Michener, James A. (146 page)

So the deal was made: the Rusks gave Alonzo Betz $300 of their $550 as a down payment; the barbed wire was shipped from Eureka, Illinois; Frank Yeager and his men began building fences; and Banker Weatherby had in his big iron safe a mortgage on the entire Larkin Ranch.

Bob wahr they called it throughout Texas, and when Yeager and his men finished driving their posts and stringing their strands they sounded the death knell of the open range, for they had removed the choicest acres and the best water holes once used by the

itinerant cattlemen. With timing that was diabolically unfortunate, they had everything in place just as that year's big cattle drives from the south began, and just as one of the most severe droughts in history started to bake the Texas range.

Emma, watching these restrictive procedures, was not surprised when they caused trouble, for as she had warned: 'Earnshaw, you're chopping this great open land into mean little squares, and the people won't tolerate it.' She wanted to add: 'And my Longhorns won't, either.'

The first rumbles of trouble came when school began after Easter vacation, and they were so trivial that neither Rusk nor Yeager could later recall their beginning, jaxifer had come to Rusk with a curious protest. The two cavalrymen had met an Indian squaw, a Waco from the eastern regions, and had taken her into their stone house, ostensibly as cook-helper. None of the white families could be sure to whom she belonged, but in due time she had produced a pretty little girl baby, half black, half Indian, and because the former cavalrymen had witnessed the advantages children enjoyed if they could read and write—which they themselves could not—they wanted the girl, whosever daughter she was, to get an education: The fence we've put up, Mr. Rusk, it makes the teacher walk the long way round instead of across the field, as before.'

'I am sorry about that.'

'And we wondered if there was some way to cut a hole . . .'

'Where the road runs, we've already put in gates. But cut a fence merely to continue an old footpath? Never. That fence cannot be touched.'

'But the teacher . . .'

When other parents began to protest the inconvenience to their teacher, Rusk and Yeager went out to study the problem, and they saw immediately that this portion of their fence had been unwisely strung, for it did cut off access to the school, but the fence had been so costly and had required so much effort to construct that it had become a virtue in itself, something that had to be protected. 'What we will do,' Yeager promised, 'is give the people lumber so they can build stiles, but cutting our fences except where roads run through, we cain't allow that.'

The next complaint was more serious. A family not connected with either the ranch or the village rode in to complain bitterly about what the fence had done to them: 'For a long time we've used the road which runs south from the tank where the soldier and his girl killed theirselves. Now your fence cuts it off, and we—'

The fence is on our land,' Yeager interrupted sternly.

'Yes, but it cuts a public road.'

The only public road is the one that runs east-west from Three Cairns. And we've put in gates to service that.'

But we've always used this road.'

'Not any longer. We've fenced our land, and that's tnat.'

'But if the county seat is going to be at Fort Garner, how can we get there?'

'You'll have to go around and catch the Three Cairns road.'

'Go around! Surely you could add one more gate.'

The fence stands,' Yeager said, terminating that conversation.

Less than a week later, one of the ranch hands rode in with sickening news: 'Come see what they done.' And when Rusk and Yeager rode out to where their new fence blocked the disputed road, they found that someone had cut it and knocked down the posts.

'I'll shoot the son-of-a-bitch who did this!' Yeager threatened, but Rusk restrained him: There'll be no shooting.'

But there was. When Jaxifer and another hand rode out to rebuild the fence across the road, someone shot at them, and they quickly retreated. Frank Yeager himself went out, well armed, to repair the fence, and when someone fired at him, he coolly waited, watched, fired back, and killed the man.

Thus began one of the ugliest episodes of Texas history, the Great Range War, in which one group of cattlemen who had been utilizing the open range suddenly found that another group with a little more money had fenced off traditional routes and, much worse, traditional water holes. One of the most severe losses of water occurred at the Larkin Ranch, where the Rusks had fenced in their tank north of town, and not with one line of fence, but three, because the outer ring delineated the perimeter of the ranch, while the double strand, with its guarded gate, protected the water from pressures by either the Rusk cattle or strays that might crowd in.

With the first big drive of the summer it became obvious that there would be conflict, because cattle had to have water prior to the long trail up to the Red River. But for some curious reason, Earnshaw Rusk, this peaceable Quaker, refused to see that his action in closing off the water hole was arbitrary, unjustified, and opposed to the public welfare. His recent years of dealing with Texans had indoctrinated him with their fundamental law: 'Private property is sacrosanct, mine in particular.' So he continued to keep other cattle away from his water; he continued to maintain his fences, even if they did cut people off from their accustomed

routes. He was neither irrational nor obdurate; he had become a Texan.

Almost daily, now, one of the hands reported at dawn: 'They cut more fence,' for if Alonzo Betz had been a genius in selling bob wahr, other salesmen had been equally ingenious in selling long-handled cutters that could lay that wire flat within seconds, so daily Rusk and Yeager were forced to ride out and repair the fences.

The war was not an unequal one, for the cutters, those men who loved freedom and the open range, could in one dark night destroy an immense reach of fence; sometimes every strand for two miles would be cut between each pair of posts, at grievous expense to the rancher. The rancher, on the other hand, could post his trigger-happy ranch hands in dark hiding places among the dips and swerves of his land, and then gunfire exploded, with the newfangled wire-cutters left dangling on the fence beside the corpses.

In this warfare the advantage now began to swing to the fence-cutters, for the hardened men trailing their cattle north hired professional gunslingers to ride along, so that when a battle erupted, the firepower was apt to be on the side of the trail drivers. Frank Yeager learned these facts the hard way when one of his new hands was killed while trying to stop a wire-cutting. He retaliated with fiendish cleverness.

Originally opposed to fencing, he was now its primary defender, for in the act of building a fence he identified with it, and any attack upon it was an attack on him. So when his man was killed he announced: 'No more watching at night. We'll find other ways.' He did. Utilizing his imperfect knowledge of explosives, he devised a number of sensitive bombs which would be placed along the wires and activated if the tension on any wire was released by cutting. Each bomb contained so many fragmentations that the cutter did not have to be close when it went off; the shards would fly a long distance to kill or seriously maim.

Now the hands at Fort Garner slept in their beds, rode out at dawn, and counted the corpses. The trail drivers in retaliation began shooting cattle inside the fences and setting fire to pastures, while settled citizens whose modes of travel had been disrupted by the fences began cutting them with hurtful frequency. So more deaths ensued. On all fronts it was now open warfare.

One hateful aspect of the battle at Fort Garner was that Earnshaw Rusk, contrary to every principle of his upbringing, found himself acting as a kind of general defending his fort. Unwilling to handle a gun himself, he directed the strategies of those who did. Even worse, he also served as leader of those other ranchers

in the area who had fenced their properties. He became General Rusk, defender of the bob-wahr fence.

The Range War was resolved in a manner peculiar to this state. No police were sent into the area, no state militia, no army units. In August, when the prolonged drought increased the number of killings, a medium-sized man in his early thirties rode quietly into town, Texas Ranger Clyde Rossiter, slit-eyed and with his hands never far from his holsters. His assigned job was to terminate the Larkin County Range War. He moved soberly, made no arrests, no threats. He was out on the range a good deal, inspecting fences and intercepting herds as they moved north, and wherever he went he made it clear that the fence war was over.

He was successful in halting the carnage, but as the people of the region watched in admiration while he took charge, it became obvious that he always sided with the big ranchers and opposed the little man no matter what the issue, so one night a group of citizens asked if they could meet with him to present what they held to be their just grievances. He refused to listen to their whining, telling them: 'It's my job to establish peace, not to correct old injustices.'

He explained his basic attitude one night when taking supper with the Rusks: 'From what I've seen of Texas, the good things in our society are always done by people with money, the bad things by people without. So I find it practical to work with people who own large ranches, because they know what's best, and against those with nothing, because they never know anything.'

'Do most of the Rangers feel that way?' Earnshaw asked.

'Our experience teaches us.'

'Does thee own a ranch?'

'I do, and I'd not want trespassers cutting my fences.'

'What should I do about the people who protest about our cutting their road?'

'It's your land, isn't it?'

'But how should I respond?'

'I'm not here to pass laws. I'm here to stop the shootin', and I think it's stopped.' But he did, as a careful Ranger, want to inspect all angles of this war, so he left Fort Garner for several days to range the countryside between that town and Jacksborough, and was absent when R. J. Poteet came north with two thousand seven hundred head bound for Dodge City. When Poteet reached the area he found a distressing situation. Not only were the Brazos and Bear Creek bone-dry, but the permanent water hole on the Larkin Ranch had been fenced off. Methodically, but with minimum damage, he proceeded to cut the outer fence that his cattle must

penetrate before they could approach the tank, whose double fences would also have to be cut if the cattle were to drink.

Rusk's watchmen were amazed at the boldness with which this determined stranger was cutting their fence, and when they rode back to inform Rusk, they could find only Yeager, who grabbed a rifle and rode breathlessly to the scene, only to discover that it was Poteet who was doing it.

'Hey there! Poteet! What're you up to?'

'Watering my cattle, as always.'

'That's fenced.'

'It shouldn't be. This is open range, time out of mind.'

'No longer. Times have changed.'

'They shouldn't.'

'Poteet, if your men touch that fence, my men will shoot.'

'They'd be damned fools if they did. I've got some powerful gunmen ridin' with me.'

At this point Earnshaw Rusk rode up, and he was preparing to issue orders to his troops when Poteet spoke: 'Friend Earnshaw, I don't want your men to do anything foolish. You see my chuck wagon? Why do you think the sides are up?'

When the Rusk men looked at the ominous wagon, they could see that it had been placed in an advantageous position, with its flexible sides closed. 'Friend Earnshaw, one of my good men in there has his rifle pointed directly at you. Another has you in his sights, Mr. Yeager. Now I propose to water my stock as usual, and I shall have to cut your fences to do it.'

Rusk took a deep breath, then said firmly: 'Poteet, my men will shoot if thee touches that fence.'

For a long time no one spoke, no one moved. R. J. Poteet, born in Virginia fifty-six years ago, had acquired certain characteristics in the cattle-herding business which he was powerless to alter, and one was that his animals must be tended daily, honestly and with maximum care. This included regular watering. Since the close of the War Between the States, he had trailed one large consignment north each year and sometimes two, for a total of twenty-one herds, some of huge dimension, and he had never lost even two percent, not to Indians, or bandits, or drought, or stampede, or shifty buyers, and it was unthinkable that he should vary his procedures now. He was going to water his steers.

Earnshaw Rusk believed profoundly in whatever he dedicated himself to. When he saw that a new day was opening upon the once-free range, he spurred its arrival. And perhaps most subtle of all, he had become infected with the Texas doctrine that a man's land was not only his castle, but also his salvation.

In the long wait no one fired, but all stood ready. Then the two leaders spoke. Rusk, still playing the role of general, said: 'Did thee know, Poteet, that Ranger Rossiter is here to end this fighting? If thee shoots me, he'll hound thee to the ends of the earth,' and Poteet snapped: 'Rangers always side with the rich. I'm surprised a man of your principles would want their help. Friend Eamshaw, what would you do if you had twenty-seven hundred head of cattle within smelling distance of water? And none elsewhere to be found?'

There was silence, when life and the values men fought for hung in the balance; it was prolonged, and in it Eamshaw Rusk dropped his pose of being a general and acknowledged that what he and Frank Yeager had been doing was wrong. It might represent the wave of the future, and perhaps it would prevail before the decade faded, but as things stood now, it was wrong. It was wrong to fence in a water hole which had been used, as Poteet said, 'time out of mind.' It was wrong to cut off public roads as if schoolteachers and children were of no concern. It was wrong to impose arbitrary new rules merely because one was strong enough to get a loan at the bank, and it was terribly wrong to abolish a neighbor's inherited rights simply because thee had bob wahr and he didn't.