Part 6

It was quite the thing for local men who had a little cash, or backing, to take a hand in the cattle game. My Uncle Nick Bristow and Roland Van Amburg contracted for a large herd of those longhorns from Dr. W. L. Challis, cattle broker of Atchison. The cattle were fresh from Texas—brought up over the famed Chisholm trail. Uncle Nick and Van divided the herd, and after running the cattle on grass, tried to carry them through a rather severe winter on prairie hay alone. Those fresh longhorns would not eat corn. The cattle were so weakened by spring that when turned out on grass they mired down in creeks and water holes all over the range. They died in bunches, almost to the last head. And while that cattle deal cost my Uncle his farm, Van said it cost him only his “britches.” Roland Van Amburg was a grand old sport, with a great capacity for seeing the “funny” side of life—and up or down, financially, he was always the same cheery Van.

Other men got out of their Texas cattle speculations less lucky. Dave Garvin, besides losing a lot of his hard-earned money, had to take the “rest cure” for nearly a year. However, those who confined their speculations, within their means, to native-bred cattle made money. John Thornburrow, starting from scratch, amassed a small fortune. Charley Hutchison, a mere boy, scion of a wealthy’ brewer family, sent out here from Ohio to sober up, and put on a section of wild land, made a pile of money from his herds — and more, he became a teetotaler, a solid, honorable citizen. Fred Achten, a fifteen dollar a month farm hand, built the foundation for the Achten Empire, the largest land holdings in the country, largely on cattle and free grass.

Also, John Rebensdorf, a German farm hand, after marrying Christine Zabel and settling down, made plenty of money running cattle on free grass. Rebensdorf was oddly a thrifty man. By no means an inveterate tippler, he liked, occasionally, to pay for his own beer—and drink it himself. Time and again I have seen him ride into town, tie his horse at the rack in the middle of the street in front of the saloon, go in, and, elbow himself a place at the bar, order three quart bottles of beer—always three bottles. When he had leisurely emptied the third bottle he was ready to pipe. “I’ze zee richest man in zee whole country.” And, at that, the man was not far off in his calculations.

One time, John Rebensdorf and his brother-in-law, Albert Zabel, of German parentage, were engaged in a spirited argument—on a street corner, in my hearing — over something which had to do with cattle and free grass, Albert, a fine Christian gentleman momentarily suffering a lapse of piety, called Rebensdorf all the fighting names in the book—that is, all the names that would rile an American, without perceptibly ruffling him. Albert worked himself up Into a white heat, but he couldn’t bestir John. Rebenstorf would say, “No, Albert, you iss wrong.” He repeated this, meekly, several times. Finally, when Rebensdorf, wearied of the argument, started to walk away, Albert yelled parting shot, “You old sauerkraut, you know I’m right!” Then “zee richest man in zee whole country” turned quickly, came blustering back, shaking his big fat fist, and roared, “By gosh, you call me sauerkraut! Now I fight!”

Also, the residents would often—that is, in season, cut hay off the prairie that had been more or less grazed. One summer my brother Sam and I hauled into town $315.00 Worth, at $2.50 a ton, measured in stack—and much of this was done at night, by moonlight, owing to high winds making it impossible to handle the loose hay by day. Owners of cows in town, as well as in the country, always aimed to have enough hay stored to carry their stock through the winter, but often the supply was found to be short, especially when the winters were unusually severe. Then the speculators who had stored hay against such eventualities, would have an inning—maybe get $3 or $3.50 a ton, in stack. One especially energetic man in the Granada neighborhood, with a couple of confederates, put up an unusual amount of this free hay one season, inside fire breaks—then a prairie fire in the late winter destroyed all the outstacked hay belonging to his neighbors. Then bedlam broke loose among the natives. Still there were no killings.

And, even with all that grazing and mowing there was enough grass left on the south range to make spectacular prairie fires, racing at times, all the way to town—and would even sometimes jump the creek and menace the town.

Here is one more of the many incidents attributable to the free grass range. Without refrigeration in the early hot summers the farmer’s wives had difficulty keeping butter made from grass-fed cows fresh until it could be brought to market. On the whole the women managed exceedingly well under trying conditions—it was before the day of screens on the homes—but there were some that didn’t know how, or just didn’t seem to care.

At that time I was clerking in Than Morris’ store, along with Curt Shuemaker, George and Chuck Cawood. We had already accumulated a full barrel of off-grade butter that would have to be sold for soap-grease, when Morris told us all that should a certain woman bring in butter again for us to reject it. It so happened that it fell to the lot of the “cub” clerk to wait on her. Morris and the three other clerks stood by, grinning. I carried her jar into the side room, and without uncovering it, brought it back and told the woman we could not buy it. She appealed to Than, saying, “Mr. Cawood here,” nodding toward me, “took my butter away and got it all dirty, and now says he won’t buy it.” Morris knew what to look for—and it was there for all to see. He said, “Look!” pointing to the uncovered jar, “ Cawood didn’t put those wigglers in your butter. Don’t bring us any more of that stuff.”

The woman insisted that “Mr. Cawood had dirtied it up”—and Morris paid in full, gross weight. And she was permitted to take the whole mess back home, along with her purchases. I was thankful that Morris, in dealing with her, also called me Cawood—minus the “Mister.”

Still calling me “Mr. Cawood,” this woman later told me she had rheumatism—that she had, unfortunately, spilled her cooling bucket in the water well, and that her man would no longer allow her to cool her butter in the customary way — suspended on a rope deep in the well. After she had passed on, the second Mrs. L. made good butter—so good in fact that the town customers called for it by name. But even this could not correct the damage done to my delicate stomach during that summer in the Morris store. I have never tasted raw butter since that time. And with me, after that sheep herding experience, mutton is also taboo. Old Morgan’s sheep were scabby.

Again, while clerking in the Morris store I was put to the test—and though this has nothing whatsoever to do with the free grass range, I am sure you will observe that it is neatly wrapped in fast green. A Miss Sumerville, a relative of the Zabel’s, visiting in Wetmore—I believe she was from Pennsylvania—asked for variegated yarn. I told her we didn’t have that kind, but I would show her what we had. I admit that I was not very bright on some matters — but at that, I wasn’t as dumb as one of the standbys that I could have named.

Morris said, “Show her what you have in that drawer over there,” indicating the drawer holding the variegated yarn. After I had made the sale, Morris complimented me for selling the little lady a lot of something she didn’t want. He said, “When you don’t have what they want, always try to sell them something else.” He henkie-henkie-henkied in a manner which passed as a derisive laugh. “Keep awake, young man,” he said, “and you’ll make a salesman in time — maybe as good as Cawood here,” indicating Chuck.

With George Cox and his two sons, Bill and young George, I helped build that Holland corral earlier mentioned — and a small bunk house. And it was here where I mixed it with the rattlesnake I had been admonished so often to keep a sharp eye out for. Note Note how well young America obeyed the injunction. I saw the rattlesnake coiled by the roadside as we were coming in after the day’s work, with ox-team, piloted by a Mr. Green who had brought the outfit up from Atchison to haul the lumber out from town. I jumped out of the wagon, and hit the snake with a rock. It flopped, then lay still. I thought it was dead but to make sure I prodded it with a stiff prairie weed—and learned pronto that the stick was a mite too short on one end. That rattler lashed out at me, overreaching by the fraction of an inch, with its neck or body falling across my wrist. My hands were scratched and blood-stained from handling the rough pine boards—fencing came in the rough in those days — and Mr. Green insisted that he saw the snake bite me “with my own eyes.” And to prove it, he spotted a snagged place on my hand where he was sure the snake’s fangs had struck.

Mr. Green crowded those normally slow plodding oxen, and we actually came to town by fits and spurts on the gallop. He wanted to buy whisky for me, and seemed awfully distressed when I refused it. He was so exercised over the matter that one easily could have believed that it was he who was in need of a generous slug of the stuff — and I’m not so sure that he didn’t get it. Anyway, I was ready to go out on time the next morning. Mr. Green was not. And you can bet your life I never again tried to poke a diamondback with a stick too short on one end.

Incidentally, I may say there were other close calls and near misses—not to overlook the one August day when a seven-button, (seven-year-old) rattlesnake actually made a ten-strike on my bare foot. And though always to me a bit hazy, I can now assure you that this is no dream. Just why I would stand still by the side of the hole into which I had poured water in the hope of drowning out a ground squirrel, and watch that snake slither up through the grass, coil and strike, before going down the hole, has always been something for me to ponder.

It was said in the old days that snakes would charm their prey—mesmerize a bird so that it could not fly away. Well, here for once was a “charmed” fledgling that did “fly” away—too late. The charm was broken the moment the snake struck, and though I was only six years old, my brother Charley said I let out a terrific yell, and cleared a wagon road in one jump. Even now I wonder does one ever get so frightened that both mind and body refuse to function?

And here is a solemn truth you will likely find hard to believe. For several years thereafter, come August and dogdays, my right leg would become spotted like that rattlesnake. In a previous article I told of this same rattlesnake encounter, and my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me why didn’t I mention the fact of those recurrent spots? I told her that I didn’t want to weaken the story with anything hard to swallow, however true it might be. Then she said, “Well-I, could tell them that it is true, that your mother—” her sister—”told me that it was the gospel truth.” And there were no better Baptists than that pair. Still, in this day of freedom of thought, you can doubt it if you wish — but you would be wrong.

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE Little Josephine Cole, not yet three years old, trying to catch an evasive cat in our home, shocked her Aunt Myrtle by saying, “Damn that cat.” My wife was telling Mrs. Morrison, our neighbor, about it, When Dick Morrison, the husband, spoke up saying, “I said those very Words about our damned old cat while the child was over here yesterday.” It has wisely been said: “Out of the mouths of babies come Words we shouldn’t have said in the first place.”

DONE IN CALIFORNIA Not Hitherto Published—1948.

By John T. Bristow

As sequel to the foregoing old-time cattle riding story-experienced in my younger days on the gently undulating plains of Northeast Kansas, I here record a contrasting up-to-date cattle riding experience I recently had on a far away mountain range. But in this last ride I did not race my horse and crack my whip for the sheer fun of it—as of yore.

Until Sunday, April 18, 1948, I had not been on a horse for fifty-five years—not since the opening of the Cherokee Strip, September 16, 1893, at noon, when, with my brother Dave, and Dr. David H. Fitzgerald, and Charley Rice, I rode sixteen miles in fifty-six minutes to locate a claim on Turkey creek, seven miles southwest of the present city of Enid, Oklahoma. In that race we were led—for a price — by “Ranaky Bill,” an Oklahoma outlaw.

While going up the mountain, the name of other notorious outlaws—the Daltons—was mentioned by my nephew, Sam Bristow, with whom I was riding. Sam owns “Dalton Mountain,” some sixty miles east of Fresno, California, where it is said those desperadoes were in hiding a long time ago.

The Dalton gang of bank robbers—following in the wake of the Jesse James gang whose hideout was in Missouri — operated mainly, I believe, in Kansas and the Indian Territory, in the late ‘80’s. At any rate, the Dalton bank robbers came to grief at Coffeyville in southern Kansas, with three of the gang killed by a sharp-shooting local hardware merchant, and law enforcement officers. Grat and Bob Dalton were killed. Emmett Dalton was badly shot up — was captured, convicted, and given a life sentence. President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned him. I have a faint recollection that sometime prior to the Coffeyville raid, the news dispatches stated that the Daltons—under assumed names—had shipped their horses to the Far west. And it is not at all improbable that our old-time Kansas and Indian Territory band of desperadoes rode their horses to the saddle-back near the top of my nephew’s 3500 foot mountain, from which eminence they could have guarded the approach in all directions.

Dalton Mountain is an attraction for patrons of a large Dude Ranch close by, in the Kings river area—something to talk about only. No dude could ride a horse up that mountain—particularly none of the thirty New York “dude” girls who rode the canyon trails thereabout for several weeks, recently.

Also, I recall the time when Jim Dalton, after killing Sheriff Charley Batterson and escaping from the Marysville jail, was captured by a posse led by Constable Charley Andrews, near the Buening school, eight miles southwest of Wetmore—my home town. After serving time, it was said, Jim Dalton went to Los Angeles and made an honorable “killing” in the manufacture of ovens for bakeries. I do not know if he was a member of the old gang. Probably not. But it has often been considered that he was.

But we were not riding via a series of switchbacks to the top of Dalton Mountain especially to view that historic spot. From the saddle-back, looking to the north down a tree-studded canyon, and looking back over the trail we had traveled, we could see at a glance much of Sam’s 1480 acres, of mountain pasture land, trees and rocks. And from this lookout we could locate nearly all of his ninety-eight head of cattle that had wintered there during the worst winter drought that California has had in eighty years, while other valley ranchmen were feeding $40 hay to $100 cattle, or shipping their stock to pastures in other states—some to the wheat fields of Western Kansas. The north slope of Dalton mountain, shielded from the burning sun, is what saved the day for Sam. Campbell mountain, almost in Sam’s dooryard, was picked bare. Sam bought fifteen of the cattle taken off that range. In his pasture, those newly purchased cattle did not graze with the other stock. And this is where the trained McNabb shepherd dog, Spike, comes in. I shall give Spike a line, later.

When Sam was saddling the horses before loading them in the truck for the 35 mile drive up into the mountains, from his 80-acre valley ranch, his wife—Anna—came out to the barnyard, and said to me, “Don’t let Sam talk you into making that hard ride all the way up to the top of the mountain. When you get tired, turn around and come back.” Excellent advice—but that was the one thing I couldn’t do. We were already coming down when I began to tire, and a quick reflection on Anna’s injunction told me that to turn around then would have availed me nothing. And though I had had it done to me many times in my younger days, that hard four hours horseback ride up the mountain and back did not produce the saddle-weary spots my relatives were expecting.

For identification purposes, let’s say Sam’s son Robert, 21-year-old ex-GI, an exemplary young man, and Sam’s daughter Virginia Anne, 13 years old, each own a dog — Spike and Curley. When loading the horses into the truck both dogs were “rearing” to go. Spike, the trained cattle dog, told us by signs and in perfectly understandable dog language that he wanted to ride in the cab. But he was forced in with the horses—and after he had made the rounds of the pasture, he climbed in with the horses without argument for the return trip. In the pasture, the dog would run ahead and spot segregated bunches of cattle, then come back, point out the stock, and stand “at attention’” awaiting orders. Sam said should he tell Spike to “Go get ‘em,” the dog would be off right now. He said it was almost impossible to get the cattle out of the hills without a trained dog. Sam paid $50 for the pup, and trained it himself.

Sam had said he would not take Virginia Anne’s dog along with us, that Curley would likely pick up a deer trail and follow it for hours, which might delay the return trip.

He planned to drive back by the Kings river road through the Dude Ranch to show me the place where the new irrigation ditch now being put through past his valley ranch — to take San Joaquin river water from the lake formed by the recently built Friant dam—goes under the Kings river, ninety feet below, through a 27 foot circular cement tube nearly three-eights of a mile in length. From the 100 foot bridge spanning the irrigation ditch one could look down 90 feet to the bottom of the ditch, and up nearly a 100 feet to the top of the ridge of dirt deposited by the big dragline. We had seen the west approach to this siphon on coming out from Fresno the evening before.

Sam says he frequently sees deer in his pasture—particularly one big buck—always before the hunting season opens, but never when he is permitted to shoot them. With the advancing years, it seems the deer, as well as man, are taking on wisdom. Hunters say that as soon as the season in California opens the deer make a break for the National Parks, where they are protected.

Sam also said that we would call on Mrs. Bert Elwood, who has lived in the canyon adjoining his pasture for a great many years—and get the facts about the Daltons. But she was not at home when we stopped, on our way out. I really wanted to obtain from her a firsthand report on the early-day cattle business, and information about the cougar menace in the low mountains years ago. I have been told that the cougars were alarmingly destructive then.

The cougars are now mostly in the high mountains, though the Fresno Bee reported two killed in the Valley last winter. Professional hunters have kept them down in recent years. It is said a professional cougar hunter named Bruce—his surname—has a pack of dogs that will track them down without fail, if the scent is not more than 72 hours old. A grown cougar will take a toll of 50 deer in one season.

Getting back to the wise deer in the parks. While “doing” the Sequoia National Park five years ago with Major Clement A. Tavares—he was in the service then, and that “Major” handle was pretty firmly fixed, but “Doctor” takes precedent now—who is the husband of my niece, Alice Bristow, I saw a deer browsing about the ranger camp. The Major took a “movie” of it while it was walking in front of a giant Sequoia tree. A Ranger told me it was a “wild” deer that had never been in captivity. And I saw deer at several places by the roadside so close that I could have almost touched them. Also we saw two young bucks “sparring” almost under the General Grant big tree. The Major turned his camera on them.

Again, yesterday, we saw deer in the Yosemite Valley. My brother Theodore shooed one away from a foot-path where it was nonchalantly nibbling a mushroom. Deer are very tame in the valley.

The Yosemite Falls, seen at their best on Sunday, May 23, 1948, with Yosemite creek in flood from melting snow, did not look to be 2425 feet in height; not until we got up close enough to be sprayed — good. Even the foot-path through the grove seemed to grow in length, as we walked toward the Falls.

Many, many years ago, I heard Eugene May lecture on the beauty and immensity of Yosemite Valley at the Methodist Church in Wetmore. When it came to describing the Falls, he got up on his toes, reached for the sky—literally soaring up, up, up, in an unbelievable manner. Now I find the Falls and other notable sights in the valley all that May said they were—and then some. There are six separate falls pouring into the valley.

Nothing looks its size up in the High Country. The far famed tunnel drive through the big Sequoia tree in the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, is deceiving. It looked as if it would be a tight squeeze for the car, but after passing through with room to spare, I could easily believe a cattle truck might pass through it.

While driving in the Grove, with the big trees standing surprisingly close together, the Doctor said he had been pretty much all over the world, and had seen nothing to compare with this wonderful Grove. Just imagine a tree 33 foot through standing 300 feet high.

When I first went up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, years ago—when automobiles were first coming into general use—trees were hitched on behind the cars to hold them back while coming down the mountain. And there was a sizable wood-yard at the foothills—product of those drags.

Five years ago, I came down from the Sequoia National Park with Major Tavares, when he put the machine in low gear and eased it down ever so gently. But now, with everything in California moving along in high gear, the tendency is to open ‘er up, and let ‘er drop down at an alarming rate of speed.

Last Sunday the Doctor—yes, it was the Doctor now — brought me safely down from the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, at a fast clip—a drop of nearly 8,000 feet in 65 miles of winding hairpin curves, done in less than that many minutes, the speedometer showing 65 to 70 miles all the way. And I had been told that his wife Alice was the best driver in the San Joaquin valley.

The Park roads are really wonderful—built at the right pitch for safety, at every turn.

The Doctor, with Alice and their two children, Clemie, eight, and Myrna, three, plan to fly in June to Honolulu—the Doctor’s birthplace. He is not Hawaiian, however. Alice has invited me to accompany them—but as I have always believed air travel unsafe, I declined, with thanks.

But now, after Sunday, I think I would not balk at anything—let come what may.

THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE Published in Wetmore Spectator January 3, 1936

By John T. Bristow

Other things may be submerged in the whirlpool of life and forgotten, but memory of the old swimming hole, no matter where it was, or in what generation, lives long.

Now comes a letter from one of the old “boys” living in another state calling for elaboration of that tanyard gang’s doings. Combining the old swimming hole with the tanyard and our circus layout—they were closely connected — he mentions them as likely material for a story. A “funny” story, he suggests.