From the peculiar figure which I saw on his flank as he lay in the street, I could trace him back through two thousand miles of wanderings, down to the ranche of Col. Mifflin Kennedy, where he was born.
There are three or four larger ranches in Texas, but Kennedy’s is a model in its way, and a brief description of it will give an idea of the manner in which stock-growing is carried on here. Kennedy’s ranche is a peninsula, comprising more than one hundred thousand acres of land, projecting into the gulf between the Neuces and Rio Grande rivers. On three sides of this tract are the waters of the gulf, so that all the owner had to do was to build a fence on the land side, and his farm was enclosed. But this was not so easy a task as one might think, for this fence of stout planks is thirty-one miles long. At intervals of three miles along the fence are little villages, groups of houses for the herders, stables for their horses, and pens for the stock. Within the enclosure roam about forty thousand cattle, ranging in size from young calves to three-year-olds, and perhaps as many more horses, sheep and goats.
I should guess that our steer began his first experience with life at Kennedy’s, on an early spring day. A spring day in March, the very thought of which makes you shiver, is in Texas a season of bud and blossom and singing birds. The new grass is thrusting its bright green blades up through the brown and faded tufts of last year’s dead verdure, the trees are unfolding their leaves and the broad prairies are white and blue and purple by turns, with the early wild flowers which grow in beds miles in extent.
“The branding process.”
The little calf has enjoyed a happy existence of a few days amid scenes like this, when his first sorrow comes—an experience much like that of the baby with vaccination. This is the branding process which he must undergo, a hot iron being placed against his flank, which burns off the hair, and imprints upon the tender hide a mark—a sort of monogram—which he never outgrows—and which serves to distinguish him forever from the cattle of other ranches. In Texas every stock-grower has his own peculiar brand, which is registered with the proper official, and no person is permitted to use that mark besides himself. By this means cattle that wander away or are stolen can be singled out wherever found, as you see I recognized our wanderer in New York.
After the branding the calf is turned loose to make his living on the plains, and for two or three years he leads a life of absolute freedom. He rapidly grows tall, gaunt, uncouth and belligerent, and by the time he is a full-fledged steer, what with his immensely long horns, shaggy hair, and wild-rolling eyes, he is a fierce-looking fellow. I have a pair of horns taken from a steer in Western Texas, which measure more than five feet across from tip to tip, and this is not a remarkably large measurement.
When our steer is not more than three years old, he enters upon another stage of his existence, which for him ends ingloriously, in a few months, in a Northern slaughter-house. Some spring day, such as I have described, the cattle-buyer appears, and the steer changes owners.
The collecting and assorting of the herds for the drive Northward, on the fenced ranches in the settled portions of the State, are easily accomplished; but in the grazing regions further west, where the cattle roam without limit, this work is both difficult and perilous. The cattle in these remote regions are mostly bought by a class of bold, daring men, of long experience on the frontier, known as “out-riders,” who buy and collect the cattle from the stock-raiser, and sell them to the speculators from the north.
The outrider fills his saddle-bags, and most likely a belt which he wears around his waist, with gold coin to the amount of tens of thousands of dollars, for in the section of country he visits there are no banks; and, taking a few trusty companions, all well mounted and armed, sets out on his long journey, beset by constant danger from lurking Indians and white outlaws who infest this wild country.