“Look at ’em!” he exclaimed, waving a hand. “If that ain’t a perty sight I don’t know what is!”
“Great glory!” exclaimed the Abilene man. “I didn’t know there were that many cattle in the world! Sir, my fortune is made! Where’d you get them all?”
“In Texas we don’t ast no man that. I told you we done raise them cows by hand, every one of them.”
The Abilene man gave a deep sigh.
“You don’t know what that means!” said he. “The first herd up from Texas!” He babbled, speaking of revolutions, epochs, swift changes.
One by one he met the wild crew of the Del Sol men, who wore a garb and spoke a language unfamiliar to himself. Praying for trail herds from the South, the Northern men never really visualized the new personnel which was pushing north from the lower range. Indeed at that time of the American civilization there had been but little actual interchange of population between the North and the South. The natural expansion of the republic had been westward. As to the old cruel line of Mason and Dixon, it never fully was broken down by the Civil war. But here was the first break—the penetration of a peaceful, natural commerce, here on the Western plains. Through that opening, in the years immediately to come, flowed values greater than those of barter and trade in horned kine. A manly understanding passed back and forth, and out of that a tacit union, a concord in all young strong impulses. That union of North and South built the West overnight. The world has never seen a better country.
That empire gave us our first and only true American tradition—the tradition of the West. Great as that American tradition is, grotesque as we have rendered it, far as we have carried from dignity and truth the tradition of the West, “the Range” still is a word to conjure with to-day, and will be to-morrow. Here, then, was the very beginning of that great tradition. It was no more than a generation ago.
“My Lord!” repeated the Northern man. “Just look at them! I guess that’s all the cattle in the world.”
“No, I don’t reckon so,” replied Nabours. “We got sever’l left down in Texas. Come along; you must meet the owner of them all.”
They approached Taisie Lockhart’s camp where the giant carts—things of wonder to the stockyards man—stood gaunt and grim in the twilight. Taisie was superintending the preparation of the evening meal, her women busy at the fire. At first the Northern man took her to be one of the young riders of the herd. She stood straight and free of self-consciousness as any of the men; as brown of face and hand, much like them in apparel. She wore the universal checked trousers, stuffed into her boots. But the boots apparently had been made by loving hands, so neat were they, so sewed with countless little seams. And at their tops, in red, was the Lone Star of Texas.