In the summer this ranch is covered with green, and little yellow and pink flowers carpet the range for miles. It is at its best then, and is as varied and beautiful in its changes as the ocean.
The ranches that stretch along and away from the Rio Grande River are very different from this; they are owned by Mexicans, and every one on the ranch is a Mexican; the country is desolate here, and dead and dying cattle are everywhere.
No ranch-owner, whether he has fifty thousand or five hundred head of cattle, will ever attempt to help one that may be ailing or dying. This seems to one who has been taught the value of “three acres and a cow” the height of extravagance, and to show lack of feeling. But they will all tell you it is useless to try to save a starving or a sick animal, and also that it is not worth the trouble, there are so many more. In one place I saw where a horse had fallen on the trail, and the first man who passed had driven around it, and the next, and the next, until a new trail was made, and at the time I passed over this new trail, I could see the old one showing through the ribs of the horse’s skeleton. In the East, I think, they would have at least pulled the horse out of the road.
But a live horse or steer is just as valuable in Texas as in the East—even more so.
The conductor on the road from Corpus Christi sprang from his chair in the baggage car one day, and shouted to the engineer that he must be careful, for we were on Major Fenton’s range, and must look out for the major’s prize bull; and the train continued at half speed accordingly until the conductor espied the distinguished animal well to the left, and shouted: “All right, Bill! We’ve passed him, let her out.”
The Randado ranch is typical of the largest of the Mexican ranches which lie within the five hundred miles along the Rio Grande. It embraces eighty thousand acres, with twenty-five thousand head of cattle, and it has its store, its little mission, its tank, twenty or more adobe houses with thatched roofs, and its little graveyard. There is a post-office here, and a school, where very pretty little Mexicans recited proudly in English words of four letters. Around them lie the cactus and dense chaparral cut up with dusky trails, and the mail comes but twice a week. But every Saturday the vaqueros come in from the range, and there is dancing on the bare clay floor of one of the huts, and the school-master postmaster sings to them every evening on his guitar, and once a month the priest comes on horseback to celebrate mass in the adobe mission.
Around San Antonio are many ranches. These are more like large farms, and there are high trees and hills and a wonderful variety of flowers. There are also antelope and wild fowl for those who love to hunt, and the scalp of a coyote brings fifty cents to those who care for money; for the coyotes pull down the young calves. The life on the range is not at all lonely here, for the women on the ranch do not mind riding in twelve miles to a dance in San Antonio, and there are always people coming out from town to remain a day or two. The more successful of these ranches are like English country-houses in their free hospitality and in the constant changing of the guests.
HILLINGDON RANCH
Many of these about San Antonio are owned, in fact, by Englishmen, although a record of the failures of the English colonists of good family and of well-known youths from New York would make a book, and a very sad one. There was a whole colony of English families and unattached younger sons at Boerne, just outside of San Antonio, a few years ago; but they preferred cutting to leg to cutting out cattle, and used the ponies to chase polo balls, and their money soon went, and they followed. Some went to England as prodigal sons, some to driving hacks and dealing faro, and others into the army. A few succeeded, and are still at Boerne, notably a cousin of Thomas Hughes, who founded the ill-fated English colony of Rugby, in Tennessee.