SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
THE LIBRARY OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELESTHE WEST
OF YESTERDAYCOWBOY MIXThe WEST of YESTERDAY
By TOM MIX
AND
TONY’S STORY
BY HIMSELF
COMPILED AND EDITED
BY
J. B. M. CLARK
FROM INTERVIEWS WITH THE AUTHOR
The TIMES-MIRROR Press LOS ANGELES
1923Copyright, 1923 Times-Mirror Press Los AngelesTABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword by Tom Mix.....................  7
Editorial Preface........................ 9
Chapter I—Tony’s Story Told by Himself.. 11
“	II—Life Story of Tom Mix.......... 20
“	III—Land of the Great West........ 46
“	IV—The People of the Towns........ 66
“	V—Tim Teegarden and the Fire Net.. 77
“ VI—The Ranch and Cowboy Life....... 91
“	VII—The Affair at Lone Tree	Ranch.114
“ VIII—The Mining Camp and the Miner. . . . 127
“	IX—Dan Prout’s Last Hold-Up.......142
“	X—And Now—The Movies..............157
ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece—Cowboy Mix......................... 2
Tuned Up for Action............................ 14
Doing Tricks................................... 18
Tom and Tony...................................100
Discussing the Matter..........................159FOREWORD
I find myself in perfect agreement with Roger Pocock, who said:
“I had years punchin’ cows, and I am most surely grateful. ... So far as I seen, up to where grass meets sky, this trade of punchin1 cows appeals to me most plentiful. In every other vocation the job’s just work, but all a cowboy is paid for is forms of joy—to ride, to rope, to cut out; to shoot, to study tracks and signs, read brands, learn cow. A bucking horse, a range fire, a gun fight, a stampede, is maybe acquired tastes, for I have known good men act bashful.
“There’s drawbacks also—I’d never set up thirst or sandstorms as bein’ arranged to please, or claim to cheerfulness with a lame horse, or in a sheep ranch. No. But then you don’t know you’re happy till you been miserable, and you’d hate the sun himself if he never set. . . .
“Hard fed, worked plenty, all outdoors to live in, and bone-weary don’t ax, ‘Whar’s my pillow?’ No. The sun shines through us, and if it’s cold we will shiver till we sweat. Rains,northers—Oh, it was all so natural! Living with nature makes men natural. We didn’t speak much—pride ain’t talkative. Riding or fighting, we gave the foreman every ounce we had got, more when needed. Persons would come among us, mean, dirty, tough, or scared, sized up before they dismounted, apt to move on, too. Them that stayed was brothers, and all our possessions usually belonged to the guy who kep’ the woodenest face at poker.
“The world in them days was peopled with only two species—puncher and tenderfoot, the last being made by mistake. Moreover, we cowboys belonged to two sects, our outfit and those of no account.”
Tom Mix.EDITORIAL PREFACE
The whys and wherefores of this book having been explained by Tom Mix himself, there remains hardly any editorial duty beyond the expression of thanks and acknowledgment to those who have lent personal assistance or whose works have been consulted and quoted. To the first class belong: Tom and Tony; Mr. George F. Marshall, late of the Mix staff; Mr. E. M. Boddy; and Mr. Gerald F. Sherman, Mining Engineer, of the Phelps Dodge Co. The latter class includes: The late Colonel Roosevelt, whose works on the West have been invaluable; Mr. Roger Pocock, in particular for his “Man in the Open”; Mr. Baillie-Grohman, for his “Camps in the Rockies”; Mr. J. H. Beadle, for his “Undeveloped West”; Mr. Cato Sells, U. S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the facts about the Indians in Oklahoma in his Annual Reports; and Mr. Chester H. Westfall, late of the Kay County Gas Co., for his admirable description of the land rush in the Cherokee Strip in the book on Kay County issued by the aforesaid company. Dr. J. A. Munk ofLos Angeles, and of the Munk Ranch in Arizona, may be said to be in both classes at once, through personal effort, and for the valuable information culled from his “Southwest Sketches” and “Arizona Sketches,” and from the Munk Library of Arizoniana in the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles. To one and all the compiler’s heartiest thanks are extended, coupled with the request that they, and the public generally, will pardon any crudeness displayed in the handling of such excellent material, or failure to carry out adequately the laudable idea back of the publication of the book. Sins of omission and commission are entirely editorial, and should be so visited.
J. B. M. Clark.

CHAPTER I
Tony’s Story Told by Himself
Note: I have deemed it advisable to let Tony open the ball by putting his story first, so that in case this book should not be a success I can lay the blame to his charge.—Tom Mix.
F HORSES could speak, or were able in some way or other to give expression to their thoughts, Tony might be expected to declare himself somewhat after the following:
“They have asked me to write a story about myself and to tell people what I really think and feel about things, and I am going to try and do it. It may not be very easy, but that doesn’t make any difference. Things that are worth while are never easy. I daresay most of you have seen some of the things I have done in the pictures. Well, they were not easy. But I did them just the same.
“I am not going to tell you exactly how old I am, because horses don’t like to have their age spoken about. I might be eight and I might be nine years. It doesn’t matter much anyway. But one thing you might take note12
The West of Yesterday
of—I am no colt. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that. When I see a bunch of colts in a corral I never pay the slightest attention to them. They don’t know anything. All that wild running around and kicking up their heels and whinnying is just mere silliness. But I have learned to do tricks. . . .
“I can’t remember being born, but it happened somewhere in California. If I had a father I never saw him, but I had a good mother and a good master and that is all a young colt needs. Tom Mix is the only master I ever had. I never want another. He taught me all the tricks I know (and I know quite a few), and he is the only person that has ever been on my back. That is why some people think I am proud. Well, so I am, but I think it’s the proper kind of pride. My color is sorrel and I have “white sox” on my hind legs. I don’t know how they got there. I have never had to draw wagons or carts or loads of any kind, although I could do it easily enough if I wanted to, or if my master told me. But I don’t want to, and he doesn’t ask me.
“Horses understand difficulty and danger and friendship and enmity and deceit and hatred. They can tell an unjust man from aTony’s Story Told by Himself 13 just one. You read sometimes in the papers about a horse becoming mad with fright and bolting—dashing away, he doesn’t know where. There’s a reason for that. It’s always a high-spirited horse that does that. Something came on him too quickly, something strange, or somebody was stupid and didn’t let him see the thing that frightened him, or didn’t tell him there was nothing to be frightened of. Read what my master has to say on the subject in another part of this book. He knows.
“Why are we so frightened? We’re not so frightened. If you are a running horse or a jumping horse or a cowpony, you are nervous —if you are a thoroughbred and high-spirited. You can’t be a thoroughbred or high-spirited or quick or clever or ‘tuned up’ (as my master says) and not be nervous. Did you ever see a city cab horse that was nervous? No. Well, did you ever see one that was clever—as clever as I am? Or a cart horse that could do anything smarter than run by himself to his stable? Of course not. But you never thought there was any connection between the two things. It wasn’t your fault; nobody told you.
“But now I am telling you because ITUNED UP FOR ACTIONTony's Story Told by Himself
15
know you will listen to me. Did you ever see a greyhound held on the leash waiting to run a race? Did you ever feel any clever dog tremble when you put your hand on him? I do that sometimes when I am tuned up for action. I know I am ready to do something quick and clever and dashing, and I am already doing it in my mind. Did you ever see people rebuke the greyhound or the horse for that trembling? I have. “Quit that, you fool,” I heard a man say to a horse. “What are you scared of?” My master never calls me a fool. Oh, no. Let me tell you something right here. There is really only one thing an animal needs to be afraid of—human stupidity.
“Of course I can make mistakes, too. But when anything goes wrong that we are both mixed up in I just cock my ears a certain way and ask my master by a look: ‘Was it my fault?’ And he generally shakes his head. And once in a while he might say (in a kind of slow, reflective way) : ‘Well now, if we had just made another half-inch on the jump .... and he will run his hand along the jumping muscles that lie along my withers, about the base of my neck (you thought they were all in my legs, didn’t16
Tiie West of Yesterday
you?). And then I will tremble again and sweat and hang my head for the lost halfinch, and wish we could do it over again. That’s how a horse cries.
“If you ever see me going down a steep or a difficult place by myself in a picture (and I have gone down some pretty difficult ones) just watch the way my master acts. You will perhaps see me hesitate for a moment, and then you will see him give me a kind of push. And then I go down. That push means: ‘Go on down—you know you can do it if you like. What are you standing waiting for?’ And because he believes I can do it, and because he knows that I understand he believes in me, I can always do the things I am set to do.
“I am a movie horse first, last, and all the time. That is what I have been brought up to be. Old Blue was a cowpony, that is, a horse trained to round up cattle on the ranges. Old Blue was the horse Tom used before me. I think he liked Old Blue better than he likes me. Perhaps he knew him for a longer time, and possibly Old Blue got him out of more difficulties and dangers when roping cattle on the plains. I am not a bit jealous of Old Blue, who must haveTony’s Story Told by Himself
17
been a wonderful horse. He was 22 years old when he died.
“The things I like to eat best are apples, carrots, and bananas, in the order named. I have never been allowed to have any sugar, so I don’t know what it tastes like, but as most horses seem to be crazy about it I’d like to try it. I’ve seen a city van horse put his forelegs on the bottom step of a flight of stairs and look as if he was going to trv and go to the top to get a piece of lump sugar —van and everything. Some horses haven’t much sense. But in any case that kind of horse couldn’t go up a flight of stairs. I’m fed on plain horse food most of the time, and may say I don’t get as many nice things to eat as I’d like,to.
“I don’t like traveling in box cars, and I don’t like people to say I’m almost human. I’m not meant to be human. I’m meant to be a horse, and I try to be as good and as clever a horse as I can. People wouldn’t like, if they were clever, to be told they were ‘almost equine,’ or something like that. Well, a horse has his feelings, too.
“I have heard that Tom once told a newspaper man that I liked to show off. Well, I’ll tell you something. He likes to showDOING TRICKSTony's Story Told by Himself
19
oft too. Do you think he would do all those difficult and dangerous tricks if he thought nobody would see them? Not likely. And I’m just the same in that respect. 1 can do clever things and I like it to be known. For that is quite a proper kind of pride.”CHAPTER II
Life Story of Tom Mix
GREAT annual festival of the
Cherokee Indians,” an. ancient chronicle relates, “was the Propitiation, ‘Cementation’ or Purification festival. It was celebrated after the first new moon of autumn, and consisted of a multiplicity of religious rites, fastings, ablutions, and purifications. Among the most important functionaries on the occasion were seven exercisers or cleansers, whose duty it was, at a certain stage of the proceedings, to drive away evil, and purify the town. Each one bore in his hand a white rod of sycamore. The leader, followed by the others, walked around the national heptagon, and coming to the treasure or store-house to the west of it, they lashed the eaves of the roofs with their rods. The leader then went to another house, followed by the others, singing, and repeating the same ceremony until every house was purified. This ceremony was repeated daily during the continuance of theLife Story of Tom Mix
21
festival. In performing their ablutions they went into the water and allowed their old clothes to be carried away by the stream, by which means they supposed their impurities removed.”
Thus a primitive people sought, with the faith of primitive people, to drive out evil from their midst. We can picture these exercisers with their white rods, tall, stately, and impressive in paint and feathers, going about the business with dignity and seriousness, chanting a strange song. And then picture another scene centuries later—a room in a modern California bungalow. On the floor are gaily striped Indian rugs and the skins of mountain lions. On walls and tables and stands and pegs are a thousand trophies and treasures of chase and contest—bows and arrows, tremendous ornamental saddles, masterpieces of silver and tooled leather, bridles, spurs, sombreros, ribbons, medals, loving-cups, and (in a curtained nook) a whole arsenal of modern rifles and revolvers. In the middle of the room a tall, swarthy, blackhaired figure stands, very straight and erect, and full of unconscious dignity as he makes the impressive statement: “Whatever we do, we must be truthful.”22
The West of Yesterday
It is but a continuation of the older scene, a “cut” if you will from the past to the present. In this man’s veins there courses the blood of those who chanted the strange song and beat with their white rods upon the eaves, or sent their raiment adrift upon the stream, bent on purification. These simple rites and forgotten ceremonies were the foundation for something nobler. The love and the care and the solemnity and the sincerity of the wild men in the performance of these observances were not lost. They could not dream, poor simple ones (although they did have their dreams), that amid the ruins of lost tribes, conquered lands, a dying people and vanishing glory, there should arise from their own line one who would be a pioneer and a purifier for the great new race that was to be —who would ride and leap and lasso and hunt as they had not done these things, and who, combining the old skill with the new, and armed with strange and fearful weapons, would become a terror to wicked men and evildoers; whose deeds, moreover, by weird art and “great big medicine,” would be shown in the very life in a hundred hundred places in the same sundown, that the youth of the land might be trained in the way of truth andLife Story of Tom Mix
23
grow to be strong and tall and fearless. This was no dream of theirs. And yet who can say but that some proud chief of the tribe has fallen out of the march, and looking far back down the trail has seen the work and knows that it is good?
Tom Mix is one-eighth Cherokee Indian and proud of it. His great-grandfather, a half-breed who lived in the White Eagle Reserve, translated the Bible into the Osage language. His father was Captain Mix of the 7th U. S. Cavalry, and the family belonged to Texas. Tom was born near El Paso in that state some forty odd years ago. The name “Mix,” wherever it comes from, always seemed good enough to Tom. There is a rumor to the effect that back in 1910 the owners of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show wanted him to take the name of “Cody” and pose as the adopted son of the man who was “the idol of all the children of the United States, and who had conquered the Indian race.” Tom was to be his understudy and successor, a representative of the conquered race, “to ride pony express and do some shooting and so forth,” and portray to the public the life and the hardships of the western pioneers. Questioned on the subject Tom24
The West of Yesterday
explained: “Well, I listened and listened to these proposals and then 1 said: ‘Thank God my name is Mix—that it always has been and always will be.’ I don’t want to ridicule Buffalo Bill, but I told them I had spent my life since childhood in this border country, that I knew it as well as anybody, and didn't need to be an adopted son. And so the thing fell through.” Whatever we do we must be truthful. And then comes the reward of virtue: “And now here comes the very thing they wanted to do then—the very opportunity comes to me to do it in a different way. Instead of going out and utilizing their show and taking another name and buncoing the public, we can go out here today and give the public an insight into the character and the history of the pioneers of this western country, a thing that is absolutely new to the average man unless somebody with the necessary experience can come forward and give him a proper idea of it.” There you have the man—simple, straightforward, honest, resisting what must have been a tempting offer because it seemed to savor of deception (with perhaps a dash of wounded pride at the thought of playing the tamed captive), and with a faith in the ultimate triumph ofLife Story of Tom Mix
25
right and truth that nothing could shake. One finds oneself wondering dimly what would happen to Commerce if such a man got loose in it.
As he came quietly into the room to greet his visitors one did not get an impression of big muscles or tremendous shoulders or bulging biceps, or indeed of any of the things commonly suggested by the professional strong man, the wrestler, or the lifter of heavy weights. And yet Tom Mix is a strong man. He has “bulldogged” a steer (taken it by the horns and twisted it over on its side) in five seconds. And you rub your eyes and wonder. And then you begin to recollect that a panther does not suggest strength so much as grace and ease and quietness. But the strength is there just the same. And so you look again. And then you notice that the man is taller than you had imagined (he is close on six feet and weighs around 175 pounds),' and that what fooled you was his admirable proportion and (like the panther) his grace and ease. Balance and proportion do not betray themselves in the perfectly developed product—traces of labor do not show. What Whistler said of painting might apply—that the picture that bore26
The West of Yesterday
marks of toil was an incomplete picture, that work must be effaced by work, and all traces of sweat removed. So Tom Mix may be said to typify a man rather than a strong man, and indeed Elinor Glyn, the English novelist, pronounced him to be the most perfect specimen of manhood she had ever met.
When you see him in action, however, you begin to understand things. Not in action as you see him on the screen, leaping on and off the backs of flying horses or being dragged along the ground by the stirrup; swinging precariously over chasms; lassoing and climbing on to an express train; or jumping on horseback from a great height (and if you have seen him do any of these things in the pictures you may know he has actually done them, for there is neither trickery nor make-believe about the Mix pictures) ; but in action in the reception room of his bungalow, illustrating some of his innumerable stories by gestures and actions (true to his Indian blood), showing you how something was actually done, you get immediately the impression of power. The lithe, graceful, bending body, the quick noiseless movements of the arms and legs, the sudden crouch and spring, and the suggestive play of the largeLife Story of Tom Mix
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and shapely hands, convey an effect of the most formidable strength far more effectively than any words could describe. When, in your search for a simile, you turn your thoughts away from the creatures, from the leopard and the panther, to something of man’s making (always poor by comparison), you think of a steel spring—a coiled spring of piano wire that neither breaks nor buckles.
What he wants to do at this time is to set down in a form that will be permanent and lasting something that will give the average man and woman of today and tomorrow an idea of what the pioneer has done for this great western country, and of the great future that his efforts, his labors, his hardships, and his sufferings made possible to those who came after—to honor the memory of the hundreds and even thousands of unknown men who died and were buried and forgotten in blazing the trail. Who endured uncomplainingly insufferable fatigues and perils, thinking only of making the land safe for posterity, ambitious only to the extent of being pointed out as “good citizens.” Such men as of whose deeds Milton sang: “Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War”—perishing of hunger and thirst in the desert; waiting for28
The West of Yesterday
days “in the line” without food or water for themselves or their horses till twelve o’clock on a given date, when at a signal they would dash out to stake a claim and make history; founding townsites and homesteads, and opening up and developing the country. And of those other pioneers who, when the ground had been broken, and the township established, drove forth the gunman and the gambler and the cattle rustler and the thief, and established law and order, that thereby prosperity might be assured and more settlers attracted. And of the cowboys, and of the humor, the pathos, and the simple uprightness of their lives. It is of such, and not of himself, that Tom Mix would tell. “Tom Mix doesn’t matter,” he says with a deprecating gesture. “But this other thing does.”
“Tom Mix doesn’t matter”—well, perhaps not. Yet it may not be amiss to set down here a few of the cold facts on which his name and fame have been built, and on which he bases his plea to be heard as a narrator and a spokesman for the pioneer. His claim does not have its foundation in anything he may have done in the movies, daring and dangerous as his admirers know these to have been, but in something further back,Life Story of Tom Mix
29
more fundamental, nearer to the soil. It is founded in the fact that he himself is a native-born son of the great southwest; that he was raised among its horses and cattle and cowboys; that he lived their life and shared their difficulties and dangers, as well as their mirth and their merrymaking; and that he too was a pioneer of the pioneers, an enforcement officer, a sheriff, a deputy U. S. marshal, a Texas Ranger, a soldier and a man.
He doesn’t remember ever learning to ride a horse or even to throw a lasso or handle a six-shooter. He just did these things from the beginning. With horses in particular he was early intimate. The family home in Texas was forty miles from the town of El Paso, which meant either driving or riding each time there was occasion to make a trip there. And as with any other country boy, “going to the station” was a great event. On the Mix Ranch they raised horses which Tom’s father trained and drove in contests. This was how the boy came to love and to understand these animals. “A horse thinks,” the Tom of today will tell you, his face growing tense and rigid at the thought of the ignorance often displayed in the treatment of the creatures, with its consequent30
The West of Yesterday
misunderstanding and possible cruelty. “He connects things together in his mind. For instance he sees steam from an engine for the first time and he jumps in alarm and some man strikes him. Well he thinks the steam struck him, and he expects the same thing the next time he sees it, and is scared of it. Or a piece of paper blows up and startles him and you spur him on the other side. He thinks the paper did that—caused that pain—and he doesn’t like paper the next time he sees it. Or his stable is on fire and you rush in and pull him out with unusual noise and confusion—cutting the halter—dragging him about—doing everything different than you usually do it. And no sooner do you get him out than the first thing you know he runs back into the burning stable again. It is his home, the place where he rests and feeds and sleeps and enjoys himself. He knows everything about it. He doesn’t want to leave it, and doesn’t like being dragged out any more than you would like being dragged out of your home. So he goes back in again. They think—they connect things just like we do.” And when you hear this you are really listening to a lecture on Darwinism and being instructed that the animal has a mindLife Story of Tom Mix
31
differing from your own in quantity only, and not in quality.
Tom says that he did not have much education. This statement may be considered in the same class as “Tom Mix doesn’t matter much.” It depends how it is taken, and what exactly is meant by “education.” Perhaps he has no great stock of historical dates, or scientific terms, or “formulae got by rote.” I do not know. But if you are wise you will be chary about tackling anyone who has done so much and seen so much and lived so much and endured so much; who in his spare moments is found writing scenarios and cowboy lyrics, shoeing horses, repairing motor cars, and composing music; and who, in addition to English and Spanish, speaks at least four Indian dialects. “If I were stranded in a strange city,” he says ruminatively, “I might possibly get a job driving a motor wagon.” Quite possibly.
He really got most of his early education from brothers and sisters, one brother being a Yale man who won the All-round Collegiate Athletic Championship in 1895. Later they got private tutors for Tom, and finally shipped him off at the age of fourteen to the Virginia Military Academy where he at once32
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plunged into athletics and did horseback stunts that made his fellow students sit up and take notice. But alas for academic learning! The United States got to scrapping with Spain in 1898, and from that time scholastic knowledge left Tom’s mind. He started out to be educated in the big world by enlisting in the Artillery. He went to Tampa on June 21st, was transported to Cuba, and there received his baptism of fire at the Battle of Guaymas. Then he became a Scout and was courier to General Chaffee, an old friend of his father’s. After the surrender in July of that year, Mix and other scouts were commissioned to round up Spanish sharpshooters. In cornering one of these gentlemen who was hidden in a mango tree there was a lively exchange of shots, and Tom was hit in the mouth, the bullet coming out of the back of his neck. This kept him a month in the hospital at Santiago, after which he was shipped home to the States, where he arrived about the middle of September. In a few short months he had graduated in first-class warfare.
But Tom had gotten the taste of battle, and soon after being mustered out of the service he joined the provisional army for service inLife Story of Tom Mix
33
the Philippines. Then came the Boxer Rising in China whither Tom was sent with the 9th Infantry in charge of a Gardiner Gun. He was with Colonel Listenn when the latter fell mortally wounded at the battle of Tien Tsing, and marched with the victorious allied army into Pekin. During the fighting in China he was badly hurt and was sent home to the United States and given an honorable disability discharge. Shortly afterwards he went to Denver to break horses for the British Government, and finally, in search of further adventure, he took ship for South Africa with a load of horses during the Boer War. But to be near a war was to be in it, and presently Tom was in uniform again, taking part in the exciting doings around Ladysmith. He came back to the United States in 1903, and later helped the famous Boer General Cronje to put on “The Boer War” at the St. Louis Fair.
The Mix family home where Tom spent his boyhood was situated on the northern bank of the Rio Grande, the boundary river between the United States and Mexico, and so from his earliest years he has known Spanish and the patois of the border country. As a boy he played about the banks of that river34
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with “gringo” and Mexican children, and at a time when most youngsters are timid about venturing far from home, young Tom was racing an outlaw bronco up and down the cactus belt. There was little doubt that he was destined to be one of Kipling’s “men who could ride and shoot”—although possibly no one dreamt of all that lay dormant in him. His own ambition was to be a great cowboy and rancher and own vast herds of cattle, and at the ripe age of ten years he had chosen in anticipation the brand with which he now marks his stock and his belongings —the “T-M Bar,” an ornamental M with a slanting bar on the first upright, making the T.
Apart from the short intervals in which he sought education or pursued adventure in other lands, Tom Mix lived his life on the plains. Year after year he roamed the great western cattle belt, journeying from ranch to ranch, working here, there, and everywhere. Often he did not stay very long at one place, sometimes not longer than one day, the result of “scrapping” with somebody or other or “cleaning up” some ranch bully. In this way he sojourned in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming,Life Story of Tom Mix
35
and the two Dakotas. He saw life and learned its lessons, building up, in his own simple way, the philosophy that now guides him in the more perilous paths of fame and opulence, and which he passes on to the youth of the nation (and even to its adults) when opportunity offers. “Take care of your body; keep in good physical condition; don’t eat too much; keep your mind clean; respect women. As long as I had a good horse, and plenty to eat, and a place to sleep, I did not need much money.” Long ago the Chinese philosopher, Confucius, wrote: “Coarse rice for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a pillow—happiness may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue both riches and honor seem to me like the passing cloud.” The two men, widely separated in time and place and traveling vastly different paths, learned and handed on the same lesson. And indeed all science and the wisdom of the ages has nothing better to teach.
It seems but natural to find such a man becoming the servant of the State—taking a hand in the preservation of law and order. He was known as a dangerous man with a six-shooter, although he seldom drew one in his own disputes unless forced to do so. He36
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settled these with his fists. He was generally victorious. Not always, but generally. When he was not victorious, the other fellow (or fellows) were usually too “mussed up” to do much bragging. And so we find him at different times Sheriff of Montgomery County, Kansas, and Sheriff of Washington County, Oklahoma. Here he had as one of his deputies “Sid” Jordan, a big, broad-shouldered man, who is usually the bandit leader in the Mix plays—for most of the cowboys working for Tom in the movies are friends of old days. Together Tom and Sid led the way in cleaning up that section of the country and driving out the cattle thieves and outlaws. They had the reputation of seldom coming back from a man-hunt empty handed—“they generally brought an arm or a leg or something” if they did not have a whole prisoner. Then came an urgent call from the southern state of Tennessee where a great dam was being built, and where whiskey peddlers and cocaine vendors were causing trouble in the labor camps. So Tom answered the call, bringing with him Sid Jordan and other Texas and Colorado cowboys, and law and order were restored. He was also special enforcement officer of Eastern Oklahoma,Life Story of Tom Mix
37
which had been Indian Territory, and City Marshal of Dewey, Oklahoma.
All this may read very simply, but it was not achieved without hardship, and suffering, and danger. You cannot be a reformer or a purifier without paying a certain penalty. “When I look back I am amazed at the things I did—the chances I took with my life,” Tom will tell you. “The way I fought against death without realizing that many times it was within hailing distance of me.” He was waylaid and shot in the mountains of Tennessee by whiskey peddlers, and in consequence was laid up for a whole year in the hospital at Chattanooga. The first shot hit him in the right leg, shattered the bone, and killed his horse. When examined in the hospital it was found that, in addition to his fractured limb, he had fourteen buckshots in various parts of his body. At another time, in running down the leaders of a gang of horse runners in New Mexico, he was badly wounded in the shin bone by a bullet from a Winchester rifle. Again, after a fight in which three men were killed, he himself was so badly wounded that the doctors gave up hope of saving him. But he pulled through. Yet again, with Madera in Mexico, he was38
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charged with a supposed violation of military law, tried, condemned, and was actually facing the firing squad, when he was saved by the confession of a man who had testified against him.
He is not above running a good American bluff when occasion seems to call for it. One such occasion occurred when, as a Government officer, he had to deal in some way or other with about two hundred cattle thieves (or “rustlers”) whose presence in a certain town was becoming a nuisance. For a time Tom did not really know exactly what he was going to do, but finally decided in favor of treating the undesirables to a little trick shooting. So first of all, conveniently and in private, he shot a hole in each of three wooden pegs of the kind used by surveyors. Then next morning, observing a group of the cattle thieves on the plain, he rode out to a spot within their view and stuck the three pegs in the ground a short distance from one another. Then he rode back about a couple of hundred feet and started on a wild gallop towards the pegs. As he neared, he fired at the first peg, then passing his gun to his left hand he fired at the second, and the third he shot at from behind his back. Then he disLife Story of Tom Mix
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mounted, picked up the pegs and examined them casually, threw them away, and mounting again galloped off quite calm and unconcerned. But looking back he saw the cattle thieves examining the pegs. That was all that was necessary. The story was passed around, and from that time on he was respected. And once men have a wholesome respect for any representative of the law they are not difficult to handle.
There were other tricks whereby large numbers of men were herded together and locked up. But, Tom says, he doesn’t think he could do them today if he wanted to—that they believed then he was a better shot than he actually was. He says he used to be a pretty good shot—once. Nevertheless, as in the matter of education, such statements must not be accepted too literally, for he can still cut in halves a cigar held in the lips of a smoker, at thirty paces, or break a piece of thin twine held vertically (or even horizontally—a much more difficult matter) with a single revolver shot, at the same distance.
It was in 1910 that the idea of going into the motion picture business first occurred to him, partly as the result of seeing some imitation cowboys in a screen comedy, and partly40
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through having been coaxed into performing some of his own stunts before a camera man. He had reached that point in his career when sober judgment and cool calculation were beginning to outweigh the sheer love of romance and adventure which had hitherto been the driving force that spurred him on. Up to this point he had not thought about accumulating money. It is told of him that at one time he gave a sum of $750, which he had earned as a reward for running down two notorious outlaws, the brothers Shont, in Texas, to the mother of the outlaws as compensation for the loss of her boys—although he himself explained the transaction by saying he was afraid such a sum would make him settle down, and he wanted further adventure. He would rather, at that time, have had “the excitement of running down outlaws than a million dollars.” However, he was wise enough to realize that with the reputation he had won as “a fast man on the draw” (of which he was mighty proud), it was only a question of time till, like the prizefighters, he would meet his Waterloo—till some drunken or envious or reckless cowboy would torment him into a fight that might not terminate successfully. He knew he couldLife Story of Tom Mix
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not always expect to win. He figured that he had done his share of rough work in the settlement of the great southwest, and he calculated (with considerable business acumen) that the public would be interested in seeing a real cowboy doing real stunts on the screen. So he got together his available cash, barely sufficient to ship himself and his two horses to Los Angeles (indeed the rail journey stopped at San Bernardino—he rode the rest of the way) and joined the staff of the Selig Company.
He has been at the game ever since, with results that do not need to be tabulated in this place. He became a member of the Fox organization in 1918. Every patron of the motion picture theatre knows Tom Mix, has thrilled at his daring, laughed at his simple facetiousness, marveled at his feats, wondered at his coolness and the risks he ran. He does run risks for your entertainment, and luck is not always with him. There is a limit even to what a bold man can “get away with.” But, as in the old days, danger and difficulty do not daunt him, nor broken bones deter. He deems these part of the price to be paid for the honor and the glory of his position, for the privilege of teaching the manhood of the42
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nation to be honest and upright and strong and brave and clean inside and out.
It may nevertheless be as well to turn the light for a moment on some of his movie mishaps, just to show what he has to put up with. He had three ribs broken when he was kicked accidentally in a scuffle in a snow scene; nine stitches were taken in a gash in his head when someone hit him with the wrong chair; a spur made a cut three-quarters of an inch deep on the side of his head when he threw a man and the man’s legs flew up; in taking one picture a tooth was broken—and repaired between scenes; a toe was crushed when a horse stepped on it; a knee was crushed when a horse fell on it; and as for smashed finger nails, bruises, and cuts from glass, slivers, and flying fragments, these have become so common they do not count any more. He has leaped on horseback down thirty feet into a lake; dashed through a plateglass window; jumped from a second-story window to the roof of another building; ridden up and down a fire-escape; and crashed from the top of a four-story building through each floor in turn until the basement was reached—always on horseback.Life Story of Tom Mix
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His pictures must be the real thing or nothing at all.
“Flirting with death,” expresses very mildly some of the things he has done for the entertainment of the public. In one picture he was to be shot at by a desperado and only saved by a watch in his shirt pocket over his heart. He protected himself for this ordeal only to the extent of placing an iron stove lid under his shirt, and then moved about unconcernedly while the desperado, concealed a short distance away, fired at him point blank with a heavy regulation army rifle. The terrific impact over the heart knocked him senseless at the first trial. “It was worse than the kick of any two-year-old I ever saw,” he asserts. But, nothing daunted, he repeated the performance shortly afterwards, this time using a bag of sand instead of the iron plate, and with a sheriff’s badge pinned on the outside of the shirt. Then the business was carried through successfully—the badge shot clean through, the watch smashed, and the wearer left uninjured. That is how the Mix pictures are made. Tom writes and directs most of them himself.
Fans of all sorts and conditions write to him from all corners of the globe. They44
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name things after him, from babies to boots. They send presents for himself and his horse Tony. Boys worship him. “If Tom and Tony aren’t careful,” one excited little fellow said to his mother, after witnessing a daring feat, “they’ll get seriously killed one of these days!” Even children appreciate the risks he runs, and “love him for the dangers he has passed.”
Such, in brief, is the man who asks your leave to be the spokesman of the pioneers. He wishes to be quite sure that people will appreciate all that the cowboy and the settler have done and what they have made possible. He is apprehensive that he may not have brought it all out in his pictures. Films may be forgotten, he thinks, when a book may live. As he tries to explain these things, clutching at words* the eager thoughts pushing ahead too quickly for the organs of speech, you will see him hesitate and falter, while across his countenance there flits an expression somewhat akin to fear. Fear? Yes. The fear of unworthiness, that someone else may be better able for the task. The same fear that made John Ivnox, the great Protestant Reformer, shed tears when chosen for a certain work, and that drove Washington andLife Story of Tom Mix
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Lincoln to humility and prayer. The fear of God is part of the creed of Tom Mix. Possibly Sterne was right when he said: “The best hearts are always the bravest.”CHAPTER III
Land of the Great West
HAT cattlemen and ranchers generally mean when they speak about ‘The West,’ ” said Tom, “is that great stretch of high lying, and mostly arid, country that goes to make up the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, and the Dakotas. It stretches up to Canada on the north, and to Mexico on the south. East it may be said to commence roughly at the line of the Missouri river, reaching away clear to the Pacific Ocean on the west, and including in its final sweep Oklahoma, to the south, and Arizona and California on the Pacific slope. The natural divisions of this tremendous expanse of country may be said to be: (1) The Plains; (2) the Rocky Mountains; (3) the Colorado Plateau; (4) the Great Basin; and (5) the Pacific Slope. On the plains the elevation is mostly high, ranging anywhere from one thousand to six thousand feet above the level of the sea.Land of the Great West 47
“This is the Great West that in the last quarter of a century has made such astonishing progress, which is yet developing under our very eyes, and which seems destined in the days to come to raise a distinctive breed of its own. The West of Yesterday, with its great ranches and vast herds of cattle and their attendant cowboys, its trappers, hunters, miners, and settlers, has given place to the West of Today, with its scientific methods, its intensive cultivation, its steam ploughs and tractors and high-power motor vehicles, its libraries, colleges and schools, its oil and its industries. The rapidity and extent of the change have been simply miraculous. From the humblest kind of beginnings have sprung undertakings and achievements that have commanded the respect and attention of the entire world.
“And yet a lot of this wonderful development was often accomplished with material that seemed to be of the most unpromising kind. What are today bustling and growing cities with fine tree-lined avenues, concrete roads and sidewalks, beautiful homes, splendid parks, and all the signs of life and advancement, were established by their founders in the face of almost overwhelming difficul48
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ties, discouragements, and disappointments. Take the Oklahoma ‘land rushes’ for example, as an instance of what the pioneers in the southwest had to do and endure in order that the country might be settled and built up. They would stand in the waiting line for days to get a good start off in the rush for claims, and endure all kinds of hardships. These land rushes had to do with the Indian Reservation lands and the manner in which they were thrown open and allotted to the settlers, and it may be as well to explain more fully just how this was done.”
The breaking up of these Indian Reservations and their distribution among small holders, was brought about through the pressure of civilization upon the confines of the fertile lands belonging to the Indians, in that part of the southwest which is now the State of Oklahoma. Prior to the year 1830, what were known as the “Five Civilized Tribes” of Indians, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminóles, had occupied different sections of the Southern States east of the Mississippi river, but in that year they accepted, under treaties with the Government, lands west of the Mississippi. After their removal they re-established their tribalLand of the Great West 49 governments, held and owned in common the land within their respective nations, and controlled their own affairs almost entirely independent of the Federal authorities. However, their system of leasing land to cattle grazers and others attracted, in addition to numbers of desirable people, many adventurers, fortune hunters, and worthless individuals with whose misdeeds the tribal authorities could not adequately cope. An enormous number of disputes between different claimants arose which there was no machinery for settling in a proper and satisfactory manner. Added to this was the constant cry of the ever increasing army of small farmers and homeseekers, crowding in from the north and east, that the land be thrown open for settlement purposes. The accumulation of all this presently had its effect.
In the year 1887 Congress finally yielded to the pressure of public opinion and passed the Dawes Act, followed in 1893 by the appointment of the Dawes Commission, under which fresh treaties with the Indians were made with a view to the gradual transfer of authority from tribal government and communal estates to Federal control, the allotment of the land in severalty, and individual com50
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petency and the establishment of law and order as the basis of citizenship. A complete roll was made of the five tribes, their extensive real property surveyed and allotted, and some ten thousand claims adjusted. And the land thus surveyed and allotted was then thrown open to settlers.
The procedure followed by the Federal Government in distributing these properties among the many thousands who desired them, appears at this time of day to have been somewhat primitive, but it was deemed at that time to be the fairest and most practicable manner in which to deal with such a business, besides saving the Government the expense that would undoubtedly have been involved in any more comprehensive plan. As a matter of fact, however, the hardship, suffering, and even bloodshed attendant upon these land rushes were ultimately deemed sufficient cause to warrant a change in the manner of distribution, and in August, 1901, a system of registration was introduced whereby the names of the parties registering in a given period were balloted, those whose names were drawn first having first choice of the land in their respective districts. This proved ulti-Land of the Great West
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mately to be a more reasonable and equitable method.
The first opening of part of the Indian territory actually took place in 1889, when 3,000,000 acres were allotted, and other smaller tracts were opened in each succeeding year until 1893 when the big opening of the land known as the “Cherokee Strip,” comprising some 6,000,000 acres, took place. There were further openings in subsequent years, and from first to last something like 24,000,000 acres were distributed in this way. Prior even to 1889 attempts had been made from time to time by settlers to take forcible possession of land and found colonies, and bands of them came down repeatedly from the northern state of Kansas under the guidance of one Captain David L. Payne, and established settlements. But the Federal Government was, of course, unable to recognize any such procedure, and on each of these occasions the Captain and his followers were escorted by U. S. soldiers back where they came from, and their settlements destroyed. These people became known as “boomers,” and it was largely through their persistent efforts that Congress was ultimately moved to act in the matter and throw the lands open.
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The opening of this Cherokee Strip in 1893, the most important piece of land to be dealt with in this way, may be regarded as typical, and a brief description of it (drawn largely from Mr. Chester H. Westfall’s thrilling account in the volume entitled “Kay County”) will serve to familiarize the reader with the “land rushes” that occurred from time to time as new territory was thrown open. This Cherokee Strip was a piece of land, for the most part fine and fertile, some 58 miles wide and 180 miles long, running along the Kansas border to the Osage Reservation on the east, and the Panhandle of Texas on the west. It had an area of more than 10,000 square miles, and was larger than the state of Vermont. It was surveyed into homesteads, or quarter sections, of 160 acres each, thus providing for more than 40,000 families. The country was surveyed into counties, townships, sections and quarter sections, ready for occupation. Something like $8,400,000 was paid to the Indians for the entire strip.
Formal announcement of the opening of the strip was made in due course, and the news that there would be a “race” for farmLand of the Great West
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lands and town lots on Saturday, September 16, 1893, brought farmers, homeseekers, and adventurers from every state in the Union. For days and even weeks before the appointed time they gathered along the Kansas boundary, sleeping in the streets of towns, in railroad depots, or on the open prairie. The land was known to be fertile, and with railways even then in course of construction into the new country rapid development was assured. In the waiting period before the official opening almost any sacrifice in the way of personal convenience was deemed worth while. Competition for front places on the edge of the boundary was keen.
Some weeks before the official opening the entire strip of new country was cleared of white men, the rules laid down and strictly enforced by the Government providing that every settler and homeseeker must remain oft the Reservation until noon on Saturday, September 16th. Soldiers searched the strip beforehand, and any persons discovered on the land ahead of time were arrested and held as prisoners until after the “rush” was over. And, as with Captain Payne and his followers, any improvements built by such persons were destroyed. All this was done in the in-54
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terests of scrupulous fairness. Such people as got into the strip ahead of time became known as “Sooners,” and to this day in the State of Oklahoma the term is applied jokingly to anyone who has been accused of taking an unfair advantage. At picnics, too, and other gatherings at which Old Timers of the race days are present, the significant question, “Where were you yesterday?” is still to be heard.
At high noon, therefore, on Saturday the 16th of September, a shot was to be fired, and the first person to drive his stake on a quarter section of land or a town lot would become the possessor of it. It can be readily imagined how people of all sorts and conditions came flocking in to take advantage of such an opportunity. They came on foot, on horseback, and in every style of vehicle, from carts, wagons, and buggies, to bicycles and even plows. Months were spent in training for “the greatest horse race in history,” and special horses were brought from far-off parts of the country, noted for speed and endurance. Nothing was left to chance.
For days before the hour of opening, men stood there in the line, preferring to go without food or water either for themselves or
Land of the Great West 55
their horses rather than relinquish the advantage of being in the first rows. Morning of the eventful day found gathered along the entire length of the strip on the Kansas border a vast multitude of clamoring and excited human beings whose numbers may have been anywhere up to a quarter of a million, jockeying, arguing, and even fighting for front places. All were armed with guns and stakes.
Every type had its representative in the mot-	!
ley throng, small farmers, shopkeepers, adventurers, “rich men, poor men, beggarmen, thieves,” all animated by a common motive— the prospect of getting something for nothing.
Soldiers guarded the line throughout its entire length in the morning, and when noon came pistols were fired at regular intervals along the whole distance, and in a wild scramble of dust and din the race was got under way. Off rushed the horses, the carts, the buggies, the bicycles, and the people on foot like a great spreading wave, to the accompaniment of cries, screeches, groans, curses and cheers. Vehicles collided, people and horses fell and rose again, bicycles were knocked from below their riders, pedestrians were ridden down and trampled on. But the race had begun.56
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Many strange things happened. One woman was jerked off the tailboard of the wagon which her son was driving, a couple of miles south of the Kansas line, and left sitting in the rough country while the throng rushed past her into the better farming districts further south. She and her son had each intended to obtain claims on good farms. She drove her stake and stayed where she was, living there for many years working out the hardest kind of a livelihood on a rocky, barren piece of land. But about twenty years later oil was discovered in this region, and she ultimately became one of the richest people in the district.
All Saturday afternoon and well into the night the race continued, and what until noon of Saturday had been a great stretch of vacant countryside had, by sunrise of the following day, become a State in the making. Four men or four families were settled on every square mile of land, and town lots were occupied by crowds of people already planning to build banks and open stores. Professional men were introducing themselves, office sites were being chosen, and saloons and gambling tents were already doing business. Progress thereafter was rapid, and in 1907 OklahomaLand of the Great West
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was admitted to the Union as a full fledged State.
There were of course many disputes after the rush, people who had staked claims on Saturday waking up on Sunday to discover that someone else had settled on some other part of the same claim. Most of these however were adjusted on the spot, it being generally a simple enough matter to establish priority, and few showing any desire to resort to the delay and expense of litigation. “I saw one fellow lay claim to a section,” said Tom, “on the ground that he had beaten all comers to it on one of those old-fashioned high-wheel velocipedes. Everybody knew darned well he couldn’t have ridden a thing like that across the open prairie. However, he was so persistent about it that presently it was decided by those round about that if he could give a satisfactory demonstration on his wheel across a certain stretch of country, his claim would be considered. He was allowed several days’ grace to give him every chance, and he sure did some queer looking stunts on that machine in the fields, but in the end of course he couldn’t make a showing, and so was ruled out.”
Those who lost out in the great race were58
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forced to go into the hills and rough country and console themselves as best they could with such land as was left. In the years that followed many of these people could hardly make a living, and numbers of them sold out or withdrew in disgust. One such barren region was the northern portion of what is now Kay County, but the pioneers who had the courage and endurance to hold on to their land in this district came into their own some twenty years later when oil was discovered in the neighborhood, and many of them today can buy all the good farm land they want.
So much, meantime, for Oklahoma, which in the fifteen years of its statehood, or more properly from the opening of the Indian Reservation land, has advanced to a prominence and importance in respect of population, industry, and development that few would have been hardy enough to predict. The discovery of oil in more recent times has, of course, accelerated the general progress, but the rapid expansion of what was Indian territory and grazing land into prosperous farms, homesteads, towns and hives of industry is thoroughly typical of western development in general. And all of it is founded on the sufLand of hie Great West
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fering and the perseverance of the early pioneers who made the thing possible.
The grazing country of the Great West in what is known as the “arid belt” presents for the most part a barren and desolate appearance, and indeed the almost complete absence of the verdant green color commonly associated in eastern farming and grazing country with the presence of cattle, puzzles and mystifies the newcomer. For scores and even hundreds of miles on the plains nothing is to be seen but great rolling undulations of what appears to be simply desert, but which in reality is fine, rich grazing land. The explanation lies in the nature of the “bunch” grass (of which there are several varieties such as gramma and buffalo grass), the cattle fodder of the open prairies.
This bunch grass is quite distinctive, and totally different from the compact and continuous sward of the eastern fields and meadows. It grows in scattered bunches or clumps of perhaps six or eight to the square rod, or slightly denser where moisture is plentiful. The roots of a single bunch are generally close gathered and compact enough to be spanned by the hand, but above it spreads60
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outwards, and sometimes several bunches will combine to form a spread of twelve inches across the top. The average height is about six inches, although some varieties are smaller. Growth commences about the middle of May and continues till the end of July (varying more or less in different localities), when the grass dries up on the stalk and is cured by the sun. This bunch grass in most districts is never at any time of a deep green color, but in the short period of its growth is usually of a pale green shade, and when cured it remains for three-quarters of the year of a greyish-brown hue.
The peculiar and rare characteristic of the bunch grass is that when naturally cured and dried in the manner described, it does not, like the grasses of the east, lose all its virtue, but retains its most valuable properties, and indeed in this condition is deemed even more nutritious for cattle than fresh grass. A herd of cattle on the plains will feed all the year round and grow fat on what in the eyes of an eastern farmer would appear to be nothing but an arid waste on which nothing could find a satisfactory meal. One species of this grass, white topped, with a small black seed, is particularly fattening, and is reckoned quiteLand of the Great West
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as nourishing as ripe oats. With this fodder animals can make journeys of a thousand miles without getting an ounce of other grain.
But nature has not stopped even here. Not satisfied with having endowed the bunch grass with qualities that enable it to flourish, or at least to preserve its virtue, in spite of the burning summer sun and the lack of moisture, she has also contrived that not even the severest frost of winter shall harm it. Temperatures of 40 and even 50 degrees below zero, deprive the bunch grass neither of the nutritious quality of its blades and spurs nor the life and hold of its roots. It successfully withstands the severest weather, and so long as it is accessible cattle can live on it. The only danger is that the snow may crust over the top of it, and the cattle in consequence be unable to get at it. It is actually stated that the almost magical properties of this bunch grass were discovered accidentally during the construction of the Union Pacific Railway many years ago. Several draft oxen happened to get lost one fall, and to the astonishment of the owner were located in the following spring in a fat and healthy condition. They had lived through the winter on62
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bunch grass, as all the cattle on the ranges now do.
For thousands of square miles in the heart of the Great West the ground is whitened by a bicarbonate substance to which the name “alkali” has been given. East of the Sierras it is to be seen in patches resembling hoar frost upon the grass, but further west it lies in great beds or is mixed with the soil, poisoning the water and destroying vegetation. In all the territories stretches of this alkali desert are to be found. In his fascinating study, “The Undeveloped West,” Mr. J. H. Beadle relates that just west of the great Salt Lake in Utah is a stretch of some five or six thousand square miles of what looks like a vast salt marsh. In one expanse of seventy miles water can only be got in one place, and that by digging. In local parlance, “a jack rabbit can’t cross it without a haversack, and an immigrant cow will shed tears at the sight of it.”
Then again there are the “bad lands” about which so much is heard. These are also to be found in most of the territories, and vary in character, but for the most part consist of spongy or clayey soil, destitute of vegetation, and traversed by great cuts orLand of the Great West
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gaps with treacherous and crumbling banks. Through these the creeks will eat their way, sometimes overhung by banks that are broader at water level than at the top, making the stream in places almost of an underground character. To approach the brink of one of these banks is to invite disaster, as the treacherous substance is as likely as not to give way altogether and precipitate the intruder down anywhere from ten to twenty feet into mud or quicksand. Pioneers crossing these places with horses and wagons had frequently to cut through these banks and make a kind of roadway right down to the water level.
The rivers and streams too in these bad lands, and indeed west of the Missouri generally, have unpleasant ways of their own, and in the northern districts have been known to rise twenty and even thirty feet in half an hour, as the result of rainstorms. Or again, in dry periods, they will shrink to the merest trickle or vanish altogether in stretches of from ten to fifty miles, where badly needed. Timber is scarce in these regions, vegetation being confined to the coarse sage brush, of a white or bluish color; and cactus, of a faint green. The sand and rocks may be either white, yellow, or red. In places these64
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stretches are broken by what are known as “buttes,” high, rocky tablelands, broken by deep gorges or “coulees” frequently bare of timber, but occasionally with soil enough to support growths of dwarfed pine trees.
These, for the most part, were the natural conditions the pioneers had to contend with in their search for homes, and amongst which their cattle had, and still have, to find pasturage. In the plains, and where the bunch grass grows, the cattle flourish, but of course they cannot be supported in confined areas like the animals in the east, whose pasturage is dense and close, and consequently have to spread out far and wide, from fifteen to twenty-five acres per head being a common estimate of their needs. Overcrowding of animals on the land has to be carefully guarded against, and in the past has been quite as serious a cause of destruction as drought or hard weather. The cattlemen learned by experience.
By struggle and striving and toiling the West was subdued/ Barren places were rendered fertile, water was piped and conveyed to dry and parched places, and gardens made to blossom in the wilderness. This artificial spreading of humidity seems to helpLand of the Great West
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the processes of nature, and regions formerly arid are found to be gradually becoming moister with increased planting and cultivation. And to the possibilities of such development there appears to be no limit.CHAPTER IV
The People of the Towns
IT WAS not the “land rushes” of Oklahoma alone that brought people from all corners of the Union out across the Missouri into the land of promise. The lure of the Great West itself has not failed, any time this last fifty years, to prove as powerful in its drawing power as it was in the days of the forty-niners, of the stage coach, the pony express, and the Indian on the war path. Since the days of Horace Greeley’s “Go West, young man!” the adventurous souls and excitement lovers, the hunters and homeseekers, have passed in a steady and never-failing flow from East to West—to the plains, the ranches, the mountains, and the mining camps. And, as in the Oklahoma rushes, they have been drawn from every rank and walk of life.
With the more settled conditions of the last thirty years, however, there has been a preponderance of the type most desired, the homeseeking small farmer type, the type that,The People of the Towns 67 impervious to the attractions of gold rushes and get-rich-quick schemes, had made up its mind to settle on the land, to work hard, and to become part and parcel of the country. The type that, having staked its claim, could be relied on to stay with it, undaunted by difficulties that soon drove out weaklings or those whose grip on the land was less tenacious. Building upon the foundation laid by the hunter, the trapper, the rancher, the cowboy, and the early pioneers, these people proceeded to erect the solid framework of the structure now in course of erection. They are building a new nation.
That appears to be the outcome—a new people in process of being developed, with characteristics peculiarly and exclusively their own, born of the dry, clear, matchless air of the high plains and tablelands, that climate which, not content with the distinctive pattern of its own native-born sons, lays hold of the raw material pouring in from other parts, and in an incredibly short space of time (if they but stand the trial and the shaping) sets its own brand mark upon them. The bad and the unfit do not survive. The favored ones adopt as if by magic the clear eye, the bronzed complexion, the quick turn68
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of temper, and the droll, dry humor of their new environment, begotten of wide open spaces, bright sunshine, and cloudless skies.
The place in which this blending of old and new, along with the distinctively western types, was to be seen to best advantage in the early days of the present century, was the small frontier town or settlement, those mushroom creations whose solitary street often began and ended abruptly in the open prairie itself; which frequently sprang into being in a matter of days; and sometimes (though not so frequently) were deserted and left to fall to pieces. Some of these settlements had their beginnings in such things as mere accidents, a broken wagon axle-tree, or a case of sickness and death, causing some party of emigrants, bound for a settlement hundreds of miles further on, to seek the nearest timber and water and build a cabin. Others were called into being by the proximity of mines, and others again were purely and simply “cattle towns,” depending entirely on the cattle raising industry.
Everything was of the most rough-and-ready description, from the sprawling and scattered shacks and one or two story wooden buildings, to the dusty unpaved streets andThe People of the Towns 69 wooden sidewalks. Boarding houses, hotels, and saloons were of the same crude variety. The town was built in a hurry and you had to make the best of it. And in the streets, or lounging about the hotels and saloons, could be seen hunters, trappers, cowboys, wolfers (or wolf poisoners), sheepherders, teamsters, and stage coach drivers—a motley throng clad in all manner of raiment from buckskin shirts and fur caps to sombreros and chap-erajos. And of course there was always a certain percentage of loafers, professional gamblers, and gunmen.
In those days and those places every man was, as often as not, a law unto himself, and his own judge of his own conduct. Personal disputes were ended quickly and on the spot. This did not make, as is commonly supposed from the number of “wild and woolly” stories of the old West in general circulation, for lawlessness and indiscriminate shooting, but rather for a set of people careful of word and action and little given to bullying or interfering, repressed and self-contained. Trouble was generally started by gunmen and trouble makers, “bad men” as they became known, and sooner or later this type usually met a violent end, killing them-70
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selves off or being killed off as the case might be. Peaceable people who kept away from bad resorts were seldom molested. Men, as far as possible, kept cool and looked after their own affairs. Brigham Young’s advice to his “Latter Day Saints” was typical of the spirit of the West at that time. To the men he said: “Keep still, and mind your own business.” The women he told: “If you see a dog run by the door with your husband’s head in his mouth, say nothing till you have consulted with the Church.”
Every man was master of his own destiny, was as good as any other man, and no “swank” or pretentiousness of any kind was tolerated. A man was taken on his own merits, and neither wealth nor family connections stood him in any stead. Gentlemen, who behaved as such, were esteemed, nor were good clothes objected to if properly worn. But (according to Mr. Baillie-Grohman) any overdressing or ostentation was liable to be met with: “Hold on tha’r, stranger! When ye go through this yer town, go slow, so folks kin take you in,” or some such humorous suggestion.
Given a serious dispute however, between two sober and serious Westerners, and there was generally only one ending—the deathThe People of the Towns 71 of one or both. “I’ve seen it happen myself often enough,” said Tom, “and a woman I met not so long ago told me how she lost her husband in just such a quarrel. He was a cattleman somewhere in the southwest and had a difference with another cattleman about something or other—possibly nothing very serious. Well the two of them met one day in a small town just outside the only merchandise store in the place. They renewed the argument. This woman was sitting in the spring wagon and couldn’t hear much of what was said, but presently her husband remarked: ‘Wai, if that’s how you feel, guess we’d better settle it right now. Ain’t got no gun handy, but if you’ll wait around I’ll go get me one.’ So he went into the store and took his time about buying the kind of gun he wanted, together with a supply of cartridges. In a few minutes he came back, and they proceeded to shoot it out. Both were killed.”
Sometimes it happened that the bad element got the upper hand in a town where progress and prosperity had been very rapid, and the local officials themselves became corrupted. When this occurred things would go from bad to worse with the same amazing72
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rapidity that characterized the growth of the towns themselves, and the day of reckoning, when it did come, would be swift and drastic. Things would be set right in true Western fashion. A case in point is furnished by Mr. Baillie-Grohman concerning the town of Ellsworth, in Nebraska, some 250 miles west of the Missouri. This town, situated on one of the principal cattle “trails,” sprang into being in a fortnight, and, being a convenient center, prospered amazingly. Money was made so quickly and easily that all kinds of wild extravagance ensued, and although this was no more than typical of the mushroom towns of the cattle trails or of the mining camps generally, Ellsworth nevertheless contrived to outdo them all. Gambling hells and other resorts of the worst description, owned by municipal officers themselves, flourished unchecked, and hardly anything was reckoned so cheap as human life.
Then came the purging. The cowboys of the neighborhood got together, and after passing resolutions condemning the city government, they proceeded to shoot the mayor, the police magistrate, the city marshal, the chief of police, six policemen, and several other corrupt minor officials. For three days theThe People of the Towns 73 cowboys held the town in a state of siege, shooting at every head that showed at a door or window, until order was restored. After that there was no further trouble.
Gambling is a thing the cowboy (like many other primitive men) appears to find it hard to resist, and when he comes to town for a “spree” much if not all of his hard-earned money finds its way into the hands of the professional gamblers. In the old days it was not uncommon for a cowboy to dispose of the fruit of months of perilous and arduous toil in a matter of a day or two, between cards, dance houses, and poisonous whiskey —that whiskey which the cowboy himself has dubbed “tangleleg” and of which he facetiously remarks: “One drink of it tempts you to steal your own clothes; two drinks makes you bite off your own ears; and three will make you save your drowning mother-in-law.” The solitude and monotony of the ranch life appeared to work themselves off in periodic outbursts of wild exuberance, which, however, were generally manifestations of sheer light-heartedness and mad gaiety rather than expressions of ill-will or any innate desire to work mischief. Boot heels and hats would be shot off once in a while,74
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and people who had made themselves objectionable would be set to dancing in the streets, assisted thereto by having shots sprinkled around their feet. But, as already stated, quiet and inoffensive people were seldom interfered with. Fights among the cowboys were usually the result of personal grudges. Where outsiders generally got hurt was when a mix-up occurred in some saloon and firing became promiscuous, “it being real wonderful,” as one old timer remarked, “how many bullets goes to wrong people.”
Tom Mix dealt with gambling in his own way when city marshal of Dewey, Oklahoma. “Men will always gamble,” said Tom. “Knowing this, I said to the city council, ‘Look here, there’s going to be gambling in this town. Now instead of driving these fellows into livery stables and under cover, let us allow two or three of them to run a game, and fine them every Monday morning, and so keep them under control. And if anybody loses money unfairly or anything goes wrong, we will know where to find it.’ Consequently every Monday morning these fellows came up and paid their fines, and with the money we put up some lamp posts, and paved streets and set men digging ditches.The People of the Towns
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We put money in the treasury, and we really built up a town out of the darned thing.”
Another story of Tom’s, relating to a bank hold-up in a small town, is not without a touch of grim humor. One of the robbers was on guard outside the bank door and had scared off the bystanders who had scattered to cover. However one old fellow, curious to see exactly what was going on, peeped around the corner, whereupon the robber, fearing gunplay, promptly fired and put one of the inquisitive one’s eyes out. “I haven’t peeked around a corner since,” the victim says in telling the story. They take their misfortunes stoically as a rule, these Westerners, and are not given to complaining.
And of course in the West of Yesterday, and even of today, liberties were and are taken with the language, which, far from being displeasing, as often as not lend additional point to the dry and racy humor of the men of the plains. The word “outfit,” for instance, is used in a variety of senses, many old timers applying it indiscriminately to things animate and inanimate, from a wife and children to clothing, weapons, kitchen utensils, a wedding or a funeral. All are covered by76
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the laconic “that yer outfit.” Or an old hunter may tell you (as Mr. Baillie-Grohman was told) “he never knew one of them thar English lord chaps ‘outfits,’ them top-shelfers who come over to hunt, to be without ‘bar-coated wipes’ (rough towels), rubber baths, string shoes (laced boots), and a corkscrew in their pocket knives.” A lady’s maid, too, was referred to by an old trapper as “one of them outfits I heerd called ‘lady’s maids.’ ”
One of the best examples, however, of the humor of the West, and of small town life in the West of Yesterday, is the story Tom Mix tells of Tim Teegarden and the Fire Net, which deserves a chapter to itself, and will be found following.CHAPTER V
Tim Teegarden and the Fire Net
THE inhabitants of Hogback, Arizona, about a score of years back, contained the customary percentage of good, bad, and indifferent that generally go to the make up of a township that has just turned the thousand mark and is beginning to dream of big things. Hogback, its native sons would tell you, was no “mushroom city” but was made up of good solid stuff. The town was straddled along a low lying ridge of red sandstone from which it took its simple and unpretentious name, and was located twelve miles across the plains from the railroad terminus at Landslide. In addition to the usual quota of saloons and gambling dens, Hogback contained a court house, a school, a church, and a building at the corner of Market Square three stories in height.
Mention is made of the three-story building to show that the town was both ambitious and progressive, for the optimistic idea in many western townships runs in the direc78	The West of Yesterday
tion of tall buildings. New York has tall buildings, and there was nothing, Hogback thought and said, to prevent another New York from springing up on the plains. “Oak trees grows out of acorns” one of the city councillors poetically expressed it. On the strength of this sentiment, and with an eye to eventualities, the town had purchased a fire net through the medium of a commercial traveller of an unusually persuasive turn of speech who happened to strike the place. The vote in favor of the fire net, however, had been almost unanimous, on account of the general agreement as to the far-seeing wisdom of such a course. But a proposal to buy a chandelier for the city hall, put forward at the same meeting, drew a heated objection from Councillor Sid Seagers, that “nobody could play the dern thing if it was brung in,” and precipitated an acrimonious and unprofitable discussion which ended in the defeat of the proposal.
In due course the fire net was delivered and held ready for service. But somehow the need for service hung fire. Tall buildings were slow in materializing. Murmurs about extravagant expenditure commenced to be heard, too, and Gus Laval, the mayor,Tim Teegarden and the Fire Net 79
and his pals, began to be anxious to get a little service out of the net without waiting for the advent of the tall buildings. What could be done with it? To start a fire was out of the question. There were several more or less futile suggestions, but the real solution came like a flash to Gus during a meeting of the local order to which he belonged, when a change in the initiation ceremony was being discussed. Tom Teagle had suggested that applicants be thrown out of the window “and caught in a blanket or sumpen unbeknowns to them.” And immediately Gus thought of the fire net and rented it forthwith to the order for use on these special occasions, at a nominal price.
It was in a room on the second floor of the three-story building at the corner of Market Square that the order in question held its meetings. The room was towards the back of the building and had two windows, one looking down into the square and the other into a courtyard at the back of the premises. And not long after Gus had made his deal with the order about the net, the first occasion for using it presented itself in connection with the proposal of the name of Tim Tee-garden for admission to membership.80
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Tim Teegarden was one of the town barbers, and was understood to be getting rich quickly. He had not really been very keen about joining the order for various reasons. First of all, his wife did not like the idea, and Tim had a very wholesome regard for the views of his wife. Secondly, all the other barbers were members of one or other of the local orders (there were several in town), and so long as he (Tim) was not connected with any he had been able to maintain a certain air of impartiality that was not without its advantages. And finally, he was doubtful if the benefits outweighed the cost—considering that he would have to pay the costs and his wife would receive most of the benefits. However, pressure of a peculiar and irresistible kind had been brought to bear on Tim and he had finally allowed his name to go forward. And this was the night of his initiation.
Tim had heard queer stories about initiation ceremonies but had never taken much stock of them. It had, for instance, been rumored that Ned Magee had been stuck head first in a barrel of rain water; that Pete McConkey had been scared stiff by having an execution scene staged for his benTim Teegarden and the Fire Net 81
efit which included an executioner with a black mask, a block, and a big axe; and that Mike Donnelly had had cigarettes shot out of his mouth. Tim had laughed at these stories with the rest, but now that his own turn was at hand he felt uneasy.
His uneasiness did not diminish when he saw the solemn rows of faces that surrounded him on all sides of the room when he was finally escorted into it. Everybody seemed washed and dressed up, which in itself was alarming enough, and everybody wore an air of seriousness and even of gloom. Still Tim had been assured by his sponsor, Ed Casey, beforehand that it would be all right. “You ain’t never seen any of our bunch goin’ around on crutches, hev you?” Ned inquired. To this Tim had been forced to reply in the negative. “Well, by cripes then!” Ed had ejaculated with some show of heat, “you ain’t got no cause to go thinkin’ there’ll be anything about these yere pro-ceedin’s that’s goin’ to make your hair stop growin’. You jes keep quiet and smilin’ like when they blindfold you and do ezzackly what they tells you. An’ the quieter you are the better they’ll like you fer it. An’ you’ll be safer’n if you was in your own82
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bed.” And although hardly prepared to accept the validity of this last statement, Tim felt relieved nevertheless.
A handkerchief was bound over Tim’s eyes and he was turned around quickly several times, which had the effect of making him lose his bearings. His heart was thumping strangely, and he felt a little queer about the stomach. But he kept smiling as Ed had counseled. For Tim did not deny the fact that he was not a “nervy” person, and indeed had always argued that barbering had a softening effect on the nerviest man if he just kept at the business long enough. Tim was rather glad now, that he had emphasized this point. Too much would not be expected of him.
“What’s to be done with this man?” asked the voice of the Grand Master, Dan Short.
A chorus of groans arose from the assembly, and a sepulchral voice from the far corner said: “Throw him out the winder!” Tim’s hair rose on his head. Whose voice was that? He could not place it.
“Throw him out the winder,” cried the chorus.
For a moment there was a profound and dismal silence, and then a voice from someTim Teegarden and the Fire Net 83
where near the door said: “Wai I dunno. He’s mebby not so bad. What’s agin’ the man anyway?” “That was Art Dunphey,” thought Tim, a wave of gratitude surging over him. Art was a good scout. He would remember Art for that. He would give him a free shampoo once a month. Still Ed had told him it would be all right. Nobody ever got hurt. This was all a bluff about throwing people out of the window. He would just keep on smiling. He might not need to give Art that free shampoo after all. Time was money, and so was shampoo powder.
“Throw him out the winder,” boomed the deep voice in the corner again. “His razors is never sharp, ’n when he cuts your hair he lets half uv it go down the back uv yer neck.” The groans were renewed with redoubled energy and Tim’s knees trembled. In an agony of apprehension and perspiration he strove to place the owner of the deep voice. Could it be Pete Rumsey over to Bowlders Corners? Pete had never kicked about the razors or the hair going down his neck. It might be Abe Rafferty. He kicked about everything....
“Wai I dunno,” said the drawling voice,84
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that Tim took to be Art Dunphey’s. “Mebby his razors wuzzn’t so sharp ’n mebby he did let some hair down yer neck and put soap in yer mouth. All barbers is the same. Tim ain’t so bad. Doggone me ef I want to vote fer throwin’ a man out the winder cos he falls down on shavin’ and hair cuttin’.” Tim’s spirits rose once more during the progress of this lengthy oration. It was all a bluff anyway, he assured himself again. Up to this point he had maintained a forced smile, but now he felt emboldened to offer a word in his own defense.
“Mebby I was a little slack, boys,” he said with a show of cheerfulness. “I might. . . .” “Silence!” called the master of the ceremonies sternly. “Who comes here and starts talkin’ about hisself? What’s to be made of a man that does that?”
“Throw him out the winder,” called the crowd with increasing vehemence. The feeling in favor of throwing out was growing, Tim thought nervously. Suppose they did have it in for him? They were a tough bunch he knew. They might throw him out just as likely as not, if they really took it into their heads. He still kept smiling, but his spirits were sinking. He was glad Art Dun-Tim Teegarden and the Fire Net 85
phey had put in a word for him. He would give Art that free shampoo after all....
“Besides he don’t talk enough when you go to his place,” another voice put in. “He don’t tell you nuthin’ about what’s goin’ on. What use is a barber that don’t hev the latest news?” That was Josh Kimball, Jim thought. Ornery little cuss! You couldn’t talk when he was in the place. He talked all the time himself.
“He give me the wrong change wunst,” said somebody in a high falsetto adopted to disguise his ordinary tones. “He gimme a dime instead of a quarter.”
“Out o’ the winder with him!” chorused the assembled members once again. There was a sound of rising from chairs and the scuffling of feet. Sweat broke out afresh on Tim’s forehead. Were they really going to do it?
“I’m fer Tim,” Art began again, and again Tim was conscious of relief. It was just like being too hot and someone turning on a fan, the sensation Tim got when Art spoke up for him. Art would have that free shampoo. He would have it once a week. He was the best of the bunch. “I ain’t sayin’ Tim’s everything he might be,” Art was proceeding,—but a86
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multitude of hoots and groans interrupted him, and it was apparent that the spirit of violence was growing. Chairs and benches were banged and kicked, there was a sound of a window sash being raised, and several pairs of strong hands took hold of Tim at the same moment. He was lifted from the ground and carried over to where he could feel a draft of air on his face. Two men had him by the shoulders and two by the legs. They commenced to swing him to and fro. Tim was just preparing to cry out in alarm but he checked himself by a mighty effort. After all it would be as well not to let them see he was scared. For if they thought he was really scared they might do something that was not in the programme. . . .
Besides Ed had been quite positive that it would be all right if he just kept cool. There certainly were no members of that order going round on crutches that he (Tim) had ever seen. And you simply could not chuck men out of a second-story window and get away with it every time. Bones were bound to be broken some time or other. . . It was all a bluff. You just had to keep smiling. So Tim continued to smile as best he could under theTim Teegarden and the Fire Net 87
circumstances—which was really not very well.
The pros and cons of his situation had flashed through Tim’s mind in a very short space of time while the swinging process was being kept up. Now additional hands were laid upon him, and the movements increased in violence. There was a murmur of voices, several smothered laughs, someone said, “Let him go!” and the next instant the unhappy barber, with a loud yell, was shot head foremost into the dark night air of the silent square. A moment later there was an appalling crash and then a great silence.
As Tim’s legs disappeared over the sill the first loud guffaw had burst from the lips of the assembled members and had then been checked waiting for the shout that was to come from below announcing the safe arrival of the newest member in the fire net. But no shout arose—only the heavy smashing noise already alluded to. Sid Seagers leaned cautiously forward out of the window, a shining reflection dancing from the bald spot on the crown of his head. He made out a dark object on the sidewalk below; but of the squad with the net there was no sign. “By cripes!” said Sid aghast, wheeling about sud88
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denly. “Where did you place them boys with the net, Ned?”
There was a rush to the other window. There in the yard underneath were the men with the fire net stretched, waiting patiently. One or two of them, hearing the cry and the noise, had just dropped their hold and were running round the corner to investigate. There had been a horrible misunderstanding; the men with the net had been stationed at the wrong window. Amid noise, confusion, and a babel of voices the members came clattering downstairs and out into the square. Presently most of the town’s one thousand inhabitants were on the spot.
Tim was carried inside and the doctor sent for post-haste. A cursory examination showed that there were no serious injuries. Indeed aside from a broken collar bone, a broken leg, and three fractured ribs Tim was quite all right. “I alius allowed that a barber was a pretty doggone tough proposition,” said Sid Seagers meditatively. “But danged ef I don’t think they are even tougher ’n I calc’lated. Most men might hev broke a neck in that fling. But not our Tim. Nothin’ doin’.”Tim Teegarden and tiie Fire Net 89
“He’ll be all right,” said Art Dunphey reassuringly. “Jest you let him know, soon’s he comes round, that all the trade’s goin’ past him. That’ll bring him back to the old stand faster’n any dope or patchin’. Tim’s all fer business. You jes’ watch.”
There were other expressions of a like tenor together with a half-hearted and ineffectual attempt to place responsibility for the mishap. The men with the net blamed Ed Casey; Ed Casey blamed the men with the net. A deputation was formed which set off reluctantly to break the news to Mrs. Teegarden, and the committee of management proceeded to draw up two versions of the affair, one for the minutes of the order and the other for the press. Sober heads calculated on possible legal proceedings. . . .
Whether or not the prophecy of Art Dunphey as to the driving power of Tim’s business instinct was correct, the forecast as to his speedy return to duty was accurate enough. Tim was not long in getting back to the old stand. But not before he had made the order pay a pretty handsome bill for bodily damages and personal injuries received, together90	The West of Yesterday
with a written promise of the custom of all the members from that time on. And altogether Tim was reckoned to have done rather well by the proceedings, and it must be admitted that he did not complain a great deal —after the signing of the papers.
Editor’s Note: Although the real names of persons and places have been suppressed in the foregoing, the facts, in the main, are as stated. Interested parties will be furnished with the information withheld on application to the writer.—Tom Mix.
CHAPTER VI
The Ranch and Cowboy Life
WHEN I look at the screen pictures of the cowboy today,” said Tom Mix reflectively, “and then think of him as I used to know him and his life, I begin to understand how very, very few people there must be who really understand exactly what his duties were, how he spent most of his days, and the nature of his joys, his sorrows, his hopes, his hardships and his heroism. The limitations of the screen tell against him. You lose altogether his racy, laconic humor and his peculiarly appropriate allusions, and in the inevitable twist and tangle and cross purposes of the screen story and the ‘plot’ it becomes quite impossible, try as we may, to convey any requisite notion of routine life on the ranch in the West of Yesterday.”
And this generally leads Tom to go on to state that one of the best cowboys he ever knew, and a good friend of his own and of every cowboy, was the late Colonel Roosevelt. He knew the men and the life, for he lived92
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it himself and has described it in his books. “I met him first in San Antonio,” said Tom, “when he was down there with his Rough Riders. I was singing some cowboy songs at the time—or trying to. The Colonel applauded. When I was through he came up and said: ‘I am Teddy Roosevelt. I enjoyed that song very much.’ I said: ‘Pleased to meet you, Colonel. I am Tom Mix, and the pleasure is mutual.’ Some time later he came to Oklahoma for a hunting trip, and did me the honor of inviting me to be his guide. And when he was inaugurated I went up to Washington with my gang and he entertained us.”
The Colonel’s “close-up” of the cowboy as contained in his work “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail” is one that Tom considers hard to beat:
“Singly, or in twos or threes they gallop their wiry little horses . . . their lithe, supple figures erect or swaying slightly as they sit loosely in the saddle; while their stirrups are so long that their knees are hardly bent, the bridles not taut enough to keep the chains from clanking. They are smaller and less muscular than the wielders of axe and pick; but they are as hardy and self-reliant as any men who ever breathed—with bronzed, set faces, and keen eyes that look all the world straight in the face without flinching as they flash out from under the broadbrimmed hats. Peril and hardship and years of long toil broken by weeks of brutal dissipation draw haggard linesThe Ranch and Cowboy Life
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across their eager faces, but never dim their reckless eyes nor break their bearing of defiant self-confidence. They do not walk well, partly because they so rarely do any work out of the saddle, partly because their ‘chaperajos,’ the leather overalls they wear, hamper them when on the ground; but their appearance is striking for all that, and picturesque too, with their jangling spurs, big revolvers stuck in their belts and bright silk handkerchiefs knotted loosely round their necks over the open collars of the flannel shirts. . . . Except while on sprees they are quiet, rather self-contained men, perfectly frank and simple, and on their own ground treat a stranger with the most whole-souled hospitality, doing all in their power for him and scorning to take any reward in return. Although prompt to resent an injury they are not at all apt to be rude to outsiders, treating them with what can almost be called a grave courtesy.”
It is rather interesting to note how the knotted kerchief came, in the process of evolution, to be part of the cowboy’s regulation attire or “outfit.” When driving the herd on one of the long migrations so common in the old days, certain of the cowboys were told off for duty in the rear, where the dust raised by hundreds or even thousands of hoofs would make breathing a matter of difficulty. As a result of this condition the cowboy took to wrapping loosely about his neck any old piece of rag or cloth he could get hold of, and which, when he found himself in a dust cloud, he could draw up readily over his nos94
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trils to act as a kind of sieve or screen. Then he took to buying neckerchiefs for the purpose, and of course he did not fail to provide himself with one or more “swell” ones for use on state occasions such as his visits to town or to his sweetheart.
The routine life of the cowboy in the old days was monotonous enough, in spite of occasional bursts of danger and excitement. His living quarters on the ranch generally consisted of a long bunk house where he and his companions slept and kept their belongings, with a separate cabin for the foreman, and frequently another in which meals were cooked and eaten, together with the usual complement of, stables, sheds, and outhouses, and perhaps a blacksmith’s shop. In many cases these buildings would be of the most primitive description (as indeed might be the ranch house itself), built of unhewn cottonwood logs stopped with moss and mud, branches and dirt being used for roofing. Sometimes the doors were made from boards taken from packing cases and hung on rawhide hinges, and tables and chairs would be of the same rough-and-ready character. Outlying camps were simply tents or dugouts in the ground. Of course where lumber wasThe Ranch and Cowboy Life
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available better buildings would be in evidence, and further south in Arizona and New Mexico the adobe house would be found, some of which were really fine dwellings. The cluster of buildings at the main ranch would be gathered round the horse corral and the patches of fenced-in garden plots, and situated either out in the open country or for preference on the bank of some creek or river. And these little settlements marked the beginning of civilization on the plains and in lonely, distant places.
Cowboy fare was simple, consisting for the most part of salt pork and bacon, jerked beef, canned goods, bread, and coffee, together with such wild game as might fall to their rifles. The regular provisions were brought in bulk from the nearest town, which might be a couple of hundred miles away. If the rancher happened to be of an energetic turn he might keep a few milch kine and some chickens, thus ensuring a plentiful supply of fresh milk, butter, cheese, and eggs, but in very many cases ranch owners were too lazy or indifferent to undertake this extra work which would have added so greatly to the comfort of themselves and their employees.
The men are up betimes, breakfast being96
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over and done with generally before sunrise, even in midsummer. When it is finished one man, told off for the purpose, goes off to gather in the saddle horses which he drives in a body into the corral. The other men, who have been waiting around, then come out with their ropes and proceed to the corral, where each catches one of his own horses. When this is done the rest of the horses are turned loose again, and the men proceed to saddle up and go about their respective duties, which necessitate being on horseback most of the day. Some are sent to look for strayed horses, while others go to work among the cattle, driving in and branding animals that may have been neglected in the round-up, or pulling others out of bog holes into which they may have strayed in their search for water.
This “branding” of the cattle, it may be explained, is done for the purpose of identification, each ranch owner having his own particular brand mark registered in his name. Sometimes, of course, a large cattleman who happens to own several different ranches will be the proprietor of several different brand marks, which he has taken over with such established ranches as he may have purchasedThe Ranch and Cowboy Life
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or acquired, the brand mark going with the cattle. However one particular brand mark for one particular ranch is the general thing. The branding is done with a hot iron, so that the marks cannot be obliterated, and these marks consist of letters, numbers, signs, or combinations of all three, generally about six inches high, and placed either on the left hip, shoulder, or side, or on all three. Specimen marks are: “the three fives,” “OX,” “IV,” “Bar Y” ( Y ), “quarter circle diamond” (¿>), and so on, the ranch and those belonging to it usually being named after the brand mark. In addition the ears and dewlaps of the animals (the “dewlap” is the pendulous skin under the throat) may be cut, notched, or slit. Thus when the animals are wandering at large over the plains in the summer, autumn, and winter (sometimes animals are found hundreds of miles away from their own herds) and getting mixed with those of other outfits, the brand marks make identification a matter of comparative simplicity when the annual “round-up” takes place.
When the forenoon’s work is over, the men who have been out among the horses and cattle come in and are joined by those who may have been doing odd jobs about the98
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ranch, such as chopping wood, or haying, and dinner is served. Although the time of this meal is not constant, varying according as the men come in early or late, it is the main meal of the day, and the best that the ranch can muster is on the table. Even though the variety may not be great there is rarely any stinting of quantity. Hungry men are not to be denied. The cooking is generally done by one man, Chinese being occasionally employed for this purpose.
Although one might frequently not suspect it from his appearance, the cowboy is really a very cleanly person, and few of them, however unkempt, will sit down to a meal without visiting the “wash basin” (which may simply be a battered tin pan) and washing his hands, doing himself up a little before the fragment of looking glass fixed to the wall, and drawing over his head the remnant of a comb (which he sometimes calls a “Jerusalem Overtaker”) generally to be found attached to a piece of string alongside the mirror. And if the conversation at table is sometimes a little rough and free, it wants but the presence of a white woman to bring it instantly to a proper decorum. There is no greater reTiie Ranch and Cowboy Life
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specter of womanhood living than the cowboy.
Sometimes, on special occasions, there is a call for grace, and in this connection an amusing story is told by Mr. Baillie-Grohman of an old mountaineer by the name of “Trading Jack,” that is typically western. Called on unexpectedly by the host (who happened to be an old miner whose face had been disfigured, and who had lost a hand which had been replaced by an iron hook) to pronounce the blessing at a Thanksgiving dinner, Trading Jack said: “Wa’al boys, it’s kinder mean of that thar man with the one eye, iron-hook paw, and skunk-backed nose to pass the kiards in that ’er fashion; but boys, I am thar when I am thar, so don’t you bark up a wrong tree, and rest for a straddle on that thar blind. This thar is a boss day, and I’m always kinder willin’ and ready to remembrance the Old Boss up in hiven to thank Him for His mighty goodness to us all, when I once gets on His track; so, boys, let’s pray as white men oughter on this thar day.” And after this quaint introduction Trading Jack said an equally quaint grace, winding up with “Yours truly and obediently, Trading Jack.”TOM AND TONYThe Ranch and Cowboy Life 101
Work in the afternoon is very much the same as in the morning, except that such time is more frequently employed for odd jobs, such as breaking in a new horse, repairing saddles, fixing spurs, or practising with the rope. Cowboys never seem to tire of trying their skill at roping, which requires long and assiduous practice for any degree of proficiency. The lariat commonly used is 40 feet long, most objects being roped at a distance of about 25 feet. According to Colonel Roosevelt, there are not many men who throw as far as 40 feet, a 60-foot rope being necessary for such a performance.
Supper is taken in the early evening and the men turn in soon afterwards, the hard physical work in the open air necessitating long hours of sleep. Many men are paid off at the end of the summer season, and the few that are left have not a great deal to do, although frequently called on to suffer great hardship and exposure “line riding1' and bringing in weak cows and calves. For the most part, however, the cattle are left to shift for themselves, and in the very hard weather the men simply stay around the house.
The great event that relieves the monotony of the ranch life is the round-up, when the102 Ti-ie West of Yesterday
cattle are rounded up and the calves branded. On large ranches there are generally two of these events in the season, one in spring and one in the fall, the spring round-up being usually, although not always, the more important. It lasts about six weeks during the months of April, May, and June according as the season is early or late. All the ranchers in a given district of many hundreds of square miles—embracing say ten to twenty ranches—arrange a convenient meeting place on some suitable plain, and a regular encampment is formed, wagons coming in from the different quarters each with its quota of cowboys and horses. The captain of the round-up, who may or may not be a ranchman, but is generally an old settler familiar with the country, takes charge, the various wagon foremen acting as his lieutenants. In assigning the work, the captain will usually allot some specific task to one foreman, leaving him to handle the details and distribute his men in his own way. And both captain and foremen enjoy the same work and the same fare as the cowboys themselves.
A few days usually elapse at the meeting place while the details of the round-up are being planned and while the stragglers areThe Ranch and Cowboy Life 103 coming in, and these days are generally regarded as holidays by the cowboys, who indulge at such times in horse and foot races, wrestling matches, and sports of different kinds. After the dullness and inactivity of the winter the men are glad to get loose again.
However, when round-up work begins in earnest it is hard enough, although varied and frequently exciting. Spells of sixteen hours and even longer in the saddle are not uncommon. Fifty to sixty men compose an average round-up in point of numbers, with perhaps half a dozen wagons, and four or five hundred horses. Early each morning camp is broken and the wagons and loose horses move forward in a straight line to the next camping place, which has been announced by the captain, and which may be a few miles off. Camp is pitched again before midday. In the interval the cowboys, working in two bands, one on each side of the line of march, systematically spread out and rake the countryside to a distance of perhaps fifteen miles, driving in all the cattle towards the new camping place. When the men come in they go to their respective wagons for dinner, and to change horses, a few men being left in charge of the collected animals and104
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such precautions taken as may be necessary to keep different herds from mixing.
Immediately after dinner work commences on the herd or herds, men from different ranches looking through them and cutting out those bearing their own particular brands. As the cattle keep moving about and mingling, this is a matter calling for particular skill both in man and horse, and long experience. When the animals of any one brand are thus cut out from the herd they are given in charge of a rider told off for the purpose, who “holds the cut.” As animals are constantly breaking out there is much chasing and excitement. As soon as the particular cows, calves, and other animals it is desired to separate have been weeded out, the rest are turned loose in the opposite direction to the line of march, and the next group or herd tackled.
When this sorting out process is completed the animals to be branded are dealt with in bunches, each bunch in turn being herded into a corral or surrounded by a ring of riders, and the work of branding proceeded with. Unbranded calves take the brands of the cows they follow. Dr. J. A. Munk in his delightful “Arizona Sketches” tells of anThe Ranch and Cowboy Life 105 ingenious trick resorted to when a calf has got separated from its mother and its ownership is uncertain. In order that no mistake may be made the calf is burned slightly with the branding iron—just enough to hurt it a little. It is then turned loose, and (like a child) goes off “crying for its mammy,” which it never fails to find. Its identity being thus established the calf is caught again and the branding operation completed. A dozen men carry on this work, one keeping tally, two branding, and the others catching and holding the animals. It is a lively, exciting, and occasionally dangerous job, and carried on amid a perfect pandemonium of noise and dust. But throughout it is conducted with skill and celerity for all the apparent confusion.
During the night each wagon takes its turn of guarding the herd of collected animals, the work being divided into watches of two hours each, and two men generally going on guard during one watch. This as a rule is a cold and tedious task, but frequently it becomes both hazardous and nerve trying if the cattle get stampeded, as they frequently do from storms and other causes. The watching cowboys ride round the herd in opposite di-106
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rections till the animals lie down, often calling or even singing to them (the songs, quite commonly, not being of the drawing-room variety), as they seem to be quieted by the sound of a human voice. But if anything frightens them they are all up and off like a shot, and then it may be a matter of enormous difficulty and danger getting them stopped and gathered together again—occasionally necessitating the calling out of the whole camp.
The work goes on from day to day without intermission until all the ground has been covered and all the animals handled. Although entailing hard and persistent labor and affording very little time for rest or sleep, the round-up is generally enjoyed thoroughly by most cowboys. And of course the duties call for the exercise of special qualities of skill, courage, and endurance which the cowboy rarely fails to furnish when the need arises. Occasionally accidents happen, although, considering the nature of the work, these are not so common as might be supposed. Mr. Baillie-Grohman in his “Camps in the Rockies” tells of seeing a cowboy, chasing some bulls down a steep hillside, get a tremendous fall through his horse puttingThe Ranch and Cowboy Life 107 its foot in a gopher-hole. The man went flying over the head of his mount and rolled for a distance down the hillside amid the laughter and jokes of his companions, who rarely express sympathy on such occasions. Out of curiosity Mr. Baillie-Grohman measured the distance from the gopher-hole to the spot where the man’s shoulder first touched the ground and found it to be only three inches short of twenty-seven feet. Yet the cowboy was only slightly stunned. The pony however had to be shot.
When the round-up is over, the animals for the market are sorted out and sent to the nearest shipping point, while the remainder of the different herds are escorted to their respective ranches and there turned loose again, to wander off until the next round-up. In general it may be said that these creatures are too stupid and troublesome to be regarded with anything but indifference by those who tend them. They are, moreover, always an uncertain quantity as to temper, and a man is really never safe on foot when there is a chance of falling in with a drove of them.
“You see steers understand a man on horseback,” Tom Mix explains, “but they are not accustomed to seeing a man on foot, and what108
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they are not accustomed to they are darned curious about. They are just as curious as the antelope that will come right up to the white rag that you wave on the end of your rifle from behind a bush to leeward of them. Like the antelope they will always come to investigate something strange. I was once lying on my back below a tree when one came over to examine me. He came gradually closer and closer, and I lay quite still. Presently he came right up to me and was just bending down to sniff when I fetched him a sudden kick on the nose. He was so astonished and alarmed that he fell clean over backwards.
“But they are not always so easily disposed of, and it is best to keep clear of them if you are on foot. I happened to be in the corral one day and had to pass near a bunch of steers to get to the rail which was some distance off. Well, one steer got curious and came towards me. I was walking at a steady pace carrying a saddle, and I kept on walking. To have started running then would have been fatal. Well, I walked and the steer walked. I kept up an appearance of indifference, but was really measuring the distance to the corral fence pretty carefully. Gradually the disThe Ranch and Cowboy Life 109
tance between the steer and myself lessened, and still I kept walking on. When he was just about on me I dropped the saddle and ran for it. I had about thirty yards to go, and believe me I covered the ground in great shape, the steer charging close on my heels. I didn’t go over that fence in any graceful style, but took it dying, head first.”
The pay of an ordinary cowhand in the early days of this century was anywhere from $30 to $40 per month, all found, and it was roughly estimated by the ranch owners that one cowboy could take care of one thousand head of cattle. As an indication of the thorough manner in which the cowboy performed his duties it may be stated that, although the cattle roamed hundreds of miles away from their home ranches, losses from straying ranged only from two to five per cent. “Bronco busters,” whose duty it was to break in the untamed horses, were paid wages ranging from $5 to $10 for every animal they handled. On the large ranches nearly all the breaking in was done by one of these special men, the work being too dangerous for the average cowboy. A bronco buster would not often spend more than three days on one animal, handling him perhaps three to five hours110 The West of Yesterday each day. And incidentally few men grew old at this occupation which was and is one of extraordinary difficulty and danger. Only young men are able to withstand the terrific shaking, and even at that only for a few months on end at a stretch.
The “bucking” consists in the animal lowering its head between its front legs, arching its back suddenly, leaping into the air, and coming down with all four legs stiffened out like so many poles or metal rods. This is continued with astonishing rapidity, and few men in the end can withstand the violence of it. Two methods are followed by the bronco busters, either to “follow the buck” or to “receive the buck,” the former being the course commonly adopted on account of the terrific strain on the body imposed by the “receiving” method. But in either case the shock is severe, and the lungs of the bronco busters frequently suffer in the long run, spitting of blood being a common result of the process. Nothing delights the cowboy more than to see an inexperienced man on a bucking horse, and he will offer all sorts of humorous advice and exhort the victim to “stay with her.” When the unfortunate is finally dumped off he will be told solemnly that he “landedThe Ranch and Cowboy Life 111 kinder squarly,” that he “hurt the ground,” or that he was “rough on the bunch grass.” And in this connection the epitaph on a lonely western grave tells its own tale:
“William Jake Hall, Got a buck and a fall; Killed dead as a slug, By a Texas plug; Born in Georgy, ’48 Anno Domini.’’
Anything and everything that comes under his observation is fair game for the cowboy. On one occasion Mr. Baillie-Grohman, who had bought what was supposed to be a fast horse, but which was in reality something quite different, and who was trying it out on the open plain, was consoled with such observations from the onlooking cowboys as: “Ain’t you VERY tired, mister?” “You oughter drive some stakes into the ground to see that you actually is a movin’”; “Wai, now, them legs DOES seem kinder willin’ to shove the old hoss along,” and so on. But their fun is rarely offensive, and is meant in good part.
Politeness and fine manners are reckoned to be superfluous, and “Thank you” is almost unknown. “Say, mister,” said a cowboy to112
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the author of “Camps in the Rockies” (Mr. Baillie-Grohman), who had just treated him to a fine dinner,” “ain’t you the boss as runs this outfit?” Mr. Baillie-Grohman replied that he was. “Well,” said the cowboy, “I’ll be darned if you wasn’t the only cuss as said thank you when the grub pile was trundled over to yer side.” Mr. Baillie-Grohman said he hadn’t got over the bad habit yet. “Them’s bad habits of civi-ly-sashon,” said the cowboy seriously. “Out here them tony chin music don’t pan worth a cent.”
And what of the cowgirl? “Women on the plains,” Tom says, “are sacred beings. They are brought up in a hard school. They may not have that education that is learned from books in schools and colleges, but they are taught from infancy to take care of themselves. Their very lives make them a sturdy class, and they know the difference between right and wrong to a hair line. Common sense comes through their familiarity with nature and its animals. They know more of God’s glorious earth than any book could tell them. They know how to ride and how to use a gun. ... I believe every girl should be brought up in the Western plains. You may think I go too far when I make such anThe Ranch and Cowboy Life 113
assertion, but I know of no better school to fit them for real healthy and common-sense life.
“I feel a dash of pride when I see a girl swing into the saddle and ride off like the wind, for I know that she is a girl who can think for herself and conquer the difficulties in life. A woman who can master a Western horse can go anywhere and come through as she herself elects.”
“The West is hard on cattle and on women,” was a proverbial expression in the old days— in the days of the pioneers, the land rushes, and the undeveloped territory. There can be little doubt that it was hard on them. But they endured it doggedly, and with unbroken spirit, these mothers of the new race. Their daughters might well be the wild and free creatures of whom Tom Mix speaks, for in the finest sense of the expression they are indeed “diamonds produced by the awful pressure of suffering.”CHAPTER VII
The A ffair at Lone Tree R an ch
THE administration of justice in the West of Yesterday appears to many of us, accustomed to security and orderly procedure, to have been largely of the “rough and ready” variety, and characterized at times by a severity that seemed rather out of proportion to the nature of the offense. Thieves were dealt with in merciless fashion, and men were sometimes shot or hanged for stealing a horse. We are inclined to ask ourselves if the times were not cruel as well as crude.
In extenuation it may be pointed out that such methods have invariably been found operating in young or undeveloped countries all over the world, and at every period of history. In wide and sparsely populated countrysides with few roads and imperfect means of communication, it has inevitably been forced upon the inhabitants that in order to engender respect for a law that is difficult to enforce, drastic example must be madeThe Affair at Lone Tree Ranch 115 of those culprits who are caught in the act, or whose guilt is established beyond doubt. It was only by rigid adherence to such a course that security of life and property were attained, without which progress would have been impossible. For amongst primitive or unruly people leniency is very apt to be mistaken for weakness.
It is pointed out too, with considerable point, by old-time Westerners, that a swift and summary meting out of justice is not without its advantages, and contrasts very favorably with the difficulties and delays attendant upon modern legal procedure. In those times the tribunals set up, however crude and unpolished, kept the issues clearly before them and handled each case strictly on its merits, whereas nowadays the simplest kind of dispute often involves protracted litigation, accompanied by expense out of all proportion to the general importance of the problem to be solved. And whether, with the introduction of the “unwritten law” and the ultra scientific analysis of human emotions that have become part and parcel of current legal practice, the ends of abstract justice are more fully and completely met, may be regarded as exceedingly doubtful.116
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On the cattle thief, or “rustler,” in particular, the hand of the law bore heavily, as indeed it always has among pastoral or cattle-raising people. It is true that, in the early days of the ranching industry, at the close of the Civil War, profits were enormous and capital could be doubled in a matter of three or four years; but that condition had long disappeared by the end of the nineteenth century, and only the large ranch owners really made much money. The great body of the ranchers found it a hard enough matter to get a small return on their investment, and between drought, disease, scarcity of food, wolves, coyotes, and stampedes, something like ten per cent of the money value of a herd was lost each year. Competition was ever becoming keener, and the conditions of the packers more onerous. Every animal counted, and economy was the order of the day. Thus there was developed on the plains a passion for the rights of property and a consequent hatred of thieving, coupled with a determination to put it down at any cost.
As stated in another chapter, identification of the cattle depended wholly and solely upon the brand marks, and branding became in consequence a matter of the utmost signifi-The Affair at Lone Tree Ranch 117 cance. Any “working” of brand marks, any attempt to falsify or change them, was a most heinous offense in the eyes of the ranchers, and one summarily dealt with. However, so long as the cattle actually were branded, any crooked work in connection with the markings could generally be spotted with a little vigilance. But in the case of young unbranded calves whose mothers had perhaps been killed or overtaken by accident, and which had strayed into another herd, identification became absolutely impossible. These were the favorite prey of the cattle rustler.
These cattle rustlers were of two varieties— the rancher variety and the outlaw variety. The rancher rustler was the man who put his brand on such stray calves as came his way and said no more about it; who roped unbranded animals and led them off with his own from other herds; who changed or “worked” brand marks; and who received cattle stolen by outlaws. He was the more dangerous rustler. The outlaw rustler was the lazy, good-for-nothing loafer who simply stole—who battened on the labor of others. Feeling ran strong against both. The people of the plains cried for vengeance on the cattle thief.118
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The representatives of law and order, the sheriffs and their deputies, were imbued with the same spirit. They understood the hardships of the rancher and exactly what his cows and steers meant to him. The bitter disappointment attendant upon losses by theft and the aggravation of the wound that came with the knowledge of the extreme uncertainty of recovery and the remote possibility of bringing the guilty parties to justice, struck sympathetic chords in the bosoms of the guardians of the peace, most of whom had themselves at some time or other suffered the same evil. So short shrift and summary treatment for the cattle rustler were the order of the day, and when a man once fell under suspicion he was liable to be called to a strict accounting at any moment. Yet because of the great temptation and the ease with which thieving was frequently accomplished in lonely places there was seldom any great lack of the rustling fraternity or serious depletion in their numbers.
This then was the temper of the cattle raisers towards the rustler back in the days when Tom Mix was sheriff of Two Buttes, a Colorado township lying some 36 miles off the railroad track in the county of Baco, in theThe Affair at Lone Tree Ranch 119 southern part of the state. Lone Tree Ranch itself was located some fifteen miles away in a northeasterly direction over towards the Kansas border. It belonged at that time to a man named Blair, of evil reputation as a starter of “rustling scraps” and regarded with something more than suspicion as the accomplice of several notorious thieves. But he was a difficult man to trap and a dangerous man to handle.
This time, however, there was no mistake. Evidence of a positive nature was laid against himself and two Mexicans in his employ, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of all three. Tom had the business in hand. None of his deputies happened to be available, but knowing the value of prompt action and the danger of the men getting word of the proceeding in advance and making off, Tom decided to tackle the job alone. Accordingly he saddled up early on a bright February morning, and crossing the creek at a point almost due north of Two Buttes made his way eastward. The country was rough and difficult, and it was getting on towards noon when he saw the ranch with the tall solitary pine tree from which it took its name on the sky line ahead of him. As he emerged from120
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a gorge on to the open range he saw a group of men at work among the cattle, and among them he made out the three he was after. He headed towards them, only to see them mount their horses and make off in the direction of the ranch. At first Tom imagined they would simply outride him, taking advantage of the fresher condition of their horses, and get away into the surrounding country, eventually working down and across the Mexican border, but instead they rode round the corral and disappeared among the ranch buildings. And when he himself rode up not long afterwards and entered the yard it was to find their horses tethered to the corral rail and no human being in sight.
At this point the narrative, as related by Tom himself, comes to rather a curious and unsatisfactory ending, Tom withdrawing from the scene with the remark that “he guessed he was a bit careless in handling the job, as he got shot up considerable; but that those three men didn’t give any more trouble after that time.” Full details of the windup of the affair, which was dramatic enough, had to be wormed out of Sid Jordan, who possibly got them by degrees from Tom himself. All three of the cattle thieves it appearsThe Affair at Lone Tree Ranch 121
were killed outright, but this, as will be seen later, was quite unavoidable, and Tom, as sheriff of the district, was amply justified. It was his life or theirs. However his reticence on the subject is quite understandable, since he does not believe either in killing or in making exhibitions of it to the public, but it is possibly as well that the incident should be told in full as an example of duty carried out under difficult circumstances.
“Knowin’ what an ornery cuss this man Blair was,” Sid explained, “Tom certainly took some chance goin’ at the thing the way he did. Yuh see the place was laid out kinduv on the square, the ranch house on one side opposite the corral, an’ the stables and sheds bein’ the other sides. An’ he goes walkin’ in there knockin’ and tryin’ the doors. Byemby he locates someone in a shack, but they hev a barricade built on the inside, and they aren’t extendin’ no invitation to him neithers. Well, he thumps on the door and shouts and is just goin’ to take a kick when zip! ol’ man Blair who’s hid in the corral lets fly at him with a double load of buckshot which gets distributed nice all up and down Tom’s back.
“It must uh been done quite simple like,122
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an’ him walkin’ in that easy must sure have riled him considerable. Well, he swings round and lets drive with his Winchester at sumthin’ he sees movin’ behind a hayrick, and that’s how Blair come to cash in his chips right then, gettin’ shot through the head.
“When a scrap like that starts you can’t never tell where she’ll finish up. Most uh them cattle rustlers ’ll quit when it comes to a showdown with a sheriff that means business, but sometimes when shootin’ starts it’ll keep goin’ on. Tom bangs on the door again and calls on them two greasers to open, but there ain’t nothin’ doin’ at all. So he heaves her a kick and busts sumthin’, and in he goes, kickin’ down the barricade and gettin’ himself outa the doorway just as quick as he knew how. It was kinda dark inside, the window bein’ boarded up, and it sure was a wonder he didn’t get finished off right then, for those fellows showed ugly all through. However, he got in and took stock of the outfit.
“It was a kind of toolhouse with spades and things laying around, also a barrow and some axes and kegs of nails. A bunch of sacks and empty crates had been dragged over to one corner and piled up like as if to make
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another barricade. One uh the rustlers was back of this, a pretty husky Mexican with a red handkerchief round Jris neck. The other fellow, not quite so big, was in the middle of the floor. He had been helpin’ prop up the door and had backed off as she came down. And everybody had guns out.
“Well, Tom tried talkin’ to them first. He knows their lingo, being raised on the border, and he told them Blair had got his and there warn’t no use them tryin’ to beat the law for it ud get ’em in the end. He’s kinda persuadin’ in his way and at first it looks as if they might be no more fireworks. But you never kin tell with them greasers. They don’t act nacheral, and you can’t be sure just which way their feelin’s’ll blow ’em. Meb-by they thought they wuz in for trouble anyway, and might get away back where they come from if they could just get this one man out uh the road. So they both lets drive at Tom simultaneous. One bullet makes a driveway along his hair and then goes into the woodwork and the other bites him somers in the left side and goes the same way.
“An’ there was Tom still standin’ there doin’ nothin’. He mustuv knowed what was cornin’ for you can see in a man’s eye what

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to expect before he pulls the trigger. But he jes’ stood. Mebby the rub along the head kinda queered him or he thought he was hurt bad and lost his hard feelin’ agin’ them. He’s got some the’ries uv his own about bad men and I guess he was just figgerin’ out the proposition again—they didn’t know what they was doin’, or they had squared it with themselves, or mebby they had a grudge against everybody, or no one had showed them the right and wrong of such things, or sumthin’ like that. He even figgered he was dead and finished, and this was how the new life started up — just where the old one stopped. They had all shot and killed each other and now they had to straighten things out between them ....
“However once pain grips you proper you soon lose them fine feelin’s and get right up in the air. It came right back to him how he’d walked into their trap like any tenderfoot and they’d cleaned him up. And him reckoned a smart man on the draw ’n everything! An all done by cattle thieves too, the meanest skunks on earth! So right there the hull three lets go, and the man over to one corner gives a screech and comes down over the barricade, tearin’ at his shirt and twistingThe Affair at Lone Tree Ranch 125
terrible, which sure is a bad sign. An’ as he comes down he hits the legs of man number two, spilin’ his next shot which he was just makin’ then.
“Mebby Tom was hit again, mebby he wasn’t, for when bullets is goin’ that free you kinda lose track. An’ besides the hard feelin’ had left him again and he was spec’latin’ harder’n ever about rights and wrongs. Still he and greaser number two had a couple uh shots more each before the wind up, and one from Tom’s gun give number two his finish. ’N by this time number one wasn’t twistin’ any more. So Tom comes outside, and his hoss, Old Blue that was, kinda fusses round know-in’ something’s wrong. An’ Tom mounts up and heads for the grading camp six miles off and gets there somehow or other, an’ he sure did surprise them some laughin’ and jokin’ about the hull business and sayin’ he was goin’ to take his own time about dyin’. He must hev his own way even in that. An’ men come fer miles to help, and when word was given out that there was no hope uv savin’ him there was sure some lamentations of Jeremiah . . . Still Tom’s pretty tough, an’ they got the lead dug out uv him some way or other.126
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“Yes, sirree, a sheriff had to take some chances in them days in the discharge of his duty. But I can’t remember there was ever any scarcity of sheriffs. Cattle thieving had to be put down good and firm if the country was to be fit to live in. And that was how it was done.”CHAPTER VIII
The Mining Camp and the Miner
O DESCRIPTION of the West of Yesterday would be in any sense complete without some reference to the mining camps and towns to be found scattered over the states which lie in the Rocky Mountain belt and on the Pacific Slope —Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, Nevada, and Idaho. These are the principal mining states in the union. They produce gold, copper, silver, lead, and zinc. But in the West of Yesterday, gold mining was undoubtedly the most picturesque of these callings, and the one about which most was heard.
It has been said by someone or other that while “trade follows the flag, the flag follows the pick.” There is much truth in the observation. A “mining rush” to any given quarter has sent a surging wave of humanity into hitherto undeveloped and even unexplored parts of the earth’s surface—across the scorching desert, over terrible mountains, or128
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far away into the bleak and frozen north. From wherever the tidings came of the discovery of gold, thither the wave swept with a force that nothing could stop. Sometimes it ebbed and receded, but civilization had generally taken root, roads had been built, cities founded, and waste places reclaimed. The driving force may have been nothing loftier than individual selfishness; but the work accomplished was pioneer work nevertheless.
Since the days when the forty-niners swarmed across the desert to California by the overland route, or took ship round Cape Horn, the character of the miner has been drawn in rude and crude colors. From the days of Bret Harte onward he has been depicted for the most part as a bold, bad man, spotted here and there with redeeming qualities, but unregenerate in the main, and with his finer feelings and perceptions blunted by the primitive nature of the life he led, and coarsened by contact with low types of humanity. Yet such was very far from being the case.
Men do not inevitably spoil by getting out of touch for a term of years with modern civilization. As often as not the return to aMining Camp and Miner
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simple, healthy, outdoor existence builds them up, not only physically but mentally and morally at the same time. Men of culture and education who lived settled lives in large cities; others of the artisan class from the towns in the east; lawyers, doctors, college men, often found to their astonishment that what had appeared, while they endured it, a dull, toilsome, monotonous life in some mining camp, was one to which they found themselves looking back, long after their return to civilization, with the keenest regret. Others were not able to return to their old haunts at all, but remained in the new towns and grew with them. Many regarded the mining years as the best of their lives.
The dirt, and danger, and monotony, and hardship of the life quite frequently tend to bring out the very best qualities that are in a man. He is moreover constantly spurred on by the thought of the fortune that may be awaiting him, and of all the good he can do with it. Beautiful and lasting friendships were formed in these mining camps, and men whose outlook had previously been narrow and restricted, broadened out and assumed an air of greater toleration and understanding130
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towards their fellow creatures. In few cases were good men turned into bad ones by the labor and privation of the mining camps. As an illustration of how peacefully matters frequently went in some of these communities (in direct contradiction to the popular idea) it is recorded in Alfred T. Jackson’s “Diary of a Forty-Niner” that an Indian who was caught robbing one of the gold sluices was sentenced by the miners to receive 50 lashes on his bare back. But nobody would volunteer to do the job. Finally lots were drawn and the task fell to a certain miner who applied some half-dozen strokes, whereupon the Indian yelled so loudly that they let him go, although there was not a mark of any kind upon him.
Naturally enough the monotony, the loneliness, and the complete absence of feminine society were burdens that proved unendurable to many who in consequence became morose or savage or developed bad characteristics. And in addition there was always the large percentage of wasters, hangers-on, and rough characters generally who were usually to be found in the van of every gold rush, and who frequently succeeded in getting the whole mining fraternity judged by their ownMining Camp and Miner
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undesirable standard. This phenomenon however is not confined to mining camps and miners but is to be observed in almost any walk of life.
The mining camp of the old days was, in the first instance (in the West of the Day before Yesterday), generally of the crudest description, the men living for the most part in tents, or even sleeping in the open among the sagebrush or on the hay brought up to feed the horses. When the cold weather came on, in the mountainous districts, excavations were made in the mountain side which became known as “holes in the wall,” where men lived very comfortably during the winter season. It is related in the Pacific Coast Annual Mining Review for the year 1878 that one such “hole in the wall” in the Comstock district contained two billiard tables and furnished accommodation for twelve men. Miners were very loath to put time and money into the erection of buildings of a permanent character, knowing that they might ultimately have to be abandoned if the workings gave out. Many mining camps and towns have been completely deserted at short notice, and this happens occasionally even at the present day.132 The West of Yesterday
Sometimes it happened that a new location would be inaugurated by a deed of violence which tended to give the place a bad name. A case in point was the township of Gold Hill in the Comstock district mentioned above, and recorded in the publication already referred to. After the first house was built, two of the miners, by name Jessup and Sides, played cards to see who should stand the drinks. A dispute arose, and Sides stabbed Jessup twice with a bowie knife, killing him on the spot—a crime for which he actually went unpunished. Thus it came to be said of the Comstock miners that “they had to kill people to start the graveyard,” and for long afterwards it was alleged that the faces of old timers from this district would light up at the thought of “man for breakfast,” or at the prospect of having a “stiff to plant.”
And speaking of “planting stiffs” calls to mind the story told of Leadville, Colorado, related in Mr. Baillie-Grohman’s “Camps in the Rockies,” where the cemetery was turned into a silver mine, which story illustrates as almost nothing else could the grim humor of the west, and that indifference to established forms and ceremonies so characteristic ofMining Camp and Miner 133 pioneer days when the sentimental was always pushed aside to make way for the practical. A Scotchman in the camp had died during the winter, and the “boys,” wanting to give him a “right smart burial,” hired a man to dig a grave through the snow and the hard frozen ground. “Scotty” was meantime stuck into a snowbank pending the preparation of his last resting place. After an interval of three days, during which nothing was seen or heard of the grave digger, a deputation was sent to investigate his progress. They found that the hole he had begun as a grave had turned out to be rich in silver ore, to which the digger laid claim. Prospecting holes were immediately sunk all round, and no more was thought about Scotty who remained in his snowbank till the sun thawed him out in the spring.
However, by the close of last century with the advent of improved mining machinery and the gradual replacement of rule-of-thumb by scientific methods, the adventurous prospector of the old days with his pan and rocker, his “Long Tom” and primitive sluices, had begun to give way to the professional miner, the servant of a company, working for a daily wage. Deep mining for hard134 The West of Yesterday
quartz ores largely took the place of surface workings or “placer deposits” as they are termed. It may be explained that in the placer deposit the gold bearing veins have come to the surface of the ground, and as the rock wears away faster than the metal the gold is gradually left exposed, mixed with sand or gravel. Placer mining consisted in separating this gold from the other matter by washing with water, and this of course was the only form available to the old time prospector and fortune hunter with his crude methods and appliances. California and Alaska have been the great centers for placer deposits in the United States, and as recently as 1916 upwards of $8,000,000 were mined in that year from such sources in California, as against upwards of $12,000,000 from the deep mines. Even to-day there is still a little of the old time prospecting for and working of placer deposits, but most of the surface workings are now taken care of by steam dredges.
The average mining camp or town in the West of Yesterday did not, in its general outward appearance, differ greatly from the “cow town,” excepting perhaps that it might be of an even more temporary or primitive description. There were the same rudeMining Camp and Miner 135 shacks and buildings, the same stores, the same saloons, hotels, boarding houses, and gambling dens. The population in the mining town might not be so varied as in the cow town, and of course the miner type is quite distinctive. They are often large men, but even if not tall are generally splendid physical specimens. Their working attire consists of a flannel shirt, overalls, and either long rubber boots or heavy shoes. The miner in addition is characterized by a peculiar kind of heavy gait, possibly acquired as the result of his particular form of physical labor. Dressed in his best, however, he is quite as presentable as anyone.
Between the miner and the cowboy there was not, and is not now, any particular animosity further than that each looks down on the other and his occupation. Each feels that his own is the more useful and manly calling. And it may be explained that those particular parts of the country which the miner refers to contemptuously as “cow counties” are really quite unfit for anything else but grazing, lack of irrigating facilities rendering them useless for ordinary agricultural purposes. So perhaps reasonably enough136
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the miner has concluded that they are amongst the waste places of the earth.
The miner is not without his share of western humor, which, although perhaps lacking the laconic quality of that of the cowboy, which is bred of the great silences of the plains, is nevertheless droll enough on occasion even although rough at times. In some of the camps in the vicinity of snow-capped mountains they will say of a bald-headed man that “he has his head above the timber line.” A hungry man without money is spoken of as one with whom “the grass is short,” while of one who is continually in hard luck they say he is “running in porphyry”—porphyry being a certain kind of hard rock very troublesome to mine.
Possibly no better example of the rough humor of the western miner or of his manner of expressing himself could be found than in the poem written by Dr. Henry Degroot and published in the “Golden City” many years ago, a few verses of which are given on the next page. It describes the meeting of two veteran prospectors after a long separation :Mining Camp and Miner
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“Hello!” “Hel-lo!” “Why Jim!” “Why Dan!” “Good Lord! I want to know!”
“Well, well! old fell, give us your han’—
But Jim, how does it go?”
“Oh sometimes gay and sometimes rough— And how’s it go with you?”
“Well, times is just a little tough
Up here in Idaho.”
“But where ye been, Jim, ever since
We left the Stanislow;
And pulled up stakes down there at Dent’s— Now eighteen years ago?”
“Started from Alpha on our trip,
And passed up the Divide,
Through Tangle-Leg and Let-Her-Rip, Red Dog and Whiskey Slide.
Then after leaving thar we went
Down by the Tail-Holt-Mill,
’Crost Greenhorn Mountain to Snow Tent, And up to Gouge-Eye Hill.
From Gouge-Eye down to Esperance,
Slap Jack and Oro Fin;
Through Deadwood over to Last Chance, Root Hog and Lost Ravine.
From Petticoat to Shirt-Tail Flat,
And on by Murderer’s Bar;
’Crost Bloody Run and through Wild Cat To Poker and Lone Star.138
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From Angel’s Camp down by Rawhide, We took a run one night;
Through Chinese Roost and Satan’s Pride Across to Hell’s Delight.
Then came along to Poverty,
Dead Broke and Bottle Ridge,
By Hangtown, Poor Man, and Lone Tree,
Garrote and Smash-Up Bridge.”
“Well, Jim, you must uv seen a heap,
I’d like to make the rounds
As you have done, and take a peep
Through the old stamping grounds.”
“Y-a-s, but I tell you what it is,
The times they ain’t no more
In Californy as they was
Way back in ’54.” '
Like the cowboy, the monotony and loneliness of his existence made the miner an inveterate gambler, and in the gambling hells which abounded in the mining towns and even in the camps there was never any lack of reckless souls to be found wagering their gold dust, and getting rid, in the course of an evening’s play (or even at a throw of the dice) of the fruit of several days of arduous toil. And when trouble arose, as it frequentlyMining Camp and Miner
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did, it would as likely as not be in connection with these games.
The fare of the miner was very much on a par with that of the cowboy, and consisted mainly of pork, beans, potatoes, canned goods, such bread or “flapjacks” as he cared to bake, molasses, tea and coffee. Flapjacks or griddle cakes are made in the frying pan with a batter of flour and water, and these were the staff of life in many cases. The miners grew expert at tossing or flapping them over in the pan, a toss of two or three feet in the air being quite common. Some even claimed to be able to toss them up the chimney and then run round on the outside of the cabin and catch them in the pan! In the outlying camps fresh vegetables were nearly always scarce. Occasionally some hunter would come in from the hills or plains with venison which he would peddle around the camp very profitably to himself.
The wages of the miner vary according to the district and the class of mine, but in the past twenty years they have improved considerably along with the amelioration of his general working conditions, and concurrently140
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with the putting of the industry on a more business-like basis. In the West of Yesterday $3.50 per day was reckoned a good average rate of pay, but today the miner gets around $4.25 per day for the same class of work, and the “mucker,” the man who does the rough shoveling, $3.75 per day. In the days of the forty-niners, when every man went prospecting for himself, $8 per day had to be paid for hired men who were hard to get even at that. At the present time there is a very large percentage of Italians, Austrians, and Slavs to be found in the mines, and the native born American is gradually abandoning the occupation and seeking less laborious work.
At the end of last century the gold mined in outlying towns and camps was taken to the nearest rail point by stage coach, express wagon, or other vehicle, or even by mounted messenger. These naturally were the object of much attention from highwaymen, or “roadagents” as they were called, who were still plentiful enough at that time. Many thrilling stories are told of the doings of these gentry, and of the bravery of stage coach drivers and messengers. Sooner or later, however,Mining Camp and Miner 141 the road-agent or hold-up man would meet his inevitable fate, and the long arm of the law would reach him in some shape or form. Occasionally a character of a slightly more picturesque description than usual would make his appearance, and rouse more than an ordinary share of interest. One such was Dan Prout, whose story as told by Tom Mix will be found following.CHAPTER IX
Dan Prout's Last Hold-Up
A THING that can’t be too strongly emphasized in connection with crooks,” said Tom, “is that their crooked work doesn’t pay. Sooner or later the crook meets his Waterloo. I never knew it to fail. Read the history of any notorious road-agent, or burglar, or gunman, and see how many of them escape the long arm of the law or of fate. Or take the ‘bad’ man who is always pulling guns—he gets it too, in the end. I have seen it happen over and over again. Plot and counter-plot, and all kinds of tricks for getting advantage. Carrying guns in concealed places in addition to those in the belt —up in the breast of the shirt, for example, so you can pretend you are lighting a cigarette or something, and then whip out the gun suddenly and get ‘the draw’ on the other fellow! I have seen so many of these things done. But so long as the motive was wrong, whether private revenge, or blood lust, or

Dan Prout’s Last Hold-Up 143
vainglory, you could bank that the end would be the same in the long run.
“The sad thing about it is that if a man is not careful, the wrong frame of mind is apt to become chronic, like any other habit. Nearly all villains begin by thinking they have a good reason for the things they do. And so they go on from bad to worse. Most / of the desperadoes I came across in the days when I was a sheriff and a bronco buster were good fellows who justified themselves in their own minds. They had got hold of a wrong point of view—that was all. I never saw one yet that wasn’t convinced that he was right in his course of action.
“Sometimes a man has quite a genuine grievance against society. This is liable to happen at any time, and it actually did happen every now and then in the West of Yesterday, when sheriffs and officers of the law were not always what they might have been. They were generally the best that could be got under the circumstances. The case of this fellow Prout was something like that. He got a raw deal from a man in a position of authority, private troubles came on the top of that, and he tried to revenge himself on Society, a thing no man can do and get away144
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with. For as you will see, an officer of the law got him in the end.
“People thought his real name was Kingsley, but he always called himself Dan Prout when he said nice things to his victims while his men took their money and valuables, and he used to sign this name on strange letters that would be found nailed to the doors of certain houses in any one of a number of Colorado townships within the given radius in which Prout worked, the owners of which houses were supposed to be getting rich. Polite notes they were, advising these people ‘not to overdo the thing,’ or stating that ‘it might be necessary to relieve them of some of the filthy lucre that was playing such havoc with their souls,’ or stuff like that. The man seemed to think he was the agent of Destiny or something. Sometimes the notes came through the mail. But however delivered, the threats they contained were usually carried out sooner or later, either by means of ordinary (or extraordinary) hold-ups, by abduction and ransom, or by other audacious schemes. Prout seemed to be a master hand at disguises, and was understood to go in and out of these townships and all over the country pretty much as he pleased. No two ac-Dan Prout’s Last Hold-Up 145 counts of him were ever quite alike, although he never covered his face. His men, however, wore flesh-colored masks.
“All kinds of posses had gone after him, but they hadn’t done much except get themselves covered with ridicule or disgrace. He had a hiding place somewhere in Big Boulder Canyon, an arid and God-forsaken spot in the hills some distance away, but it had never been found possible to track him to his lair, although bloodhounds were used on the job more than once. Prout once bound and gagged a member of a posse, changed clothing with him, and came back to town himself with the main body, eventually getting access to the court house and making off with several sacks of gold dust. His most powerful weapons were ‘friends in the know.’ If there was a man anywhere that could be bribed, Prout bribed him.
“Whether or not Prout actually was the man Kingsley was of course only a guess. Kingsley was a quiet, dark-haired, good-looking fellow who had come out West with his wife and little daughter from somewhere in Iowa perhaps ten years further back, with some idea of farming. He was a trustful sort of a guy evidently and had somehow or146
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other gotten into the hands of Oily Mason, a real estate pal of the sheriff’s and had been persuaded to sign some kind of deed that made over to him a part of a river bed and not the land alongside of it, as he had thought. In this way he lost his money, and the law, as administered locally, could do nothing for him. He spent a good deal of time trying to get the thing straightened out, but finally quit when he saw it was no use and went off up country where he got a job in a lumber camp. Shortly after this his wife and child were carried off in an epidemic of smallpox that broke out in the camp, and soon after that Kingsley disappeared. But that was the time that Prout first began to be heard of, and among his first victims were Tom Burke, the sheriff, and Oily Mason, the former being shot through the head in a posse fight and the latter waylaid and killed on his way home from a neighboring town.
“But it’s as like as not that Prout actually was Kingsley and that he thought he was justified in his deeds at least as far as the killing of these two men was concerned. Quite likely he figured that if the land sale had been a genuine one and if he had not been ‘legally swindled’ he wouldn’t have had to
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147
go to the lumber camp and his wife and child would have escaped the smallpox. That is the way the minds of these men work. And they get bitter in their hearts against the law that so often fails to uphold them in their troubles, but which always seem to hold them strictly accountable when they try to even up the score themselves. There were lots of men in the district harboring grievances of this kind (just as there are today), and Prout could have had his pick of a score of desperate characters as his followers. But he was wise enough to limit the number of these to four.
“And so for something like five years these men had been the scourge of the countryside, and four lives were already laid to their charge. A large reward was offered for Prout dead or alive, but so far this had not produced any result. The rank and file of the people round about did not worry a great deal about the matter, for there was something about Prout’s way of working that rather tickled them. He generally took money from those who could well afford to lose it, and he never robbed the poor. He seemed to have a wonderful knowledge about the finances of different people, and of who was148 The West of Yesterday
and who was not getting rich. Sometimes money stolen in a raid or a hold-up would be mysteriously returned. There was never any rough or even unmannerly treatment of women either by Prout himself or any of his gang. They did not rustle cattle, and they only stole horses when they actually needed them.
“However the law didn’t take any stock of Prout’s ‘good points.’ He had killed men and robbed private citizens and that was enough. Several determined efforts were made at different times to round him up, and twice the Big Boulder Canyon was encircled and searched from end to end—but without result. For in addition to being a lonely and inaccessible place in itself, the canyon was honeycombed with caves amongst which half-a-dozen men who knew the ground thoroughly could have played hide-and-seek with an army for weeks. It was on these occasions that the third and fourth men were shot, and it was clear enough that Prout and his followers did not mean to be taken alive. And in the sheriffs’ offices it was sworn they would be taken dead.
“Prout’s methods were uncommon. For weeks or even months at a stretch nothingDan Prout’s Last Hold-Up 149
would be heard either of himself or his followers, and then would come several daring robberies in quick succession at widely scattered points. Frequently an alarm would come that would send the sheriff and his men to a distant place, and in their absence that particular town would be raided and the saloons cleaned up. Then there would be a long silence, and then another outbreak in a different section of the country. On one occasion a sheriff’s posse was trapped and relieved of its possessions by Prout’s gang playing the old Indian trick of burying themselves in the sand by the roadside and covering even their faces. But as a rule the mail pouches and treasure chests of the stage coaches were the chief objects of regard.
“And yet, as so often happens in cases of this kind, the end of Prout himself and the break-up of his gang, came about simply enough as the result of an attack on the ‘Flying Mountaineer,’ the coach that ran twice a week between two points in Colorado. When this coach left a certain township about midway on its journey one fine day early in June nearly a score of years ago, its passengers and officials were not quite prepared for all that was to happen before they reached their des150
The West of Yesterday
tination, even making due allowance for all the strange things that did happen in the West in those days. The coach was light both as to passengers and valuables, and little apprehension was felt. Prout knew too much to attack a light coach. In any case most of the gold dust was generally carried in the opposite direction, and attacks were not so frequent on this journey as on the return. In addition to the heavily armed driver and guard (or ‘messenger’) there were two deputy sheriffs on their way home from a round-up of cattle rustlers over the border. One of these was a middle-aged man named Norton, a lean, sort of sour-looking fellow; the other was a big, husky, blue-eyed boy just turned twenty and not long sworn in. His name was Dick Webster.
“The coach was of the regular ‘Concord’ pattern used in those days, and was something like the one I use in my pictures, which is a real coach that has actually seen service. The body sloped up at the ends something like a cigar shape, and there was a big ‘boot’ in the rear in which baggage was stowed. It was drawn by four horses. The wheels were large, and there was a rail round the roof on which extra baggage (and sometimes Chi-	
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151
nese) were carried. Inside there was room for about six or eight passengers.
“On this particular day there were only three inside passengers, two male and one female, in addition to the escort of four already mentioned, that is, the driver and guard and the two deputy sheriffs. Of these passengers one was a stout, white-haired elderly man, sort of comfortable looking, and rather short of breath. He was a doctor, and his name was Suthers. The second man was a tall, thin, stooping sort of person, with restless eyes and nervous manner. What little hair he had was carefully distributed over the top of his head. He was a lawyer, Murga-troyd by name, and was journeying to a distant township in connection with some property dispute. The lady of the party was a pale faced girl of perhaps eighteen. She was a ‘school marm’ and was on her way to take up new duties. Her name was Manson.
“The coach left the town of Almaville about noon and proceeded briskly for a time —a thing it generally did when starting out. The usual stage coach topics were discussed over again, the dust and the heat and the discomfort of such traveling. After a bit, conversation died down. The old doctor fellow152	’ The West of Yesterday
took his hat off and covered his head with a white handkerchief, getting ready for the nap he usually took in the afternoons when he got the chance. The lawyer was anxious and uneasy and looked out of the window by fits and starts. The young lady, who had left her friends in a distant part of the state, felt lonely and looked it. Outside, the driver and one of the deputies told yarns to one another that raised bursts of loud laughter at intervals, while the horses toiled up the long ascents and rattled down the inclines. When the trouble came it came suddenly, as trouble usually does.
“It was getting on in the afternoon, when the coach had reached a point about fifteen miles from its destination. The horses had just reached the top of a long and tiresome pull of about a mile, where the road crept up to the summit of a rocky incline, and then bending sharply to the left passed between two high banks covered with sage brush, afterwards dropping away on the long slope to the open country below. The coach had almost reached the top of the incline, and the guard and the younger of the deputies had abandoned their seats to relieve the horses, and were plodding along through the
zDan Prout’s Last Hold-Up 153 thick dust, one on each side of the vehicle. Dr. Suthers had aroused himself, and was pointing out some features of the landscape to his fellow travelers, and enlarging at the same time on the evils of alkali dust. The equipage reached the cut between the banks and swung round the bend, coming to an abrupt halt a moment later. In the coarse brush at the roadside the body of a man was lying motionless, his horse, from which he had evidently fallen, standing quietly beside him. The sheriffs held their rifles in readiness, and looked around on every side, while the guard drew a revolver and the driver put his whip in its socket and gave both hands to the reins, the horses showing signs of becoming restive at the unusual sight.
“ ‘Some of Prout’s work, I suppose,’ said Webster, approaching the prostrate figure. It was that of a man of perhaps thirty-five years of age, tall and slender in build although muscular and well proportioned. He was lying on his back, his face partly covered by his sombrero. The mouth, which was visible, was firm and well shaped. His dress, although dusty and disordered, seemed to be rich, and his belt and pistol holsters were heavily studded with silver. The butts of his154 The West of Yesterday
revolvers, which could be seen peeping out, were lavishly ornamented with mother-of-pearl, and a beautiful scarf of shot silk was about his neck. His top boots and his silver spurs seemed to be of the same high-class order, and there was a gold ring on one of the fingers of his left hand. No marks of violence could be discerned about the body, although the brush round about was crushed and trampled, evidently as the result of a struggle of some kind. Webster stooped down and removed the sombrero, revealing a pale and handsome face with a broad, strongly-marked forehead, jet black eyebrows, and a slightly aquiline nose. The man’s hair was also jet black. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be unconscious.
“Dr. Suthers and Miss Manson got out of the coach in some alarm, and the doctor, crossing over, proceeded to examine the recumbent figure with deft fingers. ‘Don’t seem to be any broken bones,’ he announced presently. ‘Let’s hope he is not seriously hurt.’ At that instant the man opened a pair of dark eyes and regarded the group languidly. Together Dr. Suthers and Webster raised him to a sitting posture—and then started in dismay as a stentorian voice high up on the bank	
155

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rang out: ‘Drop your guns and put up your hands, you sheriffs—quick! And you, guard, sling out the mail bags. Sharp now! No tricks! We have you covered from both sides of the road!’ A tall, masked man was standing on the edge of the far away bank, a revolver in each hand.
“Now there,” said Tom with a chuckle, “you have all the elements of a very pretty movie romance. If we’d been making a picture of that we’d have had Prout fall in love with the girl, or she with him, or both, and he’d have carried her off to marry her, or surrendered on the spot and been pardoned, but in any event she would have reformed him and he’d possibly have wound up by becoming an eminent public character. We’d have had to make something heroic of him for story purposes. But what I want to bring out is that in real life it never ends that way when a man turns against the law. You’ve only to read the life of Jesse James or any of them to see the truth of this. They never get away with it.
“It was the same thing in the case of Prout. He got up off the ground, drew his guns, and was walking over to where the mail bags were lying, when there was a sudden shotThe West of Yesterday
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from somewhere close at hand. It was fired by the lawyer Murgatroyd who had remained inside the coach, and it was a good or a lucky shot for it got the man up on the bank right through the head. This got Prout off his guard for a moment, and that moment was enough for the sheriff on the box to pull a gun and let go a couple of shots at him. They both took effect, one of them killing him instantly. And that was the end of Dan Prout. The whole thing was over in less than half a minute. The talk about men on both sides of the road was just bluff, for there was nobody else there. The rest of the gang were taken later. That kind of thing is always just a question of time. The end is always the same.”
CHAPTER X
And Now—The Movies
O HERE I am,” said Tom with a twinkle in his eye, “ending my checkered career in the picture business. Did I ever dream of such a wind-up? No, not in my early days, when I had most of my dreams. I was to be a great rancher. Of course, incidentally, I am a rancher today— though perhaps not a great one. My ideas about great ranchers have toned down slightly since the days of those dreams.
“How do the two compare for danger— cowpunching and motion picture making? In some ways the movies put it all over the cowpunching trade for dangers and hardships. Yes, indeed, I’ll bet I have broken two bones at this game for every one I broke at the other—sheriffing and all the rest thrown in. I have one or two ribs knitting up right now. Got mixed up with some horses. . . . I didn’t seem to have so many patches to carry around in the old days. But now insurance companies are balking. They divide158
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me up between them. I was some disappointed when they put a lower value on my head than on my legs.
“Have the movies a corrupting or a demoralizing effect on my private life? Not that I am conscious of. I have to be home by nine o’clock every night, and I don’t have much time to get either corrupted or demoralized. You need a steady nerve and a clear head for my end of the game. But in any case the rules of my home are too strict. I have to be in by nine. When I require to be later I get a permit. I don’t know how other fellows manage. I might find out.
“But they are not all angels and innocents that live in Hollywood? I don’t suppose so. I don’t believe there are many angels or innocents living anywhere. Motion picture people seem to me to be very ordinary human beings. The great majority of them appear to live and move and have their being in quite everyday and even commonplace ways. Many of them are family men and women. I’ve got a helluva good little cowgirl daughter myself. . . .
“That’s not the point—I must be aware that there is much wrongdoing in Hollywood? Don’t be too stern with me. I see things inDISCUSSING THE MATTER160
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the papers occasionally. But say now, what do you suppose would happen if the members of any other trade or profession were all bunched together in one district? The stockbrokers, or the doctors, or the lawyers (fancy a colony of lawyers!), or the carpenters, or the plumbers? Wouldn’t you expect to see the same thing as you see in Hollywood?— the few black sheep bringing disgrace on the whole colony? It’s the significance of segregation that hurts us.
“What will ultimately happen to the bad ones? The same that happened to them in the West of Yesterday. They will kill themselves off in course of time. Fate will overtake them, as it overtakes them in every walk of life.
“You see movie people have to pay a certain penalty for being constantly in the public eye. Everybody knows us. Publicity is a thing from which many of us would escape gladly were it just possible. But it is not possible. It is part and parcel of our business. Our comings and goings, our sayings and doings, our hopes and fears and aspirations are all chronicled and heralded. And as for our love affairs—why the public frequently know more about them than we do ourselves. ItAnd Now—the Movies
161
is the inevitable price that has to be paid for keeping in the public eye.
“If a motion picture actress has to appear as a witness in court in the most trifling kind of case, the whole thing immediately takes on an appearance of deep and dark mystery. It is at once assumed that there is far more in the case than appears on the surface. If she wears her best clothes, she has some dubious and sinister purpose. If she doesn’t wear them she is trying to escape observation and has something to conceal.
“That is what happens when she is simply a witness. But if by any chance she should be the principal in a case the thing becomes of enormous significance. She has designs on the whole moral structure. She ogles the judge, languishes at the jurymen, upsets counsel, and even spreads her nets for a shocked but curious general public, signifying discreet disapproval by numerical strength.
“And the male actors? It’s much the same with them. We seem to be utterly unable to keep our bath robes and pajamas out of the newspapers, or our negligee preferences to ourselves. I don’t know how it is—and I certainly haven’t time to study the problem. But I do know that I’m proud to belong to162
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the profession, and I’m mighty glad that I was given an opportunity to enter it. From small and crude beginnings it has grown to be one of the greatest industries in the country, and even yet it’s only in its infancy. Its value can be either educational, instructive, entertaining or cultural, and however clumsily and imperfectly these functions are meantime fulfilled we are marching steadily on towards better things, better and more unselfish efforts, nobler purposes, loftier and more elevating themes and motives. And not all the scandal and the foolishness and the wrongdoing and the false ideals either among ourselves or in the whole world will stop us or drag us down.”