.
After the horses quit running, they took the
ropes from off their waists and made a
hackamore and put it on the horses where they
could ride them. They come on south into
Arizona, away from the Indians, and they stayed
a while. And they run into somebody and traded
for some saddles. And they knew the Indians
would be a following them, so they
went--instead of going back to their ranch,
they came back down into Arizona and spent the
winter there. And then the next spring, they
came back into New Mexico and spent the summer
there, and then that fall they went back home.
But they never did hear from the Indians any
more.
Williams was cautious, however. Stephens went on to
explain:
After the Indians run the horses off, after
that they built a stable onto the house. And
it just had two or three little narrow windows
in it and no doors on the outside. They had to
bring the horses in through the house. And any
time they'd have an Indian scare, they'd put
two or three horses in there, where the Indians
couldn't get to them, so they wouldn't be left
afoot.
The tale appeals to modern listeners for several
reasons.
They admire Williams' courage and tenacity as he
V^j
32
trails the Indians on foot for two weeks.
The listener is
relieved and triumphant when Williams' courage and cunning
are rewarded by the recovery of the stolen horses.
The
epilogue about building a stable onto the house is a common
frontier anecdote, found in reminiscences and repeated as
family history.
Mabelle McCurdy, who was born in 1898,
often tells a similar story concerning her mother's
girlhood.
Leon.
Her mother was a Texas girl, raised near De
When she was young, they had problems with Indian
raids, so they would put their horses outside a window,
pull the reins through the window and tie them around their
wrists as they slept to keep the Indians from stealing the
horses.
Not all tales of encounters with Indians have as
positive an outcome as the Williams story.
Stephens tells
the story of another Indian raid that had more deadly
results:
They tell me at Miami, coming along the
Canadian River north of Miami there, two
freighters were coming down from Dodge City,
and the wagons and teams were good. And the
Indians were following them. They could hear
the Indians bird-calling on each side of them.
So they stopped at dinner, and this older
freighter told this young feller that was
driving this other wagon, says, "The Indians
are following us. They'll attack after while."
Says, "If you want to make a run for it," he
told him which horse they had there that was
the fastest. He says, "I don't think you can
get away from them, but if you want to try it,
why, you take the fastest horse and make a run
or It.
33
So when they got done ea ting, why, they
acted like they was hooking the team back up,
and they slipped this horse around and got him
out of the harness, and thi s boy got on him and
took off down the road. An d he got away. And
come to the first ranch, an d he told them what
had happened back up there, It was fifteen or
twenty miles. And the ranc her and his cowboys
took up there. But when th ey got up there, the
Indians had already attacke d him, and they
found him tied to the wagon wheel where they
had burned him.
Question: When was this ?
Stephens: It happened r ight after they came
to this country, and they c ame in '78. That
happened right after that. One of the last
Indian scares that they had
Sometimes the high spirits of the soldiers and cowboys
presented just as great a threat as Indian raids.
Piner
Stephens explains:
I was raised at Miami. And when I was born
there, it wasn't too old a town, and I knew a
lot of the old settlers, and I worked for them
and grew up when they were older men, and I
heard them talking.
At old Mobeetie, it was Ft. Elliott in the
early days, and one man run a saloon there.
And he said that one pay day at the end of the
month, why, the soldiers got paid and the
cowboys was in and the buffalo hunters was in,
and things got pretty wild. A bunch of these
cowboys just started in at one end of the
street and would go into a saloon and just tear
it all to pieces, and go down to the next one.
And he said when they some into his saloon, he
was ready for them. When they come into his
saloon, he had two sawed-off shotguns a laying
on the bar. And he said he told them, he says,
"Cowboys, the drinks are on the house." Says,
"But you drink and then leave." Says, "The
first one that starts any trouble is going to
get both barrels." And he says they didn t
cause any trouble.
34
Another early Mobeetie resident literally took to the
hills when the soldiers were in town.
Stephens also tells
her story:
Another old-timer there. He came in with the
buffalo hunters, and he liked the Panhandle so
well, that when the buffalo hunting was done,
why, he went back and brought his wife and
family to Fort Elliott at Mobeetie. And then
later he settled at Miami. And I heard her
telling about a--when pay day come and the
soldiers and cowboys all gathered in and got
reckless, a shooting up, that lots of times she
would get her kids in one room and take the
mattresses off the bed and put around them.
That so many stray bullets were flying around.
And said that a few times it got so bad that
she took her kids and went to the hills and
spent the night, which was much safer than
staying in town. They said the soldiers were
worse than the Indians or the cowboys.
Sometimes innocent bystanders were not lucky enough to
escape stray bullets.
Chip Boreing recounts a story he
heard from his father, who worked for years at the Yellow
House Ranch between Littlefield and Levelland.
Boreing
explains:
I don't know exactly where it took place.
This was back when it [the Yellow House] was
still the XIT, like 1880, I believe my dad
said. And Charley Vinsen was an old man when
my dad met him. My dad was still pretty young,
and this guy came out to the ranch, had been
gone for years and he come back and was looking
around. And he told my dad the story about--he
was a young kid, I'm gonna guess sixteen,
eighteen years old, and was workin' on the
ranch just kind of a--wasn't really a cowboy,
just kind of a gopher, you know, errand boy.
And two guys had shot the same antelope, or had
thought they shot the same antelope. And they
both came runnin' up to it. And so, "What are
you doin' with my antelope." Said, "No it's my
35
antelope." And they got into a fight. And one
of them pulled a gun and shot at the other one
and missed him and hit this Tom Ballard, who
was off, you know, minding his own business or
watchin' or whatever, and killed him. So this
Charley Vinsen guy, they loaded this dead man
on the wagon and sent him back to the ranch
with him.
Well, it took quite a while in the wagon,
and it started getting dark, and this kid
started getting scared. And he was afraid to
walk by the dead body. And as long as he was
behind him, he thought he was all right, but he
would open a gate. When it started gettin'
dark, he started gettin' scared. And he got to
where he was afraid to walk by that body,
afraid he was goin' to jump up and grab 'em, so
he started leavin' gates open. He left several
gates open. He'd open them and just keep on
goin'. Maybe that's why he didn't work there
anymore.
And he finally made it to the house. And
they put the body in the commissary, which was
what we called it. And it's still out there
today, the bottom half...[description of
commissary.] And they put this dead body in
there where it was cool. And I think he stayed
there about three or four days until the
sheriff could ride out and pronounce him dead.
But he's, I think, the only person that they
really know is buried out there on the Yellow
House. There's a little--I don't even know if
it's still there. It was there about ten years
ago. It's a little patch, you know, ten by ten
or fifteen by fifteen feet around, a little
barbed wire fence around it. And there's
supposed to be four graves there, and Tom
Ballard is the only one that's got a--that you
can still read his name. They just found a
flat stone, you know, and kinda chisled his
name on it and stuck it up there. It's still
there.
Evidently lone graves often inspire legends.
In the
foreword to Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier, Elmer Kelton
recalls a story from his own childhood in the Pecos region.
He writes:
36
As a boy helping work cattle in the McElroy's
south pasture, I came upon a lonely grave out
amid the greasewood and the low-growing
mesquite. I was told that it was the resting
place of a cowboy murdered by horse thieves,
who were later caught and shot or hanged, their
bodies flung into a hand-dug hole we knew as
Horse Well. I remember my fascination with
that place, the chilly thrill of looking down
the dark shaft and trying to imagine I could
see the skeletons. I tried to tell myself
there was nothing to it. But when we camped
there with the chuckwagon a couple of times a
year, I contrived to see that my father's
bedroll lay between mine and that ghostly well,
(xii)
In Borden and Garza counties on the South Plains,
conflict centered not on Indians or rowdy cowboys and
soldiers, but on a land rush in the area at the turn of the
century when farmers started filing on land that the
ranchers had been using.
the Ribbon Wars.
Local residents call the fracas
The late Tom Bouchier of Post explains:
The way the y'd file on this land, you'd have a
certain tim e in the morning you'd go to the
courthouse [in Gail] to file on it, and there
was always two parties. There was the blue
ribbons and the red ribbons. The red ribbons
was the nes ters that was moving in here tryin'
to file on the land that the ranchers
had--under fence. I'll put it that way. Under
fence. And the blue ribbon was the ranchers,
And of cour se they liked--did very well for
about three or four years. They'd have these
land rushes at Gail. And there'd just be a
knock-down drag-out to see who'd get in there
first to fi le on it.
Mr. Bouchier did not remember any specific fights
because he was a small child at the time, but Jerry
^
37
Wilkinson of Slaton tells a version of one fight that
involved her family:
Well the story is, again Gra ndpa Burnet was
down in the Borden County--i t's county seat. I
think it's Gail. And there was a bunch of the
cousins and nephews. And Gr andpa wanted the
best land, and he was kinda at the back of the
line. So he had the boys st art a fight among
themselves so that it would- -so that he could
get to the head of the line, So the Blairs,
the Rogers, and the Burnets, which were all
cousins, and these were youn g men in their late
twenties, early and late twenties, and they
just started fighting. And then Grandpa got to
the head of the line, so the refore, he could
file the claim on the land h e was wantin'. And
get the water and everything , which is very
important in that part of th e country, because
if you don't have a source o f water, you might
as well forget it.
Not all historical legends center on conflict with
people; sometimes nature is the adversary.
Floods and
grass fires can present a challenge for today's cowboy as
well as for his frontier predecessor.
Knowing the ways of
the land and being able to read nature's signs have averted
many disasters.
Stephens tells the story of one wise man,
a Mr. Baird who homesteaded along Tierra Blanca Creek in
Randall county just east of Buffalo Damn:
We's down on the creek one time after a big
rain, and he showed me where his dugout was
that he homesteaded. Said he hunted out the
highest water mark that he could find and dug
his dugout above that. And said a few years
after that, they had a big rain back west of
here. It just rained and rained. Said the old
Tierra Blanca was just spread out all over the
country and getting up close to his door. And
he got tow sacks and filled them with dirt and
stacked them around his door. Said, water got
y
38
up to about two foot of his door and stayed
there all day. And he sat there a waiting to
see what it was going to do. Along about the
middle of the evening, it began to go down. It
didn't get quite to his door. Said it was the
highest he had ever seen it.
At times, man would help nature's destructive powers
along for his own selfish purposes.
Stephens relates
another story that Mr. Baird told him:
He was sitting on his porch late one
evening, and the house faced east. And the
road then was south of the pavement. It went
by his house. And he was sitting there one
evening an hour or two before sundown, and he
noticed somebody coming, just a riding like
everything. So he said that he knew something
bad had happened to somebody, a tragedy or
something. When they got pretty close, he
walked out to the road to get the news. But
the feller just kept a riding and coming on and
never slowed down, went right on by. And he
recognized the boy. So he said, "Wonder what's
going on?"
So he went back and sat down in his chair,
and in just a few minutes, here four or five
men came, riding like everything. He walked
out beside the road and thought, well, maybe
they'll stop. So they pulled up, and it was
the sheriff and some deputies. And they asked
him, "Did so-and-so go by here a horseback?"
And he said, "Yes, just a few minutes ago."
So here they went. About ten or eleven
o'clock that night, neighbors come woke him up
to put out a big prairie fire. The fire's
coming from the west. So everybody from the
country gathered in to fight the fire. It
burned for miles before they got it out. The
sheriff and the deputies were there to help
fight it out. They had got to crowding this
boy and his horse began to give out. So he
jumped down and set the fire and rode off and
left them. And they had to stay help put the
fire out. The boy left and growed up and
didn't come back until he was married and had a
family .
Question: What had he done?
y
39
Stephens: There were four boys in Canyon,
and when a freight train would stop here, some
of them would get on the freight train, and
when it would pull up at the grade in Umbarger,
they'd break into the box car and throw out
things they wanted. And then some of the other
boys would be in a wagon and team, and they'd
come along and pick it up.
Nature is seldom cooperative in West Texas, and lack
of water is often a serious problem.
When the town of Post
was established, people soon discovered that they could not
find water when they dug wells at the townsite below the
Caprock.
They solved the problem by digging wells on top
of the Caprock and piping the water down to the city.
Douglas Tipton of Garza County says:
And they decided they'd move off the Cap then,
and they drilled all these water wells,
windmill wells, and tied them all together and
had a pretty substantial little bunch of water.
They built an old reservoir right under the
edge of the Cap. It's still there, this
concrete reservoir. And they had--when I was a
kid. Post got their water from about twenty or
thirty windmills. That's what supplied the
water for Post. My daddy helped dig some of
them wells, him and my oldest brother. They
helped dig. They dug by hand, you know. And
they just lined whose windmills up from over
about south of where Rag Town [Close City] is
now nearly to the edge of the Cap, and tied
them all in together. They was Samson
windmills, first steel wheel. They was
twenty-four foot wheels on them, and a three
inch cylinder. That's how Post got their water
for years and years.
Other historical legends linger in oral tradition
because they deal with unusual incidents or discoveries.
Some are only short narratives of colorful incidents that
40
have no great significance.
For example, when Tom Bouchier
was a child, rancher John Slaughter gave him his first
horse and let him help with a roundup.
Bouchier's story is
told in a Lubbock Avalanche-Journal article:
He "grabbed the horse's tail and went up the
treacherous Lone Cedar Trail" to the caprock
like other Slaughter cowboys had to do on the
cattle baron's orders. The steep ascent and
descent were "too hard on a horse carrying a
rider" and Slaughter fired cowboys who rode.
(Burton 14-B)
The story appeals to the imaginations of those who live in
the shadow of the Caprock.
As they drive up the steep
ascent of the Caprock on a divided highway, they may wonder
about or recall the difficulties the early settlers in the
region had in making the same trek.
Unusual incidents, such as Post's water supply, are
another popular subject for historical legends.
These
stories are as varied as the towns they represent.
A
favorite story in the Borger area concerns the day that the
Texas Rangers drove the whores out town during the early
days of the oil boom.
Jerry Wilkinson tells the story as
she heard it from a friend she worked with in Borger.
Wilkinson says:
And she was there when they drove the whores
out of Borger. She saw that happen. Borger is
laid out--At that time the railhead was in
Panhandle. And there's two streets. There is
Main and Grand, and they intersect like a "T".
And the whore houses were on Grand. And you
could walk down the street, and she can
remember--Well, her daddy and her husband were
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41
walking down the street, and the women would
come up and say, "Hey, Johnny! Hey, Johnny!"
And so they started calling her daddy Johnny
because the whores would come out. Because men
would walk, you know, up and down. And then
she was there in town where they, when they
drove the whores out of Borger, where the
Rangers rounded--went from building to building
to building and had the women gather their
stuff up, and then the Rangers got on horseback
with black snakewhips and literally popped the
whips over the whores' heads, having them walk
the twenty, twenty-five miles to Panhandle
which is where the railhead was. But that was
the closest way to go at that time, because
it's forty miles of very desolate country to go
from Borger to Amarillo now. And there wasn't
even a road then. You had to go from Amarillo
to Panhandle and back at that time.
Borger writer Jack Walker also recounts the story in his
novel Boomer's Gold.
He sets the date of the incident in
April 1927, but his version is a little less colorful than
Wilkinson's; there are no bullwhips, and the whores walk or
ride toward Amarillo.
Other stories appeal to the imagination for different
reasons.
One of Piner Stephens' stories tells of a
skeleton found in a cave.
Obviously, the unsolved mystery
involved in the story has helped keep it alive.
Stephens
says:
Lester Service, his folks come here when he was
just a boy back in the '80s. I believe they
came here in '88 or something like that. He
said there on Tierra Blanca, the creek south of
Canyon, him and some boys was down there one
day a playing, swimming, and above the water
line back in the bank, they found a cave and
crawled back in there. And they found the
skeleton of a man laying back in there. And
his rifle was laying there, and his six-shooter
42
was laying there, canteen. And they came in
and reported it to the old sheriff. And they
figure that either he got sick and crawled in
there, or he got wounded in a fight with the
Indians or something and crawled in there and
died.
Service's discovery is a great deal like an incident
in James Michener's novel Centennial.
In the Michener
book, a boy discovers a beaver cave hidden under the
waterline of a creek.
When his parents accidentally kill a
man, the body is hidden in the cave and is discovered years
later.
Because Michener did some of his research for the
novel in the archives of the Panhandle-Plains Museum in
Canyon, it is possible that this very story sparked his
imagination and was integrated into his narration.
Chip Boreing tells a similar story about his brother
finding an Indian burial site in a cave on the Yellow House
Ranch.
He says:
These beads were dug out of a cave by my
oldest brother out there wh en he was- -I don't
know, when he was a kid. A nd there a re a bunch
of caves in the Cap out the re. They' re not but
six or eight foot deep. An d he went back in
this cave, and I think he f ound a pie ce of
pottery. And he got all ex cited, and he went
home and took a window sere en off the house,
and ran back down there, an d got him a shovel,
and was taking dirt out and was sifti ng it.
And he found these [beads], and there was one
other that I gave to my aun t.
And he found that, these beads, an d some
pottery, and these [human t eeth]. So evidently,
somebody was buried in that cave. Th ese four
[teeth] here were dug out o f the cave
So
evidently, somebody, some I ndian was buried in
or had gotten hurt and had crawled in it and
died in there, you know, or whatever. But
43
these four teeth, and these teeth weren't in
the best of shape either. Those all came out
of the same cave.
Boreing concludes his story with a description of the cave.
It is interesting to note that the story-tellers
follow Olrik's Law of Opening and Closing.
They do not
begin with the most important part of the action; instead,
they introduce the story slowly.
Nor do they end the
stories abruptly with the conclusion of the main action.
Instead, they proceed past the climax by adding related
details such as how Williams kept his horses from being
stolen again or what type of windmills pumped water for
Post.
The standard opening for historical legends is usually
background information about sources or informants.
This
information reinforces the authenticity of the stories.
The raconteur himself did not witness the events, but men
who were participants told the stories to him.
The
introductions reveal a closer tie to the incidents than the
"friend-of-a-friend stories" common in modern urban lore,
yet the stories could not be accepted as oral history.
They remain local legends that circulate in West Texas in
several different versions.
The legends are popular because both teller and
audience get vicarious pleasure from listening to stories
of other's adventures, adventures which put the modern
^
44
cowboy in no danger, but which appeal to his sense of
history and adventure.
In the foreword to Castle Gap and
the Pecos Frontier, Elmer Kelton says that the real value
of legends is that "they stir out imaginations; they
inspire in us a state of wonder that would be spoiled if
all truth became known and all mysteries solved....We cling
to them because...we want to believe" (xv). The statement
is true because if anyone questions the storytellers about
the veracity of these legends, they, like Frank Dobie,
would probably reply that if that is not the way it
happened, it is the way it should have happened.
For the
folklorist, the way it should have happened is the more
important element.
CHAPTER IV
PERSONAL LEGENDS
According to Jan Harold Brunvand, personal legends or
hero tales are "stories attached to individuals and told as
true....In American Folklore the hero legend has been
manifested first in such frontier figures as Davy Crockett
and...Mike Fink, later in regional characters like Johnny
Appleseed and Billy the Kid..." (American Folklore 170).
In the Texas Panhandle and South Plains, personal legends
usually involve the exploits of early regional settlers or
bad men, but no one person dominates the cowboy's hero
legends.
Instead, there are a number of local heroes. The
local hero is not nationally well-known, like Davy
Crockett, but he is rather strictly limited to a specific
region, and heroes change with locations.
Mody Boatright
explains that the cowboy is too independent for his fiction
to ever become unified around a single, supernatural,
strong-man character such as Paul Bunyon; his heroes are
common men who "merely possessed to the highest degree
endurance, agility, and other qualities which the cowboy of
45
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46
necessity exemplified, and which he consequently admired"
(Folklorist 4).
The cowboy's personal legends fall into two
categories:
legends involving local historical characters,
either heroes such as Charles Goodnight and Billy Dixon or
bad men such as Tom Horn; and stories built around the
character and exploits of family members, often the first
family members to settle in the region.
The first and
currently most popular category is closely related to
historical legends and is grounded in truth, though
variations exist.
The second category is closely related
to the first, except that the hero tale is usually limited
to family lore and is unknown to most people outside the
family circle.
Historical Legends
Historical legends are often repeated tales about real
individuals who played an important part in the development
of the region.
Local residents may remember the men for
their daring deeds (good or bad) or because of some unusual
circumstance or mystery surrounding them.
Usually,
historical versions of these people's stories can be found
in printed sources such as history textbooks, biographies,
journals, and newspaper articles.
The oral version of the
tales always centers on a few significant events in the
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47
person's life.
These oral versions are usually fairly
accurate, though the folks may exaggerate certain traits
that they especially esteem.
In the Post area, the most popular local hero is
cereal magnate C. W. Post, who was a colonizer in Garza
County.
Local residents may chuckle over some of the man's
activities since he is also known for his efforts as a
rainmaker, but he is generally admired and revered in the
community because of his honest concern for the people.
Charles Dudley Eaves gives an historical account of Mr.
Post's activities in Volume XLIII of the Southwestern
Historical Quarterly (pages 72-84 and 425-437), but local
residents keep his story alive in the oral tradition.
According to Tom Bouchier, Post came to the area in
1906 and bought about 335 sections of land, some on top of
the Caprock and some below it.
He sat up experimental
farms and in 1914 began to sell out small tracts of land to
farmers.
Douglas Tipton still owns land near Close City
that his parents bought from Post in 1914.
He says:
This abstract on this place, it dates from what
they call the sovereignty of the soil, you
know, and it was given to the railroad. And
they, they leased it to the Llano--Llano Land
and Cattle, I believe. And eventually they
sold it to him [C. W. Post]. It give a price.
I don't remember. A few cents an acre. And C.
W. Post, he bought this particular section of
land from--if I remember right, it's in the
abstract--from the Llano Land and Cattle
Company in about Nineteen and Five or Six.
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48
Post s efforts to start a farming community in Garza
County met with a number of obstacles.
For one thing, he
had to move the location of the county seat.
Tom Bouchier
says:
The first location from what we call Close City
is five miles off the--further than five miles
off the center of the county, so he had to
relocate the county seat, put it where it'd be
within the five miles of the center of the
county. So he moved it back from Close City
back to where it [Post] is now.
Once the town had been moved, people discovered that they
could not find water when drilling wells below the Caprock,
and they had to drill wells on top of the Cap and pipe the
water down to a reservoir near the city of Post.
No matter what problems he faced, Mr. Post was not
deterred, not even by a severe drought that hit the country
a few years after he brought in settlers.
Tom Bouchier
explains:
And I'll tell you how good a man he was.
Course after '16, the first year of 1916, after
he had quite a bit of improvements there. They
was good years '14, '15, and the first part of
'16. But then the severe drought started in
the latter part of '16, '17, and '18. And he
was never known to take a place away from
anybody. If they had made him take 'em back,
they'd come in and turn 'em back to him, and
he'd try to keep them from it. And he also
lent 'em money to even live on to stay there,
which is very unusual for anybody to be that
way.
49
Post's refusal to foreclose is something that makes
him a true hero in the eyes of the region.
have long memories about such dealings.
Country folks
Even today, local
residents of Dalhart will point to a certain bank and say,
"No one banks there because they repossessed land during
the Dust Bowl."
Rural people appreciate someone who will
accept a "slow note" during droughts and other hard times.
Lack of rain is always a problem in West Texas, and
Post tried to help the situation along by acting as a rain
maker.
Tom Bouchier says:
He tried, as you know, he tried to make it rain
here. That started in 1911, and he bought, all
together as I understand, fifty thousand
dollars worth of dynamite and stored it here.
And he operated--he was around, and he'd shoot
this dynamite when they would think it would be
favorable. As he said, he'd always understood
that it would rain after a battle. They'd have
rain, so he'd have these dynamite stations
about every hundred yards apart around the edge
of this Caprock here. And they shot it. I
think it's twice it'd rain here after that. It
rained over at O'Donnell one time. It rained
at Spur one time. And he got credit for it
whether he caused it or not.
Today, people often chuckle over v>7hat they call Post's Rain
Wars, but the old-timers take the effort more seriously.
They appreciate Post and the good intentions behind his
actions.
As Justiceburg resident Pearl Nance says, "He
arranged those farms so the farmers could buy 'em and pay
for 'em, too.
He was the greatest help to the country."
50
Other sections of West Texas have different heroes.
Probably the most often repeated legend on the Panhandle
concerns Billy Dixon and the Battle of Adobe Walls.
Dixon
was a buffalo hunter and early pioneer in the area.
Piner
Stephens of Randall County tells one of the more accurate
versions of the Adobe Walls story:
Billy Dixon died just about two years before
I was born. And his wife was a lot younger
than he was. And after he died, she moved into
the edge of Miami, about a half a mile from us.
Her youngest boy was about two years older than
I was. And I heard her tell about it [Battle
of Adobe Walls], what Billy Dixon had told her.
That these Indians attacked early one morning,
and they thought it was a shot that woke them
up, but later they found that it was one of the
ceiling beams that broke in the roof and popped
and woke them up. And they got to looking
around to see what it was, and just about that
time the Indians attacked. That woke them up.
When they first attacked, I think there was two
or three men sleeping outside that they killed,
but everybody else got into the building. And
it was a sort of a stand-off there for a day or
two.
And then at the end, Quanah Parker and some
of these Indians was sitting on a knoll, about
close to a half a mile off. I've forgotten how
close, but it was a long ways off. And the
chiefs were sitting up there and somebody said,
"Well, if we could shoot one of 'em, kill one
of 'em, why, the others would probably leave."
So Billy Dixon said, "I believe I can do it."
So he got his buffalo rifle out and pulled out
on him, and killed him. Right after that the
Indians gathered up and left.
The major variations in the story concern the distance
of the shot and the number of details.
is richer in detail than most.
Stephens' version
The only major point
^
51
missing is the type of gun Dixon used.
Most raconteurs
agree that it was a .50 caliber Sharps buffalo rifle.
As
for distance, some people claim that the Indian was a mile
away when Dixon shot him, but a half mile is the more
generally accepted version.
The tale is not restricted to cowboys but is repeated
by many groups in the region.
There is a replica of the
Adobe Walls trading post at Camp Don Harrington, a Boy
Scout camp which occupies part of Palo Duro Canyon.
year scouts are treated to versions of the story.
Every
The
author has heard some horribly mangled versions of the
legend at camp, but costumed historians from the
Panhandle-Plains Museum often repeat more accurate versions
of the tale when they visit the scouts.
Certainly the most
accurate account of Dixon's life is recorded in a biography
written by his wife, Olive Dixon, entitled The Life of
"Billy" Dixon.
Amarillo mystery-writer D. R. Meredith often draws on
local legends for her fiction material, and she includes a
version of the Dixon tale in her novel The Sheriff and the
Branding Iron Murders.
One of her characters is shot,
apparently from a mesa a half a mile away from the victim,
leaving a wound the size of a small artillery shell (84-5).
Later, when the sheriff receives the pathology report, the
doctor tells him that the murderer must think he is another
52
Billy Dixon.
Because the sheriff is a relative new-comer
to the area, the doctor repeats the story for him:
Billy Dixon shot an Indian off his horse at the
Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874 from a distance
of 1,583 yards. He said afterwards it was
plain damn luck, but what I'm saying is that a
half a mile is not unreasonable under the
circumstances. (102)
The doctor goes on to tell the sheriff that the man was not
murdered with a modern gun, but with "the same kind Billy
Dixon used:
a Sharps buffalo gun, except probably a .44-90
instead of a 50 caliber..." (102).
Another popular folk hero on the Panhandle is Charles
Goodnight.
This remarkable cattleman and naturalist has
many credits, all discussed in J. Evetts Haley's biography
Charles Goodnight:
Cowman and Plainsman.
Historically,
Goodnight is best known for blazing the Goodnight-Loving
cattle trail across the Llano Estacado.
In Panhandle oral
tradition, he is best known as the man who first brought
cattle into Palo Duro Canyon shortly after the Red River
Wars drove the Indians from the area, and as the man who
helped establish and run the JA Ranch which includes parts
of Palo Duro Canyon.
Piner Stephens, a former JA cowboy,
repeats the most popular story:
He was one of the first ones that brought
cattle in and put them in the canyon. They
come down what they call the Indian trail. And
they wintered down in the Palo Duro Canyon, and
when they brought their cattle in, they had to
run the buffalo out of the lower end in front
53
of them. And they had to keep riders at the
lower end to keep the buffalo back, to keep
them out and keep their cattle in the canyon.
And then after that first year, then they moved
over east to where the ranch is now.
The name Goodnight is said with reverence on the
Panhandle.
J. Frank Dobie says that Goodnight "made a
deeper imprint on the Great Plains than any other man who
has lived there" (Cow People 283). He established ranches,
made treaties with the Comanche Indians, studied the plants
and animals of the region, and experimented to improve
cattle breeding.
He was an honest man with pride and
character who made and lost several fortunes in his
lifetime.
Goodnight:
vision.'
Dobie relates a conversation he had with
"Some man said, 'You have been a man of
'Yes,' he [Goodnight] retorted, 'a hell of a
vision'" (Cow People 294).
Personal legends are not limited to well-known
figures.
Piner Stephens recalls a cowboy in New Mexico who
made a lasting impression on him in his youth.
Stephens
relates a series of stories about this man he called
Concho.
The first tells hov/ Concho came to the ranch:
One feller out there, I liked him real well.
I came there to work in '35 or '36, somewhere
around there. And he'd been there since the
early I900's. He came in and wanted a job.
And they put him to work, and he was a real
good hand. And Mr. Williams always had said
that when a man came there to work for just the
round-up or something, if he was a top hand,
then he tried to keep him, find work for him.
54
and keep him on as long as he would stay. So
this feller came to work, and he was a real
good hand. And so when the round-up was
over...he asked Mr. Williams if he had anything
else for him to do. And he said, "Yeah, I've
got a camp way back in the hills there.
There's nobody likes to stay there." And says,
"I need a man there. If you want it you can
have it."
And this feller says, "That's just what I'm
lookin' for."
And he says, "We'll put you on the payroll
permanent. How do you want us to put you down
on the payroll?"
He stumbled around and stuttered, and he
says, "Just call me Concho." And that's all
they ever called him, all they ever knew.
And he went to this camp and stayed. And
Mr. Williams said, four or five years later, a
U. S. Marshal come there. He knew him
personally. So they talked quite a while, and
after a bit he was fixin' to leave and says,
"Well, I'm sorta lookin' for a feller, and I
think he's in this part of the country." And
pulled out a picture of a nice-lookin' feller
and said, "Have you ever seen this man?"
Mr. Williams said no. Said, "I don't
recognize him." And he told me, says, "And I
didn't lie to him either because I've never
seen Concho without a beard and mustache. This
feller was clean shaven. I didn't lie to him.
I'd never seen a man like that." Says, "I know
that's who that is, but he made me a good hand,
and whatever he done, I figured he was goin'
straight." But they never did know v\7here he
come from or what his real name v;as.
Stephens went on to say that many of the cowboys did
not get along well with Concho, but Stephens liked him and
spent time with him on several occasions.
He emphasized
several time that Concho "was a swell cook" and described
the hand-crafted cedar furniture and kitchen cabinets that
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55
Concho made.
Stephens ends the stories by explaining that
Concho stayed on William's ranch:
"I guess he stayed there
until he died.
I really had a nice time.
several times.
We made it real fine.
I went up there
Oh, he was a swell
cook."
Other stories concern outlaws who, unlike Concho, did
not "go straight."
Local residents relate stories of these
people with a great deal of relish as well.
outlaws are fairly well-known.
Some of the
Billy the Kid often visited
Old Tascosa, but local tales are sparse in details
concerning what he did there.
In contrast, Tom Horn's
story traveled south from Wyoming with relatives.
While
working on the JA, Piner Stephens met Joe Horn, who came to
Texas after his infamous relative made the name Horn
unpopular in Montana.
(Though Stephens places Joe Horn in
Montana, Tom Horn is connected with the Johnson County Wars
in Wyoming.)
Through Joe, Stephens learned an oral version
of the story of Tom Horn.
He says:
They were losing a lot of cattle up there to
ruslers. And a group of ranchers got together,
and they hired this Tom Horn--he was a
gunman--to come in there and clean these
ruslers out. And his system was, he'd come in
and find out which fellers was stealing the
cattle, and he'd give them thirty days to leave
the country, or he'd kill them. And it was
pretty effective. And he was cleaning them
out, and I guess he must have got too close to
some of the important men, because somebody
killed a little boy, and they accused Tom Horn
of doing it. And they hung him. And they
claim that some of the ranchers did that
56
because he was getting too close to some of
them. It like to have caused a feud up there.
And this Joe Horn was kin to him, and his
family lived around there. And when he was
hung, they said things were pretty unpleasant.
Said they moved to Colorado. I heard Joe Horn
tell about it. He was a cowboy at the JA
Ranch.
Stephens tells of another local bad-man named Boss
Jackson.
This character is less well known than Tom Horn.
He lived in the Tucumcari area, and according to Stephens,
was killed in 1927 or 1928.
The story probably survives in
local oral versions because of the mystery surrounding
Jackson's murder.
Stephens says:
He was quite a character. He was a big
rancher, and the way he came to all of it
wasn't exactly the right way. He was a pretty
shady character. He owned lots of country. He
owned a big piece of land between Endee and
Tucumcari, New Mexico. When he was collecting
all this land and things, why, a lot of
homesteaders, something would happen to them,
and they'd get ambushed out in the country or
some way they'd get killed, and he'd be the
first one to go to the folks to help them out.
Then he'd eventually wind up with the land.
He had a part-Indian, Jim Bryant, working
for him. And \\iheu they begin to put it all
together, he was the one that was doing the
ambushing and the killing. And then Jackson,
after it was over with, he'd buy them out, buy
the folks out, collect the land. And it worked
pretty good until, in a few years, for some
reason, they robbed a bank over in New Mexico.
So they got them and tried them, and Boss
Jackson came out of it free, but Jim Bryant,
they sent him to the pen for a long time.
So one day over at Glenrio, why he [Jackson]
was in a barber shop getting a haircut and a
shave. And he was laying back in the chair and
had his face wrapped up. A feller came walking
in with a bandana over his face. And he
reached up and pulled the towel off of
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57
Jackson's face. And said, "Boss, I want you to
know who's going to kill you." And the barber
said he pulled the bandana down off his face
and pulled it back up and shot him and turned
around and left. And the barber swore that it
was Jim Bryant. He knew both of them
personally. But when they went to checking on
it, why he was in prison in Santa Fe, and there
was no way he could have been there as far as
they knew. The officials out there said he was
in the pen, but the barber always swore that it
was him. So it was never solved. And Jim
Bryant, he was killed while he was still in the
pen out there, by one of the convicts.
Stephens then relates learning about a different side
of Jackson:
In the thirties, I was down at Magdalena
working, and went in to get a haircut. Why,
the barber there, one day I got to talking to
him....And he said he was raised at
Tucumcari.... I sat around and we got to talking
and something was said about, of course it
hadn't been too long since it had happened to
Boss Jackson. We mentioned his name, and I
said, "Did you know him?"
And he said, "Oh, sure. My mother was a
widow woman, and she had a boarding house. And
he kept a room rented there all the time, kept
it paid for."
And I said, "He was quite a rough character,
wasn ' t he?"
He said, "Well, when he was in town or
around women, there wasn't a nicer man, with
better manners than anybody ever saw."
And for years he kept a room rented for when
he was in town....And they just thought the
world of him. And then when all this come to a
head, so many local people there in Tucumcari
just couldn't believe what he had been up to.
Jackson's story fits Richard Dorson's description of
the characteristics of outlaw-hero tales, which was based
on more famous outlaws such as Jessie James and Billy the
Kid.
Dorson says that the heroes all died by foul means.
\.v
58
and "legend looked kindly on their premature deaths and
softened the histories" (American Folklore 238).
Dorson
goes on to explain that though these men were thieves, they
were admirable because "they never betrayed a friend....
They were polite to women and kindly to cripples" (238).
Even more than Tom Horn, Jackson fits this description
because he was a perfect gentleman in town and was murdered
as he sat in the barber's chair.
Family Legends
Other personal legends are historical stories based on
the raconteur's family members.
These tales are even more
limited in scope than the tales of regional heroes, but
they do circulate in West Texas.
Chip Boreing tells one
such story about his great-grandfather:
My great-grandfather was a Texas Ranger, my
dad s grandfather. He didn't do it very long.
I don't think he had the stomach for it. He
was in the frontier battalion of the Texas
Rangers. [Boreing shows some pictures of his
family.] But he hired out or got on with the
Texas Rangers. I think he was in for like six
months. But at that time, they were just
cleaning out this area, or whatever area they
were in. I don't really know where they were
stationed. They would find Indians or outlaws
or whatever, and said they'd just wipe 'em out.
And said they'd just stack the bodies up into
piles and burn 'em, you know, which is pretty
cold. And he just didn't have the stomach for
it. He quit. And he said, later in life when
he had to be in his sixties and seventies, he
was saved, I guess you'd say, and just scared
to death that he was gonna go to Hell. He was
afraid to die. Said, he'd get to talking about
\-.S
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59
that and just start cryin' and shakin', because
of what he'd done when he was younger. He
hated it.
Boreing relates another story about this same man,
which indicates that he may have felt guilty about
something more than his activities as a Texas Ranger:
And somehow or anothe r, I don't know exactly
how it came about, bu t he killed a man, my
great-grandfather did
I don't know if it was
in a gunfight or what transpired. But he left
Texas or Oklahoma at that time and went to Old
Mexico. And he ran a lemon farm in Tampico,
Mexico for five or si X or seven years. And my
dad said when he fina lly did come home to
visit, he had to ride around Texas to get to
Oklahoma cause he was wanted in Texas. So I
guess I've got outlaw s in the family.
Other family legends might not have center around
outlaws, but the characters were usually ornery old men
Jerry Wilkinson relates a series of stories about her
Grandpa Burnet (pronounced Burn'-it):
Okay, this is family s tories concerning Marion
Francis Burnet, who is a second or third cousin
of David G. Burnet. 0ne of the stories that is
told is that there wer e a group of men--family,
all related, Burnets, Rogers...and Blairs.
There was a group of ' em going out hunting,
There was a young boy they called Blair Burnet
who they didn't want t o go because he was
either a pain or too y oung. Or both. So at
the first campsite, th ey put Blair on guard
duty, and the older me n got together and
decided they were gonn a try to scare him and
run him off. So they put him on guard duty,
and Grandpa, who was F rancis Marion, took a
buffalo robe, threw it across his shoulders,
and was sneaking up on Blair on his hands and
knees. And Blair was at a log, and he came to
the log, and Blair--Gr andpa heard the gun cock,
and it was an old Shar ps or Henry buffalo gun,
and when Grandpa heard the gun cock, he went to
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60
pull-back the buffalo robe, and hollering
"Don't shoot! It's me!" And it caught--the
ball went through the palm of his hand. And so
from then on Grandpa had a hard hand, and it
was literally stone hard....I mean it was hard.
Daddy said he'd catch him--Grandpa would catch
him and thump him with that hand, and it was
just like being hit with a rock.
Wilkinson goes on to relate another story about her
Grandpa Burnet's encounter with John Slaughter, a big
rancher in Garza County:
And another story that I love is that he was
somewhere around John Slaughte r's ranch area,
And there was a water hole, an d Grandpa was
camping there, and som e of the Slaughter ranch
hands came by and told him to get off. Grandpa
told him, "Here I am, and here I stay." Well,
they went back to the headquar ters and told
John Slaughter, who wa s a very fiesty old man,
about it. And so he c ame out there with the
hands, and he looked. and he s aw it was
Grandpa. And he says, "Oh, sh it! You don't
wanna mess with that o Id man," turned around.
and walked off.
John Slaughter was not the only cattleman with whom
Grandpa Burnet had an encounter.
Wilkinson went on to say:
Another story that's told about this same old
man, who's Grandpa, that he's--him and Charlie
Goodnight would sit catty-cornered at hotels.
And I do not know if it was in Amarillo or
Guthrie, Oklahoma, or where. But they would
sit catter-whampus from each other on hotel
front porches and cuss each other at the top of
their voices. And this was when Charlie was
still alive and fiesty.
Wilkinson also relates a story about her grandpa
wanting to file on some land in Borden County during the
Ribbon Wars.
He was at the end of the line, so he told his
family to start a fight to distract everyone else so that
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61
Grandpa Burnet could move to the head of the line and get
the land he wanted.
Some people may respond negatively to feisty, old men
like Charles Goodnight and Grandpa Burnet.
When asked
about Goodnight, Helen Estlack of Clarendon replied, "Well,
you know, he really wasn't a very nice man."
Yet there is
something in the character of these men that appeals to the
imagination of the modern cowboy.
They epitomize the
independent and self-reliant spirit still valued in modern
West Texas.
In fact, the modern cowboy's choice of folk
heroes reflects many of his cultural values.
The modern
cowboy prefers dwelling on the bravery and character of his
ancestors rather than on the exploits of some Paul
Bunyon-type superman.
His heroes show the West Texan's
lack of regard for the overly imaginative, yet they possess
the traits that the cowboy holds important in today's
society:
courage, grit, a knowledge of nature and of the
land, common sense, job skills, and sometimes "pure-dee"
luck.
Some heroes, such as Post and Goodnight are fondly
remembered for their contributions to the region, while
others such as Burnet or Jackson are remembered for
colorful incidents or mysterious deaths.
These legendary
men, whose lives surpass the anecdotal, are the ones who
have endured in oral tradition.
X
CHAPTER V
ROPING YARNS
Roping is a favorite subject for many cowboy tales.
Some roping yarns fit into the category of exaggerated
personal tales; others are personal experience tales,
favorite stories men repeat about their own experiences.
Some of these stories may exaggerate a cowboy's expertise
with a lariat, but all the tales reinforce the importance
that cowboys place on this job-related skill.
John
Erickson claims that "of all the skills a cowboy possesses,
roping is the one he prizes most highly" (Modern Cowboy
94).
Roping is a favorite subject for tales not only
because it is a necessary occupational skill but also
because, according to Erickson, "when he [a cowboy] holds a
rope in his hands, when with a flick of his wrist and a
flip of the rope, he can bring an animal weighing half a
ton to its knees--that cowboy may be a common man, but he
doesn't feel like one" (Modern Cowboy 94).
Roping provides the cowboy with a sense of power and a
sense of pride.
The worth of men in cow country has long
been determined by how well they rope, and new hands could
62
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63
often gain respect and acceptance through their roping
skills.
Chip Boreing relates a story about his father that
illustrates the importance of roping.
Chip's father was in
his fifties when he came to the Yellow House Ranch as
foreman.
The younger men did not know Boreing and possibly
resented his becoming foreman because he had been away from
ranching for several years.
On his first day at the ranch,
Boreing went into town and bought a grass rope, even though
most cowboys use a nylon rope.
When he returned from town,
he found some of the other cowboys practicing their roping
behind the barn.
Chip Boreing relates the rest of the
s tory:
And old Colorado had hi s rope out, and he
was ropin' a sawhorse with one of these plastic
heads on it or a cow skull on it. He ro ped
that, you know. And this other David gu y that
worked out there, they'd t ake turns ropi n' .
And they told my dad, said , "Vince, come over
here and show us how to ro pe." I think they
were kinda--course he was fifty somethin ' years
old. I think they were ju St kinda teasi n ' him.
So he gets that rope out, and he ropes i t a
time or two. And he says, "You know, it 's been
years, but I used to be ab le to do some stuff
with this."
And he started out with a loop, you know
like this [spinning in fro nt of him J, which
itself fascinated me, and he could make it go
side to side. You've seen 'em make it do that,
Then he would jump in and jump out of it. And
here he is fifty somethin' years old, and I was
just shocked. And course they were too.
Initially, I think they ki nda resented him
comin' out there. Cause h ere they were in
their late twenties and ea rly thirties, and
this fifty-somethin'-year- old man comes in as
the new foreman. And I th ink they kinda
resented him a little bit or didn't think much
64
of him, but he fit in real quick. Cause
afterwards--we weren't out there but for six or
eight months, and Gary Melburg, the one we used
to call Colorado, he kept up with my folks for
four or five years, send 'em Christmas cards,
stop in and visit with 'em. So he made an
impression on 'em.
Roping stories abound, in contemporary oral tradition
as well as in print sources.
They include stories of men
roping bears, deer, trains, and almost anything else that
moves.
Evidently nothing is sacred, not even small calves
or fancy automobiles.
In the old-timers' stories, cowboys
expressed their contempt for progress and the price of
shipping cattle by telling stories of encounters with
trains.
Paul Patterson relates one story of Lee Reynolds
trying to rope a train:
Up in Od essa one time, what with Lee feeling
his corn (d istilled cowboy equivalent of his
oats), he h ad Old Rowdy girted up tight, a
sizable loo p built, and was waiting for the T&P
passenger t rain to pull in--or out. Either way
he was goin g to rope the smokestack.
"Lee^," p leaded one of the "Clabber Hill"
hands, "don 't do it. You don't know what
you're a-ro p m
"Ahhhh. No, and they don't know what I'm
a-ridin' either." ("Cowboy Comedians" 102)
According to Stan Hoig in The Humor of the American
Cowboy, "One of the favorite tricks practiced by cowboys
when celebrating was to rope the smokestacks of trains"
(120).
He goes on to relate the story of Peckerwood Pete,
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65
a prize roper who applied for a job as cowcatcher for the
railroad:
The conductor agreed to give Pete a tryout
and suggested he ride up the track about a
quarter of a mile and, when the engine came by,
show what a good roper he was.
Peckerwood Pete rode with confidence up the
track, and by the time the train got even with
him it was gaining a pretty good speed.
Straightedge [Pete's horse] was shy as a rabbit
of this smoking, clanging object, but Pete
finally got him to lay in close. Then, at just
the right moment, Pete's loop shot true.
Straightedge squatted, the rope held, and the
cinches broke. And Pete? Well, Pete decided
that he didn't care much about working on the
railroad. (121-122)
San Angelo writer Elmer Kelton takes roping moving
vehicles a step further in his novel The Good Old Boys.
The novel is set early in the Twentieth Century, and
Kelton's main character, Hewey, is annoyed by the uppity
attitude of a city slicker who drives a red automobile.
When the young driver is especially obnoxious on the road,
Hewey and a friend take matters into their own hands.
Kelton writes:
Both unfastened their horn strings and shook
loops into their ropes. Snort shouted, "I'll
rope the head of the goddamn thing, Hewey. You
come in there and heel it!"
Spurring the roan horse, swinging the loop.
Snort gave chase....Snort threw that great
boxcar loop and landed a catch around the
dashboard, one carbide lamp and a front wheel.
He jerked up the slack and took a dally around
his saddle horn. "Now heel it, Hewey! '
Hewey spurred Biscuit in, cast a quick loop
over one of the rear wheels and rode south.
Snort rode north....
.V
66
As the two cowboys hit the end of their
ropes, they jerked the automobile half around
and ran it into the ditch....
[The dude came out fighting, but Hewey]
wrestled the man to the ground. Snort, still
on horseback pitched Hewey his tie rope.
"Since we can't tie up an automobile, maybe we
can tie up an automobile jockey."
Hewey got the little loop over both of the
man's hands and then over one foot. He trussed
him the way he had been tying steers.
In a sudden flush of showmanship he stepped
back and threw up his hands in the manner the
ropers used to stop the time-keepers.
(176-177)
The incident in Kelton's book is significant and well
integrated into the storyline since it leads to further
trouble for Hewey.
The thoughtless prank is also symbolic
of Hewey's attitude toward change.
He wants to rope and
tie progress and mechanization, to hold back the changes in
his own life.
His attitude is indicative of the feelings
of many early cowboys who roped trains.
The action was a
boast of their own skill as well as an act against the
progress and changes that threatened their way of life. It
also gave them an opportunity to express their resentment
toward the price gouging of railroaders.
The modern cowboy does not rope trains, but the
fascination with roping anything that moves remains.
the youngest boys practice roping.
Even
Gordon Timms of Lubbock
relates a tale from his own youth, with his wife Lucille
adding thoughts of her own.
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67
Gordon: When I was a kid, we all tried to
rope. We roped calves, and we roped goats, and
fence posts.
Lucille: I remember on Sunday afternoons,
my cousins, and my aunts and uncles would
usually get together, and all us kids would be
there. And the boys, that was their big sport,
to rope those calves and...ride them and get
thrown off, and sometimes they'd get hurt.
Gordon: Oh, yeah, we'd call it bull riding.
Every Sunday we'd go somewhere since Mother
and Daddy wouldn't let us ride the calves at
home. They didn't like it.
Once the boys become older, they rope more dangerous
animals.
Paul Patterson relates a tall tale of a man who
roped a bear:
Snaky was on drive one morning when he jumped a
big black bear. He built hisself a loop, loped
to the bear, and fit it on him right quick.
Then he turned and rode the other way. When he
looked back he noticed that the bear was coming
up the rope, hand over hand. Then, spiter'n
hell and all he could do, the bear d u m b up and
kicked him out of the saddle. Smoky (sic) hit
the ground a-runnin' and when he looked back
this bear was shakin' his ownself out a loop.
Snaky says if he hadn't beat the dam thang to a
rough header he reckon the bear'd a roped him
and drug him slap to death! (106)
John Rusk of Canyon relates a more believable bear
tale.
According to Rusk, his grandfather was with the
group of men who killed the last bear in Randall County.
Someone in the group roped the bear before another person
shot it.
Pearl Nance of Garza County relates a similar story
about a bobcat she and her husband killed:
.;**f'
68
Ott roped a....bobcat. So he was ridin' a good
horse, and so was I. Well, he just leaned over
and whaled it. And we just relayed that
bobcat. He'd run it. Then I'd run it. And
finally, he just stopped, sittin' there
growlin'. And Ott could rope that bobcat, but
then he'd back out of the loop. So I said,
"Ott, the next time you get that rope around
him, just set still, and I'll go around behind
him, and when he looks around at me, you draw
up. And that's the way we got 'em. And I
killed 'em with a pole. When Ott drawed that
rope up, and he was draggin' 'em kinda slow,
you know, and I killed em with a piece of
post. I put him up in front of me, and that
thing was the hottest thing you ever felt. It
was a cold mornin', and my hands were cold, and
I just stuck 'em under that bobcat, and he was
hotter than a firecracker.
At one time or another in his life, almost every
cowboy ropes something that he has difficulty getting rid
of, and these encounters are favorite subjects for tales.
Dee Woods includes a a roping story from JA Ranch in her
article "Panther Yarns":
It was good dusk, and a cowboy was riding
into camp for supper. He saw an animal which
he thought was a bobcat st icking its head out
of a buffalo wallow. He d ecided to have a lot
of fun out of the Chink co ok, so he roped the
animal. The small head ha d fooled the cowboy.
When the loop dropped over the animal's head
and the cowboy gave a jerk , out came a panther,
scrapping.
The panther scared the tired horse which
began to snort and pitch, The cowboy jerked
the rope but the animal wa s too large to jerk
off its feet. Instead, he tried to climb it.
The camp was a good quarte r-mile away. The
cowboy was worried. He qu irted the horse and
tried to pull the panther after him but had a
fight all the way into cam p. Part of the time
the cowboy could keep the rope tight and part
of the time the animal was trying to get at the
69
horse. Finally, he made it to camp.
gathered around making remarks:
"Where'd you get your kitty-cat?"
The boys
I'Nice pet."
"Who hired you to rope panthers?"
"Shoot it," yelled the cowboy. "Get your
gun and shoot it!"
"It's yours. You can have it!"
Worst of all, the Chink cook grinned and
grinned. Circling camp with the tired horse
blowing hard and the panther trying to climb
the rope, the cowboy was getting the worst of
the deal while the whole camp was having a
rip-roaring good time....
The second and third encirclements of the
camp were worse than the first. The boys got
more and more hilarious. The fourth time
around, the cowboy had an inspiration. He rode
straight through the middle of the camp with
his knife poised over the rope shouting:
"Shoot or I cut."
They shot. (131-132)
Roping stories in contemporary oral tradition are not
as "tall" as many found in print sources, but the effects
may be more devastating to the roper.
Piner Stephens
noticed that a fellow cowboy had little scars all over his
back and asked about them.
Stephens reports:
He said "Well, a deer got h old of me II Sa id,
"I was working for the Tres Montosa outfi t
And I was riding down a wid e valley, wasn 't
very many trees in it, sort of sandy
And at
the edge of the trees, I ro de up on a bunch of
_
deer. I was right on them, " Said, " T
riding an awful little hors e." Said I wasad
always wanted to rope a dee r, so her , "I h the
chance to do it. I jerked my rope d e was ght
quick, and I rode up on a b ig ole bu own ri Said,
ck." en I
I got him on the first thr
ow.
Sai
d, "Wh and
jerked on the rope that dee
r
just
st
opped d,
come back to me. And it we
nt
by
me.
II
o
"Before I knew it, he had m
Sai in
that rope and we was on the y horse t
aid,
"While we was down trying t grass." angled deer
o get up. And s
that
If
r>
•
70
was running and would jump on me and bounce
off, just like they do when they kill a snake."
And he said, "All I could so was just lay there
and cover my head up while I was getting my
knife out, with one hand, so I could cut the
lariat rope. By the time I did that, he'd just
cut the back of my shirt completely off."
Said, "I was just bleeding like everything."
Said, "When I got that rope cut, then my horse
was able to get up, and when the horse got up,
it scared the deer off.
Not all roping expeditions have negative results.
Some roping stories are still related for the humor of the
situation.
In his book The Devil in Texas, Perryton writer
John R. Erickson relates an account of roping a pint-sized
panther, or housecat.
Erickson and a friend had been
looking at a book about Will Rogers and were depressed by
his roping skills; Rogers could rope a mouse with a piece
of string.
The two men decided to try their hands at
roping a cat with a pigging string.
Erickson writes:
We loaded up and went looking for Pete.
"Here kitty, kitty, kitty, nice kitty, here
kitty."
The fool came, purring and rubbing up
against the corner of the saddle shed. Loper
got there first, swung, and let her rip. It
went straight to the mark but old Pete hissed
and ran through the loop.
Pete took off running and I was right behind
him, chaps a-flapping and spurs a-jingling.
High Loper was behind me, loading up for
another shot.
We chased the son of a gun through the front
lot, through the sick pen, out into the horse
pasture, through a barbed wire fence, and out
in front of the corrals. We blasted away but
couldn't get him caught.
71
Then High Loper nailed him and we both let
out cowboy yells, while Petie Pie sq uirmed and
hissed. "Heel him!" said Loper.
I didn't know whether you could heel a cat
or not, but I moved in for a throw, I had just
laid down a beautiful trap when I he ard a voice
behind me.
"You boys having a good time?"
It was the Boss....He cleared his throat.
"If you boys can work it into you sc hedule, I'd
like to get those steers gathered of f
Cottonwood Creek. But if you're too busy..."
"No, no, we can..." Loper un-noo sed the cat
and rolled up his string. "We just. . . II
"You see," I said, "we read this. II
There are some things you just ca n't explain
to the boss. (18-20)
Erickson's final statement is telling.
It indicates
one reason that cowboys enjoy roping tales so much; their
skill is one thing that sets them apart from the rest of
the population.
Superb roping is still the mark of a real
cowboy, a point of pride and identity.
For this reason,
roping tales remain popular in the modern cowboy culture.
CHAPTER VI
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES
The personal experience story, or true experience
tale, is a folklore genre that has only recently come under
serious study.
Jan Harold Brunvand says that "first-person
reminiscences...have long puzzled American folklore
collectors and scholars.
How many repetitions are needed,
or how widely must a personal narrative be spread for it to
qualify as folklore?" (American Folklore 172). Brunvand's
question is one that any serious folklorist must answer.
In general, a personal experience tale becomes
folklore when the story enters the raconteur's permanent
repertoire.
If the raconteur tells about something that
has recently happened to him or someone he knows for the
purpose of relating information, then the tale does not
qualify as folklore.
In contrast, if the story is often
repeated for entertainment, long after the events occurred,
then the story becomes folklore.
Brunvand claims that the
story becomes folklore if acquaintances listen "for the
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73
pleasure the performance gives, long after any suspense
about the outcome of the story is gone" (American Folklore
173).
The stories that are repeated until they become
favorites usually fall into certain categories.
Linda Degh
claims that true experience stories fall into three broad
categories:
happy occurrences such as lucky breaks or
narrow escapes; merry occurrences such as humorous
anecdotes or jokes; and sinister occurrences such as
crimes, mass murders, or mysterious tragedies (78).
Certain themes are commonly popular as well.
Degh says:
Among experienced storytellers, women favor the
themes of first love, marriage ritual...family
life, and grievances and injustices, whereas
men prefer telling of "heroic" deeds, how they
challenged and eventually beat up their bosses
and how they excelled in military service.
(79)
In cowboy folklore, certain topics attract the
raconteur, and these topics become favorite subjects for
personal experience tales.
The cowboy's "heroic deeds"
usually involve prowess in job-related skills, and these
stories make up the bulk of what Degh would classify as
tales of happy occurrences, while other happy occurrence
tales would fall under the category of narrow escapes.
In
cowboy lore, there are few tales of truly sinister
occurrences.
Although some historical and personal legends
would fit under this category, most of the cowboy's true
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74
experience tales are about frequent occurrences that are
the results of hard times or hard luck rather than about
anything as spectacular as crimes or mass murders.
The
cowboy, however, seldom dwells on hard times, and even
hard-luck stories are often tinged with humor.
Merry
tales, Degh's third category, are so prevalent in the
cowboy culture that they deserve a chapter of their own.
Other personal experience tales can be categorized by
topic:
historical and personal legends; stories about
animals, about the weather, and about roping.
Tales of Prowess
Many of the cowboy's roping stories would fit under
the category of tales of prowess because roping is a highly
prized, job-related skill.
The personal experience stories
in the previous chapter concerned roping unusual animals
and using roping skills to gain acceptance.
Other roping
stories often tell of extraordinary feats which show how
good a cowboy is when he is actually on the job.
Chip
Boreing tells one such story about his father:
He was in his thirties or somewhere in there
when he first got the foreman's job. And they
would hire a bunch of cowboys for the branding.
You know, they kept three or four year round,
and they would hire six or eight to brand. And
they'd round them all up, and they'd brand the
calves. And he would do the heelin', you know
rope 'em and get the back feet. And they had
him and this other guy goin'. He said there
was a guy out there with a stopper, with his
75
watch, was timin' 'em one day, and said they
were doin', I think he said fifty or something
calves an hour. You know, they were really
goin'. He said they'd have to stop. Course it
was like July, or it was real hot when they
were doin' it. He said they'd have to stop and
let the guys rest, cause they'd--you know,
roping 'em was easy, cause you'd just rope 'em
and the horse would do all the work. And said
they'd brand the calves or whatever they had to
do to 'em, and cut 'em loose. Said they'd have
another calf in, you know, zap! And those poor
guys that were on the ground, course those
calves were kicking and jumping, and said they
were having to fight those calves, and it would
wear them out. They'd work for, oh, thirty,
forty-five minutes and have to take a break.
It was so hot. Cause there weren't any trees
out there to speak of, just mesquites
everywhere.
Other tales of prowess often tell of accomplishments
in the saddle.
Piner Stephens tells one story about taking
a long ride from a New Mexico ranch to his home in Canyon,
Texas.
He enjoys telling the story and laughs about
covering such a long distance in a short period of time:
I was working at a ranch out northwest of
Magdelena, New Mexico, and I had my saddle
horse out there, and I was wantin' to bring him
home and come home for a visit. That was in
the '30s when there wasn't very much money
around. And I hadn't been able to find anybody
that was comin' this way in a truck or
anything, so I just decided I'd ride him. The
people I was working for, they had a truck
comin' into Magdelena, comin' in for supplies,
so I rode into Magdelena. The old boy driving
the truck to Magdelena said, "Well, I'll just
run you on down to Socorro." Cause that would
save me another thirty miles. So he took me
down to Socorro. So I stayed all night there.
The next mornin' I started coming up, goin'
north to Belen, New Mexico. And I stayed all
night there, and then I turned east on 60,
76
Highway 60. And I think I stayed all night in
Willard. I got in there, I think, the third
day out of Socorro. I got in there about two
or three o'clock and found a place where I
could water and feed my horse, get some feed,
and went to (unintelligible). And after I came
out, why, standing on the street talking to one
of the local men, I saw a cattle truck drive in
at the filling station. I thought, well, that
he looked like he was empty. If he's headed
east, I'll go up there and see who it is and
how far he'd goin', maybe catch a ride.
I walked into the filling station where they
were. And the feller said, "What in the world
are you doin' out here?"
I looked up, and it was Labert A-- from
here. And I said, "Well, what are you doin'?"
He said, "Oh, I brought a load of cattle out
here. I'm heading home. I I
I s a i d , " W e l l , t h a t ' s what I ' m d o i n ' I I
s a i d , "How a b o u t a r i d e ? "
He s a i d , "Why, s u r e . "
I said, "How about my horse?"
He said, "You out here a horsing?"
I said, "Yeah, I come from Socorro, headed
home."
He said, "Well, you get your horse, and
we'll drive out here to the edge of town and
back off into a bar ditch and load him up."
So we did, and we come into Canyon. Got in
about one or two o'clock.
The folks I was workin' for had told me,
"Now, you be sure and call us when you get
home, so we'll know you made it all right and
nothing happened to you." Along nine or ten
o'clock that morning I was talking to my
mother, and I decided, well, I'd better call
them. So I called and got ahold of one of
their daughters.
I said, "I thought I'd better let you know
I'm home. You wanted me to call you."
She said, "Where are you at?" Says, "Have
you had trouble? Somethin' happen?
I said, "No, I'm at home."
She said, "Oh, you can't be. If
I said, "Well, I am. I'm sitting here
talking to my mother."
She said, "No way in the world you could be
home by now." Says, "Has something happened to
your
77
I said, "No there's nothing wrong. I'm
si tting here talking to my mother. I got in
about one or two o'clock last night."
Sh e says, "I don't believe it. You can't do
it."
I kept on teasing her for a while, and
direc tly I said, "Well, at Willard, I caught a
ride in a cattle truck. We come on in."
Sh e was surprised, but she knew I couldn't a
rode that fast.
Other stories of prowess deal not with job-related
skills, but with narrow escapes.
Stephens tells a story of
a narrow escape made by an Apache Indian:
One time we was in Old Mexico, and brought
some cattle across the line. This ranch where
we had got the cattle had an Apache Indian
working there. We got up there to the border
patrol, and one of these Mexican border patrols
recognized him, but he was already over the
line. They said, "Well, we've been wanting
him. We'll catch him when he comes back
across. "
The man that we bought the cattle from, the
man I was working for talked to him, told him
what they'd said. He laughed. "They can't
catch him." Said, "Don't be worried about it."
We camped there that night, across the line.
We got up the next morning, and he was gone.
The Apache Indian was gone. He got up in the
night and headed back to the ranch.
Then the owner of the ranch there said,
"They've been trying to catch him for years,
knew he was working out there, but they
couldn't catch him."
Other tales of happy occurrences deal with how a
family member acquired a prized possession.
Douglas Tipton
of Garza County tells a story about how his brother-in-law.
Bill Elliot, came to possession an old Sharps buffalo
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rifle.
The story is a favorite family legend that Tipton
has repeated often over the years.
He says:
There's a man from Fort Worth come out there
[Spur]. He wanted to hunt a buffalo. you know,
They'd about all gone at that time. A nd he had
a brand new, had his brand new Sharps rifle. I
don't know whether he got a buffalo or not, but
he stayed there with Bill's daddy. An d when he
got to leave, he went to pay him for k eeping
him, you know. And he didn't want no money
from him. So he gave him this rifle, And he
rode this freight wagon with old Guy S amples
down to the railroad at Colorado City, And of
course Bill's daddy was the one who ga ve him
[Bill] the rifle. And I tried every w ay I could
to talk him out of it.
One of Bill's nephew's now has the gun, and Tipton's wife
adds, "But you know that story's in The Spurs.
That's that
book that his daddy [W. J. Elliot] wrote."
Hard Luck S tories
Hard luck stories are much more common among the
farming communities in West Texas than they are in the
ranching culture.
Almost every old farmer can recall the
Dust Bowl days and has stories to tell that begin with the
standard opening, "You have no idea how bad it was."
Cowboys also remember the hard times, but they are more
likely to brush over them with a joke.
the Depression," they might say.
anyway."
"We never noticed
"We never had any money
Piner Stephens relates one of the few Depression
tales collected:
79
During the Depression, I was working for the
Lanigans, and they was about to go broke. It
was so bad that they didn't have any sugar in
their wagon, only backstrap molasses for
sweetening. Well, I tried it in my coffee a
time or two, but I couldn't hardly stand it, so
I drank my coffee black. I've drank coffee
black ever since then.
Like Stephens, most cowboys are likely to mention only
in passing the tragedies of ranchers going broke.
Chip
Boreing's father was working in Clovis when Chip was born
in 1958 because the area ranchers were "going through a
rough time."
The ranch his father had been working on went
bankrupt, and he could not find work at any other ranches.
Boreing does not mention and apparently does not know that
the "rough time" was the result of severe drought in the
area.
Weather is often the chief culprit in the cowboy's
hard luck stories.
The late Tom Bouchier of Garza County
explains that in 1918 they only got three and 2/10 inches
of rain on his father's ranch.
Bouchier tells about a
series of droughts that put his father out of business:
The water is very poor, and the only way you
could have water for your cattle--you'd dig a
tank....And naturally, it was a very, very
small tank and wouldn't hold much water. And I
remember one occasion there when in 1904 and
'05, we had a three-year drought, and we ran
completely out of water.
80
Bouchier explains that cattle would bog down in the mud at
the tank, and he and his brother would have to use mules to
pull them out of the mud.
He continues:
Nine out of every ten head would die after you
pulled 'em out because there wasn't a ny grass
anywhere in this country. And we had one well
there that was fairly good. And...fa ther hired
two men to drill water at this well t o try to
water about eight hundred head of cat tie, and
that is impossible. And over this dr ought
there, we lost four hundred and fifty head of
cattle--cows there for lack of water and lack
of grazing. And we'd skin 'em and ta ke the
hides to Colorado City and get from a dollar
and seventy-five to two and a quarter for the
hides, but it didn't take many of tho se years
to eventually break us. And then we finally
went broke there in 1916, '17 and '18 due to
the fact of these droughts and no wat er in the
country.
Drought was not the only enemy.
Other aspects of
nature could prove equally destructive.
Chip Boreing
explains that lightning often caused problems on the Yellow
House Ranch.
Among Boreing's collection of arrowheads and
pottery shards are some nails from the XIT barn at the
Yellow House.
Boreing explains:
These nails are out of the original XIT barn
that burned down. I don't know what it is
about that Yellow House, but buildings burn
down out there left and right. They had the
original foreman's house burn down. It was
struck by lightning. And then there was
another house just a little ways down from it.
There was a bunkhouse. It was struck by
lightnin' in, I guess, the same storm....And
for some reason, lightnin' struck three or four
different building out there over the years and
burned 'em down. But those are out of the
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original XIT barn.
built now.
They've got a new barn
Other hard luck stories center around untimely or
unusual deaths.
Some of these are family legends.
John
Rusk of Canyon tells a story about one of his great-uncles
who was a bit rowdy as a young man.
He was arrested for
drunk and disorderly conduct and thrown into the Randall
County jail.
The conditions in the jail were so poor that
the young man caught pneumonia and died.
Gordon Timms of Lubbock tells a story about a member
of his family who died from an infection caused by a
mesquite thorn.
He says:
It was Maurine's [his wife's] uncle. Uncle
Lawton. He was riding a horse. He was
ranching in (unintelligible). The guy on the
horse in front of him rode by this limb and
pulled it over to turn it loose, and hit Lawton
right behind him. He got one of those mesquite
thorns in his cheek. And he took erysipelas,
and it killed him.
Question: When was that?
Timms: Oh, it was along about 1934.
Chip Boreing tells a story of an untimely death at the
Yellow House Ranch:
There was a story that 1 heard some of the
cowboys tell out on the Yellow House about a-It's on the north end of the Cap right there,
around the house. The house sits here. Around
on the north side, there's a sheer drop-off,
you know, or cliff, I guess you'd call it. And
they said that they had some cows up on top
grazing, cause they were building a tank up
there and had *em up there waterin' or
somethin'. And there was some cowboy up there
82
with 'em, you know herdin' 'em around. And a
little storm blew up, and some lightnin'
struck, and the cattle stampeded or ran or
spooked or somethin', or his horse flipped.
And said his horse went off that cliff with
him. And they said he was one of the guys
buried at that little grave yard out there, but
I don't know. I'm not sure about that.
Another favorite topic for family hard luck stories is
the unexpected loss of something valuable.
Many families
will explain that they would be rich if they still had the
land that great-grandpa used to own in downtown Dallas.
Not being landowners, cowboys value other, smaller
possessions.
Boreing's father collected arrowheads and
other Indian artifacts that he found around the ranches
where he worked.
Like many others in the rural culture.
Chip Boreing finds these mementos from the past of value,
and he tells several stories about how some of the
arrowheads were lost to him and other family members.
When
his oldest brother was a child, he took some of the
arrowheads to school and sold them to other children for
ten cents each.
This same brother also hid some of the
arrowheads one time.
Boreing relates:
My oldest brother, also, one time when he was a
kid, got a soup can and filled it full of my
dad's very best arrowheads and took it out and
buried it out behind the house. And that was
his treasure. Pop found out about it, you
know, and was ready to kill him and sent him
out there to get 'em. And he couldn't find
'em. So somewhere out behind the house in the
Yellow House is a full soup can of his very
best--He said they were all just like this, [he
83
points to an arrowhead] perfect arrowheads.
Said he took his very best and buried 'em in
that can, and he never has found 'em. Of
course my brother denies it, but that's where
they wound up.
Later in the interview, Boreing tells stories of
people who came out to the Yellow House Ranch looking for a
lost treasure of some sort.
He suggests that maybe one of
those people will find the soup can full of arrowheads.
"Now, that would be a real treasure," he adds.
Boreing's touch of humor is typical of the cowboy
storyteller, even when he is telling hard luck stories.
The rough living conditions are somehow softened when
people are able to chuckle, and the ability to brush over
difficulties by using humor is a characteristic of the
cowboy, setting him apart from the farming culture in the
region.
Though they do have a sense of humor, the farmers
and other land-owners take the difficult times more
seriously, probably because their land and livelihood is at
stake.
The cowboy has less to lose.
If he loses his job,
there will be other ranches and other jobs in his future;
he seldom stays in one place very long anyway.
case
In any
a touch of humor helps ease the tension when
situations threaten to become too difficult.
CHAPTER VII
MERRY TALES
The merry tale is the most prevalent tale form in
cowboy lore and has always been immensely popular in the
culture.
In The Humor of the American Cowboy, Stan Hoig
observes that the amusing anecdote, the circular story, and
the tall tale were the three prevalent tale patterns for
cowboy stories (30). Of these three tale types, only the
amusing anecdote is currently popular in West Texas. Many
of these amusing tales take the form of anecdotes about
pranks or other true experiences, while others are told for
a laugh and are never meant to be believed.
No matter
whether the tale is a true experience or a fictional
anecdote, the subject matter usually focuses on regional or
occupational subjects that reflect or exaggerate events in
the cowboy's everyday life.
Pranks and Personal Experience Anecdotes
According to John Erickson, "Pranks are almost as much
a part of the modern cowboy's life as chewing tobacco and
snuff" (Modern Cowboy 50). Evidently, pranks are a
84
major
85
form of entertainment during long, boring hours of work.
They are a way to pass the time and to poke fun at those
nearby.
Erickson lists some examples of pranks he has
observed:
You walk up behind a fellow in a branding pen
and step on his spurs so that he can't move.
You sneak around to someone's horse and take
the loop out of his catch rope, so that when he
needs to rope a calf, he's shooting blanks.
You tie the sleeves of his jacket into knots.
If a man is standing in a branding pen and is
preoccupied with something, you run up behind
him and yell, "Watch the bull!" You tie a tin
can to the back of his stock trailer so that
when he starts home, he'll think a wheel
bearing is going out. You ride up behind a
man's horse, grab the horse's tail, dally up to
the horn, and ride off. There is no end to the
pranks cowboys will play on each other, and
that is one of the things that make working
with them so enjoyable. (51)
Since pranks are so prevalent, it should not be
surprising that many personal experience anecdotes are
stories about pranks.
common categories.
Sometimes these pranks fall into
Though the stories themselves are quite
different, many true experience anecdotes end with someone
going over the edge of a riverbank and into the water.
Piner Stephens of Canyon tells one such story about a prank
that resulted in a dousing:
One time we pulled a prank down there. We were
down on the JA, and we'd been down along the
Red River gathering cattle, and we was coming
out. And the trail was pretty narrow,
followin' the creek. And two fellers up in
\
''^&i^^£*^^^^^^^y
86
front of me a ways, they were always pullin'
something. I was ridin' along beside the herd.
They were a 11 strung out and goin' up this
little bank , oh, five or six foot above the
creek bed, and we went around a sharp bend, and
boy, someth ing scared my horse. And I looked
up right qu ick and here these fellers were down
on their ha nds and knees a comin' at me. My
horse just whirled and went off the bluff right
into the wa ter. It just soaked us good. And I
got out of the water, and boy, they was just
sittin' dyi n' laughing. They thought that was
the funnies t--It scared my old pony just half
to death.
Gordon Timms of Lubbock tells another story where a
prank results in someone getting wet.
He says:
My daddy used to t ell a story about him and a
fellow used to go fishing at the river called
Clearfork of the B razos River. That was back
in the wagon and t eam days. They went in a
wagon, and they go t down there and found them a
place to camp. Th at night when they started to
get ready to go to bed, one fellow, he was
going to get down on the bank, close to the
water, and put his bed down there. So the rest
of them, they were back away from it a ways,
They got to thinki n' about this guy's pretty
scared, anyway, si eeping down there. So they
decided they'd sea re him. So they got the old
chain and harness all around after this fellow
went to sleep. Th ey got up close to him, and
they went to rattl ing that harness, hollerin'
and a screamin', a nd runnin' toward him. And
he jumped up and r un off into the river. He
thought there was a team and wagon a fixing to
run over him.
Timms tells another over-the-bank-and-into-the-water
anecdote where the dousing was the result of carelessness
rather than a prank.
He relates the tale from his boyhood
One time, my brother and I and another guy.
we went fishin'. It was during school. We
87
lived just about a mile and a half from the
creek and there was a high bluff down there,
and it was about fifteen foot off down there to
the water. And there were four, five, of us
boys, neighbors there that went down there
fishin' one night in the early spring. And we
put out trot lines. My brother and two or
three more boys, they went to run the trot line
in the boat and come back, and they had caught
some pretty nice fish. While they was gone, me
and this other boy had--We'd had a fire up on
this bank, and it was back away from the edge
of the bank. We decided we'd move this fire
out on the edge of the bank so the light would
shine down on the water and we could do some
pole fishing.
One old boy, he come back, and it was pretty
cool. He come back, and he had a great big
fish, one in each hand, about that long, a
catfish, a great big catfish. And he come
runnin' up there to the fire. He run around to
the other side of that fire, and he fell off
that bank down into the creek.
I hollered and asked him when he come back
up. I asked him, "Jasper, what'd you do with
them fish?"
He said, "Oh, I turned 'em loose."
I got to laughin', and they threatened to
throw me in. They thought I had moved that
fire over purposely. But really we didn't
think about it when we moved it over there. We
never thought about anybody runnin' off there.
But he didn't give us time to say anything. He
just came runnin' up to that fire. He was
goin' to run around to the other side of fire
and get warm. Then he went off that bank, and
it was about fifteen foot to the water. You
can imagine what he thought before he hit that
water.
John Erickson tells a story with a similar motif in
his book The Devil in Texas.
In the Erickson story, when a
steer took off toward the creek, he chased it, hoping to
catch it using his new grass rope.
Erickson writes:
V
88
The north bank was steep at this point, and
the creek was narrow and deep. There was just
enough room on that high bank for a horse to
walk, and the farther we went, the narrower the
path became. Finally the old steer ran out of
path. There was a high bank on the right and a
four-foot drop into the water on the left.
I crowded him and he tried to crawl the
bank. He couldn't quite make it and fell into
the water. His head went under and he came up
swimming. That was a pretty deep hole.
"Serves you right, you old fool," I told
him.
Now I had to figure a way to get myself out.
There wasn't enough room to turn my mare. So I
started backing her out. Her left rear hoof
broke off a piece of the bank and we went over
backwards into the hole. I had just enough
time to kick out of the stirrups before we hit
the water with a big kersplash. (36)
Erickson concludes his story by explaining how wet and
miserable he felt.
He penned the steer and changed into
dry clothes, but his new grass rope was never the same, and
he never had a chance to use it again.
Though the stories are funny when they are re-told,
sometimes people use pranks as a mild method of getting
even with someone who is annoying for one reason or
another.
Piner Stephens tells of a time that his brother
and sister pulled a prank on an unpopular neighbor:
They tell about one time, my little sister and
my little brother, they had a neighbor there a
few miles off. We was all afraid of him, and
he had a big knot on his jaw. We called him
Lump Jaw. And one day he come walkin' up and
all the horses got out, got loose, and he was
walkin' eight or ten miles over there. Needed
to borrow a saddle horse. And they didn't like
this old feller at all. And so they had a
horse there that nobody could ride, wouldn't
\^
89
nobody ride except my father. He could ride
it. So they caught up old Scotty for old Lump
Jaw. And the horse threw him off. And he got
up a cussin' around and went back to the house
and told my mother. And she told them they had
to go back and get him another horse.
Giving someone a wild horse to ride is a common form
of hazing or pranking in cow country where men often pull
pranks to test a newcomer's mettle and see how he will
react.
The popular cowboy song and poem "Zebra Dun" tells
a narrative which is similar to Stephens'.
According to
Gordon Bright's version of the song, a greenhorn came into
camp and "kept on a talkin' till he made the punchers all
sick/ and they began to look around just how to play a
trick."
They gave the greenhorn a wild horse (the Zebra
Dun) to ride, but to their surprise, the newcomer was able
to ride the bronc, proving that "ever' well-educated fellow
is not a damn greenhorn."
In addition to hazing, cowboys sometimes use pranks to
cure people of bad habits such as bragging.
Monte Jones,
also known as Biscuits O'Bryan, told a story about a prank
when he spoke at the Cowboy Symposium held at Texas Tech
University.
Biscuits O'Bryan is a stage persona, but his
tales accurately reflect cowboy culture.
He says:
Now, one of the things cowboys like to
do--cause they stay kinda juvenile even after
they get old--they like to play tricks on one
another. And I remember one time we had this
young feller come into camp, and he didn't have
enough sense to keep his mouth shut. He was
90
tellin' everybody what a hand he was, and just
braggin' until nobody could stand it no longer.
So finally we all got together and talked to
the foreman, and he worked him hard one day and
then put him on the night shift. And he rode
all night long. And the next mornin' they put
him in to flankin' calves and had him flank
calves all day long. And by the time
supper time got there, that guy was so worn out
he couldn't brag no more. He couldn't even
hardly breathe. And he didn't even eat no
supper. He just fell into his bedroll.
And we got out one of them big old leather
awls, and we sewed him plumb up to his neck in
that bedroll. We let him sleep for about an
hour to be sure he was good and asleep. And we
got the night crew to bring their horses over,
and somebody shouted "stampede," and the horses
started runnin' through. And he tried to jump
outta that bag. And that bag was just a goin'
like that, and he couldn't get out. And by the
time he got his eyes open real good, course the
horses had done run off. And everybody else
was lyin' there like they was asleep, except
all those bedrolls was just a bouncin' off to
keep from laughin' out loud. And the old boy
was so tired that he just finally passed out
again.
And as soon as he did, well, we unsewed him,
and the next mornin' when he got up, I guess he
got the point because he didn't brag no more.
Cured him.
Sleeping on the job is another annoying habit
deserving of a prank.
Stan Hoig relates a story about a
prank pulled on a sleeping cowboy in his book. The Humor of
the American Cowboy:
On another occasion there was a big,
overgrown cow poke named Tall Cotton, whose
specialty was going to sleep during duty hours,
leaving the rest of the crew to do his share of
the work. The boys took it for a time, but
they finally decided that something had to be
done about the matter.
91
Then came the day they found Cotton curled
up in a haystack, boots off, sound asleep. The
opportunity was golden. The boys rounded up a
huge tarantula, killed it, and laid it close to
Cotton's leg. Then they tied a pin on the end
of a stick and jabbed the sleeping waddie a
couple of times. Cotton came awake like a wild
Comanche doing the snake dance and, at the same
time, a cowboy rushed up and smashed the
tarantula with his boot heel.
Cotton took one look at the dead tarantula
and turned white. He began to get sick, even
though the other waddies did their best to
console him with stories of the horrible deaths
they had seen as a result of tarantula bites.
Finally, one of the crew, who laid claim to
having read Ten Thousand Things Worth Knowing,
as well as Dr. Chase's Recipe Book, offered to
try to save Cotton, even though he admitted it
seemed hopeless.
First the cowboy poured a pint of bear's oil
down Cotton. When that started some of the
poison coming out of him, they followed it up
with a glass of soda, a cup of vinegar, and
finally a quart of water in which a plug of
tobacco had been soaking. For a while it
seemed almost certain that Cotton was going to
die from that tarantula bite; but the medicine
was potent and, eventually, he was saved.
After that, the crew had very little trouble
with him lying down on the job, especially in
haystacks. (26-27)
In The Modern Cowboy, John Erickson tells of several
pranks pulled on a boy who liked to sleep in the saddle
A cowboy who worked on a ranch in the Canadian
River valley had a habit of falling asleep on
his horse, a nd his compan ions gleefully
exploited th is weakness a nd spent hours
dreaming up new pranks to play on him. Once
they led his horse under a tree with a low
branch that swept him out of the saddle.
Another time they let him ride ahead of them,
then they al 1 galloped forward, yelling and
screaming as they rode pa st, and left the poor
fellow in po ssession of a bucking bronc.
Another time they led his horse into a deep
pond. (50)
V
t:
92
Some pranks are pulled just for the fun of it rather
than for the purpose of teaching someone a lesson.
One
favorite prank is saddling a horse backwards when its owner
is otherwise occupied.
Paul Patterson tells of one such
incident in "Cowboy Comedians, Horseback Humorists":
A couple of other such stories co me out of
Fort Stockton, likewise by word of m outh. The
first one had to do with the cowboy who used to
come in from some big outfit out of town a good
ways, tie his horse in front of the firs t
saloon, and proceed to have a look a t the
elephant and listen to the lobo.
One day the boys sneaked out and turned his
saddle around. Directly out wobbles the cowboy
and climbs into the saddle. But som ething
seems amiss? Nope. Here's the sadd le horn.
And the stirrups? But hold up, here
Where's
Old Rambler's head at? Looking quit e confused,
not to say abused, the cowboy steps back down,
reties his horse, steps back and kic ks the
critter a resounding boot in the bel ly. "Now,
you old so and so! Ain't you ashame d of
yourself? Now Stan there till you sober up!"
(106)
John Erickson tells another backwards-saddle story in
The Modern Cowboy:
Jake Parker of Beaver, Oklahoma told me about
an elaborate prank he witnessed. A branding
crew of about ten men was moving from one
pasture to another. Their horses were loaded
in two stock trailers, and the cowboys piled
into the back of the pickups. One of the boys
on this crew--we'll call him Charlie--was a
nice, quiet fellow who didn't think too
quickly. Charlie was riding in the first
pickup, but his horse was in the trailer pulled
behind the second. The boys in the second
pickup got together and hatched a plot. They
stopped, unloaded Charlie's horse, and turned
his saddle around backward. When they reached
their destination, all the cowboys jumped out
93
and ran for their horses, yelling, "There's a
coyote! Let's chase him!" They leaped on
their horses and rode away, while Charlie tried
to figure out why he couldn't mount his
backward saddle. (50)
Other pranks may be a bit more dangerous.
Chip
Boreing relates one prank he heard about that almost had
disastrous results:
There was a guy who used to live in Southland.
His name was Son Basinger. He told me a story
one time. Said this guy--Course, I don't know
if he was a new cowboy or not--that was runnin'
with 'em, said he had an old Model T or Model
A, you know, that had the throttle on one side
and the spark advance on the other. Said they
went out and got to drinkin'. Course Son owned
a ranch down there. He may not have at the
time. But they were up, out runnin' around
this ranch drinkin' and shootin' rabbits or
coyotes or whatever. And when you drink a lot,
you know, sometimes you have to relieve
yourself. So Son and this friend of his
decided they were goin' to pull a prank on this
guy. So if you turn the throttle off, that car
won't start, those old Model T's or Model A's.
And they'd crank on that car, and crank on it,
and crank on it. "Man, this thing won't
start." And they told this guy, said, "Wet
that engine down." Said, he turned around and
they started cranking on it, you know. They
thought they'd killed him. Said he screamed
and hit the ground. Said they thought they was
goin' to have to carry him to the hospital.
There's a lot of electricity comes out of one
of those old cars. That's about the only prank
I'd ever heard of like that.
Not all cowboys brush a prank aside with a laugh; some
seek revenge.
Biscuits O'Bryan warns that "you should
never play a trick on the cook cause the feller that
controls the menu has got lots of power."
O'Bryan relates
94
the story of a prank he pulled in retaliation for a trick
the cowboys played on him:
So I don't even remember what this kinda
silly trick they played on me was. But I
didn't say nothin'. I just played like nothin'
had happened and went on about my business.
Course that made 'em nervous right there.
But we was camped down on the Concho River
down on some of old man Bart Nasworthy's
country. And there was all these big old pecan
trees along there, and one day while they went
out workin , I decided I would take my four ten
and go down and shoot a mess of squirrels and
make me a squirrel stew. And I did. I got me
a whole tow sack full of squirrels, and I was
headed back up to the camp. And I just
happened to look down there in the river, and I
seen a nest of them big old river rats down
there.
And it was just like a light bulb went on
over my head. Thought, I'm a gonna teach them
guys somethin' to play tricks on me. So I shot
me about six of them big ole river rats,
skinned 'em, and took those skins back to camp
with me. Went ahead and fixed my squirrel
stew, and it was right laritan if I do say so
myself.
And they were all a eatin' squirrel stew,
just a shovelin' it down as fast as they could.
And while they were all busy stuffin' their
faces, I took them rat skins, kinda laid them
out over by the stove. [Laughter] You got it.
And them first couple of fellers didn't see
them skins a lyin' there, but the next guy that
come along, he seen 'em. Couldn't even say
nothin'. He just stood there [pointing] "Uh,
uh--uh, uh." And everybody gathered around to
see what was goin' on and pretty soon they were
all headin' for the bushes.
Course by then, I had done climbed up in one
of them big old pecan trees where they couldn't
see me no more. I didn't say anything for four
or five days after that, and then one day I
finally said, "Did you boys enjoy that squirrel
stew?" I said, "By the way, I shot me a bunch
of them old river rats and boiled them up for
the camp dogs. And they seemed to enjoy 'em."
And these fellers got the point. From then on
X
95
there wasn't anybody ever played a trick on
Biscuits O'Bryan again.
Not all true experience anecdotes involve pranks.
Sometimes they recount an amusing or unusual happening.
Helen Estlack of Clarendon tells a couple of anecdotes
about some of the ranch women she knows:
There's a man and his wife named Walter and
Gladys Johnson who work for J. D. Swift, who is
a banker. And he paid Gladys full wages as a
cow hand. She was that good. One day Walter
and Gladys drove over to a pasture to pick up a
cow to take to a sale. And when Walter drove
up to the gate, she jumped to open the gate and
shut it. And they drove over and got the cow,
came back to the gate. She jumped out to open
the gate for him, and he drove through, and he
just kept drivin'. So she waited there a
little bit and decided that he wasn't gonna
come back, and so she walked about ten miles.
That night, he came in, went in, sat down and
read the paper. She cooked supper. He came in
to eat supper. They ate supper. She got ready
to get up and wash the dishes, and finally she
said, "Walter, when did you think about me?"
He said, "My god. Slim, I hadn't thought of you
yet."
Mrs. Estlack tells another anecdote about a different
woman from the Clarendon area:
And the lady that I told you about, Carol
McClellan, tells me that back in the forties,
she and another lady from the ranching
community were gonna go to Pampa shopping. It
was real hot that day. And from Clarendon to
Pampa, you have to go down a long hill. So her
husband John came in just before they left, and
he said, "Now Carol, I want you to take this
jar of molasses with you."
She said, "Well, whatever for?"
He said, "Well, you know that hill you have
to go down goin' to Pampa? You're gonna go.
You re gonna get down that hill all right, but
comin' back, your radiator belt is goin' to
96
slip, cause it's gonna get real hot, and it'll
be a hundred degrees or so." And said, "Your
radiator will boil over, and you'll be
stranded." And he said, "When you get right to
the bottom of that hill, pour this molasses on
your radiator belt. And it'll make it stick,
and you'll get right on up and can come on
home."
And she said, "We did, and it worked."
Jokes and Fictional Anecdotes
When the cowboy indulges in fictional anecdotes, his
humor ranges from one extreme to another, from the
understated to the exaggerated.
Some of these stories are
told as jokes or short, fictional tales that no one is
expected to believe.
Other anecdotes are longer and more
involved, with real names and places inserted into the
story.
The exaggerated nature of these anecdotes, however,
soon becomes apparent and sets them apart from the
historical personal legends or hero tales.
Some of the cowboy's jokes are the short question and
answer variety, such as a joke Lawrence Clayton told at the
Texas Tech Cowboy Symposium:
brims up at the sides?
Why do cowboys turn their hat
So three of them can sit in a
pickup.
Other jokes are longer and play on the cowboy's dry,
understated sense of humor.
John Erickson gives several
examples of this type of joke in The Modern Cowboy.
writes:
He
97
Here is a gem of cowboy understatement which
was much admired and passed around by cowboys
in the Oklahoma Panhandle, A cowboy got bucked
off his horse and had to go to a chiropractor
to get his neck straightene d out. He hobbled
into the office and the doc tor asked him what
on earth had happened. The cowboy was too
proud to admit that he had been planted in a
sandhill, so he said, "Well , my horse went down
and stepped on my hat."
The
doctor frowned. "St epped on your hat?"
111
'Yalp. My head was in i t.II (55)
i
Erickson relates another joke with a similar motif.
His comic hero lives near Perryton, Texas, but the author
heard the same joke in Hereford, Texas on several occasions
during the mid-seventies.
Erickson writes:
My favorite example of cowboy unders tatement
comes from the Wolf Creek country south of
Perryton, Texas. Late one night a cowboy was
driving home to the ranch, perhap s with a few
beers under his belt. He fell as leep at the
wheel and rammed his pickup into a bridge
abutment. The pickup spun around several times
and came to rest out in the pastu re. Bleeding
and battered, the cowboy walked t o the nearest
house and hammered on the door un til he roused
the neighbors out of bed. The ra ncher opened
the door and stared at the injure d man on the
porch.
"My god, Jim, what happened!"
"Aw,' the cowboy looked at hi s feet, "muh
pickup quit on me. ' (55)
At the Cowboy Symposium, Colquitt Warren told a
traditional joke about a local politician.
Dr. Kenneth
Davis says he heard the same joke in Bell County in the
1930s, and it was old then.
Warren says:
We had a fellow out at Dell City run for
Justice of the Peace. And he got two votes.
suppose it was his and his wife's. And the
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98
next time he came to town, he had on a
six-shooter pistol.
And the sheriff saw it, and said, "What are
you doin' with that gun?"
He said, "Well, I'll tell ya. A man who
ain't got no more friends than I've got needs
protection."
Some older anecdotes show up in a variety of printed
sources.
Stan Hoig repeats a number of these in his book
The Humor of the American Cowboy.
In one story a surprise
twist at the end provides the humor.
Hoig writes:
An outlaw was busy sticking up a train one
afternoon when he came to an old fellow who
shook his head and said:
"I'm sorry, but I have nothing to give you."
The outlaw looked at him suspiciously.
"How come? Who are you?"
"My name is Reverend Appleton. I am a
Methodist minister."
The outlaw scratched the back of his neck
with his six gun, then dropped a big handful of
coins into the minister's lap.
"Here," he said. "You take this. I'm a
Methodist, too." (191)
In another section of the book, Hoig tells a different
anecdote, which is popular in printed sources:
On another occasion a local no-good was
caught cheating in a poker game and was
promptly shot to death by one of his fellow
participants. The fellow was married, and it
was agreed that someone should notify his wife.
Of course no one wanted the chore, so the
matter was decided by drawing cards. The loser
was a gambler. Reluctantly, with hat in hand,
he knocked on the door of the victim's shack,
and a big, straggly-haired female answered the
door. The gambler asked to see Widow Yates.
"Widder Yates? My name is Yates, but I
ain't no widder."
"Lady," the gambler said, "I have twenty
dollars that says you are!" (95-96)
99
Some longer anecdotes fit the category of personal
legends or hero tales.
These stories contain traditional
folk motifs and are told strictly for laughs.
Most
raconteurs would not expect their audiences to believe
these tales, yet specific names and places are inserted.
Any name will do.
Mody Boatright explains, "When a hero
was needed, his name might be invented on the spot; the
feats of daring might be ascribed to some local character;
or the narrator himself might appropriate the honors"
(Folklorist 4). These anecdotal personal tales are common
in print sources but rare in contemporary oral tradition.
During this study, the only examples of such stories
presented orally were collected at the Cowboy Symposium at
Texas Tech University; however, the motifs are so common
that the tales deserve inclusion in this chapter.
One anecdote that is popular concerns a man and a
cuspidor.
Different local names are used in the story, and
the author has heard the modern tale repeated as a joke,
rather than as a personal legend.
B. A. Botkin uses the
name of Jim Baker in a version of the cuspidor story
printed in his book, A Treasury of Western Folklore.
Botkin says:
On one of Baker's visits to Denver, while
seated in one of the hotels chewing tobacco, he
spat on the carpet. A Negro porter who
happened to see him moved the cuspidor to the
spot where he had expectorated, whereupon Jim
turned his head and spat in the opposite
100
direction. The porter again moved the cuspidor
to that side. Jim, not heeding this, spat
again on the carpet.
Finally the porter made several attempts to
place it within the range of his amber spray,
and having been unsuccessful, he placed the
brass receptacle directly in front of him. Old
Jim looked down and replied..., "You know, by
G--, if you keep movin' that thing around, I' m
li'ble to spit
in It."
it." (12-13)
;pit m
Some anecdotes can move through time and be modernized
and personalized, while others have specific historical
settings.
Colquitt Warren tells a couple of anecdotes that
combine historical fact with an incident of questionable
veracity.
One story is about Murdo Mackenzie:
Murdo Mackenzie, a Scotsman came to this
country in 1885, and he managed the Matador
ranch from 1890 to 1912. Then he skipped in
years while he managed a big ranch in Brazil.
And then he came back to the United States and
managed the Matadors from '22 to '37. And he
moved the head office to Matador from Trinidad,
and while there, he stopped off at old Tascosa,
at a little hotel to spend the night. And
during the night he heard a lot of shots in the
saloon next door. And he got up and dressed
and went down to the saloon. And when he got
there, there was a fellow layin' down--layin'
in the floor, shot up and bleeding. And
there's two cowboys standin' over in the corner
by a barrel of whiskey. And Mackenzie said,
"Does this fellow need attention?"
And this young boy said, "Hell, yes, but
stray bullets shot holes in this barrel, and if
we take our fingers out, we'll lose all our
whiskey. ft
Warren's other historical anecdote is about someone
less famous than Mackenzie, a cattle trader named Bull
Nelson.
Warren says:
101
In the 1890's and along there, cattlemen
went to buyin' high priced bulls, Herefords,
Angus, and importin' from England and Scotland,
And there was a cowman up there n ame
of...Nelson, and he was a trader as well as a
cowman. And he imported--it was said ten
thousand bulls in a period of ten years, and
that earned him the nickname of B ull Nelson,
And he bought a bull that was fam ous, and
everybody wanted to see it. So h e got him a
side-show and put this bull on di splay. And
charged people twenty-five cents a head to see
it.
And a fellow came along and sa id, "I'd like
to bring the wife and children to see this
bull." Said, "Could you give me a cut in the
price?"
And Bull Nelson said, "How man y children do
you have?"
And the farmer said, "We've go t seventeen."
And old Bull said, "You go get your wife and
children and come in free. I wan t the bull to
see you!"
In contrast to Warren's historical stories, cartoonist
Ace Reid modernizes a traditional anecdotal tale and claims
it as his own when he explains why he moved from West Texas
to Kerrville.
He says:
But I live down at Kerrville. Oh, boy! Now
there's you a pretty country. I moved down
there. And the reason I moved down there, it's
the healthiest country in the world. And I was
down at a rodeo in Vernon, way back there in
about 1950 at the Santa Rosa roundup. And
that's how I found out how healthy Kerrville
was. The old cowboy that won the bronc ridin',
the bareback bronc ridin', the bull ridin', the
bulldoggin', the calf ropin' was forty-seven
years old, and he was from Kerrville, Texas. I
went up to him the last day when they announced
that he was the champion. I said, "How in the
world does an old boy your age stand the rigors
or rodeoin' and win ever'thing?"
He says, "Hell, my old daddy down at
Kerrville can beat me whenever he pleases, and
he's seventy years old." He said, "Now, Ace."
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102
Said, "If you'll have to excuse me. I gotta
get back to Kerrville to my grandfather's-J J •
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o
wedding.
I said, "Wedding? How old's your
grandfather?"
He said, "A hundred and three."
I said, "Why in the world would an old man a
hundred and three want to get married?"
He said, "He didn't want to. He had to."
That says a lot for our water.
Some anecdotal heroes prefer whiskey to water.
Paul
Patterson relates some humorous personal legends about such
a man in his article "Cowboy Comedians and Horseback
Humorists."
His cowboy heroes is Bud Colbaugh, a man who
"liked long looks at the sky with a quart bottle as a
telescope" (103).
Peterson writes:
Dur ing early prohibition, when whiskey could
be obt ained only through a doctor's
prescr iption. Bud had the extreme good fortune
to get bit by a rattlesnake. However, time and
strict adherence to the doctor's prescription
cured Bud completely of snakebite. Even so, he
kept g oing back for more medicine, but the
doctor kept turning him down. Early one
mornin g a neighbor noticed Bud out at the
woodpi le juggling mesquite around to beat the
band.
"Bu d, I know you better'n that. You ain't
about to to cut no wood."
"Oh , hell, no!"
"Th en what're ye up to?'II
II T »
m looking fer me another snake." (103)
In another tale about Bud Colbaugh, Patterson relates
a strong-man story with the humor provided by a clever
retort at the end.
He says:
It happened that in better days Bud's best
friend in San Angelo was a bartender, in Bud's
point of view the only type of friend worth
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103
cultivating. And it so happened that one day
this bartender friend called upon Bud to eject
a mean Irishman from his place of business.
"Why don't you throw him out?" asked Bud.
"He's an old schoolmate of mine."
Believing he could "throw" him out, most
especially after one or two of the bartender's
best under his belt. Bud went in after him.
Shortly there was a considerable commotion
inside, and here came Bud on all fours--and
much of his considerable momentum wasn't of his
own making.
"Dammit, Bud, whyn't ye throw him out?"
"Aw, I found out he was an old schoolmate of
mine too!" (103-104)
Bars are the scene for many anecdotes.
Patterson
relates another bar story that contains a traditional
motif:
Although not of the stature of Bud
Colbaugh...many oth er old-timers have been good
for at least one st ory that has stood the test
One such story is said to
of time and telling
have originated in Sheffield fifty, s ixty, or
seventy years ago i n Sam Murry's salo on. It
seems that a drumme r was in there enjoying a
quiet drink when a cowboy, wheeling h is horse
away from the bar, caused the critter to stomp
on the drummer's fo ot. Immediately t he drummer
took his complaint to the bartender. who was
Sam Murry himself, But there was no sympathy,
much less compensat ion, forthcoming f rom Sam.
"What the hell y ou a-doin' in here afoot
anyhow?" he asked. ("Cowboy Comedian II
105-106)
The story is repeated in several sources.
Stan Hoig
records a more generic version of this tale in The Humor of
the American Cowboy (pages 155-156).
Hoig's version is set
in a New Mexico bar and none of the people are named.
At
the Cowboy Symposium, Bill Leftwich told a similar story
V
104
about some ex-Rough Riders who used to rendezvous each year
at a rodeo in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Leftwich says:
One of 'em got to feel in' pretty good,
There's a pretty little h otel in Las Vegas, and
he rode his horse in ther e. You know how it is
when a bunch of cowboys g et to feelin' extra
good sometimes. They're gonna ride their
horses into somethin'. S o he rode his horse
into this hotel, and it w as crowded, and there
was a drummer from back E ast in there, and his
horse jostled that drumme r pretty hard. And
that drummer run up to th e desk, and he was
highly upset. And this o Id boy behind the desk
was an old broken-down co wboy anyway. And this
drummer says, "I'll have you know that I was
jostled by a horse, back there. What are you
gonna do about it?"
And this old cowboy li fted his head, and he
says, "Hey, fellow, what are you doin' in here
afoot anyway?"
Cowboys take pride in strange things.
While other
cultures extoll a man's intelligence or brawn, on the
American frontier, a man can take pride in being ugly.
Paul Patterson attaches a local name to another common tale
about an ugly man.
He says:
Booger Red Privitt, the famous bronc rider,
one of Bud's contemporaries, was jealous of the
title "ugliest man in the world." In fact,
Booger Red had boasted that he'd shoot the
first fellow he ever saw uglier'n he was, which
boast he made to Bud Calbaugh the first time
they met.
Bud studied Booger a minute, shifted his cud
to the other jaw and said, "Feller, if I'm
uglier than you air you don't have to shoot me.
I'll do it myself." ("Cowboy Comedians" 104)
Richard M. Dorson collected a slightly different
version of this tale.
The lack of names reinforces the
importance of the motif rather than the person.
The
V
105
strategy indicates that Patterson knew the tale and plugged
in a local name for his own and his audience's amusement.
Dorson's version reads:
A cu rren t story tells of the ugly man walking
home one n ight, when he is suddenly accosted by
a st ranger , who throws him to the ground,
plan ts one knee on his chest, and presses a
knif e to h is throat. The victim begs to know
the reason for the assault. His assailant
says , "I swore if I ever met a man homelier
than mysel f, I would kill him." The prostrate
man peers closely into the face of the other,
then sighs , "If I'm homelier than you, kill
me.
(Sel ected Essays 165)
Speaking of ugly, Darrell Baldwin of Lamesa attended
the college at Guyman, Oklahoma where he claims there is a
pretty girl behind every bush.
To fully appreciate the
comment, one would have to see the flat, treeless grassland
around Guyman.
His comment follows the frontier tradition
of bragging on the womenfolks.
Colquitt Warren tells
another story about some neighbor women of his:
About ten years ago I moved out to Cross
Plains. That's the most isolated and remote
area northeast of Dell City, Texas. And this
family settled there years ago. A lot of their
descendants are still there. And they all-men, women and children--all chew tobacco.
They say it preserves their teeth. And the
last three years, I've lived alone. And last
Christmas, somebody knocked on the door, and I
went. It was one of the neighbor women, and
she looked a beauty. She said, "I brought you
a cake.
And 1 asked her to come in, and took the
cake, and set it down, turned around and tried
to kiss her.
And she threw up one arm and sorta backed
off towards the porch. And she said, "Wait a
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106
minute, you old son-of-a-bitch, 'til I spit out
this chew of tobacco."
Other cowboys, probably those without womenfolks, like
to brag about how tough they are.
Ace Reid repeats a story
he heard about a tough cowboy:
Old Baxter [Black] was tellin' me about a
ranch up here west of here that he was workin'
on, how tough the people are from up here.
Said, "The toughest people I've ever seen lives
on those old high plains." Said, "We's out
there at the ranch here a while back, and an
old boy was--" Said, "We's out workin' cattle,
and an old cow broke out of the herd, and an
old boy took out after it. Just as he got over
to hit her, his horse tripped and fell and
throwed him astraddle that barb wire fence. He
slid down that barb wire, just rollin' up wire,
snappin' the top off of them cedar posts. It
split him right up to the ham string."
I said, "Baxter, did it kill him?"
He said, "Nope. He got up and let his
stirrups out and got on his horse and headed
that cow."
Baxter Black tells a very similar story in his poem "Talk
About Tough!" (Coyote Cowboy Poetry 32).
Other cowboys only have to look and talk tough to get
their point across.
Bill Leftwich tells an anecdote about
one such man:
0 ne time there was a roundup down there in
Bris coe county, and an o Id boy rode up one
even in', and they looked short handed, and it
was one of the Bexar boy s, and I don't know
whic h one it was. And h e applied for a job.
A nd the foreman says, "You bet." Says, "I
sure need another hand." Said, "But somehow
when things get a little harried around here,
and I get the green tail s, I cuss a lot." And
said , "I might call you a dirty SOB or
some thin'." Said, "Don" t think nothin' about
Said, "It's just m y way."
11.
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107
And this old Bexar boy said, "That's all
right." Said, "And if I knock you down."
Said, "Don't think nothin' about it."
Well, that foreman cleaned up his act.
Not all cowboys are as tough as they would like.
Biscuits O'Bryan puts his own name in an anecdotal tale
when he explains why he quit being a cowboy and became a
cook.
He says:
Quite a few years ago, quite a few, we's
workin' down on the 96 Ranch down by Van Horn.
We'd been roundin' up cows back in them big old
headers up in the rimrock country. We'd
finally got through, and several of us took a
break and went down to Alpine. And they had
this big dance over at the Toltec Cafe, and
somehow we took up with this sheep dip salesman
from Del Rio. I don't know how we got linked
up with him. But anyway, after the dance was
over, we went back over to the Holland Hotel.
And up on the second floor they got this
balcony where you can sit around and watch
what's a goin' on down in the lobby. And we
had been a settin' there drinkin' margaritas on
the hoof.
You know what a margarita on the hoof is,
don't you? Where you put some salt here and
hold the piece of lime and a shot of tequila in
this hand and lick the salt and drink the
tequila and bite on the lime. That's a
margarita on the hoof. V\/ell, there's one thing
that--Jose Quergo, you ain't no friend of mine.
But anyhow, we got to tellin' stories, and
this sheep dip salesman was one of them fellers
that no matter what anybody had did, he had did
it twice as big. Somebody talked once about
being charged once by a wounded mule deer, and
he said, "Well, I was charged by two of 'em at
the same time." You know what kind of person
I'm talkin' about.
And the braggin' just got worst and worst.
And that's the last thing that I remember.
Three days later, I woke up in the Brewster
County Hospital. I had both arms and both legs
in casts. My jaw was wired together. When I
could finally open both eyes and get 'em
108
focused on the same place at the same time, I
seen my old buddy Jake a settin' over there. I
finally managed to growl, and then asked him
what in the world had happened to me.
He said, "Don't you remember?"
I said, "No. If I remembered I shore
wouldn't be askin' you." And it was hard
enough just to talk because I had a hangover
that was big enough to share with the whole
nation of India and have some left over anyway.
So Jake said, "Well, you and that sheep dip
salesman got to braggin' to each other. And
finally you bet him that you could stand up on
the balcony rail, fly down past the desk, pull
a feather off that stuffed eagle, and then fly
back up again."
I said, "Why in the hell didn't you stop
me?"
He said, "Stop ya? Hell, I had fifty bucks
a ridin' on you."
As soon as they let me out of the hospital,
I had 'em put me up on my horse, and I was
quite a sight there with plaster chaps and
statue arms. And I got to thinkin', there must
be a better way to make a livin' than
cowboyin'. Sure enough, I talked to the boss,
and as soon as I got out of all that
restriction, he put me on a cookin', and I've
been a doin' it ever since.
The story is a popular one, especially at the Cowboy
Symposium; Marguerite Noble tells a shorter version of it
with her cousin playing the hero's part.
She says:
I had another cousin named Dick Robbins who
rodeoed. And you know, these boys could hardly
make it with their entrance fee or anything
else. And he traveled with a partn er. They
shared a horse. They shared a room . They
shared their entry fees. They shar ed their
winnings. So this time after the r odeo, he was
telling me that they were sitting i n a room all
gathered, and they were telling a 1ot of lies
to each other, everybody out-braggi
everybody. And this one boy had ha d a little
more than one drink. And he said, "I can walk
out that window, and I can fly arou nd this
hotel."
109
So they started taking bets on it. And he
got up, and raised his arms, and went out the
window. Well, he landed on the bushes and he
came back, and he was walking very straight.
And he said to my cousin, his partner, he said,
"I'm your partner." He said, *'What'd you let
me do that for?"
And he said, "Well, because I thought you
could do it. I lost ten dollars on you."
There are times when a cowboy is ashamed of his
weaknesses and would like to hide them, but even these
occasions provide grist for the humor mill.
Colquitt
Warren tells a story about a cowboy named Bob Craft:
He never got to go to school, and he
couldn't read, and he couldn't count. And when
he was workin' for the Millars, he had to help
build a fence. And one evenin' late, just
before they quit, the boss said, he asked old
Bob, said, "Bob, count the holes so I'll know
how many posts to bring out in the mornin'."
And Bob was ashamed to tell him he couldn't
count, and he went off down the line of post
holes. And after while he came back. And the
fellow said, "How many. Bob?"
"Well," he said, "somewhere between a
hundred and a thousand. I never saw so damn
many post holes in my life."
The modern cowboy depends on both the exaggerated and
the understated in his humor.
He both caricatures and
downplays aspects of his life, but no matter which approach
the cowboy takes, the humorous story is quite popular in the
culture; however, the popularity of the most exaggerated
version of these stories, the tall tale, is waning.
It is
significant that the only tall tales collected were recorded
at a university symposium where the participants would be
familiar with literary and printed folklore texts.
These
110
stories are not often repeated in the field, though if
asked, most people will remember hearing some of them.
Evidently the tales have been popular in the recent past.
Mody Boatright collected many tall tales on the range and
printed a collection of them in his 1934 book Tall Tales
fi^oin Texas Cow Camps, and in 1962 Paul Patterson published
"Cowboy Comedians and Horseback Humorists," an article about
anecdotal tales.
These tales are still funny and held great
appeal at the Cowboy Symposium, yet they are out of vogue
within the popular culture for some reason.
The waning popularity of such tales is the result of
cultural changes in recent years.
The old cowboys told the
tales for entertainment, not expecting anyone but the
greenest of newcomers to believe them.
In recent times, the
truly "tall" tale has been relegated to academic texts or to
Disney movies and children's storybooks because, like anyone
else, the modern cowboy depends on television and movies for
most of his entertainment.
(Modern technology in the form
of satellite dishes and video casette recorders has only
recently made television an attractive and practical form of
entertainment in isolated areas.)
Though some tall tales
may metamorphose into jokes, others will be lost entirely or
revitalized through cowboy poetry, folklore texts and
seminars.
Whatever the outcome, the tall tale's place in
i.
Ill
the popular culture is changing even as other forms of humor
continue to grow in popularity in cowboy lore.
CHAPTER VIII
ANIMAL TALES
The cowboy's stories are not animal tales in the
traditional sense but are rather stories about animals.
In
traditional folklore, animal tales "have as their main
characters domestic or wild animals that speak, reason, and
otherwise behave like human beings" (Brunvand, American
Folklore 190).
In cowboy lore, the stories are tales about
domestic or wild animals indigenous to the region.
Though
these animals may at times show certain human
characteristics--such as loyalty, stubbornness, bravery or
cowardice--they do not speak, reason or behave like human
beings.
Most of the stories currently in circulation are
true experience tales.
These tales have long been popular,
as evidenced by J. Frank Dobie's collections published in
his books The Longhorns, The Mustangs, and Rattlesnakes.
Although some of the stories Dobie collected and published
fall under the tall tale category, the vast majority of the
stories deal with people's true experiences with
extraordinary animals.
112
V
113
Cattle
Because cowboys work with cattle daily, it is not
surprising that these animals are often subjects of tales.
Some of the stories look back on the old days, on trail
drives and longhorns, in a sentimental manner.
In Texas
Panhandle lore, the most famous longhorn is probably
Charles Goodnight's lead steer. Old Blue.
J. Evetts Haley
claims that "no animal so charged his [Goodnight's]
imagination like Old Blue" (Charles Goodnight 431).
People, Dobie makes the same claim.
In Cow
He says that "while he
[Goodnight] would not give half a damn for anything that
anybody might write about Charlie Goodnight, he would 'like
to have Old Blue given his dues'" (286).
Dobie does give Old Blue his dues in The Longhorns.
He devotes several pages to Blue's life history, claiming
that Blue "knew the trail to Dodge City better than
hundreds of cowboys who galloped up its Front Street"
(267).
According to Dobie, Goodnight bought the
four-year-old Blue from John Chisum in New Mexico.
Blue
led Goodnight herds to Wyoming, home to Texas from
Colorado, and from Texas to Dodge City, surviving many
perils along the way.
Blue died when he was twenty years
old, and his horns hung in the JA office for some years
afterward (267-275).
114
The old steer's legend lives on in current lore.
Piner Stephens of Canyon recalls what he heard of the
longhorn:
Now the JA had one [lead steer] back there.
They had one they called Old Blue, and they'd
use him for several [cattle drives]. They
wouldn't sell him. And he'd take the lead when
they'd move cattle to market or up north for
the summer. And when they'd start back, why,
he'd just fall in with the saddle horses,
travel with their saddle horses. And they kept
him for years.
Other current tales about cattle are less sentimental.
John Erickson claims that "you should never underestimate
the stupidity of a cow brute" (Devil in Texas 28). Baxter
Black shares Erickson's opinion, as evidenced by one of
Black's "Coyote Cowboy Proverbs":
"When given a choice, a
cow will always go out the wrong gate" (4). Erickson gives
a few other examples of cows' stupidity:
when moved into a
new pasture, they were driven toward water but could not
find the tank the next day; one young steer got its head
caught between two willow trees, and "instead of turning
his head sideways, which is how he had gotten in there, he
pulled straight back...which didn't work" (28-29).
Erickson writes of one especially stupid calf:
This brainless wonder (again, a steer) had
found a five gallon bucket lying out in the
pasture, stuck his head into it, and started
wearing it. He was quite blind, was staggering
around in search of food and water, and I would
imagine that his ears were ringing. Had he
lowered his head just a few inches, the bucket
V
115
would have fallen off. but that was beyond his
mental capacity. (30)
Some people recall that when cattle do something
stupid, they can cause some considerable damage, not only
to themselves but to other property.
Helen Estlack of
Clarendon tells one such story:
My father and a friend went into a cattle
venture, and my father was a county agent at
Brownfield. And they decided that they would
run some mother cows, and they didn't have
horses to move the cattle with or handle them
at all. They did it out of a car, a Ford car,
and had one cow that kinda went loco. So they
were going to lead her up and take her to the
sale. And when they roped her, she just really
went crazy. The only way they could hold the
rope was to tie it around the door post [of the
car]. And then the cow swung around, and she
knocked out one headlight. And then she swung
around and got out the tail lights, bent the
door post where the windows could not roll up
and the doors wouldn't open or shut. And they
finally got her in the trailer, and the durn
cow died.
Mrs. Estlack tells another anecdote about a neighbor's
bull:
The man who has the, well the [Clarendon]
college rodeo classes, or I mean the ranch
operation classes, went out to a pasture to
pick up a bull and move him to another pasture.
The bull was really a mean critter. They
finally got him in the trailer, started off
down the road. All of a sudden this trailer
started jerkin' around, and just jerk, jerk,
like it was wrecked or somethin', and then it
leveled out. And they had to go up a hill, so
it was pretty slow, and they didn't think
anything about it. And the young boy got out
of the pickup to open the gate for them as they
went along and noticed that the bull had kicked
116
the floor out of the trailer, and he was havin'
to run along and keep up.
Sometimes a bull will do even more serious damage to a
cowboy than Estlack's bulls did to vehicles.
Burney
Chapman tells of one incident when a bull put a cowboy in
the hospital.
Chapman says:
One of the stories I remember real well from
the sixties is--I was at the H line camp. We
had a man there named Shorty Sanderson, and his
wife was the camp man, and Shorty was a real,
real religious fellow. I mean extremely
religious....He didn't cuss, and he didn't
smoke, and he didn't drink, and barely would
drink coffee. I mean that's just how religious
this guy was.
We were gathering bulls in the end of July,
first part of August, and it was hotter than
Hades. And we'd gathered all the bulls out of
this one pasture, but we missed one bull. And
we knew he was in there. There was about,
probably about ten, twelve sections in this one
pasture, and back in those days that country
was real brushy. And this one bull, he'd see
you comin' and he'd just sorta line his tail
and head for croaklin [?]. He just couldn't-And if you did catch up with him, he'd turn on
ya, and he'd do some pretty good damage. So we
had him all bought up in this brush, and ole
Shorty and I were together, and we were
ridin'--They was the sorriest horses on the
outfit. One of 'em was called Kicker and the
other was called Got Chopper. And they were
just about named correctly.
So I roped this bull around the horns, and I
said, "Now what are we gonna do with him.
Shorty?" I wasn't but about thirteen years old
at this time. I said, "Maybe you oughtta heel
him." The old bull was just in there, and I
was tied hard and fast, and I was out haulin'
that bull, and he was out haulin' me. And ole
Shorty, instead of heelin' him, he roped the
dude around the horns.
And this is a true story now. I said, "Now
what are we gonna do with him? How are we
117
gonna get him anywhere?" You couldn't pull him
anywhere because he'd get your horse. So
Shorty's over there, the bull's in the middle,
and I'm over here. I said, "I'll tell you what
1^11 do, Shorty. You stay on your horse, and
I'll get off of mine, and I'll tie my rope to
the bottom of this mesquite tree right here,
and then I'll get back on my horse, and you get
off your horse and tie yours to the bottom of
that mesquite tree over there, and we'll have
this dude captured."
I get off my horse, and I tie my rope to the
bottom of this mesquite tree. And I worried
about this rope, gettin' it tied, and I looked
up and Shorty is off his horse, standin' there
holdin' the rope.
So I run just as fast as I can. And I got
on them big ole got-hooks, you know, and those
bat-wing chaps, and I'm a goin'. And the bull,
he just hooked me right in the ass, and just
sent me up in the brush. And I just laid
there, and the rope held. The rope held. It
was tied to the tree.
Shorty, instead of gettin' on his horse, he
just cuts a choky down through the brush afoot.
And he's not but about this tall anyway [about
five feet]. And the bull sees him. This time
the rope didn't hold. The bull hit the end of
the rope. The rope broke, and the bull ran
right over Shorty, did some major damage to
him. So this bull just kept on goin'.
I run over there. I said, "Shorty, are you
hurt?"
He's layin' there, "Ow! Ow!"
I said, "Shorty, are you hurt?"
And he said, "The Lord was after me. The
Lord was after me."
I said, "No, Shorty." I said, "That was the
bull that gotcha." So I said, "Buddy, you'd
better stay." He was really hurt now. I
thought he was dead. So he's goin' on about
the Lord being after him, and all that. So I
aid, "Shorty, I'd better go back to the camp
nd I'll see you." And I couldn't even drive
an automobile. I mean, I didn't even know how
to drive a car in those days. So I got on a
horse.
And his wife lived back there, and they had
an old Plymouth automobile of some kind. And
118
his wife didn't know how to drive either. And
I said, "Well, Mrs. Sanderson." I said, "Ole
Shorty's really hurt bad." I said, "He caint
move, and we gotta get the car out there or
somethin'. Or a wagon or somethin'."
So she said, "Well, I think I can help tell
you how to drive that car if you'll drive it."
So she said, "I think that reverse is up here
somewhere."
Sure enough, I got it in reverse, and I got
over there, and we picked Shorty up and drove
out there in the pasture just as near to him as
we could get. I was scared to death. I just
knew he was gonna be dead.
But anyhow, Shorty survived. And about two
weeks later--George and them sent him to
Wichita Falls to the hospital where he got all
his x-rays. Course it tore up his mouth,
knocked some teeth out where this bull had
gotten him....
Anyhow, we finally captured the bull and
turned him loose in a three section trap that
was brushy, with about ninety other bulls, and
he was the last bull that we got out of there.
And when we finally had to catch him, a bunch
of the other cowboys from headquarters came
out. We roped the bull and tied him to the
back of a wagon, and we drug the bull into a
lot with a couple of mules hooked on the back
of the wagon.
Another common motif in animal lore concerns animals
being trained to respond to a sound.
In cow country,
animals are taught to respond to certain sounds at feeding
time.
Most ranchers simply honk the horns on their pickups
to call cattle when they put out feed.
unique methods of calling cattle.
Others have more
Chip Boreing says:
A lot of ranchers around Southland and Post,
they'll put a siren on their pickup. And
that's how they'll call their cattle. They'll
V
119
go out and hit that siren and feed 'em. And of
course after two or three times, they hear that
siren, and they'll come runnin'.
Other ranchers call animals in different ways.
The
late Bill Elliot had a goat ranch near Del Rio in the mid
1960s.
He would drive out to a pasture, rattle corn in a
large can and call, "Here, goatie, goatie, goatie.
Ba-a,
ba-a," and the goats would all come running.
The calls themselves can often be a source of
amusement, but in one anecdote, the animals' response to
the standard call is the basis of the story.
Chip Boreing
of Slaton says:
You know those ranchers--Where was it where
they were sufferin' from the drought this last
year? Up in the midwest? They had this big
drought. You know, the other farmers and
ranchers would donate hay, and the marines
would fly it in in helicopters and drop it.
And the cattle would all run up--course they
were all starvin', and they'd run up and eat
the hay.
There was a politician a few months ago--I
can't think of who it was--had this big press
conference. I think he was runnin' for
governor or somethin'. And one of the big
things was he was wantin' to be the farmers'
friend. You know, wanted farmers to vote for
him. So he had this all planned. He was goin'
to land out in this field, you know, and had
the TV cameras. And so the helicopter came
over, and all the cattle came runnin' up.
Couldn't even land the helicopter. Ever' time
they'd move the helicopter, the cows would
follow. They never did have a chance to have
his news conference.
./y
120
Horses
Baxter Black, extending "Some Cowboy Philosophy,"
writes:
"Never assume nothin'; there's two things a cowboy
don't know anything about; one of 'em's a cow and the
other's a horse!" (124).
His observation calls attention
to the close working relationship between a cowboy, cattle,
and horses.
Although the modern cowboy spends less time on
horseback than his earlier counterparts, the horse is still
an important part of his work, so it also earns its share
of tales.
Like the longhorn, the wild mustangs of times
past captured the imagination of the early storytellers,
and a few of these stories are still known, though few
still circulate.
According to J. Frank Dobie, one horse of
legend is the Pacing White Mustang.
Dobie writes:
A superb stallion of one region in the
beginning, he became the composite of all
superb stallions....The great horse went under
varying names--the White Steed of the Prairies,
the Pacing White Stallion, the White Mustang,
the Ghost Horse of the Plains. His fire,
grace, beauty, speed, endurance, and
intelligence were exceeded only by his passion
for liberty. (I'll Tell You a Tale 53)
Dobie goes on to explain that this stallion showed
great intelligence in evading capture.
It could outrun and
outthink anyone tracking it, and no one ever successfully
brought it into captivity.
Dobie says:
No matter what claims may have been advanced by
reputed captors or what tales rumored, the White
Steed of the Prairies never surrendered. He and
^
111
his kind no longer graze and watch over the wild
and free world that they once dominated, but the
mystery of the Ghost Horse of the Plains is not
likely to vanish. (55)
Once again, the modern tales express a slightly less
romantic view, even though Don Hofman of Tucumcari, New
Mexico claims that horses are everything, more than just
tools for the job.
He believes that if a ranch wants to
keep good help, they must provide good horses.
To
illustrate his point, Hofman tells a story about one cowboy
who had been working for a ranch for about twelve years and
was particularly fond of a ranch horse that he used.
When
someone showed an interest in buying the horse and
insistantly asked if the manager would sell him, the cowboy
replied, "Well, if he does, I'll leave."
Other cowboys show a high regard for good horses.
Buster Welch raises champion cutting horses, and he says a
good cutting horse "can cut the baking powder out of a
biscuit and not break the crust."
Most horses are simply work animals, but being on
horseback makes the cowboy feel special, a man set apart
from the masses.
Marguerite Noble tells a story that
illustrates the point that a cowboy believes his
saddle is a throne.
She says:
I had an uncle, George Cline, and he took my
son on a roundup. And you know the man on
122
horseback thinks he is king. He looks down on
the sheepman, and the sheepman may be able to
buy and sell him a thousand times. He may not
have good boots or hats, which show how poor
off he is, but he's a man on horseback. So
they came up on these cattle, and pushed up
under the mesquites. And my uncle said, "You
know, son." Said, "Them old cows think they
can get away from us [but they can't]. And he
said, "They're afoot and we're a horseback."
In modern lore, people may talk about what a fine
horse they once had or about a horse that took them on a
particularly memorable ride, but most of these stories
would fit under the category of tales of prowess, for the
story emphasizes the raconteur's skills rather than the
worth of the horse.
They talk of the person's ability (or
inability) to ride a wild horse or of a person's long or
dangerous ride.
Chip Boreing tells a little different
story, one more in keeping with the old movie stereotype of
the cowboy kissing the girl and then riding off into the
sunset with his horse.
Boreing explains:
I know my dad's horse couldn't stand my mother.
It was jealous. When my dad first got married,
he had this horse named Socks, had three white
socks on it. And my dad would take my mom out
to the ranch, you know, to go ridin' or
courtin' or whatever you want to call it. And
that horse would--Pop said that was the
gentlest horse in the world. Anybody could
ride it. Said, my mom would walk within a
hundred yards, and that horse would kick the
fence and claw at her and bite her. Said one
time he talked her into ridin' it. Said the
minute she got on the saddle, he took off at a
full run with my mom on it. I don't know how
far it ran before somebody finally chased it
down. It was a jealous horse.
123
Some horses like some people are just plain ornery.
Burney Chapman tells a story about a brown stud he had the
misfortune of riding for a time:
There was a time on the L7 Ranch--I told
this to Big Ed the other day--Mr. Jack Ferris
was an attorney from Oklahoma City, and he had
this L7 Ranch country right southeast of
Crosbyton leased, 510 sections on it at that
time. And Mr. Ferris was the kind of a boss
that you didn't want to ride the milk pen
calves while he was away. He didn't want to do
anything like that while he was away. Most
ranchers, you'd have to wait 'til the boss left
to ride the milk pen calves, rope and all that
kind of stuff. Mr. Ferris always liked a good
show.
We had an old Morgan stud that somebody had
brought down there for Mr. Ferris for some of
us cowboys to ride. This Morgan stud would run
away with you. You couldn't hold him. I mean,
you just--once you got him above a high lope,
it was history. You couldn't pull him around.
You couldn't do anything. So Mr. Ferris-Instead of calling me Wichita, he called me the
Spider. That was my nickname for Mr. Ferris.
He said, "Spider, I want you to ride this brown
stud because I want my friends--I want you to
get this thing where you can stop him and turn
him around."
I said, "Okay, Mr. Ferris." Well, you
couldn't turn this thing around in a ten
section pasture. But anyhow, we were ridin'
along one day, and there was a big, old, fat,
dry cow out there, and Mr. Ferris said,
"Spider, why don't you rope that old, big, fat,
dry cow off the brown stud?"
And I said, "Mr. Ferris." I said, "I'll get
killed doin' that."
And he said, "Oh, why, it won't be any
problem at all. Why don't you go right ahead?"
So I said, "Okay." Well, I knew what was
gonna happen. Immediately, I knew, because
when I kicked this rouse up into a run to catch
the cow immediately it was goin' to be history.
Well, I roped the cow, threw the trip, and I
124
quit the flat. I bailed o ff that stud cause I
knew what was gonna happen •
And sure enough it did. Both beasts--when
the beasts hit the end of the rope, it jerked
the brown stud over backwa rds, and jerked the
cow down all right, broke the tree in my
saddle. And if I had been in it, it would have
probably broken me, too. But from then on-that's one thing it did fo r the brown stud.
From then on, you couldn't ride the brown stud
up on a cow. He wouldn't go. He'd still run
off with you, but you sure couldn't--if you ran
him toward a cow, he would never--.
Animals:
Domestic and Wild
Another domestic animal that attracts a share of
stories is the dog.
Perryton writer John Erickson says he
is the only person he knows who works for a dog, but his
series of humorous books about Hank the Cow Dog are quite
popular.
tradition.
Other less famous dogs have their place in oral
Chip Boreing relates one story about a dog and
a coyote:
This dog I had was an Irish Setter, and she
was a coward, you know. She was a good dog,
but she just wasn't very brave. And we had a
pig die there at the house one time, and we
pulled it out behind the barn just to get it
out of the pig pen. And one morning my dad got
up about daylight. Course, he always got up at
daylight anyway. And he went out and saw this
coyote workin' on this pig. So he came in the
house and got the twenty-two and went sneakin'
down there toward the barn, and course Lonnie
was real brave. The dog's name was Lonnie.
She got real brave when there was somebody
standin' next to her. And Pop was sneakin'
down to the barn with this twenty-two, gonna
125
try to get a shot at this coyote. And here
comes Lonnie, you know, growlin' and snortin'.
She took off. Course the coyote took off
runnin'. Lonnie was hot on her tail. And Pop
got about half disgusted, you know, so he just
walked down there. He walked up to the fence
and kinda leaned on the fence, watchin' the dog
chase the coyote.
The coyote turned around and started chasin'
the dog. Course, you know, Lonnie just locked
it down, slid to a stop. Said, she was humped
up runnin' for everything she was worth, and
that coyote was right on her tail. And I guess
it kinda humiliated that coyote. He wouldn't
take it. Anyway, the coyote turned around and
started off again, and Lonnie turned around and
went back after him. He turned around and came
back after Lonnie again. Finally got her close
enough that Pop got a shot and got that coyote.
You know, he just kept aimin', and they just
kept comin', and he finally shot it. So he got
the coyote right there at the house. Lonnie
inadvertently just lured it back to him.
The coyote as trickster is a common motif in
Southwestern lore, but in Boreing's case the trickster was
tricked.
The coyote escapes in a story that Elmer Kelton
relates in The Time it Never Rained (pages 96-110).
In a
1988 address to the Texas Folklore Society, Kelton says
that he based the coyote hunt on a real story he heard
around Barnhart.
A transcript of the speech reads:
The coyote chase in my book gets pretty
wild, but it is no wilder than one at Barnhart
that inspired it. I remember people talking
about that one for a long time.
It got some riders spilled. The airplane
used in the hunt came down too low and bumped a
wheel against the cab of a pickup....
In the real hunt at Barnhart, they never got
the coyote they were after. Late that night,
long after everybody had given up and gone
126
home, two frightened wetbacks ventured up to a
neighboring ranch house, looking for food.
They had seen that mass of horseback riders and
pickups and the airplane bearing down on them.
They thought they were being hunted by all the
border patrolmen in the world.
They dug deep down in some brush and hid
while the whole procession passed by, almost on
top of them. No one saw them.
They were still lying there an hour or so
later, terrified, when they saw the coyote come
up out of his hiding place just a little piece
away and trot off triumphant.
I used that in the story. (Living and
Writing 18-19)
Another story of a coyote hunt has a different twist
at the end.
Piner Stephens relates:
One time we got surprised. We was--had some
dogs chasin' a coyote. And we come to a little
ole creek. The coyote went down in there. Our
dogs went up to a big log. There's two big
logs layin' there, and we thought the coyote
was under there. They was a yelpin' and goin'
on. One of the dogs got in there, and right
about quick we found out it wasn't a coyote.
It was a skunk.
The coyote is still fairly common in West Texas
because it can exist, even thrive, next to man; not so the
wolf.
The lobo no longer lives in West Texas, so its
stories are rare.
One wolf story was collected and is
included because of its common motifs.
Jim Matthews, the
raconteur, is not a cowboy, but his narrative of a buffalo
hunter's encounter with wolves is based on manuscripts in
the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University.
Matthews says:
127
White buffalo hunters often used arsenic and
mixed it with meal, tried to tempt the buffalo
to eat it, thereby poisoning them, so that they
would slowly die and the hunters could track
them down until finally they fell dead. That
was the easy way of doing things.
There's one story told in which one of the
hunters did try this method, had his buffalo.
The buffalo was in pain, obviously. It was
beginning to feel the effects of the poison.
But the buffalo kept on wandering, kept on
walking forward. And so the hunter followed
along behind him. And as he followed,
something happened which he didn't count on at
all. A wolf pack caught the scent of the dying
buffalo, and they began to follow along after
him. The wolves, which the hunters called
lobos, came closer and closer to him, until
finally he was afraid that the leaders of the
pack were just about on his heels, and there
was no chance of him escaping them. Sure, he
could have shot a few of them, but then as soon
as they got past those few, what chance did he
s tand?
The hunter realized that the wolves would
often go into a frenzy over any strong scent,
especially that of blood. To begin with he
tried to give them the scent of human, so he
took off his hat, waved it behind him, and then
dropped it. Immediately the leaders of the
pack pounced on the hat and savagely tore it to
shreds. That occupied them for a couple of
minutes, and then they continued on the trail
of the hunter and the buffalo.
The buffalo was getting much slower now, and
it was certain that before too long he would
drop, but the hunter could also see that the
wolf pack was going to catch up with him long
before the buffalo dropped. And so, the next
thing he tried was he took off his coat, waved
it behind him, got the scent, and dropped it.
Again the leaders pounced on the article of
clothing. They tore the coat to shreds. This
occupied them a little bit longer. The man was
able to get further ahead.
By now the buffalo was getting slower and
slower. And it didn't look like there was any
chance for the hunter to get away from the wolf
pack. The hunter realized that the buffalo
didn't have too much longer to live. So as the
128
pack closed in on him again , he turned, pulled
out his pistol, shot the le ader right between
the eyes. The lead wolf fe 11, and again the
pack closed in with scent o f blood this time,
and fell on the leader and tore him, and
feasted on one of their own kind,
Well, this gave the hunt er the time he
needed. By the time the wo Ives had finished
feasting on their own leade r, the buffalo
finally dropped. And natur ally, the wolf pack,
in a frenzy, descended upon the buffalo, and
began to feast upon it. In the confusion, the
hunter escaped. He didn't come away with his
prize buffalo, but he did c ome away alive.
The story is similar to one recorded in the Baughman
Motif Index.
Matthews' story is of more believable
proportions than the one Baughman recorded, and Matthews'
version contains additional motifs, but the resemblance is
evident.
Baughman summarizes the story thus:
Wolves pursue wagon loaded with food. The
driver throws them the load of meat. Then
shoots them one by one. The wolves devour dead
comrades, then continue chase. Only one wolf
left when the man runs out of bullets. The
wolf is no longer dangerous, having eaten wagon
load of meat and twenty wolves. (482)
The other motif in Matthews' tale is throwing clothing
to the pack to distract them and buy time.
Both of these
motifs are common in panther lore as well as wolf lore.
J.
Frank Dobie tells one story of a neighbor of his who went
hunting and was pursued by a panther on his way back
to his horse.
The man dropped six turkeys behind him, one
at a time, to distract the panther before the man safely
reached his horse (Tell You a Tale 204-205).
129
In the same book, Dobie tells a common story of a
woman with a baby being chased by a panther.
According to
popular belief, panthers are attracted to the smell of a
baby, so this woman and her child were an ideal panther
dinner.
The woman had been visiting her cousin and stayed
later than usual, until sunset.
Dobie quotes her:
I was hurrying along when something made me
look back, and why I didn't just drop dead, I
don't know. A big yellow panther was walking
right after me. I started to run, and the
panther ran too. When I slowed down, he would
slow down, but still gain on me. It was
getting darker and darker, and I was getting
scareder and scareder. I seemed numb all over,
but somehow I kept on running. The panther
gained on me and I knew any minute he'd grab
baby away.
I snatched off baby's cap and dropped it,
and the panther stopped to smell it. I gained
a little. Then one by one I snatched off more
clothes, mine and baby's both, whatever was
handiest, and dropped them as I ran. Well, I
made the cabin door and fell inside and managed
to push the door shut. Thank Heavens, Sam
wasn't there, and I come to enough to dress
ourselves and start supper before he got in.
He didn't need to ever warn me again to take my
saddle pony and go around by the open pasture
when I wanted to visit Sary. (210-211)
The panther stories, like the wolf stories, are part of
Texas' heritage, but few of the tales are still popular in
the modern oral tradition.
Snakes
Snakes are the most popular subject for animals tales
in West Texas.
The rattlesnake is an ubiquitous creature
tPJSi.',.
y
.
130
in rural areas, and it evokes a combination of fear and
respect from the humans with whom it shares its domain.
Favorite topics of snake stories include true experience
tales of close calls or lucky escapes as well as
exaggerated tales about how big a snake is or how many
snakes are found in any one place.
The late Gordon Bright often talked of a snake
infestation in Zavala County in the late 1950s.
Bright
lived thirteen miles from the town of Crystal City and as
he traveled, would often kill snakes that crawled out onto
the highway.
The warmth of the road attracts snakes
especially at night, and Bright says he killed twenty
some-odd snakes on one round trip into town.
On one
occasion, he killed a snake that stretched clear across the
highway.
Even considering the width of Farm-to-Market
roads, that was a mythically large snake.
Bright later started carrying a pistol and would get
out of the car to shoot the snakes rather than running over
them.
He made this decision after hearing about a mechanic
who died from a snake fang embedded in a tire.
Evidently,
a snake struck the tire when the driver ran over the snake.
The fang stuck in the tire and broke off.
Later when the
mechanic fixed the flat caused by the snake bite, he
scratched his hand on the fang and died from the
second-hand bite.
131
This is a modern version of a common motif in snake
lore, the traveling fang.
In older versions of the tale,
the fang is embedded in a boot heel rather than in a tire.
Mody Boatright tells a version of this story in his book
Tall Tales From Texas Cow Camps.
He says that a snake
strikes the boot heel of a cowboy named Bill.
Bill dies,
and his boots are passed on to two friend, each of whom
dies, before a third friend finds the fang in the boot heel
and removes it (2-4).
The traveling fang misconception is a fairly common
one.
In her thesis "The Folklore of the Rattlesnake,"
Linda Adams reports that a number of people share the
opinion of a Colorado City man named Mr. Blassingame, who
says, "I used to run over rattlesnakes in the road but I
don't do that anymore, because a rattlesnake fang will hang
in the car and you might could get hurt" (47). A
Sweetwater man named Dan Dooley was even more specific
about the matter.
He says, "I've heard stories about
people running over a rattlesnake's head and gettin' a fang
hung in a tire, and then two or three months later they go
to change a flat and they'll get that venom in their
finger" (Adams 47-48).
Other snake stories center on people accidentally
stumbling into a nest of snakes.
such story:
Piner Stephens tells one
132
One time we was moving some cattle from up
here by Stinnett to over close to Tucumcari.
We was going up the Canadian River. It had
been a rainin' for two or three days, and we
was all wet and out bedrolls was wet. About
four or five o'clock, the boss, he'd been
ridin' way out ahead, picking out the trail,
and he come back, and he said, "I've found a
good place for us to stay all night." Says,
"An old rock house up here. Some stables to
put our horses in, and we can get in there and
build a fire and dry our bedrolls out, dry our
clothes out."
Sounded good to us. And we got up there
that night. The cook got there ahead of us,
built a fire and had us a good warm supper out
of the rain. We was sittin' around after
supper talkin', and someone of the boys says,
"Everybody be quiet. I thought I heard
something."
So we got real quiet and listened a while
and couldn't hear nothing, so we went on a
talkin'. And directly, he says, "I hear
somethin'." Said, "Be quiet. '
We was quiet a little bit, and directly we
heard an old rattlesnake go buzz-z-z. So we
wondered, what in the world? We got to
listening. An old wooden floor had cracks in
it, and we put out ear down to it, and the fire
in there--gettin' warm--had woke those
rattlesnakes up. They began to stir. So we
got our bedrolls and moved outside in the rain
and let them have the house.
People are seldom bitten by a snake, but close calls
are the favorite subjects for personal experience tales.
Marshall Holcomb relates a close call in a 1972 interview
recorded for the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech
University.
Holcomb says:
Well, really, I've never seen anybody--I've
heard of it--but I've never seen anybody bitten
133
in my life. Usually, a rattlesna ke won't harm
you. I did know of a boy laying on a wagon one
time, and a rattlesnake crawled u p over him and
the cook seen him. And the cook said, "Well,
hell, I didn't know what to do." Said, "All I
done is just held my breath."
And this guy breathing--They s aid that the
snake, you know, felt him moving, I guess, and
crawled off away from him. And h e said, he
[the snake] woke that old boy up, and he said
when he did, he killed this rattl esnake....But
anyhow, he said when that old boy woke up, he
said he was lookin' right straigh t at that
rattlesnake, and he said he prett y near knocked
himself out of the wagon trying t o get out of
there. A man that just waked up, you know, and
look there at that snake.
Waking to find a snake sharing the warmth of the bed
is another fairly common motif in snake tales.
Mody
Boatright includes a "tall" version of the story in Tall
Tales From Texas Cow Camps.
He writes:
Hank stirred u p the coals and put on a
mesquite grub. L anky game him his cue by
asking if rattles nakes ever got in people's
beds.
"Occasionally, " said Hank. "Occasionally,
though they ain ' t as thick as they used to be.
One time I woke u p in the night, thinkin' it
was about time fo r me to stand guard. I felt
something cold on my chest. I knowed what it
was. I says to m yself, 'Now, Hank, keep cool,
Keep cool.' All the time I was easin' my hand
back around to th e top of my head to git a-holt
of my six-gun. I was as careful as I could be,
but I reckon the critter got on to what I was
doin' , for jest a s I was about to touch the
gun, he raised up his head and opened his mouth
to strike. Then I let him have a bullet right
in the mouth. Th at was the quickest draw I
ever made." (14)
Other more realistic stories of close calls are
popular in the current culture.
Connie Urbanczyk, a
134
Hereford man, enjoys telling a story about a frind of his
who was working under his pickup when a snake bit him in
the rear.
The man was so filthy that he took a shower and
cleaned up before going to the doctor in town.
When he
arrived at the doctor's office, the doctor lectured him
about not coming in sooner, but the physician could find
nothing wrong with the man.
They finally discovered that
the snake had struck the man's wallet.
Chip Boreing also had a close call with a rattlesnake,
He tells of a time when he stepped on a snake:
And I stepped on a rattlesnake when I was
out there [ranch at Southland]. The way our
chicken house was set, you had to go--You know
our house was just right under the Cap, you
know, still on the hill, and you'd go down the
hill about a hundred, two hundred feet. No,
more like three or four I guess, between two
barns into the horse pen, and walk through the
horse pen, and there was a big shed that the
horses, you know, would get out of the sun. And
you had to open the gate and step around the
horse shed to get into the chicken house. And
there was about a little three foot nook back
there. And I came in one summer, and I'd been
swimmin'. I had my shorts and my tennis shoes
on. Mom said, "Run down to the chicken house
and get me some eggs."
Okay, so I went runnin' down there. It was
about five o'clock in the evenin'. Course, I
jumped over the first gate and opened the
second one, and I stepped around there, and I
was opening that door, and I heard somethin'
rattle. Course, I just froze. And then I felt
somethin' on top of my tennis shoe. And I
looked down, and I had stepped on him about two
inches behind his head or so. And he'd coiled
up on top of my foot. And you know how you--I
guess you call it the willies or the
135
heebie-jeebies when you just shake. I did that
continuously for about fifteen minutes. I mean
I just was--Oh, I was scared to death! And I
was just screamin' and yellin'. Of course,
they couldn't hear me, you know. They were up
at the house, had the TV on; Mom was cookin'
dinner. And I was--It was, I want to say
disgusting because you could just--You know how
a snake moves from side to side. I mean I was
just--Oww! I yelled and yelled. And I could
see his head turnin' back and forth, you know,
tryin' to get my shoe. And I had all the
weight I had on that one foot. I wasn't about
to let him get loose because I was afraid with
him being on top of my shoe, if I tried to run,
I'd just take him with me.
And I finally got the chicken house door
open. It had some wire at the top cause we'd
had racoons gettin' in stealin' the eggs,
breakin' 'em, so we'd wired that every hole up.
And I had to take that wire loose by hand. I
finally got the door open, and I took my right
foot and scooted 'im off my left foot. And of
course, he'd crawl around and try to, you
know- And I grabbed both sides of that chicken
house door, and as soon as I'd scooted 'im off,
I just pulled myself in as fast as I could, sat
in the chicken house and shook for about half
an hour. I was afraid to come out, you know.
And I sat in there and cooled down for a little
bit, and finally opened the door, didn't see
the snake. I snuck out and ran back to the
house.
My mom says, "Where's the eggs?"
"Mom!"
Says, "Well, he's gone now. Go get 'em."
I wound gettin' 'em anyway.
The only good snake is a dead snake. That's
just the way I look at it. I can't stand 'em,
especially after that.
Nancy Hohenstein's husband Ray also had what he
thought was a close call with a rattlesnake.
The
Hohensteins now live near Lubbock, but a few years ago they
136
were living near a new lake on the eastern edge of the
South Plains, and they were having trouble with the large
number of rattlesnakes that were leaving the recently
flooded area.
Nancy would find snakes under the pea vines
in her garden and almost everywhere.
Ray's boss killed an
exceptionally large snake one day, cut off the rattles, and
threw them onto the dashboard of the pickup.
About three o'clock the next morning, Ray got up
because he was neighboring (loaning labor to a neighbor).
He was supposed to hook up a trailer and take some horses
to a neighbor's ranch.
As he was about to pull out onto
the road, he turned on the pickup's defroster, and when the
air came on, he heard the distinctive buzz of a
rattlesnake.
Ray jumped out of the pickup in a hurry.
vehicle ended up stuck in the mud in the barditch.
The
He had
to call his boss, asking him to bring a tractor to pull the
pickup out.
The boss, who was a bit of a grouch anyway, wanted to
know how Ray had managed to get stuck when there was
practically no water anywhere.
Ray refused to answer.
The
boss came and pulled the pickup out of the mud, grumbling
the whole time.
When the pickup was free, Ray told his
boss to get in and start it.
He did; the defrost came on;
he heard the buzz of a snake, and he left the pickup even
137
faster than Ray had.
Afterwards, Ray walked over to the
pickup and flicked the rattlers out of the defrost vent
where they had fallen.
Nancy explained that when the air
hit the rattles it made them buzz.
Ray told his boss, "I
just wanted you to know why I ran the pickup into the
ditch."
The boss replied, "Oh, and I threw those in there
myself."
There are a number of superstitions associated with
snakes.
Chip Boreing tells of watching some cats play with
a snake.
He says they did not kill the snake but sat
around and took turns slapping at it with their paws.
The
belief that cats and snakes are natural enemies is one of
several common snake superstitions in West Texas.
Probably
the best known superstition or belief concerns snakes and
ropes.
Gordon Timms explains:
This is all just hearsay, but I heard about the
old^cowboys.
They used to make their bed down
and take a rope, their lariat rope
and Put it
on the ground and make a ring around their bed.
And they claim a snake wouldn t come over that
rope,
others claim that one must use a hair rope because the rope
tickles the snake's belly; snakes do not like it and
therefore will not crawl over it.
Another common belief is
that draping a dead snake belly up over a fence will bring
rain.
138
Most of the snake stories currently in circulation are
true experience stories.
Even though some of the stories
are exaggerated, the tall tales that Hoig and Boatright
collected are no longer in evidence.
During the present
study. Ace Reid told the only truly tall snake tale when he
was speaking at the Cowboy Symposium.
Reid claims that one
of his ancestors moved to West Texas and lived in a dugout.
His wife wanted a frame house, so the man hitched up the
wagon and went to look for some trees.
He drove and drove
without finding any trees, but as he went along a snake
struck the wagon tongue.
The wagon tongue began to swell,
so the man started to split rails off of it.
He got enough
wood to build a one-room house, but three days later when
the swelling went down, the house squeezed him to death.
Although obvious exaggeration such as Reid uses is
rare, humor is evident in many animal stories.
Cowboys
like Chapman can take even serious incidents and turn them
into funny anecdotes.
Chapman and Estlack follow a long
cowboy tradition of turning everyday events into comedies.
Their type of stories circulate in the popular culture, as
do the more serious stories of encounters with animals that
the cowboy works with and lives beside.
These animals are
a part of the cowboy's life and are logical subjects for
tales.
CHAPTER IX
WEATHER WINDIES
Because the cowboy works outdoors, he is more
concerned with the weather than is his urban counterpart.
Weather has long been a topic for brags.
According to Stan
Hoig, "Lusty frontiersmen were forever ready to brag that
their part of the world had...the hottest summers, the
coldest winters, or the strongest winds of any" (37-38).
The severity of the weather is still a popular topic of
discussion and is sometimes exaggerated to comic
proportions.
Other weather stories are of the personal
experience variety.
In West Texas, the most common
personal experience weather tale usually concerns the dust
bowl era.
Older folks recall the first time they saw a
black wall of dust come down over the area, while younger
people repeat a parent's version of the story.
Other
favorite weather topics in West Texas include the wind, the
heat of the summer, droughts, and the severity of storms.
139
140
Superstitions and Folk Wisd om
People who spend a great deal of time outdoors develop
methods of predicting the weather.
Some of their
traditions such as checking the sky early in the morning to
predict what the day's weather will be like are based on
practical experience because approaching dust storms or
thunderstorms can bee seen along the horizon.
Other
traditions take a bit more faith.
There are several common jokes and sayings about
predicting the weather in Texas.
One proverb states that
'if you don't like the weather in Texas, wait a few
minutes. It'll change."
Another proverb claims that "only
fools and newcomers predict the weather in Texas."
Some
folks may add, "Come to think of it, that's the only two
classes of people I've seen in this state."
Foolish or not, people often depend on plants and wild
animals to predict the weather.
A common belief is that a
harsh winter can be predicted by the unusual heaviness of
an animal's coat.
Stan Hoig explains, "A range-wise man
could foretell a bad winter by the coyote's extra-heavy fur
or from noticing the beaver stocking up on saplings" (55).
The end of winter, in contrast, can be predicted by plants.
Shawn Arney, a Texas Tech student from Jayton, Texas, says
that "there will always be a chance of a freeze if the
mesquite trees have not come out yet."
; ^ ^
He goes on to tell
141
about a biology class project in Jayton:
"Our teacher set
out his tomato plants before the mesquites came out and
they got killed by a frost.
I waited until the mesquites
came out to plant mine and they didn't get killed.
I was
told this holds true for nearly every year."
Another Texas Tech student, Keith Daws, reports some
weather wisdom he learned from his grandfather:
"If cattle
are in a big group by the fence, then it is going to rain."
One of his classmates responded that his grandfather had
always told him that if the cattle are gathered along the
fence, it is good fishing weather.
The late Gordon Bright
also used cattle to predict the weather.
He believed that
if cattle lie down in the middle of the day, the weather
would be extremely cold that night.
Bright claimed that
the cattle knew it would be cold and they would have to
move around to keep warm at night, so they would rest
during the day.
In a dry country like West Texas, people often look
for signs of rain.
There are many possibilities:
a halo
around the moon; a whirlwind or dust devil turning
counter-clockwise; and if snails climb up a fencepost, then
the area is in for a real gully-washer.
Piner Stephens once had a boss, Mr. Williams, who
reversed the process and used the weather to determine the
condition of his pastures.
;^^tv^
Stephens explains:
142
I told him where I'd been, and it'd been
raini ng over there. And he said, "Well, when
you c rossed the creek, the run-off water, was
it cl ear or muddy?"
I said, "Oh, it was real muddy."
He said, "Well, that section is
over- grazed." Said, "I'm gonna get h o l d of the
f oreman and get those cattle out of t h e r e . "
Said, "The w a t e r r u n n i n ' off, i t s h o u l d be
clear If
So just a few days after that, we was out
there movin' those cattle out of that section.
Stephens also learned how to keep tanks from freezing
in the winter when he worked for Williams, a New Mexico
rancher.
Stephens says:
Winter came and it was cold, and there
wasn't but just a few windmills out on the San
Augustin Plains. And gosh it was cold, way
below freezing. And the water in these tanks,
there wasn't any ice on it. And we rode over
there one day and I says, "I wanna know
something." I says, "As cold as it is and
freezing, there's no ice in that tank."
And the cowboy I was with, he just laughed.
And he said, "Don't you know why? '
And I said, "I sure don't. I never saw it
before."
He said, "Well, when they put that tank
down, Mr. Williams had that well driller come
up here, and they would drill two or three
holes, according to the size of the tank, about
a twenty inch hole, down about fifteen foot,
and then set the tank over that. And then the
warm air comin' up out of the ground would keep
the tank thawed out."
The old man, Williams, he got onto that
years before. Why, some prospectors there on
his place was diggin', prospectin' for gold,
dug a slant down into the mountain and got down
there so far, and then they hit water. And so
Mr. Williams bought their claim from them just
to get their water. Well, they went in there
and piped that water out, and when they did,
out to the mountain, the tunnel, they just set
the tank there. Well, it never did freeze.
-t^y/-^
^l^
143
^ho^H'^•^? ^ ° ^ ^° thinkin' about it....So he got
the driller to come out there, and they dug
some holes down, and they put cement over them.
And It worked, so he did all his tanks that
way.
Wind, Rain, and Sun
The weather can be the topic for tall tales, jokes,
and personal experience tales.
In West Texas, most of the
stories and jokes rely on the wind, heat, and lack of rain
for their topics.
According to Stan Hoig, "It was
generally the wind which caused the most comment from any
new arrival on the Southwestern plains" (42). The
observation still holds true.
It is an unusual day when
there is not a breeze moving across the land, while severe
winds and sandstorms are common on the Texas plains,
especially in the springtime.
Little exaggeration is
necessary to describe the severity of these winds, yet Hoig
includes some appropriate brags in his book The Humor of
the American Cowboy.
He writes that "the stranger who
asked, 'Does the wind blow this way all the time?' was
likely to gain the answer, 'Heck, no.
It blows the other
direction about half the time'" (42-43).
Hoig collected other windies, or tall tales, as well.
One describes the way westerners determine wind velocity.
He says:
MM
::vv^i
144
And when pushed for enlightenment on the
subject, a cowboy would patiently explain that
the best way to tell about the wind in those
parts was to watch the heavy log chain hanging
in front of the bunkhouse. If the chain was
hanging at a forty-five-degree angle, there was
probably a slight breeze blowing. But if the
C h a m stood straight out, the chances were good
that a real blow was up. (43)
Mody Boatright tells the same story in Tall Tales From
Texas Cow Camps (pages 40-41).
In the winter, the wind can "have a shiver in it."
Many people in the Amarillo area claim that there is
nothing between Amarillo and the North Pole to block the
wind except a barbed wire fence.
"And someone left the gate open."
Plains is somewhat milder.
Sometimes they may add,
Weather on the South
Folks there claim that it only
snows in Lubbock when someone leaves the gate open in
Amarillo.
The high winds are responsible for sandstorms in the
area, and these storms are topics for discussion, gossip,
and lore.
A recent version of a windie about blowing sand
appears in the September 1987 Reader's Digest.
It is set
in Arizona, but versions of the tale circulate in Texas as
well.
It reads:
After a fierce dust storm, an Arizona
rancher spied a handsome cowboy hat by the side
of the road. Assuming a fortunate windfall, he
picked up the hat only to reveal the head of a
wide-eyed cowboy, who explained he had been
caught in dune country by the blowing sand.
[
^
145
Hold on," said the Samaritan. "I'll fetch
a shovel from the truck and dig you out."
"Better go back to town and bring a
tractor," suggested the cowboy. "I^m a-sittin'
on my horse." (118)
This is a classic tale from the American frontier.
Jan Harold Brunvand explores the history of the story in
some depth in his article "The Hat-in-Mud Tale," which
appears in the Texas Folklore Society book The Sunny Slopes
of Long Ago.
According to Brunvand, one of the earlier
versions of the story appears as a campfire tale in Andy
Adams's Log of a_ Cowboy.
Brunvand relates the "old war
story":
They used to tell the story in the army,
that during one of the winter retreats, a
cavalryman, riding along in the wake of the
column at night, saw a hat apparently floating
in the mud and water. In the hope that it
might be a better hat than the one he was
wearing, he dismounted to get it. Feeling his
way carefully through the ooze until he reached
the hat, he was surprised to find a man
underneath and wearing it. "Hello, comrade,"
he sang out, "can I lend you a hand?"
"No, no," replied the fellow, "I'm all^^
right; I've got a good mule yet under me."
(101)'
Mody Boatright includes a version of the story in Tall
Tales From Texas Cow Camps (page 49), and Brunvand traces
the story through Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi,
Arkansas, and Texas.
He explains that "this story has been
adapted to the Trans-Pecos region by changing boggy mud to
wind-blown sand" (102).
The Reader's Digest version of the
146
tale would indicate that the story is still in circulation.
No versions of the tale were collected in the field, even
though many people recalled the story when asked about it.
Occasionally, the wind is the subject of jokes.
Jim
Carnes recalls one joke that probably has its roots in the
farming culture rather than the ranching culture.
Nevertheless, the joke circulated among ranchers in the
Hereford area during the early 1970s.
Carnes says:
A gas station attendant in south Texas saw a
farmer driving a combine down the highway one
day on a very windy day. He was driving at a
very high rate of speed, and he pulled in to
re-fill his combine. The gas station attendant
asked him where he was goin' in such a hurry.
Pointing at the dust cloud ahead of him, he
says, "I planted that wheat back last spring,
and by God, I'm gonna harvest it if I have to
chase it to the Gulf of Mexico."
Some of the true experience stories about the dust
bowl might sound like tall tales, but almost everyone who
lived in West Texas during the 1930s vividly recalls the
first time one of the black clouds rolled down.
Douglas
and Claudine Tipton of Garza County recall their
experiences.
Douglas: Oh, yeah, like to scared everybody
to death. Oh, yeah, I remember that.
Claudine: Oh, mercy, it was dark as night.
Douglas: Yeah, we--our daddy herded us kids
all together, went to the storm cellar, you
know. It got just black as night, but the wind
didn't blow. Wasn't much wind with it.
Claudine: And we could see it...at
Justiceburg. Of course, you could see it when
it dropped off the Caprock. It was just like a
1^7
boilin'--Oh, you just can't imagine what it
looked like.
Douglas: It was just like a solid wall of
dirt. Course it was pretty thick, but it
wasn t life-threatenin' black.
Claudine: Oh, and remember how it settled
in the houses? My goodness! I can remember
Mama covering up the food with sheets or a
tablecloth, anything, cause it would just get
into everything. And I can remember
lighting--course we didn't have electricity
then--and I could remember lighting the lamps
in the daytime, you know, cause it was so
dark....But it seemed so odd that there wasn't
wind with it. You would have thought that the
wind would have blown, but it didn t.
Douglas: Yeah, there was a lot of worry,
but really it was just a cloud of dirt moved
over. And it happened pretty often there for
two or three years, so people got to where it
didn't bother them all that much....[It scared
them the first few times.] Yeah, the old
chickens would all run into the hen house and
get on their roost.
The younger generation grew up listening to their
elders talk about the dust storms, so the stories have been
passed on.
Chip Boreing recalls what his father told him
about a dust storm:
My dad was tellin' me a we ek or two ago when I
was over there. Sa id one Sunday--it was '33 or
somewhere in there, Said they lived in the
foreman's house, an d Doc W ingo and his wife
were living in the bunkhou se. And said it
was--the Caprock we nt righ t up directly west
behind these houses
And said they were--he
was walkin' from on e house to the other, and
said it just got da rk. Yo u remember that big
dust storm we had h ere a f ew years ago, just a
wall of dust came i n? Sai d that same thing
happened back then, Said he was between the
houses. He said it got so dark he almost
didn' t find the hou se. Yo u couldn't see i t
comin' because of t hat hil 1. It just came over
the top of the Cap, and th ere it was. Said you
148
could go in the house and turn the light on,
and you still couldn't see, there was so much
dust in the air.
Other true experience stories tell of close calls with
natural disasters.
Boreing tells about one time when a
tornado barely missed their home.
He says:
We had a tornado go over the house in
Southland one time. Me and this friend of
mine, he'd come home from school with me, and
there was this little weather bulletin that
come on, and there was a tornado in Southland.
We ran up on top of the Cap and were lookin'
for it and can't see it. And the next day at
school, another kid showed up with a picture of
the tornado his dad had took. And it went
right over our house, cause the road kinda
snaked around our house, the county road. And
said he was on the county road.
I said, "Where'd you take that picture at?"
"From right up there by your cattle guard."
So we were right under it and didn't know it
or somethin' .
In addition to being windy, Texas weather is often hot
and dry.
The summer heat is intense.
Nancy Hohenstein of
Lubbock relates one cowboy saying about the weather that
illustrates the point:
"It was so hot that I saw a coyote
chasing a rabbit, and they were both walking."
also told a tall tale about the heat.
Ace Reid
He says, "Boy, it
was so hot in this old sandy land ever' horned toad had a
stick in his mouth, so that when all the sand got real hot,
he'd put that stick down and stand up there on that stick
to put his feet on."
149
In addition to heat, lack of rainfall is often a major
problem for those who live in West Texas.
Even though dry
times are no laughing matter, a number of jokes circulate
about droughts.
Elmer Kelton relates one joke about the
subject in the introduction to The Time It Never Rained.
He writes:
"During the long Texas drouth of the 1950s a
joke--probably already as old as the state--was told again
and again about a man who bet several of his friends that
it never would rain again, and collected from two of them"
(ix).
Jim Carnes recalls a joke that he heard relating to
the same era:
During the big drought, a teacher, a first
grade teacher in--I think it was supposed to be
in Big Spring or San Angelo--had her first
grade class out on the lawn, holding a water
hose and spraying water into the air, saving
"Children, this is what rain looks like.
Ace Reid made a similar comment at the Cowboy
Symposium at Texas Tech University.
There was a
thunderstorm during his speech, and the thunder could be
heard inside the auditorium.
Reid responds, "For all you
kids that's never heard thunder, that's what that is.
This
kid's only fourteen years old and never heard thunder.
Whatcha gonna do if he sees a drop of rain?"
Stan Hoig
tells of a man caught in a situation like the one Reid
jokingly describes.
Hoig explains:
"Another waddie who
150
had never seen it rain was knocked unconscious when a
couple of drops of water hit him on the forehead.
His
friends had to throw a bucketful of sand in his face before
he came to" (46).
Ace Reid grew up in west Texas, and he claims, "You
know down--when I was raised out in this country, I saw it
so dry one time that the catfish come up out of the creek
and wiggled to the back door in hopes we'd throw our dish
water out on 'em."
On the occasions when it does rain in West Texas, the
storms are sudden and fierce.
Fred Rathjen illustrated the
point when he told a common anecdote to one of his history
classes at West Texas State University.
He said that El
Paso only gets twelve inches of rain a year, and you should
be there the day they get it!
John Erickson commented about the sudden and fierce
rainstorms when he introduced a friend at the Cowboy
Symposium.
He says, "Fred, incidently, used to be in the
cattle and wheat business until last week when we got our
annual allottment of rainfall.
And now he switches over to
rice and water buffalo.'
It is not unusual for the weather in Texas to go from
one extreme to another.
Chip Boreing explains:
There's a lake out there,
there on the Yellow House
And he [Boreing's father]
that you could hardly see
kinda a tank out
called Illusion Lake.
said it rained so much
across it. Said it
151
just flooded everywhere.... It rained
twenty-four inches. I don't know if this was
all at one time or over the course of a week or
two or somethin', rained twenty-four inches.
But Illusion Lake used to be on the Texas map,
cause I was lookin' at a road map one time, and
I could see it on there. Illusion Lake. Said
it just flooded that thing. You know, go from
one extreme to another. They had dust storms,
and they had twenty-four inches of rain.
An early cowboy poet S. Omar Barker portrays the
cowboy's attitude about rain in his poem "Rain on the
Range."
Barker begins the poem by describing the misery of
being out working in the rain:
When your boots are full of water and your hat
brim's all a-drip
And the rain makes little rivers dribblin' down
your horse's hip.
When every step your pony takes, it purt near
bogs him down.
It's then you git to thinkin' of them boys
that work in town. (12)
Barker goes on to explain the miseries of working in the
rain as opposed to the comforts of working in town with a
roof over one's head.
He concludes the poem by saying:
It's misery in your gizzard, and you sure do
aim to quit.
And take most any sheltered job you figger you
But^when you've got you neck all bowed to quit
without a doubt.
The rain just beats you to it, and the sun
comes bustin' out!
^
Your wet clothes start to steamm , and most
everywhere you pass
You notice how that week of rain has livened up
the grass.
,
a.
u
That's how it is with cowboys when a rainy
spell is hit:
152
They hang on till it's over--then there ain't
no need to quit. (Cowboy Poetry 12-13)
Wind, rain, heat, all are part of the cowboy's
everyday life.
Often bad weather can mean disaster for a
land-owner and unemployment for a cowboy, yet in true
cowboy fashion, they soften the hard times with humor.
Whether facing rain, sandstorm, heat or drought, most
cowboys fit Barker's description.
They may complain or
make jokes about the weather, but "they hang on till it's
over--then there ain't no need to quit" (13).
-rto^^T^B
CHAPTER X
THE COWBOY TALE:
WEST TEXAS STYLE
The stereotype of the taciturn cowboy, the man of few
words, is inaccurate.
Like other occupations, cowboys come
in a broad range of personality types, but one seldom meets
a cowboy who does not know and repeat at least a few jokes
or stories.
The types of stories the cowboy chooses to
tell reveal a great deal about the man, his occupation, and
his region.
Narrative Techniques
In many respects, the cowboy folktale follows the
standard pattern defined by Axel Olrik.
beginning, middle, and end.
abruptly.
It has a definite
The tale does not begin or end
It has a standard opening, and the story
proceeds past the point of climax to return the listener to
a point of rest.
The story is presented in a simple,
straightforward manner, with a single-stranded plot and
simple characterizations and descriptions.
Although the
story may be rich in specific details, no information is
given unless it is directly related to the story.
153
154
The tale focuses on one character, and in a sense,
follows Olrik's laws of Two to a Scene and Contrasting
Characters.
The cowboy tale diverges from its European
predecessor, however, because the cowboy's adversary is not
necessarily another person; many times it is the weather, a
steer, a horse, or an animal on the other end of his rope.
There is no clear-cut good (cowboy) versus evil (his
opponent).
Instead, the cowboy is likely to battle amoral
natural elements.
The standard opening for the cowboy tale gives
information that establishes the authority of the story.
The cowboy may explain where he heard the story, and who
first told it.
If the raconteur begins the story as Piner
Stephens does when telling about the Battle of Adobe Walls,
it is probably a true experience tale:
Billy Dixon died just about two years before I
was born. And his wife was a lot younger than
he was. And after he died, she moved into the
edge of Miami, about a half a mile from us.
Her youngest boy was about two years older than
I was. And I heard her tell about it, what
Billy Dixon had told her.
Stephens' introduction establishes the authenticity of the
tale:
He heard the story from Billy Dixon's widow who
lived down the road from Stephens; she heard the story from
Dixon who was a participant in the battle.
He also
155
establishes the fact that he heard the story not long after
Dixon's death.
Introductions to personal experience tales may
describe a precise setting to establish authenticity.
Examples of this type opening include Burney Chapman
explaining, "One of the stories I remember real well from
the sixties is--I was at the H line camp..." or Stephens
saying, "One time we was moving some cattle from up here by
Stinnett to over close to Tucumcari.
Canadian River."
We was goin' up the
Other introductions may describe a main
character in the story, for example Chip Boreing's saying,
"This dog I had was an Irish Setter, and she was a coward."
Each of these introductions establishes authenticity by
showing the teller's personal connection with the story.
In contrast, if the raconteur begins with "Now, this really
happened" or "This is a true story," then the listener
should expect a whopper of a tall tale.
After the introduction, the plot unfolds in a
straightforward manner, yet the middle sections of
folktales traditionally contain formulaic bridges to draw
the audience into the story.
One traditional formulaic
bridge is the insertion of questions or other direct
comments to the audience:
"What do you think of that?" or
"What do you think happened next?"
These questions are
rare in the cowboy tales, although one occasionally hears
156
them.
Monte Jones uses this technique when he asks the
audience, "You know what a margarita on the hoof is, don't
you?" and when he reaches the punch line of the story,
pauses for laughter, then says, "You got it."
The middle of the story is usually rich in detail,
with specific information given about places and names.
The cowboy storyteller also frequently fills in the story
by inserting dialogue.
When recounting dialogue, the
raconteur often begins the quotation with "he said," but as
the story progresses, and phrase is shortened to "said" or
"says", and the phrase is inserted more often than
necessary.
stories:
Helen Estlack provides an example in one of her
"He said, 'Well, you know that hill you have to
go down goin' to Pampa?...'
And said, 'Your radiator will
boil over, and you'll get stranded.'"
The abbreviated style is common among West Texas
storytellers who follow regional speech patterns which
leave the impression of abbreviated words and sentences.
For example, someone may leave the subject out of a
sentence:
us."
"Wonder what's goin' on?" or "Sounded good to
They also abbreviate words by leaving out letters.
Many adverbs have no "ly" ("We'll put you on the payroll
permanent."); the final "g" is omitted in words ending in
"ing", and sometimes "every" even becomes "ever" or "until"
•L
becomes
If 1. • 1
tii.
"
157
The sentences are usually simple or compound sentences
with a subject-verb-object structure, although sometimes
the subject or part of the verb is omitted.
Almost always,
the sentences are linked together with a conjunction,
usually "and" or occasionally "so."
When transcribing the
stories, it is sometimes difficult to decide where to end
one sentence and begin another, for the whole story could
possibly be one long sentence linked together with numerous
conjunctions.
West Texans also frequently insert
unnecessary indirect objects:
ranch."
"They started them a horse
The speech patterns, typical of the region, give
the stories a certain, unique rhythm.
The tales are also salted with numerous examples of
regional speech and vocabulary.
A small sample of regional
words used in the stories include, hollered, feller, yonder,
and catter-whampus.
West Texans also give the word "got"
several meanings when they pair it with another verb:
"got
done eatin'" means finished eating; "got wounded" means was
wounded; "got to talkin'" means began talking.
They
sometimes add an "a" before verbs, "a ridin'," "a shootin'."
Other regionalisms and their translations include, land
"under fence" (land the ranchers had claimed and fenced in),
"hunted out" (found), "pulled up" (stopped), "a bunch"
(many), after a "bit" (short while), and "fixin' to" do
158
something (about to). These and other regionalisms add
spice and authenticity to the stories.
Finally, there is no standard conclusion for the
cowboy folktale, nothing comparable to "and they lived
happily ever after."
The stories do proceed past the point
of climax to a point of rest, but no particular pattern
emerges for how the raconteurs fill this space.
Sometimes
they tell what happened after the climax of the story, or
they may repeat some high points of that story.
Gordon
Timms uses both methods to conclude a story about a friend
of his who ran over a cliff and into the river:
I got to laughin', and they threatened to throw
me in. They thought I had moved that fi re over
purposely. [Tells what happened after c limax.]
But really we didn't think about it when we
moved it over there. We never thought a bout
anybody runnin' off there. But he didn' t give
us time to say anything. He just come r unnin'
up to that fire. He was goin to run ar ound to
the other side of the fire and get warm. Then
he went off that bank, and it was about fifteen
foot to the water. You can imagine what he
thought before he hit that water. [Summ ary of
tale. ]
Other storytellers may end with a one sentence
observation (i.e., Monte Jones' comments:
"Cured him," or
"From then on there wasn't anybody ever played a trick on
Biscuits O'Bryan again.").
Still others may end by
supplying specific details about some aspect of the story,
such as the name-brand of the windmills put up.
Although
the devices used may differ, the conclusions serve their
159
purpose of leaving the reader with a sense of completion or
of introducing the next story.
S tory Types
Most cowboy folktales would fall into four broad
groups:
historical legends, personal legends, personal
experience tales, and merry tales.
For topics, the cowboy
chooses things he comes into contact with daily:
his job,
the weather, the land, and domestic and wild animals of the
region.
The stories have many motifs, some traditional and
some original, yet each bears the cowboy's personal
imprint.
The historical legends (also known local legends) show
the cowboy's love for the land and its past.
He more
readily identifies himself with the values of the pioneers
than with the values of the modern urbanite.
In some ways,
the cowboy longs to return to the good old days of the
past.
The early settlers of the region faced many
adventures and hardships with courage and endurance.
They
displayed values that the cowboy still esteems, values such
as independence, self-reliance, and a generosity engendered
by the knowledge that others would never abuse or take
advantage of an open-door policy.
The early settlers
showed cunning, bravery, adaptability, and toughness when
160
faced with difficulty.
These are all qualities that the
modern cowboy admires and believes exist in himself at his
best.
For his heroes, the cowboy chooses prominent pioneers,
his own ancestors, or people with whom he has worked.
The
hero tales are historical in nature, rather than
Paul-Bunyon-type tall tales.
In this manner, the cowboy
tale departs from the traditional hero tales.
The modern
cowboy has a practical nature and prefers true-to-life
stories of extraordinary men rather than herculean tales
centered around a single strong-man hero.
In ranch
country, a man's choice of heroes is an individual matter,
uninfluenced by cowboys in another state or another region.
The choice of heroes is one small way that a cowboy affirms
his independence and self-reliance.
The personal experience tale is a dominant form of
lore among West Texas cowboys.
These tales center on
everyday happenings that are memorable for one reason or
another.
Some of these stories may be serious in nature,
recalling hard luck or extolling the cowboy's prowess in
job-related areas.
The stories of prowess emphasize the
cowboy's tendency to judge a person by his skill and his
belief that no matter what a man's education or background,
one will not know what kind of cowboy the man is until he
sits in the saddle.
Skill and common sense alone determine
a man's worth in cow country.
161
The vast majority of cowboy tales are humorous.
The
cowboy storyteller caricatures events and objects related
to daily living--animals, people, job skills, weather.
Like Burney Chapman and Helen Estlack, the cowboy shows a
unique ability to find humor in an unpleasant event, such
as an injury, destruction of property, or hard times.
Few
others can take a potential hard-luck story and turn it
into an amusing anecdote.
The ability to laugh at
something which cannot be changed may be one reason the
cowboy endures.
Not all cowboy humor is based on true experiences.
Humor may also take the form of pranks, jokes, brags, and
traditional tales.
playful language and
It may also result from the use of
proverbs.
In short anecdotes or
proverbs, the cowboy often indulges in a form a verbal
one-up-manship.
For example, someone may start with the
common saying that only fools and newcomers predict the
weather in Texas; another personal betters it by adding,
"Come to think of it, that's the only kinds of people in
Texas."
Upon hearing the saying "There's nothing between
Amarillo and the North Pole to stop the wind but a barbed
wire fence," a cowboy will add, "And someone left the gate
open."
This verbal playfulness adds much to cowboy humor.
The types of stories that the cowboy does not repeat
also tell something about the occupation and the region.
y
K^
162
There are few supernatural or imaginative tales.
This fact
does not suggest that cowboys have no imagination, for
their imagination is clearly revealed through their
exaggerated tales, use of language, and use of humor.
It
does reveal a certain skepticism about anything
supernatural or impractical.
Only one ghost story was collected during the study,
and it was added as a post-script to a story about an
accidental killing.
Chip Boreing skeptically finishes his
story about Tom Ballard's death:
And he [a cowboy] always threw in the part about
the ghost. I think he made that up though.
The cowboys told me this. It wasn't my dad.
We had a cowboy out there when I was there.
Everybody called him Colorado.... But they were
tellin' me the story about Tom Ballard bein'
killed, and they said on the night that he died
every year, on the anniversary of the night he
died, that his ghost would walk across the
bunkhouse porch. You know, the original
bunkhouse had a wooden porch. And said you
could hear him walkin' across the porch, hear
his spurs jingle. Said when they opened the
door, of course, there wouldn't be anything
there. They tell you that, of course, when
you're down there in the dark, and you can get
goosebumps listenin' to stories like that.
Even stories of buried treasure meet with skepticism.
When asked about the legend of lost gold in Palo Duro
Canyon, Piner Stephens gave a short version of the tale, in
contrast to the longer, more detailed stories he normally
tells.
Stephens says:
163
I heard it but I never could put much faith in
f^; M ^ S ^^"^ ^^^^ ^^"^^ ^^"^^ of Mexicans come
from New Mexico, come to cut posts here in the
canyon. And the Indians attacked them, and
they buried it down there. And some of the
Mexicans got away, but come back. And they
come back and never could find it again, find
tne gold
It s supposed to be buried out
there somewhere close to the Lighthouse Canyon.
J. Frank Dobie gives a much more detailed account of the
2t°^y i" Coronado's Children.
In the Dobie version, the
gold is buried by a man who leaves Texas for Santa Fe after
Santa Anna's defeat in 1836.
Along the way, he spends some
time in Palo Duro Canyon and buries some Mexican gold
there.
The man later brings his family to settle in Palo
Duro Canyon where the man dies in 1854.
Afterwards, his
wife moves the family back to Santa Fe.
Years later, the
man's son visits the canyon and has a dream telling him
where to dig.
The son digs and finds his father's gold.
(258-263)
In a manner similar to Stephens', Chip Boreing recalls
stories of people who came to the Yellow House Ranch to
search for buried treasure.
Some of the searchers even had
maps they had bought in Mexico.
Significantly, Boreing did
not know anything about the treasure, only about the people
searching for it.
Tales about the search for treasure are
common in Texas folklore.
Dobie includes them in
Coronado' s Children, and Patrick Dearen includes them in
Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier, but it is odd that
164
Boreing would repeat stories about the search for treasure
without knowing the story of the treasure itself.
The relative lack of supernatural and imaginative
stories is common to rural people in the West Texas region,
especially those above the Caprock.
Several factors
contribute to this cultural peculiarity.
Dr. Kenneth Davis
of Texas Tech University believes that the land itself
discourages the highly imaginative or fanciful stories.
A
study of the Comanche Indians who lived in the region
before the Anglo-Americans provides some support for this
belief.
The Comanches had a more individual and less
ritualistic religion than other plains tribes.
According
to Wallace and Hoebel, the Comanche "had comparatively few
well-established visible and externalized customs of
religious meaning such as were found among other Plains
Indians...Their religion was largely individualistic"
(185).
In any case, Davis points out that the living is harsh
for Anglo-Americans in the region, with little of the
lushness of eastern areas.
People must concentrate most of
their time and attention on just making a living, leaving
little time for the leisure of daydreaming or imaginative
thinking.
He also believes that the isolation of distance
contributes to the lack of imaginative stories.
In the
early days, people could not gather often, and when they
165
did, they spent their time actively, in dances, games,
barn-raising, and the like.
In West Texas, there was no
gathering at the pub at the end of each day for quiet
conversation and reflection on the day's events.
People
had little opportunity to sit and talk and pass stories
along; therefore, the stories did not undergo the
imaginative changes that are a natural result of frequent
recounting.
The strong fundamentalist protestant element in the
region also contributes to the dearth of supernatural
stories.
The fundamentalists are a literal-minded people.
They believe in interpreting the Bible literally rather
than symbolically.
They are a skeptical people, believing
that any acceptance of ghosts, witches, magic potions, or
other supernatural elements is ungodly, and one should,
therefore, avoid the discussion of anything supernatural,
except God.
A strong Calvinistic work-ethic is part of the
culture as well, leading to the belief that daydreaming or
reading fiction is waste of time and should be discouraged.
Even education is acceptable only if it is pursued with a
practical goal in mind.
A culture that values the literal
and practical leaves little room for the supernatural and
imaginative in its folktales, and these cultural values
exist in both the farming and ranching communities of West
Texas, although they are stronger among the farmers.
The
166
folktales of rural West Texas, therefore, concentrate on
the realistic and practical true experience stories,
whether historical or personal, and on humor.
The cowboy's folktales, then, show him to be a
practical, literal-minded person with a delightful sense of
humor shown through exaggeration and clever retorts.
They
show that he is an independent, self-reliant, work-oriented
man with close ties to the land and its past.
He works
outdoors, coping with whatever nature throws his way,
whether in the form of animals or weather.
He might be a
bit dour or uninteresting if he took himself too seriously,
but fortunately his sense of humor adds spice to his life.
He can take everyday events and turn them into anecdotes
and merry tales.
Even hard times and difficult situations
can be met with laughter after exposure to the cowboy's
wit.
The cowboy's humor, like the cowboy himself, endures
through whatever hardships and changes enter his life.
WORKS CITED
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Rattlesnake." Thesis Texas Tech U., 1987.
Adams, Ramon F.
1936.
Arney, Shawn.
Cowboy Lingo.
Boston:
Personal interview.
Houghton Mifflin,
24 March 1988.
Baughman, Ernest W. Type and Motif-Index ^f Folktales c^
England and North America. The Hague: Mouton & Co.,
1966.
Black, Baxter. Coyote Cowboy Poetry. Denver:
Cowboy Co., Record Stockman Press, 1986.
Coyote
Boatright, Mody C. Folk Laughter on the American Frontier.
New York: Macmillan Co., 1949.
Mody Boatright, Folklorist.
Texas Press, 1973.
Austin:
Tall Tales From Texas Cow Camps.
Southwestern Press, 1934.
Boreing, Chip.
Personal interview.
University of
Dallas:
26 Feb.1989.
Botkin, B.A. (ed.) A Treasury of Western Folklore.
York: Crown Publishers, 1975.
New
Bouchier, Tom. Interview by Bobby Weaver. 14 Nov. 1978.
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Brunvand, Jan H. "The Hat-in-Mud Tale." The Sunny Slopes
of Long Ago. Wilson M. Hudson and Allen Maxwell, eds
Tixas Folklore Society Publication 33. Dallas:
Southern Methodist University Press, 1966. 100-109.
The Study of American Folklore: An
Introduction.
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167
168
Burton, Gerry. "Tom Bouchier to Relate History of Garza
County.
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal 25 Aug. 1980
(evening), sec. B: U T "
Cannon, Hal (ed.) Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering.
City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985.
Carnes, Jim.
Personal interview.
Salt Lake
4 March 1989.
Chapman, Burney. National Cowboy Symposium and
Celebration. Texas Tech University, Lubbock.
1989.
3 June
Clayton, Lawrence. National Cowboy Symposium and
Celebration. Texas Tech University, Lubbock.
1989.
2 June
Davis, Kenneth.
Daws, Keith.
Personal interview.
Personal interview.
13 March 1989.
24 March 1988.
Dearen, Patrick. Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier.
Worth: Texas Christian University Press, n.d.
Dobie, J. Frank. Coronado's Children.
of Texas Press, 1984.
Cow People.
1981.
Austin:
I'll Tell You a Tale.
Press, 1984.
The Longhorns.
Austin:
Ft.
University
University of Texas Press,
Austin:
New York:
University of Texas
Bramhall House, 1941.
Dorson, Richard M. American Folklore. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Folklore: Selected Essays.
University Press, 1972.
Bloomington:
Indiana
Degh, Linda. "Folk Narrative.
Folklore and Folklife:
Introduction.
Richard M. Dorson, ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1972.
An
169
Erickson, John R. The Devil in Texas.
Maverick Books, 1981.
The Modern Cowboy.
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Lincoln:
Perryton, Tx.:
University of Nebraska
National Cowboy Symposium and Celebration.
Tech University, Lubbock. 2 June 1989.
Estlack, Helen.
Personal interview.
Texas
1 April 1989.
Haley, J. Evetts. Charles Goodnight: Cowman and
Plainsman. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1983.
Hofman, Don. National Cowboy Symposium and Celebration.
Texas Tech University, Lubbock. 2 June 1989.
Hohenstein, Nancy.
Personal interview.
10 March 1989.
Hoig, Stan. The Humor of the American Cowboy.
University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
Lincoln:
Holcomb, Marshall (Mr. & Mrs.) Interview by Jeff Townsend.
8 June 1972. Oral History Collection, Southwest
Collection, Texas Tech University.
Jones, Monte (a.k.a. Biscuits O'Bryan.) National Cowboy
Symposium and Celebration. Texas Tech University,
Lubbock. 3 June 1989.
Kelton, Elmer. The Day the Cowboys Quit. Ft. Worth:
Texas Christian University Press, 1986.
The Good Old Boys.
New York:
Charter, 1978.
.
Living and Writing in West Texas. Abeline, Tx:
Hardin-Simmons University Press, 1988.
.
The Man Who Rode Midnight.
Doubleday, 1987.
Garden City, NY:
The Time it Never Rained. Ft. Worth:
Christian University Press, 1984.
"Laughter, the Best Medicine."
118.
Texas
Reader's Digest Sep 1987:
170
Leftwich, Bill. National Cowboy Symposium and Celebration,
iexas Tech University, Lubbock. 3 June 1989.
Matthews, Jim.
Personal interview.
3 March 1989.
Meredith, D. R. The Sheriff and the Branding Iron Murders.
New York: Avon, 1985.
Nance, Pearl.
Personal interview.
28 Feb. 1989.
Noble, Marguerite. National Cowboy Symposium and
Celebration. Texas Tech University, Lubbock.
1989.
3 June
Olrik, Axel. "Epic Laws of Folk Narrative." The Study of^
Folklore. Alan Dundes, ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1965. 129-141.
Patterson, Paul. "Cowboy Comedians and Horseback
Humorists." The Golden Log. Mody C. Boatright and
Allen Maxwell, eds. Texas Folklore Society
Publication 31. Dallas: Southern Methodist
University Press, 1962. 99-107.
Mr
The Old-Time Cowboy Inside Out." Sonovagun Stew.
Francis E. Abernethy, ed. Texas Folklore Society
Publication 66. Dallas: Southern Methodist
University Press, 1985.
75-81.
Reid, Ace. National Cowboy Symposium and Celebration.
Texas Tech University, Lubbock. 2 June 1989.
Stephens, Piner.
Personal interview.
Thompson, Stith.
1946.
The Folktale.
Timms, Gordon.
New York:
Personal interview.
Tipton, Douglas.
29 April 1984.
Personal interview.
Dryden Press,
24 March 1984.
16 Feb. 1989.
Wallace, Ernest, and E. Adamson Hoebel. The Comanches:
Lords of the South Plains. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1964.
Warren, Colquitt.
Celebration.
1989.
National Cowboy Symposium and
Texas Tech University, Lubbock.
3 June
171
Welch, Buster. National Cowboy Symposium and Celebration.
Texas Tech University, Lubbock. 4 June 1989.
Wilkinson, Jerry.
Personal interview.
19 Feb. 1989.
Wood, Michael. Ln Search of; the Trojan War.
New American Library, 19"83T
New York:
Woods, Dee. "Panther Yarns." From Hell _to Breakfast.
Mody C. Boatright and Donald Day, eds. Texas Folklore
Society Publication 19. Dallas: Southern Methodist
University Press, 1944. 126-133.
(Note: A few paraphrased stories included in this study
are often-repeated tales told by friends and relatives of
the author. The stories attributed to the following people
are based on the author's remembrances rather than on
recent interviews: Andy Anderson, Darrell Baldwin, Gordon
Bright, Mabelle McCurdy, John Rusk, Connie Urbanczyk.)
y
APPENDIX A:
BIOGRAPHIES OF RACONTEURS
Because background information about storytellers can
be important, short biographical sketches of contributors
is listed.
Biographical information is not included if the
raconteur contributed only one or two stories, or if the
contributions were made during informal conversation with
no tape recorder running, which means the story appears in
a paraphrased version.
If the person spoke at the National
Cowboy Symposium and Celebration at Texas Tech University,
the biographical information is taken from the symposium
program.
Chip Boreing was born in Clovis, New Mexico, on
October 24, 1958.
His father worked as a cowboy and ranch
foreman at a number of ranches, including the Yellow House,
the Sandra Lynn, the Mallet and the LE.
Most of the
stories Boreing told were set on the Yellow House Ranch,
located between Levelland and Littlefield, or on a ranch
near Southland where the Boreings lived during Chip's high
school years.
Boreing was a major contributor to the
study, telling family legends, personal experience tales,
172
173
and stories his father told him about the early days of the
Yellow House.
Boreing now lives in Slaton, Texas, and
works for the Santa Fe Railroad.
Gordon Bright is at least partially responsible for
this study.
Bright was born in Hereford, Texas, in 1917
and grew up in the Justiceburg area.
He worked as a cowboy
for a short time when he was a young man, then went on to
other jobs, but much of the cowboy culture and lore
remained with him throughout his life.
He died in Lubbock
in 1977, so there are no recordings of his stories;
however, the author listened to his stories and songs as
she was growing up.
academic interest.
From these childhood memories grew an
It is only fitting that a few of his
favorite stories and songs are repeated in this study.
Tom Bouchier was born in Colorado City, Texas, in
1898.
His family moved to Borden County two years later,
where his father alternately worked as a cowboy and
struggled to start his own ranch.
The Bouchiers finally
went broke from one too many droughts and moved into Post,
where Bouchier worked at a lumber yard.
October 1987.
Bouchier died in
When asked about storytellers, several
people in Post replied that it was a shame Mr. Bouchier was
/
174
not available, so it is fortunate that the Southwest
Collection at Texas Tech University has taped interviews
stored in its Oral History Collection.
The stories
recorded for the Southwest Collection are personal
experience and historical tales.
^"^^ey Chapman is a farrier from Lubbock, Texas.
He
grew up in the Wichita Falls area, worked at a number of
ranches, including the 6666 and L7, and he still does day
work on ranches in the Matador area.
Chapman was a
storyteller at the Cowboy Symposium and contributed several
personal experience tales.
John Erickson was a participant at the Cowboy
Symposium at Texas Tech University.
His books are often
quoted in this study, but some recorded anecdotes are also
included.
Erickson is a native of Perryton, Texas, and was
three hours short of his master's degree at Harvard
Divinity School when he decided to return to Texas.
According the the symposium program, "During his lean
years, the part-time writer supported his wife and children
by working at a number of odd jobs, including eight years
as a full-time cowboy on large cattle ranches of the
Panhandle" (11).
Erickson now lives in Perryton and works
as a full-time writer.
175
Helen Estlack is a high school English teacher fr.om
Clarendon, Texas.
She grew up in Brownfield, Texas, where
her father was a county agent who ran a few cattle.
She
and her husband also run a few cattle, but she learned most
of her stories from ranchers in the Clarendon area.
Estlack contributed four stories, two personal experience
tales about animals and two merry tales.
MoTite Jones is a minister in San Angelo, Texas.
According to the Cowboy Symposium program, he "is better
known under the pseudonym Biscuits O'Bryan, an old
chuck-wagon cook character Jones plays at the Covered Wagon
Dinner Theater" (14). Jones contributed several merry
tales, often of the "tall" variety.
Bill Leftwich was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, in 1923.
He now lives is Fort Davis, Texas, and according the the
Cowboy Symposium program has "published more than eight
books, painted 11 murals, bronzed more than 30 sculptures
and designed... other miscellaneous items.
He is also a
poet" (15). Leftwich was a storyteller at the symposium
and contributed several anecdotal tales.
176
Pea£l Nance finished high school in Snyder, Texas, and
went to work for the railroad during World War I.
She
married a Justiceburg man and the two of them worked on a
number of ranches, including the Slaughters' ranch where
her husband started working when he was quite young.
widowed Nance ran cattle at Justiceburg for years.
The
She
still has some cattle, though she is now retired in Post
due to a back injury sustained when a horse fell on her.
"Marguerite Noble was born in 1910 into a ranching
family in an Arizona Territory tent city," according to the
Cowboy Symposium program (18). Noble's family has Texas
roots, although she has lived and taught in Arizona all her
life, and her stories have an Arizona setting.
As a
storyteller at the symposium, her stories were about
equally divided between historical legends about pioneer
women in Arizona (these tales were not used because of
location) and merry tales.
Ace Reid is a sixty-four-year-old Kerrville man best
known for his Cowpokes cartoons.
According to the
symposium program, "Reid served in the U.S. Navy during
World War II.
After the war, he worked as a cowboy on a
number of ranches" (8). He says he prefers drawing
177
cartoons to cowboying because he can draw in the shade.
Reid told several traditional tall tales during his speech.
P^"^^ Stephens was a major contributor to the study,
telling over twenty stories.
He was sixty-nine years old
when the interview was conducted in 1984.
He grew up at
Miami, Texas, but his family later moved to Canyon, where
Stephens now lives.
As a young man, he worked as a cowboy
at the JA and T.L. Roach Ranches near Clarendon, and for
the Williams Ranch in New Mexico.
Mr. Williams was the
source for a number of Stephens' stories.
Stephens now
ranches near Canyon.
Gordon Timms was born on November 13, 1904 in Comanche
County, Texas.
He was raised in Runnels County, came to
the Lubbock area in 1925, and has lived there ever since.
Timms is a retired farmer, but other family members have
run cattle.
Timms contributed several true experience
tales.
Douglas Tipton was born in Garza County near Close
City in 1919.
He still owns the land his parents bought
from colonizer C.W. Post in 1914.
A semi-retired farmer,
Tipton contributed several historical and personal
experience stories.
178
Colquitt Warren has lived in Dell City, Texas, for
over twenty years.
He is a writer of western true stories
and was a storyteller at the Cowboy Symposium, contributing
several merry tales.
Jerry Wilkinson was born in Amarillo, Texas, in
September 1945.
She related several family legends about
her grandfather who ranched at Sand Springs, a small
community south of Snyder.
lives in Slaton, Texas.
Wilkinson is a nurse who now
APPENDIX B:
INDEX OF STORY MOTIFS
The stories from this collection have been assigned
motif numbers using the six volume Motif-Index of Folk
Literature by Stith Thompson and Type and Motif-Index of
Folktales of England and North America by Ernest Baughman.
If the exact motif is not listed in one of the indexes, a
new number is not assigned.
Instead, the author follows
Thompson's suggestion and lists the story motif under the
correct general heading and indicates the need for a more
specific classification by adding a plus sign (+) after the
motif number.
For example, A2681. is the general heading
for the origin of trees; A2681.+ is assigned for the origin
of the first mesquite trees in Texas.
The motif numbers
are listed in alphabetical and numerical order.
A short
description of the motif and the page number where the
story may be found in this thesis is listed beside each
motif number.
^2681.+
Origin of first mesquite trees in Texas, 21.
B710 2
Clever and swift horse of fanciful origin
(also X1241.1), 120-21.
179
^
>ys
180
B765.18.2.
Snakes will not cross rope made of hair
(also X1321.4.8.), 137.
B965.19(a).
Snake fang in boot kills wearers in
succession (also X1321.4.10(b).), 131.
J1250.+
Man showing bull at sideshow lets farmer
with seventeen kids in free, saying he
wants the bull to see them, 101.
J1250.+
Drummer jostled by horse in bar (or hotel)
complains to proprietor, who replies, "What
were you doing in here afoot anyway?" 103,
104.
J1250.+
Foreman hires new man, explaining that he
should not mind if the foreman cusses at
him. Man replies that the foreman should
not mind if he hits foreman, 106-7.
J1250.+
Cowboy embarrassed to admit he cannot count
tells foreman he needs between a hundred and
a thousand fenceposts. Cowboy had never
seen so many postholes in his life, 109
J1250.+
Man injured when thrown from horse, claims
that horse stepped on hat; his head was in
it at time, 97.
J1250.+
Bartender asks man to throw out customer.
Bartender cannot because customer is old
friend of his. Upon seeing the very large
customer, man claims he is a friend of his,
also, 102-3.
J1250.+
Man wrecks pickup and asks for help. When
asked what happened, he claims, "Ah, my
pickup quit on me," 97.
J1499.7(a).
Gambler goes to tell woman her husband is
dead. Calls her "Widder Yates." When she
claims she is no widow, he bets her she is,
98.
J1499.11(a).
Man says only fools and newcomers predict
weather in Texas. Newcomer replies that
there is no one else in Texas, 140.
181
J1549.+
Man leaves wife behind when she gets out to
open gate. At home that evening, she asks
when^he thought about her. He replies, "I
hadn't thought of you yet," 95.
J1749.+
Man keeps spitting on floor, and someone
keeps moving spittoon within his reach. Man
finally claims that if the person does not
quit moving that thing he is likely to spit
in it, 99-100.
J1760.+
Men chasing coyote catch skunk, 126.
J1760.+
Men eat squirrel stew, see rat hides nearby
and think they have eaten rat stew (prank),
94-95
J1810.+
Buzz of detached snake rattles scare man
135-7.
J1820.+
Man thinks he is bitten by snake.
actually struck his wallet, 134.
J2119.+
Prank cure for tarantula bite is pint of
bear oil, soda, vinegar, and water with plug
of tobacco soaked in it, 90-91.
J2349.+
Prank:
89.
J2349.+
Prank: Men work braggart hard, then sew him
into sleeping bag, run horses through camp,
and yell "Stampede!", 89-90.
J2349.+
Men scare cowboy's horse, causing man and
horse to fall over riverbank and into water,
85-86.
J2349.+
Men saddle cowboy's horse backwards, 92-93.
K341.+
Man at end of line has relatives start fight
to distract people in line so that man may
file on land that he wants, 37, 60-61.
K619.+
Thief starts grassfire to escape capture,
38-39.
Snake
Man given wild horse to ride, 88,
A.
182
K671.1.
Man throws meat to wolves, escapes when they
stop (also X1216.1(bb).), 127-8.
N300.+
Man hides under buffalo robe to scare boy;
boy shoots man in hand, 59-60.
N300.+
Lightning strikes barn and sets it on fire,
80-81.
N320.+
Man accidentally killed as he watches two
hunters argue over antelope carcass, 34-35.
N320.+
Man dies when he and horse go over edge of
cliff during storm, 81-82.
N320.+
Young man dies of pneumonia while in jail
for minor offense, 81.
N320.+
Man dies from infection caused by mesquite
thorn, 81.
W11.+
Post never repossessed land; loaned money to
settlers so they could stay, 48.
X137.+
Place where there is a pretty girl behind
every bush (no bushes in area), 105.
X137.+
Man claims he will kill anyone ulgier than
himself. Other man replies that if he is
uglier than first man, he will kill himself,
104, 105.
X459.+
While robbing a stage (or train), outlaw
contributes to minister of same
denomination, 98.
X599.1.+
Politician who had only received two votes
wears gun into town. When questioned, he
explains that a man with no more friends
than he has needs protection, 97-8.
X800.+
Drunk man jumps out second-story (or higher)
window, thinking he can fly. Later asks
friend why he did not stop him. Friend
replies that he had bet money on him, 107-9.
X800.+
Men turn drunk man's saddle backwards. When
drunk cannot mount, he kicks horse, telling
it to sober up, 92.
\^
1^3
X959.2.+
Man thrown from horse lands on barbed wire
fence and is split. Lengthens stirrups and
rides on home, 106.
X1003.+
Man proves worth with excellent roping
(true), 63-4.
X1003.+
Man ropes fifty cattle per hour during
branding, 74-5.
X1003.(b).+
Lie: Man ropes bear. Bear climbs rope,
pushes man out of saddle, and tries to rope
him, 67.
X1003.(b).+
Man ropes panther. Panther chases him
around camp three times as cowboys laugh.
Man rides through camp, yelling 'Shoot or
I'11 cut the rope!" 68-9.
X1003.(b).+
Man ropes deer.
It turns and attacks,
leaving man scarred, 69-70.
X1003.(b).+
Man ropes bear before killing it, 67.
X1003.(b).+
Man ropes bobcat before killing it, 68.
X1003.(b).+
Man ropes housecat with pigging string,
70-1.
Man ropes automobile and ties driver with
pigging string, 65-6.
X1003.(b).+
X1003.(bb).
Man ropes locomotive.
breaks, 65.
Rope holds but cinch
X1003.(bb).+
Man plans to rope locomotive, claiming,
"They don't know what I'm aridin'," 64.
X1004.+
Man proves worth by riding wild horse, 89.
X1004.+
Long horseback journey accomplished in three
days because horseman caught ride on truck
(true), 75-7.
Dixon shoots an Indian a half mile away,
50-2.
X1122.1(d).
X1205.1(a).
Snake strikes wagon tongue, causing it to
swell with various results, 138.
184
X1206.+
Cattle trained to expect food when they hear
helicopter follow politician's helicopter so
that It cannot land in pasture, spoiling
politicians campaign plans, 119.
X1213.+
Panthers attracted to smell of baby, 129.
X1213.+
Woman and baby escape pursuing panther by
dropping articles of clothing, one at a
time, for panther to smell, 129.
X1213.+
Man escapes pursuing panther by dropping
dead turkeys, one at a time, for it to eat,
128.
X1216.1(bb).
Wolves pursue wagon loaded with food. The
driver throws them the load of meat. Then
shoots them one by one. The wolves devour
dead comrades, then continue chase. Only
one wolf left when the man runs out of
bullets. The wolf is no longer dangerous,
having eaten wagon load of meat and twenty
wolves. (Also K671.1. and Z13.4.1(d). ),
128.
X1216.1(bb).+
Buffalo hunter chased by wolves drops pieces
of clothing to slow wolves. Then shoots
wolves one by one. Wolves devour dead
comrades, then continue chase. Man escapes
when wolves devour dead buffalo. (Also
K671.1. and Z13.4.1(d). ), 127-8.
X1217.+
Coyote chased by dog, turns around and
chases dog, bringing it into hunter's range,
124-5.
X1217.
Coyote escapes massive hunt by hiding in
brush beside wetbacks as hunters go by,
125-6.
X1237.+
Old Blue: Longhorn steer repeatedly leads
herds on trail drives and falls in with
saddle horses on return trip (true), 113-4.
X1241.+
Horse jealous of owners sweetheart, 122.
X1241.1.
Pacing white stallion, 120-21.
X1241.1.+
Cowboy threatens to quit if ranch sells
horse, 121.
K
^--
y
185
X1241.l(f).+
Untrained horse pulled off feet when man
ropes calf will not get close to a cow
again, 123-4.
X1321.1.1.
Remarkably long snake stretches across
h i g h w a y , 130.
X1321.2.+
Over twenty s n a k e s k i l l e d on road in one
e v e n i n g , 130.
X1321.4.4.2.+
Snake in bed crawls away when man wakes and
moves, 132-3.
X1321.4.4.2.+
Snake in bed is shot in mouth as it is about
to strike, 133.
X1321.4.8.
Snake will not cross rope made of hair (also
B765.18.2.), 137.
X1321.4.10(b). Snake strikes cowboy in heel of boot.
Cowboy dies. Succession of friends inherit
boot and die until someone finds fang in
bootheel and removes it (also B765.19(a).),
131.
X1321.4.10(c). Snake fang in automobile tire kills mechanic
who changes flat (also B65.19.), 130-31.
X1606.+
If someone does not likethe weather in
Texas, wait a few minutes. It will change,
140
X1611.1.1.+
When a newcomer asks if the wind always
blows this way, man replies, "No sometimes
it blow from the other direction," 143.
X1611.1.2(a).
Man hangs log chain from tree or post to
determine how hard wind is blowing, 144.
X1611.1.12(a). In dust storm, farmer comes by chasing
wheat; he is determined to catch up with it
even if he has to chase it to the Gulf, 146.
X1611.2(ca).
Nothing between Amarillo and North Pole to
stop the wind but a barbed wire fence, 144.
X1633.2(a).
Lie: So hot a coyote chasing a rabbit; both
walking, 148.
186
X1633.3.1.+
Lie: So hot horned toads carry a stick to
rest feet on, 148.
X1640.1.+
Man bets friends it will never rain again,
collects from two of them, 149.
X1640.1(b).+
Children never seen rain; teacher
demonstrates using a water hose, 149.
X1640.1(b).+
Fourteen-year-old child never heard thunder,
149.
'
X1641.1(a).
Man who has never seen rain is knocked
unconscious by raindrop. Friends revive him
by throwing sand in his face, 149-50.
X1643.+
Lie: So dry the catfish crawl to the door
hoping someone will throw dishwater on them,
150.
X1654.2.
Extraordinary floods produced by heavy
rainfall, 150-1.
X1654.2.+
Man raised cattle and wheat until he got
annual allottment of rainfall, then switched
to rice and waterbuffalo, 150.
X1654.3.+
El Paso only get twelve inches of rain per
year, and it all comes on one day, 150.
X1655.1(b).
Man under hat, which is only thing seen
above mud (or sand), claims he is riding a
horse (or mule), 144-5.
X1663.-i-
Middle-aged man wins numerous rodeo events,
claims seventy-year-old father can beat him.
Must leave to attend 103-year-old
grandfather's wedding. Grandfather had to
get married, 101-2.
Z13.4.1 (d).
Man escapes from pack of wolves which chase
him as he drives supply sled. He throws
them a quarter of beef, which they eat. He
then shoots the wolves, one at a time,
giving them time to eat the newly killed
wolf before shooting another. He shoots the
last wolf just at the edge of camp, 126-8.
Z500.+
Snakes nest under floorboards of house,
wakened by warmth of fire, 132.
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