Part 5

My father had hot noticed the holes in the limb, nor the squirrel which the Indian saw flattened out on a branch high up in the tree. To my father, that tree presented far more interesting possibilities. Before interrupted, his thoughts had, more or less, shifted from the man who had treated him so shabbily and had carried him back to the sunny Southland, to the evergreen hills of his boyhood home. There he had successfully operated a tannery—successfully, until the Civil War put him out of business.

The tree my father was now viewing was a huge black oak. It was surrounded by more of its kind. At any time the sight of a black oak attracted him. Black oak bark was the agency he employed in making leather in his Tennessee tannery. He longed to get back into the business. There were other black oaks in the country; yet he questioned if there were enough to justify the establishment of a tannery here. He was constantly on the lookout for a substitute for making leather.

Pointing to the boots he himself wore, my father told the Indian that his interest in that tree was because the bark of the black oak was used in making leather. Also, noticing that the Indian was wearing moccasins and other deerskin raiment under his blanket, my father asked him what the Indians used for tanning. The Indian became thoughtful and finally said something that sounded like “Sequaw.” But that was worse than Greek to my father.

It is fitting that I pause here to pay tribute to one of those little borderlets mentioned in the opening paragraph. Resplendent in its lofty setting that little borderlet, and its kind, possessed priceless properties. Henceforth it becomes golden thread in the woof and warp of this tale. As with the lovely Claudette Colbert and her coca-cola tidings, this is, in a manner, “the pause that refreshes.” And so being, it is with memorable pleasure that I now salute the sumac! It was my father’s salvation.

Back in the Wolfley timber, my father told the Indian the owner did not permit hunting on his premises—that he, the tanner, was not interested in the squirrel.

“Me shoot ‘im,” said the Indian. The long barrel of his rifle pointed upwards—a sharp crack, and the squirrel fell the ground, shot through the head. The Indian picked up the squirrel, and then holding it out to the frightened little boy, said, “Take.”

Without more ceremony the Indian rode away. He was gone only a few minutes. When he returned he was holding in his hand a branch of sumac. “Sequaw,” he said again. There were but a few belated red leaves clinging to the stem. “Catchum ‘fore go red,” he offered when he saw the leaves shattering in my father’s hands.

The Indian’s sharp eyes surveyed the black oak again. He looked at the branch of sumac, saying “Makum buck-kin.” He hesitated. Then said, “Maybe killum deer ‘fore Sun go way. Maybe two suns. You seeum deer?”

My father told the Indian—whom he then and there named Eagle Eye—that he had not seen the deer which those redmen were trailing. Those Indians who had remained in the background were trying to conceal a deer which one of them had swung across his pony as they went into that huddle.

The deer, more numerous in earlier days, had been pretty well killed out by this time. Though, as late as 1880, I, myself, shot a deer on that same run. Also I recall having seen one band of antelope, that fleet-footed little animal of deer family which could outrun the wind even in its then unhampered sweep across the prairies. I was too young to identify the little ruminants, but my father said they were antelope, and he was a hunter of the Daniel Boone type—in fact had hunted in Dan’s old territory, and he knew his game.

Here I will say the Indian, Na-che-seah, was the leader of that hunting party. He was tall, lithe, and straight as an arrow. In later years, with generous expansion of body, he was known as Big Simon. He died May 27, 1934. As I looked upon the still form of this good Indian, in his wigwam, on the day of the funeral, my mind drifted back across the years to the time of our first meeting—but instead of fear, it was now reverence that gripped me. Big Simon was a man of authority among the Indians for a great many years—though, contrary to newspaper reports, he was never chief. About his age, Big Simon would say, “Hundred years, maybe. Don’t know.” With the passing of Big Simon, Commodore Cat is the sole surviving member of the old, old tribe. He too may have been one of those blanketed redmen back there on that deer trail six decades ago.

The redman’s medicine was an invigorating tonic for my father’s frayed spirits. It seemed like God had sent that Indian just at the psychological moment — when my father’s depressed spirits needed bolstering so very much, when an anodyne for his ills was to be had by the blending of two agencies for making leather. Though he had never up to this time regarded it as a commercial agency, my father knew of course that sumac contained tannin. If the Indians could tan their deerskins with it, he reasoned, why couldn’t he mix it with oak bark and tan his calfskins?

I shall always believe that it was something more than blind chance that brought the paths of white man and red man together at that particular spot. Undoubtedly, the Great Spirit was in control. The movements of the Indians up to that time were of course dark, but timed just right. And praise be, there were Indians—amongst them an Indian like Eagle Eye, who could make himself understood. The big break for my father was in the sumac patch close at hand.

After ten years absence from his old haunts and the business he loved so well, the fire in my father’s blood had cooled. Now he felt the old flame leap. The black oaks and the sumacs beckoned. And to his eager nostrils rose the odor of a tanyard.

Almost at once after that meeting with the Indian, still nosing a tannery, my father was hot on the trail. With the characteristics of a thoroughbred, he doggedly followed his lead, picking up new hope as he went at almost every jump, into the woods of three counties. In a particularly fine stand of wood over in Jackson county, he “treed” his quarry. Looking up into the trees, his senses all aflame with eagerness, and I might say standing on his hind legs — upright anyhow — he barked, “Eureka!”

Then, having gone there on invitation of the owner to view those fine black oaks, standing tall, with their big boles close together, he said more rationally, but still with considerable enthusiasm, “It ’ s enough! By God I’ll have that tannery now!”

My father had now declared quite emphatically, though perhaps a bit inelegantly, that he would establish a tannery here in Wetmore. It was not idle talk. He experimented, and in due time the tannery was a going concern. Not immediately, however. Capital had to be provided, and it took time to bring materials. The tannery was an “open” yard in the bend of the creek just west of where the town bridge is now—a sort of makeshift affair, operated only in the summer months. But in one respect it was regular. It had the tanyard smell.

The black oak-sumac mixture made a fine grade of leather—much better than leather made with straight oak bark, and superior to the present-day chemically tanned leather. My father tanned only calfskins. His surplus stock was sold to L. Kipper & Sons, wholesale dealers, Atchison, Kansas.

I want to say here that those inviting black oaks, earlier mentioned, made it easy for my father to graciously accept his friend’s apology, on the plea of forgetfulness—and when he went to deal for the trees John Wolfley said, “Why, yes, of course you may have them. You know, Bristow, much as I prize my trees, I couldn’t refuse an old friend like you.” He glanced toward me, and now I’ll swear there were mirthful crinkles playing about the man’s eyes.

The black oaks were cut in the spring when the sap was up, then the bark was spudded off the trunks of the trees. All available black oaks within a radius of twenty-five miles of Wetmore were cleaned up in three years. The last tan-bark came from the Wingo farm near Soldier, twenty miles away—wagon haul. That was considered a long haul in those days. The roads here then were no more than winding trails across country, radiating in every direction from town, like the spokes in a wagon-wheel. And there were almost no bridges. The creeks were forded.

The sumac — that innocent little flaming bush, over which young and inexperienced writers are wont to revel — was cut with corn-knives and left spread on the ground until dry. The leaves were then stripped off the stems with a little corn-sheller, the kind that fastened on the hand. The sumac stems were drawn through the closed shelter and the leaves were caught upon a large canvas. Like harvesting tanbark, that was work which had to be done in season—not too soon, not too late.

The time to get busy was when the sumac began to show a tinge of coloring late in the summer, after maturity. But, as the Indian had said, when the big splash came — when the sumac thickets took on a blaze of coloring, that dark crimson hue, as if Nature had spilled the life-blood of the waning summer to glorify the last minute splendor of its passing—it was then time to quit. The leaves would no longer remain on the stems to carry through the drying process. Yes! That was it! “Catchum ‘fore go red!”

My father made Eagle Eye a pair of boots with leather tanned by the new process. He gave them to the Indian, Eagle Eye wanted to pay for them. He had Government money and he had ponies. When money was refused, he thought a pony would be about right. Maybe two, three or even a herd of ponies would not be too much. But my father said, “No, just bring me a deerskin sometime.”

The Indian brought him a green buffalo hide. At that time all swell turnouts—horse and buggy conveyances — included a buffalo robe. When, in time, the hide had been tanned and made up, my father found himself in the rather awkward position of owning a buffalo robe without the turn-out. But even so it was not a worthless treasure. On cold, stormy, winter nights—they were bitter cold then—it served as an extra bed coverlet for a quarter of a dozen of his boys, with, at times, an additional neighbor boy or two thrown in for good measure.

Buffalo were quite plentiful only a hundred miles or so west of here then. But our Kickapoos did not often venture west of the Blue River. Hostile Indians roamed that territory. The Pawnees were the worst Indians the whites had to contend with on the old Overland Trail between the Big Blue and Fort Kearney. Eagle Eye’s gift was all the more appreciated because he had braved the hostile Pawnees to get a suitable present for his “Paleface” friend.

The boots my father made for the Indian were of the tongue pattern, with morocco tops and small high heels. The tops were scalloped with half-moons over red sheepskin. A big red heart was fashioned in the top front. Eagle Eye was very proud of his boots. They were, I believe, the first boots to be worn on the reservation.

But, in time, one of those boots ripped. The side seam gaped near the ankle. The Indian had been walking through wet grass when he came to the shop to get the rip sewed up. He tried to pull his boot off. It stuck tight. My father did not have a bootjack. He always said he did not like to have his perfectly fashioned boot-counters ruined by the use of a boot-jack. He had a better way.

My father turned his back to the Indian, and told Eagle Eye to stick his boot between his—the shoemaker’s—legs and push with the other foot. “Harder, push harder!” cried the human boot-jack. When the boot finally came off, a first-class shoemaker took a header into a pile of lasts and other rubbish in the corner of the room. He came up with a skinned nose.

The Indian—who had now come to call himself Eagle Eye when in the presence of my father—did not, of course get any kick out of hurting his “paleface” friend, but it was plain to be seen that pleasant thoughts were engaging him. An Indian laughs rarely, if ever—not the old Indians two generations back, anyway. But he had his moments of extreme pleasure.

When the rip was repaired, the Indian had a hard time getting his water-soaked boot back on. My older brother, Charley, said to me, “Eagle Eye will have to sleep with his boots on tonight.” The Indian heard. His copper-colored face again registered anticipated pleasure. He actually smiled a bit as if he saw real humor in the thing.

“Huh!” he grunted, as he raised his foot and thrust it to the fore with much vigor, “Pushum squaw maybe! Heap fool squaw all time say Eagle Eye not smart!”

A TWOTIMER We were having company for supper. Little Dorothy Bristow. four year old daughter of my brother Frank and wife Cecile, told August and Hulda Bleisener they need not be afraid of the silver, that she and her aunt Myrtle had cleaned it that afternoon.

But—hold your laugh.

My wife had put pickled cling peaches on the table. Now, everyone knows how hard it is to get the meat off a pickled cling peach. I shoved one into my mouth and was doing the best I could with it when Myrtle, looking across the table, said with shocked overtone, “Did you put that whole peach in your mouth?” She of course had not seen August put one in his mouth—but, no matter, August shot his out onto his plate right now.

TEXAS CATTLE AND RATTLESNAKES Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

When harvesting sumac, often barefooted and always barehanded, we boys, sons of the tanner, had to keep a sharp lookout for rattlesnakes—and Texas cattle. We were repeatedly so warned by our parents. Also, it was generally understood that all children should “watchout” for Indians. This, however, did not greatly disturb us after we had made friends with Eagle Eye.

Then, one day, while cutting sumac for the tannery, with my brother Charley, near a timbered ravine three miles out southeast, close to the Oliver Logue farm, a long-horn steer, out of a large herd, chased me up a tree early in the afternoon and held me prisoner in the treetop until the riders, Abe Williams and John Taylor, came to round up the herd for the night.

I thought that steer would surely butt his horns off, the way he rammed that six-inch tree. He would back off, paw the ground, shake his slobbering head, and come snorting at the tree again and again. After quieting down, he grazed fitfully and frightfully close to the tree—and he came trotting in several times with something ugly on his bovine mind, I’m sure. Even now I wonder is it possible for an enraged cowbrute to have red eyes.

The day herder, at ease, on a ridge a quarter mile to the west—probably reading a Frank Merriwell baseball story—was letting the herd feed north, and so long as the cattle did not attempt to go over the rise to the east, out of sight, Wes Shuemaker would have no occasion to ride down my way. And it would have been futile for me to have tried to call him, with a south wind blowing forty-fifty mph.

My brother was safely on the other side of the ravine close to trees, but he slipped out the back way and went home. I knew he was doing the right thing. And I knew too that I would remain in the tree until the arrival of the riders. Those Texas cattle behaved nicely for mounted men, but they could not abide a person on foot.

I really had no business on that side of the ravine, with those cattle feeding there—but I guess I was, as always, a little too venturesome. I knew that herd had some bad actors in it. In fact, I had been warned to never get off my horse when riding as relief herder of that same herd, on several occasions. And one time while all alone at the dinner hour my mount, in jumping a ditch, broke the saddle girth and spilled me on a rattlesnake infested prairie, amongst those longhorns—with not a tree in sight.

However, nothing untoward happened. Had my luck been running true to form, there should have been at least one rattlesnake coiled on the margin of the shallow ditch into which I squeezed myself, and waited in misery for the day herder to return. As I lay in the ditch I just had to recall the time, a short while before, when a rattlesnake, coiled by a cowpath, struck as I trotted past—barefoot, of course—and got his fangs hooked in my trouser leg, requiring two wild jumps to dislodge his snakeship.

The herd was owned by Than Morris and Abe Williams, the latter a brother of Mrs. Jake Wolfley. Morris and Wolfley were brothers-in-law. John Taylor, herder, was a son of Hebe Taylor, of Atchison. John Taylor was later bailiff of the Nemaha county court, in Seneca. And he was the father of Earl W. Taylor for whom the Seneca American Legion Post was named. Hebe Taylor also, at one time, ran cattle in the open country southwest of Wetmore — with Ed. Keggin.

Charley went straight to the Morris general store in Wetmore and told Than of my predicament, and Morris immediately rounded up two cowpunchers. John Taylor, working with a herd to the southwest, chanced to be in town, and rode out with Abe Williams.

The herd had grazed on past my tree-perch. The unruly steer did not follow, but if the critter was capable of the sound thinking I was willing to credit him with, “I betcha” he always wished he had. A good cowhand could play a tune with a cattlewhip on a critter’s rump, under dead run. And John Taylor was good. He lashed his short-handled 10-foot whip overhead to the steer’s rump, right and left, with rhythmic timing, making the hair fly with each crack. The steer’s hindparts, seemingly trying to outrun his foreparts, swung to the right and swung to the left with clocklike regularity—and he thus wove himself deep into the herd, bawling “bloody murder.”

When told of John Taylor’s adroitness with the whip, my father said, “I wouldn’t care to tan his hide”—meaning the steer’s, of course. While father bought the hides from the lost dead of all those big herds—sometimes the losses in the early spring were heavy—he tanned only a few of them. He didn’t like to tan a mutilated hide, nor the hide of a branded critter—and he wouldn’t tan a grubby murrain hide.

Thus it was, I herded the cattle that produced the hides that made the leather which I helped make into shoes—all while still in my teens. My apprenticeship as a shoemaker began by holding a candle for my father to work by, at night. And if you could think it was not a wearying task for a sleepy boy, you can think again. The light would have to be shifted from side to side with each stitch as he sewed the soles on shoes. By midnight he usually ran out of “endearing” terms by which to bring me to attention—and he was willing to call it a day. Sometimes my mother would relieve me of this chore, but too often at such times she would be engaged in sewing up the side seams of a new boot, with awl and waxed thread. While I did a lot of repair work satisfactorily, I made out and out only three pairs of shoes. And though always behind with his orders, my father very wisely demanded that I make them all to my own measures.

Might add that we boys, sons of the tanner, and other rough and ready town boys—just to be doing something of our very own—tanned, in the big leather vats, squirrel hides, coon skins, and, of all things, two rattlesnake skins. Wes Shuemaker proudly wore the belt made of those rattlesnake skins for a long time.

Dr. Holland was another Atchison man who, in partnership with his brother-in-law, Mr. Prunty, of Soldier, ran a large herd southwest of town. His corral, a 10-acre pine board enclosure, was in the northwest corner of the Harry Cawood quarter. The land was then owned by Billy Cline, of Soldier. Where there were no corrals, a night herder would have to stay with the cattle.

The Bradford spring—now known as the Joe Pfrang spring—gushing up from a hilltop, was the main attraction for those early day cattlemen. Just how the free range was divided up to carry several individual herds, without clashing, I do not know—but there were no cattle feuds, and no gunplay.

NOTE—The values in cattle, as with everything else, ran low in the old days. An instance: In 1861, Bill Porter had a hard time raising money to pay taxes on two quarters of land. Unable to borrow $7.20, the troublesome amount, he walked and led a big fat cow to Leavenworth, and sold her for $7.50. In marked contrast, Garrett Bartley of Powhattan, son-in-law of Bill Porter, the second, reports a neighbor of his recently sold a 2,000 pound cow on the St. Joseph market for $540.00. I think the herds corralled here and grazed around the Bradford spring were bought for as little as $5 to $8 per head. This year—1950—Joe Pfrang, present owner of the Bradford spring and surrounding acres, bought, in May, a bunch of 700-pound steers for approximately $160.00 each—and after running them on pasture, the same wild grass, with some acres now planted to tame grass, sold them in the fall off grass, for an average of $270.00; a gain of about $110.00 per head. These steers were Texas-bred cattle, too. But they were not “longhorns.” Herefords never are. And likely the Pfrang 1,000-pound steers, out of the feed lot, with 300 pounds added weight, would have sold for about $487.50 each. It was a great year for the cattlemen. Beefsteak in the old days in Wetmore was ten cents a pound for the best cuts.

There were, however, some angry threats between the cattlemen and Old Morgan, an outsider, who had run in four thousand sheep on them. I helped shepherd that flock, And I discovered early that by looping a pebble in the cracker end of my cattle-whip, and sending it over them a little to the outside of the straying sheep that I could bring them back into the fold without effort. Also, the singing noise of the pebble thrown over the flock would divide the sheep into two bunches. I really became quite good at this thing, and played with the discovery a lot — until one day when the missile did not sail true, and a sheep had to hobble home on three legs. We were in the hills south of the creek. The poor little lamb got no help until after the flock had passed over the bridge at the east end of town. Old Morgan usually met us there. Luckily, he was tuned up properly and did all the talking. He threatened to sue the township for permitting a hole to remain open in the bridge. This, I like to think, was the one black mark against my rather diversified career. A sheep herder in a cattle country rated pretty low. Cattle would not graze after sheep. I quit Old Morgan before the season was over.

The cattle herder’s main function was to keep the herds from mixing, and to keep the cattle clear of the creek-bottom farms and the few isolated prairie farms; and also to keep them out of mischief in general, such as running down careless boys—and free of dogs. A dog could always start a stampede. And a cattle stampede was something to be dreaded, in the old days. When those Texas cattle and dogs mixed there was sure to be loud bellowings and a great clashing of hoofs and horns. I have a clear picture of my Uncle Nick’s herd of longhorns, after running themselves down, milling about on the range adjacent to his Wolfley creek farm—milling in a compact bunch, when one could look out upon a sea of horns; nothing but horns.