The Indians Had the Day Before Murdered the Stringfield Family

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THE TRAIL DRIVERS OF TEXAS

the Indians had the day before murdered the Stringfield family. The oldest girl was later found by Mexicans, and she is now living in San Antonio. Two little boys, aged four and six years, respectively, were taken away by the Indians and the oldest of the two was found dead by the roadside with his head split open, but the other was never heard from.

The following spring I hired to an outfit to go to Kansas with a herd which we received in the mountains about fifty miles above Uvalde. While we were herding the cattle in the valley Indians would appear on the mountains and bow to us and make signs which we did not understand. I went out one day to hunt for a bunch of our horses and found a bunch of Indians instead. They took after me, but I outran them back to camp. I guess my eyes were out of fix, for it seemed to me that there were about a hundred redskins in the band, but investigation later proved that there were only about fifteen. Ten men of our outfit went back over the ground and found three arrows they had shot at me while in the race. About the last of March we got our herd of 1,500 beeves roadbranded and, starting with them, we soon reached Red River, which we crossed at Red River Station into the Indian Territory. The Territory at that time was unsettled, nothing there except buffalo, Indians and fugitives from other states. These men would steal and rob and lay it on the Indians, so we had to guard our horses every night to prevent them from being stolen. One night a Mexican boy and myself were on guard and the Mexican struck a match to light his cigarette and as he did so somebody shot at us three times in quick succession, and when we returned the fire the boys at camp rushed out to our assistance. The scheme was to scare us away from our horses so they could get them. At Abilene, Kansas, we found a wide open town. Ben Thompson and Hill Coe were running the noted Bull Head saloon, and Wild Bill Hickok was city marshal.

There I met up with John Wesley Hardin, Buffalo Bill Thompson, Manny Clements and Gip Clements, and we went over to the gambling house. It did not take the gamblers there long to relieve me of all the money I possessed. Wild Bill Hickok told me that the best way to beat the game was to let it alone. I took his advice and have been beating the game ever since. Coe was later killed by Wild Bill and Thompson afterward closed out the Bull Head and returned to Austin.

The next year I went up the trail with the same firm, Choate & Bennett. We received the cattle on the Nueces River, with John Henry Choate in charge of the herd. When we reached Red River at Red River Station, we had to swim across. I was riding a 2 x 4 Spanish pony, and before I got across I had to slip off his back and grasp him by the tail to get to the other side. We had a severe storm after we left Red River and a number of our men were shocked by lightning. We drove our herd to Great Bend, Kansas, on the Arkansas River. This is now one of the finest wheat belts in the world.

The next year I went with W. G. Butler to Ogallala. My oldest brother, Andy Moye, was on this trip with us and got into trouble at Ogallala that caused us to leave in somewhat of a hurry.

I went up the trail again the next year, and it seemed that we had more storms than usual. When we reached the Cimarron River in the Territory it was bankful and we had to stay there several days before we could cross. While we were there two tramps came along who said they were going to swim the river. We tried to talk them out of the foolish undertaking, but they plunged in and when half way across they began yelling for us to come and help them out, but we could not get to them and they both drowned.

On Smoky River, in the northwestern part of Kansas, myself and several other cowboys were hunting stampeded beeves one day and found the corpse of a cowboy

who had come to his death in some manner unknown to as. We decided to bury him there, so we dug a hole and rolled him into it, with but little burial ceremony. One of our crowd was a good singer, and sang the old cowboy song that all of the old boys are familiar with, which runs something like this:

"Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie,

Where the coyotes may howl o'er me;

And dig my grave just six by three—

But bury me not on the lone prairie.

"Yes bury me under an evergreen tree,

Where the little birds may sing o'er me;

And dig my grave just six by three—

But bury me not on the lone prairie."

Our hearts were sad when we left that poor unknown boy out there under the sod of that lonely prairie, many miles from a habitation. Some mother's boy who went away, never to return; some husband or father, perhaps, who went out into that wild country and lost his life there.

Nearly all of my old cowboy chums of fifty years ago have passed over the trail to that home beyond the grave. A few are left here, sorefooted and dragging, but still full of life. Among those who are still in the land of the living I will mention one, for whom I have always had the highest regard and esteem, and that is P. B. Butler, who lives at Kenedy, Texas. He was always found honest and square in all of his dealings, true to his friends, and one of the best stockmen in all Southwest Texas. P. B. Butler will leave behind him a good name as a heritage to his posterity, and an example for oncoming generations to follow.

A few more of the old boys are still living near me, Munroe Hinton, Hiram Reynolds and Dick Smith being among them. Tom Edwards passed away just a short

time ago. When I see my old comrades in town, bent with the weight of threescore and ten, I am reminded that my time to quit the walks of men is fast approaching, just a few years more at best, and we will all join the silent majority.

SOME THINGS I SAW LONG AGO

By George Gerdes

Here are my credentials: "I solemnly swear and affirm" that I went the length of the trail—up to Dodge City, Kansas, and from there to Pueblo, Colorado. "I further solemnly swear and affirm" that I will tell "not" all I saw and heard. Who would? It's a long time back—to remember; and if you remember, would you care to tell? If you cared to tell, would you dare to tell? And if you dared to tell you'd be afraid; and if you weren't afraid, you'd be "skeered" as Helmar Jenkins Booth.

My credentials further state that I was born when quite young, in 1863, at a little "jumpingoffintheroad" place called Quihi, Medina County, Texas, on what was then known as the old John Heven place. We moved later to Sturm (meaning "storm") Hill, where I spent most of my childhood days.

Father was a stock raiser, and also took cattle on shares— attending to the handling and care of them on the open range. My sister and I were sent to school in an old school house near by, on the Klappenbach ranch, to be "edjicated."

As children we were warned and taught to be on the lookout for Indians. We were told wild and weird stories of massacres and how Indians would steal children and torture them; and which was not a "fairy story," but a fact. We were on our way home one evening after school when we saw in the distance a band of Indians coming in our direction. It took us but a moment to hide in a

cluster of white brush. The Indians passed uncomfortably close to us on their way to some other place, as the settlement was not molested that night. They confined their raids mostly to stealing of stock, such as horses and mules. However, they did not hesitate in "lifting a scalp" if chance offered. Some time later Indians appeared at night and made a raid on our settlement, taking with them a number of horses, and happened to lose one of their own—a little dun pony. We took up this pony and fed him so that he was soon nice and fat. One evening we took him out to graze near the house, and had gone back some 300 yards when we saw a bunch of redskins leading away our fat little pony, and we lost no time in hiding. We found the cut hobble next morning about ten feet from where we had left the horse, and I guess the Indians had watched us and waited long enough for us to leave and then took the animal. That very night the Indians stole horses all over the settlement. They also visited a place belonging to Nic Haby. He had his horses and mules in a pen and was guarding them, hiding behind a large live oak tree. Early in the night he noticed his horses becoming restless, and directly an Indian appeared above the fence and jumped into the corral among the horses. Nic Haby was a good shot and the Indian found it out. The following morning a neighbor of Haby's came over to tell Haby his trouble with Indians and the loss of horses he had sustained, when he espied the dead Indian. He drew his dirk and plunged it into the redskin's body, exclaiming: "That is the sonofagun; he stole my horses." They put a rope around the Indian's head and dragged him up on the mountain, turning him over to the mercies of the buzzards and hogs. They accorded him the same burial that the redskins gave their white victims. For a long time thereafter nobody would eat pork.

After I was large, or old enough to work out, I started freighting, my first trip being with a twohorse wagon

from San Antonio to Fort Clark. There were generally from six to ten wagons making the trip at the same time, partly for protection and also for assistance which in the rainy season was quite imperative. After a trip or two I bought a threeandahalfinch Studebaker wagon and hitched up six animals. We freighted to Del Rio, to Eagle Pass and to Fort Clark from San Antonio, Texas. We would take out merchandise and bring back raw material—wool and hides, and sometimes a load of empty beer bottles, or "dead soldiers" as we called them. We had some experiences with our work teams stampeding at night, and sometimes we would catch up with them next day ten or twelve miles away, homeward bound. In those days there were no graded roads; a wagon track, or a number of them, would be called a road if it had the name of its destination tacked to it. Sometimes a road would be 100 feet wide or wider, according to where the ground was most solid and suitable for travel. When the rainy spell set in the roads were almost impassable. Sometimes we hitched as many as sixteen animals to a wagon to pull it out of the mud, and would move it 100 feet or so, then hook on to the next one, until we had them all out of the mud. I have seen the time that we were camped for weeks on this side of the Frio River on account of high water and impassable roads. We had an old mule team that we used in swimming the river when going to Uvalde for bacon and meal. We had plenty of meat, such as rabbits, venison and also fish. In 1881, with the coming of the Southern Pacific Railroad our trade went "blooe." I became foreman of the Judge Noonan ranch southwest of Castroville, Texas, and worked there until I went up the trail in 1884.

Ed Kaufman and Louis Schorp, both of them alive to this day, gathered a herd of some 450 head of horses in Medina County, Texas. With them were J. M. Saathoff, Ehme Saathoff, a cook by the name of Ganahl Brown, and myself. We started from Castroville and drove by

way of Bandera, Kerrville and over the "old trail," crossing the Red River at the old Doan Store. We herded the horses the first few nights and later let them graze or rest during the night to themselves. We had a very wet trip, it raining almost every day while we were on the way. Feed for the horses was plentiful and our crew fared on wild game, cornbread and black coffee. We came across our first Indians when we arrived in the Indian Territory. They were very friendly and would eat tobacco and sugar "out of your hand." These articles were always on their mind and after their preliminary "How" they would never fail to ask for them. When the meals we were cooking were ready there would always be some "selfinvited" Indian guest or guests to fall in and help themselves and eat to their heart's content. One day an old buck rode up to me in the usual way and asked for "terback." I handed him a plug and after he gave two or three of his "compadres" each a chew he took one himself and stuck the balance in his pocket. I argued and asked him to give me back my plug, but he said: "Pony boss, he be good," and rode off.

It was customary to pay a duty on horses crossing the reservation, and our boss paid the Indians in horses, but they also stole some twentyfive head from us before we got away from them. We did not have very much trouble with the horses, and our trip took up something like four months from Castroville, Texas, to Dodge City, Kansas. We camped with our herd about six miles south of Dodge City, on Mulberry Creek. The first thing we did when we arrived there was to go to town, get a shave and haircut, and tighten our belts by a few good strong drinks. Here I also met George W. Saunders—the same George who is now the worthy president of the "Old Trail Drivers' Association."

While here our boss, Ed Kaufman, got summons that some important business demanded his immediate return to Medina County. He left the herd in our charge until

such a time when he should return, in about 30 days. After he got back to the herd he sold it to Mr. Wilson, of Pueblo, Colorado, where he had to deliver the horses for him.

After delivery of the horses at Pueblo, Colo., I hired to Wilson, and worked for a couple of months, when I was sent back to Dodge City to receive and take charge of a herd of 3,500 head of twoyearold stocker steers for Wilson. I started the herd and the cattle would stampede every blooming night. Often in the morning we had to help from thirty to forty of the poorer steers on their feet by a tailhold and lift. This was repeated for some eight or ten days, and we could only make from five to six miles per day. We tired of herding the cattle at night, so would scatter the herd over a large area of ground to give them more elbow room. This worked like a charm, for as long as the cattle were not in close formation they would not get excited so easily—and we had no more runs.