By Edward Beecher Bronson
EARLY in July, 1882, I made my first beef shipment of that season, from Ogallala to Chicago. I sent Concho Curly ahead in charge of the first train-load, and myself followed with the second. While to me uneventful, for Curly the trip was big with interest.
Bred and reared in Menard County, on a little tributary of the Concho River that long stood the outermost line of settlement in central west Texas, Curly was about as raw a product as the wildest mustang ranging his native hills. Seldom far off his home range before the preceding year's trail drive, never in a larger city than the then small town of Fort Worth, for Curly Chicago was nothing short of a wilderness of wonders. His two days' stay there left him awed and puzzled.
It was the second morning of our return journey before I could get much out of him. Before that he had sat silent, in a brown study, answering only in monosyllables anything I said to him.
At length, however, another friendly inquiry developed what he was worrying about.
"Come, come, Curly!" I said, "tell us what you saw. Had a good time, didn't you?"
"Wall, I should remark. Them short-horns is junin' round so thick back thar a stray long-horn hain't no sorta show to git to know straight up from sideways 'fore he gits plumb lost in them deep cañons whar all th' sign is tramped out an' thar's no trees to blaze for back-tracking yourself.
"What they-all gits to live on is the mysteriousest mystery to me; don't raise or grow nothin'; got no grass, or cows to graze on her ef they had her. 'Course some of them's got spondulix their daddies left them, an' can buy; th' rest—wall, mebbe so th' rest is jest nachally cannibiles, an' eats up each other."
And how nearly Curly was right about the "cannibiles"—at least, metaphorically—he doubtless never learned.
"But, Curly," I asked, "didn't you have any fun? Must have hit up the theaters a few, didn't you, eh!"