A cowboy detective

Bill Blank Cattle-stealing Case—Christmas Dinner and a Dance on the L X Cattle Ranch in Texas—Left Afoot on a New Mexico Desert Without Water.

My next operation out of the city was of a “Frenzied Finance” order, wherein a man whom we will call Bill Blank, a cattleman whom I had known by reputation all my life, had swindled Kansas City money brokers out of large sums of money through shady transactions.

This William Blank had come from a noted family of Texas cattle raisers, and in a cattle deal Bill was “foxy” and could out-fox a fox. It was also said that he had nine lives like a cat. During the ’80s, in New Mexico, Curly Bill’s outlaw gang shot him seven times through the body and left him out on the desert for dead, so the story goes. But he wasn’t dead by a jugful, as a couple of days later he crawled into his camp and soon after began figuring on a big cattle deal in Montana.

Some Kansas City money brokers had furnished cash to buy steers in San Antonio, Texas, the Spring previous to my being detailed on the case, taking a mortgage on the steers for security. The steers were to be driven to the Indian Territory and there fattened for the fall market on buffalo grass.

As a precaution against loss, and so the money brokers could identify their property in case of trouble, the tip of one horn of each steer was cut off.

The cattle were taken to the Comanche Indian Reservation in the western part of the Indian Territory, and there turned loose to fatten. They were kept within a certain range by Blank’s cowboys riding lines. Late in the Fall Bill concluded he didn’t want to ship the steers east for “feeders.” Therefore he turned them over to the brokers to get their money if they could, he himself withdrawing from the scene. When the brokers sent cowboys to gather up all steers with the tip of one horn cut off, they failed to find any but a few of the original number. They were not in the country, and Blank said he couldn’t account for them being gone unless the Indians had killed them. Then I was detailed to unravel the mystery.

From Denver I started on the Denver & Ft. Worth Ry. for Amarillo, Texas, there to buy a horse and saddle and ride to the range where the Blank steers had been kept during the summer.

I arrived in Amarillo, Texas, at three o’clock Christmas morning. A blizzard was raging and the weather was very cold. Knowing that my old cowboy friend of early days, Jack Ryan, kept a saloon in this town, I concluded to go there and warm up. On entering Ryan’s place I found Jack behind the bar.

After shaking hands, Jack asked if I could recognize any of my old friends among the drunken men sleeping on the floor, chairs and tables. Casting my eyes over the bunch I picked out my friend Burkley Howe sleeping in a chair and dead to the world from over-indulgence in “firewater.” In looking at him my mind drifted back to 1878, when he, then a fine-looking, sober young man of high education and wealthy parents, came to the Panhandle of Texas, then a wild, unsettled country, to learn the cattle business. He came from Massachusetts, the former home of David T. Beals, Erskine Clement and Mr. Bates, for whom I was then employed. As I was then boss of an outfit on the staked plains where the little city of Amarillo now stands, Howe was turned over to me to be taught the cattle business.

Now, here sat that same Burkley Howe on this Christmas morning, over 20 years later, a total wreck and aged beyond his years from that greatest of all evils, liquor.

Slapping him on the shoulder I said: “Hello there, Burkley Howe, old boy!”

Before opening his eyes he yelled: “Well, I’ll be d——d if there isn’t Charlie Siringo!” He had recognized my voice. He then jumped up and began hugging me and declaring to the other drunken men who had awakened when he yelled that I used to be the best wild-horse rider in the United States. He had seen me ride some “bad” horses and he couldn’t brag on me enough. In order to choke him off, I called the crowd up to take a Christmas drink with me.

Ryan then informed me that my old friend, John Hollicott, the manager of the L X ranch, which I had helped establish, was at a saloon across the street celebrating Christmas. Running across the street I found Hollicott dancing a jig and having a rattling good time, as he called it. He almost choked me as he dragged me up to the bar to take a Christmas drink “on him.” The whole crowd of a dozen men were called up to drink. I was the hero of the moment with Hollicott. Finally we went across to Jack Ryan’s place and Howe joined in the celebration.

At daylight Hollicott’s coachman hitched up the spirited team of mules and we started for the L X ranch on the Canadian river 20 miles north, to take Christmas dinner with the “boys” and girls there.

I left poor Howe laid out on the floor and I haven’t seen him since, but I was informed through friends that he died a year or two later which proves what liquor can do in a twenty years’ tussle with robust manhood.

We had a cold ride against the raging blizzard with the thermometer ten degrees below zero, hence the cork was pulled from the five-gallon jug several times before reaching the ranch.

It was about 10 A.M. when we reached the roaring fire in the large stone fireplace which I had helped to build over twenty years before. There was the identical hearthstone put in place by W. C. Moore, the outlaw murderer whom I met in Juneau, Alaska, and me.

Thoughts of bygone days flew thick and fast, and the flames from the log fire seemed to be playing hide and seek with other bright blazes of long ago. Possibly my familiarity with the jug en route from Amarillo had something to do with my imagination.

Hollicott introduced me to the Lee family who lived on the ranch. The head of the household was Mr. Garnett Lee, then came his good-looking, black-eyed wife and their two beautiful young lady daughters. The younger, a girl of 18, had just come from a college in middle Texas to spend the holidays. She was indeed a little “peach,” and it was all I could do to keep from falling in love with her, even though I was old enough to be her father.

Several of Hollicott’s cowboys from outside camps were on hand to sample the Christmas dinner. Two of them, Charlie Sprague and Johnny Bell, were former chums of mine and had worked under me when I was a “boss” on this ranch. The others I had never met before.

About 2 P.M. the fat gobbler and cranberry sauce, with the side “fixens” were set on the same old table from which the noted outlaw “Billy the Kid” and I ate meals together twenty years previous. It was a dinner fit for kings and queens, and we all did justice to it. When we got through Mr. Turkey-gobbler looked as though he had been to a bone-picking match.

The afternoon was spent “harking back” and sampling the contents of the jug.

At night, after supper, one of the boys got out his violin and the dance started. There being only three ladies present we had to make a girl out of one of the “boys” by tying a handkerchief around his arm, in order to fill out the set.

Towards morning the jug began to work on Hollicott and he wouldn’t let me dance. He insisted on “harking back” to the early days of our cowboy lives. He and I first met in 1876 in Kiowa, Kansas, at which time he was a cowboy for the Hunter & Evans cattle outfit, and I was drifting around to give my mustache a chance to grow.

John Hollicott was a high-bred gentleman, born in bonnie Scotland. He was a fine-looking six-footer, with a heart like an ox. Being born tired was his only fault, especially when it came to getting up in the morning. At one time he had worked under me on a big round-up on the South Paloduro, and getting him up for the peep o’day breakfasts was my hardest work. That same year, 1883, Mr. Hollicott took a jump from a common cowboy to the manager of this big L X ranch, with its 50,000 head of cattle and the hundreds of fine horses. Hence the fact of his being born tired didn’t seem to work to his disadvantage.

I had been considered as one of the candidates for this fat position, but was told that some of the stockholders in the company objected to me as not being tame enough for such a responsible position. Therefore, Mr. Hollicott won out, and years later, I was his honored guest.

Towards daylight the dance broke up and the coachman drove Hollicott and me and our Christmas “jag” up to the mouth of Pitcher Creek, a couple of miles, where Hollicott had his private home.

We retired together in the same bed, and Hollicott was soon fast asleep. But not so with me—I couldn’t sleep for “harking back” in my own mind to the day when Mr. Bates and I slept at this very spot, and chose this as the headquarters camp of the future L X ranch. That was in the early fall of 1877, and “Deacon” Bates, Mr. David T. Beals’ partner, had brought me along into this wild unsettled country to help him select a cattle range for a new company which Mr. Beals had formed.

The country was then alive with buffalo and Indians. Across the river from the mouth of Pitcher Creek, only a mile, three hundred half naked and painted Apache Indians were then camped. Hence Mr. Bates and I didn’t know what moment our scalps might be lifted. We selected a range forty miles square. The grass was fine and not a single cow-brute to eat it, until after the first L X herds arrived from the north.

Now, as I lay by the side of my old cowboy companion, the thoughts of those good old free and easy days came back. But finally my brain felt like scrambled eggs—a jumbled-up mess of woolly buffalo, painted Indians, yelling cowboys, bucking broncos, long horn cattle, fat turkey gobbler, two pretty girls and a big brown jug; then I fell asleep.

About 10 A.M. I was awakened by Hollicott, who was up and holding the jug and a glass, ready to give me a morning “bracer.”

After a hearty breakfast I asked Hollicott to take me back to Amarillo so that I could buy a horse and saddle for my journey to the Indian Territory. He replied that I had to lay over another night and “hark back,” this being a favorite expression of his. When I insisted that it would take me at least a day or two to buy a horse and saddle and that I was in a hurry to reach my destination, he said: “Now, Charlie, don’t mention horse and saddle to me again, when you get ready to go the best horse on this ranch will be brought up to the door, saddled and ready to mount, and if that don’t suit you, I’ll send my team and coachman to take you wherever you want to go.”

I remained, and in the afternoon we followed the pack of hounds in lively chases after wolves and jack rabbits. After breakfast next morning, a five-year-old brown horse, sixteen hands high, and in every respect a model piece of horseflesh, was brought to the door of the stone house at the headquarters ranch, where lived the Garnett Lee family. On his back was Johnny Bell’s saddle.

This horse had just lately been broken, he having run wild on the range all his life. I had known his sire and his grandsire on his dam’s side, and they were of the best blood. The sire was Glen Alpine, a four-mile running horse, and the grandsire on the dam’s side was a high-priced trotting stallion which Mr. Beals had shipped from Boston, Mass., when the L X ranch was first established. Mr. Beals had once presented me with one of old Glen Alpine’s colts, the pick of about fifty head, but like many other fool cowboys I got short of cash in a poker game and sold him for $200. Hence this big snorting brown was the second gift-horse from the same blood.

On mounting Glen Alpine, Jr., after bidding everybody, including the two pretty Lee girls, goodby, Hollicott told me never to sell this horse, but to shoot him when I had no further use for his horseship. I promised that he would never be sold.

Some of the “boys” rode a few miles with me and they said that Hollicott and the girls were no doubt disappointed at my horse not bucking, as they expected a free show, with me as the star actor. They said this horse was a hard bucker and was always ready to show his skill. They couldn’t account for him not bucking that morning. But he made up for it the next morning and on many occasions afterwards.

Two days later Glen Alpine, Jr., was left in a livery stable at Panhandle City, and I boarded an A. T. & S. F. Ry. train for Woodward, Oklahoma, one of the new boom towns in the recently opened-to-settlement “Cherokee strip.”

In Woodward several former cowboy friends were met, among them being two cowboys who had worked under me on the range. One, Billy Bell, was a brother to Johnny Bell who gave me the saddle. The other was Jim Goeber, late sheriff of Potter County, Texas, in which county the L X ranch and Amarillo are situated. Here I also met Temple Houston, a son of the Lone Star State hero, Sam Houston. He was a bright lawyer, and through liquor, had become a man-killer, so I was told. But whiskey soon put him under the sod, judging from later newspaper accounts.

After investigating matters connected with my operation, I returned to Panhandle City, where Glen Alpine, Jr., was mounted, and a start made south.

One night was spent at the Charlie Goodnight ranch, where next day I rode out in the pasture to see the Goodnight herd of buffalo and some half-breeds.

Mr. and Mrs. Goodnight were not at home, therefore I didn’t get to see them. In the early days I had eaten meals with them both in cow camps, and on one occasion, Mrs. Goodnight, a good-hearted little lady, divided the wild berries which she had gathered, with me. For this I have always held her in high esteem, as in those days women in the Panhandle country were scarce and far between.

My work lay mostly in Greer County, Oklahoma, Mangum being the county seat, and across the north fork of Red River, on the Comanche Reservation in the Indian Territory. This brought me onto ground gone over by Tim W. in the Tuscarora, Nevada, operation.

Finally I rode to Vernon, Texas, on the Fort Worth Railroad, to work on Mr. C. T. Merrick, a big cattle king, now a banker in that town. From him I gained much valuable information about the Bill Blank cattle, without his knowing my object. I visited at his home and became acquainted with his lovely wife. He is a Prince and she a Queen, of the American kind.

In Vernon, Glen Alpine, Jr., was left in a livery stable and I boarded a train for the cities of Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.

In Austin, the capital city, I made the acquaintance of the noted Robert G. Ingersoll and his good wife. We rode in the same car to San Antonio, and I had the pleasure of a private talk with this great man.

In and around San Antonio I found out all about the steers purchased by Bill Blank. Trips were made out on the range where the steers had been purchased, and the end of one horn cut off, and I also found where a man whom we will call Capt. Dash had bought a herd of steers with the same ranch brands as the ones bought by Blank, and the tips of both horns of these were cut off, and thereby hangs the tale of this plot.

In the course of time I got back to Vernon and found Glen Alpine, Jr., seal-fat, so that he bucked like the old Harry when I mounted him.

Finally I bade goodby to my friends in Vernon and started on a six hundred mile ride for New Mexico on trail of a herd of cattle driven to New Mexico by Bill Blank the previous summer.

On reaching the staked plains my road was as level as a floor for about two hundred miles. It was indeed a revelation to me how these plains had settled up with a hardy race of small ranchmen, with windmills to furnish water. In former days I had scouted all over these plains in search of L X cattle which were in the habit of following the buffalo south, and at that time there were no settlers at all. Now, windmills could be counted by the hundreds in a day’s ride.

West of Plainview, near the eastern line of New Mexico, I stopped with a gentlemanly young nephew of Bill Blank’s so as to work on him and find out on the sly about the herd of cattle driven to Arizona by his wide-awake uncle.

Before reaching the Pecos River my good name saved me from losing supper and sleeping out in the cold without bedding. The ranches here were far between.

Night had almost overtaken me when I rode up to a Mr. Taylor’s ranch. Tying Glen Alpine, Jr., to the gatepost I knocked on the door. It required several knocks to bring results. Finally the door opened just a little and a nice-looking young woman who proved to be Mrs. Taylor, asked what was wanted. I requested to stay all night. She was sorry but had to refuse on account of her husband being absent, and she and Miss Alice Littlefield being alone. I asked if Miss Littlefield was related to Jim and Geo. Littlefield, and to my friends, Phelps and Tom White. She answered yes, that Alice was a daughter of Jim’s. Then I gave my true name and Miss Alice opened the door wide and gave me a hearty welcome, after introducing me to Mrs. Taylor. Miss Alice and I had never met, but knew each other by reputation. I had worked on the cattle trail between Texas and Kansas for her uncle and father before she was born.

The two ladies had a big laugh over their plans to fight me to a finish in case I insisted on stopping. Their guns were primed and cocked for my benefit, as they supposed I was a desperado, from the fact of my having a Winchester rifle on my saddle and a pistol strapped around my waist, for people in this country had become civilized and quit loading themselves down with firearms.

I spent a pleasant night and found Mrs. Taylor to be a jolly good little woman, and Miss Littlefield was a lovely and highly educated young woman who seemed out of place in this desolate country.

Two days later I put up for the night at the Lewis ranch on the Pecos river, forty-five miles above the lively town of Roswell, New Mexico.

I got an early start from the Lewis ranch next morning, as the distance to the next water was about 90 miles across a desert country, without roads or habitation.

A lunch was put up for me by Mrs. Lewis, and with a full canteen of water I started. I had made a trip over this desert country once before in 1881, with Lon Chambers, when we rode from the L X ranch in Texas, to Lincoln, New Mexico, there to meet Deputy United States Marshal John W. Poe, and act as witnesses in the noted “Billy the Kid” cattle-stealing case. On the trip we came very near perishing for want of water, as our horses played out.

Recalling my past experience in crossing this desert, I couldn’t help feeling a little shaky, starting out alone, though I had great faith in my horse not playing out this time, for I had come to the conclusion that there was no getting tired with this son of that great horse, Glen Alpine. With faith in one’s horse the battle is half won.

We headed for the Capitan mountains, which were in sight. There being no road and the ground being rough and soft, we made slow headway. Often “Glen” would go up to his knees in the soft gypsum soil, which is full of caves. At noon I stopped an hour to let “Glen” graze and to eat my lunch. I had water, but poor “Glen” had none. By sundown we had traveled about fifty miles, which was equal to seventy-five over a good road. “Glen” was beginning to act tired, though I think it was more from the lack of water, as the day had been very hot There was one small drink left in the canteen and I had been saving it for the past couple of hours as a life-preserver.

Just at dusk I dismounted to fix the saddle tightly on “Glen’s” back for the thirty-mile night ride to water. The front cinch was tightened and I was pulling up the flank one, when “Glen” went to bawling and pitching. He bucked ’round and ’round, taking me with him. I hung onto the bridle reins for dear life. Finally I had to turn loose, and “Glen” was soon only a streak of brown in the twilight. At last the streak disappeared entirely. He had gone back the way we had come, at a clip which did credit to his ancestors. I swore a blue streak for not drinking the last water in the canteen while I had the opportunity.

I stood still for a few moments, wondering what to do. There to the southwest lay the dim outlines of the Capitan mountains, a walk of thirty miles to the first water. And towards the east, nothing but a desolate-looking stretch of darkness. I could still see “Glen’s” tracks, and my mind was finally settled on following them so long as they could be seen. Therefore I struck out in a trot “all same” Comanche Indian on trail of his supper when following a wounded deer.

A run of about one mile brought me to where I could no longer see the tracks. There I stopped to go back, rather than risk the sixty mile walk to the Pecos River without water. I began to wish that I had given up the detective business before starting into it, for the future looked a little scaly to me then. My tongue was already swollen slightly, and there was no guessing how it would be by morning.

I could see a dark object which looked like a clump of bushes, off to the east about a quarter of a mile. A faint hope sprung up in my heart that this might be “Glen” who had gotten his foot in the bridle reins and had to stop. Finally I concluded to investigate this dark object and when within a hundred yards of it a loud snort reached my ears and away he flew. My heart beat with joy at being so near water, even though it was out of reach. “Glen” was soon out of sight again, but I ran in the direction he had gone. In a few moments the dark object hove in sight again. Here I concluded to use my brain against common horse sense. I walked leisurely around the dark spot until I was east of it. Then I began to whistle favorite tunes, now and then sitting down to give “Glen” a chance to get used to me. When within a few yards of him he began to snort. I sat down and pulled grass, speaking to him all the while. On getting hold of the broken bridle rein I felt just like I did when the soldiers arrived in Wallace, Idaho,—like shouting hurrah for America.

The canteen and rifle were still on the saddle. The water was gone—out of sight, just as soon as the canteen could be put to my parched lips.

On mounting “Glen” I gave him to understand, by tickling him with the spurs, that he couldn’t lag back and pretend that he was tired, as he did an hour earlier.

About midnight we reached the slope of the Capitan mountains. Then “Glen” was unsaddled and staked out to a bush, and I lay down on the saddle blanket with the saddle for a pillow, and went to sleep.

Next morning at 8 o’clock we filled up with water out of a large reservoir on the wagon road between White Oaks and Roswell, and at 10:30 A.M. we ate a square meal in the town of White Oaks.

As this town had been my headquarters during the winter of 1880 and ’81, when in charge of a squad of cowboys on trail of the noted “Billy the Kid” and his desperate gang of outlaws, I was soon shaking hands with old friends. Among them were Attorney John Y. Hewett and his partner, Wm. Watson, then the well-to-do owners of the rich Old Abe gold mine, of White Oaks.

Of course, Judge John Y. Hewett and I “harked back” to the winter of 1880 when I gave him his first law case. He had drifted into this new mining camp and had put out a shingle as a lawyer.

During the winter one of my “rangers” as they were called by the natives, got into a shooting scrape with Sheldon, the town schoolmaster, and I hired Lawyer Hewett to defend my man, “Big-foot Wallace,” whose right name was Frank Clifford.

The trial came off before Judge Frank Lea, Justice of the Peace, and Hewett won his first case by freeing “Big-foot Wallace.”

But poor big-hearted “Big-foot Wallace” became an outlaw after quitting my outfit in Texas the following summer. I still retain the tintype photo of him sent to me from Old Mexico after he had shaken the dust of Uncle Sam’s domain from his number ten boots. In his letter he bade me goodby, saying that in all likelihood we would never meet again.

He and Ethan Allen, of White Oaks, had just held up a store and secured money and jewelry, at Los Lunas, New Mexico, on the Rio Grande River. At Socorro a posse of officers surrounded them. Young Allen was captured, but “Big-foot Wallace” made his getaway by swimming his horse across the raging Rio Grande. The officers dare not follow as the river was up and dangerous for man and beast.

Young Allen was held at Socorro, the scene of the robbery, and placed in the town jail along with a negro criminal, and the same White Oaks schoolmaster, Sheldon, whom “Big-foot Wallace” had the shooting scrape with. Mr. Sheldon had been on a drunk that day and was put in jail to sober up.

That night a mob of Mexicans broke open the jail, liberating the negro and hanging Mr. Sheldon and Ethan Allen. They did this to spite the white “gringos” for hanging the Baca brothers in Socorro a short time previous. Of course, this was tough on the well-educated eastern schoolmaster, whose worst sin was a love for “firewater.” Had “Big-foot” been captured, he too would have met the same fate, and he and Sheldon could have buried their hatchet of bitter hatred while the ropes were being adjusted about their necks. Such was life in the untamed west.

In White Oaks I also met other old friends, among them being Jones Taliaferro and his wife. Also Dr. M. G. Paden and Paul Mayer. The latter owned the livery stable of the town and his brother was the “City” Marshal.

Marshal Mayer had a complicated case on his hands, and knowing me to be a Dickenson detective, he asked that I solve it for him.

A miner with a sauerkraut brogue had been paid off the day before, and put the $300 in a trunk in his cabin, and while he was up town that night, some one with an axe broke in the door, then broke the trunk open and skipped with the money. I told Mayer that I was too tired to do my best as a sleuth, but that if he would bring “Dutchy’s” partner, Williams, of Irish extraction, to my room at the Hotel Ozane and leave him locked up with me, I would do my best to recover the money.

Williams stood on his dignity for awhile, then first on one foot, then the other, until he became tired and broke down. The $300 was turned over to poor “Dutchy,” who took the first stage for the railroad. He wanted to pay me for my trouble, but I refused it, something out of the ordinary for a detective.

This gave me a local standing as a sleuth, and quieted my nerves after that hard ride, by swelling my head, thus giving the blood more room for circulation.

Two days later I started north, continuing on trail of a young Texan whom I will call “Cunny” for short. He had been a cowboy for Bill Blank at his White Mountain ranch in Arizona, and had helped drive the cattle which I thought might be some of the stolen steers from the Indian Territory to Arizona.

One hundred miles north of White Oaks I found “Cunny” in the mining camp of San Pedro. We soon became warm friends and I worked him for all he knew, without his knowing who I was. But later I told him my business, and our friendship continued.

My investigation showed that none of the steers had been driven to the Arizona ranch. They had been stolen in a more honorable way, a way that few old-time Texas cattlemen would call stealing. It was on the order of horse trading in Texas,—to the sharpest trader belong the spoils. In fact, many Texans would have patted Bill Blank on the back with “well done, Bill old boy.”

The scheme was well carried out from start to finish, as follows:

Bill Blank and Capt. Dash had laid the plot together, so I was informed, and my whole work indicated that it was true.

In the early Spring both went to San Antonio, Texas, and bought each a herd of steers from the same ranchmen, so that the cattle would have the same brands on them. The herds were put up at the same time. Capt. Dash cut the tip of both horns off, while Bill Blank cut the tip of one off. This was done supposedly, to tell them apart, should they ever become mixed together, as both herds were bound for the Indian Territory. On the Comanche reservation both men had secured leases of a certain stretch of range, adjoining each other. Bill Blank had borrowed the money with which to buy his steers, giving a mortgage on a certain number of cattle with designated ranch brands, and the end of one horn cut off. Being on adjoining ranges the two herds naturally became mixed, and the summer and fall was spent by the Blank and Dash cowboys in cutting the remaining horn off the Bill Blank steers, thus transferring them from Blank to Dash.

As the steers waxed fat in the Fall Capt. Dash had many feeders to sell on the eastern market, and the cowboys were kept busy gathering to ship. When Capt. Dash was through shipping, Bill Blank concluded to let the brokers in Kansas City, who had loaned him the money, foreclose the mortgage, but they couldn’t find anything to foreclose on. Bill Blank had taken a back seat from whence he could, with a broad smile, view the windup. And then your humble servant came onto the scene and took a front seat, playing one of the last acts in the drama.

In order to keep in touch with “Cunny” in case we needed him as a witness, I hired him to take charge of my Sunny Slope ranch, a couple of miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico, which I was fixing up for a “hobby-horse” to ride in my old age. I really needed a man to run the place, and by hiring “Cunny” I could kill two birds with one stone.

It required two days of my valuable time to get “Cunny” pulled away from his Mexican sweetheart in San Pedro.

Santa Fe is only forty miles north of San Pedro, therefore we didn’t have far to go. “Glen” was left on my ranch in “Cunny’s” care, while I returned to Denver and discontinued the operation, after being on it about four months.

I have never heard what action our clients took against Bill Blank. They may have exposed the scheme to Blank and got a partial settlement, and again, they may have concluded to pocket their losses and in future lock their stable door before the horse is stolen, especially if old-time Texas cowmen of the tricky horse-trading kind are prowling around.

“Cunny” was never called on as a witness against Bill Blank. He had charge of my ranch for two years and then went to mining on a prospect in which I was interested. Thus he swore off being a wild and wooly cowboy, and is now a prosperous mine expert in the booming gold districts of Nevada.

Glen Alpine, Jr., lived a retired easy life on my Sunny Slope “hobby-horse” and died at the age of fifteen, though he never quit the habit of bucking, even in his old age.

On one occasion he gave a “bloody” Scotchman a “touch of high life,” which was bloody in fact, at the windup.

John Hart, a friend of mine from Denver, but now living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wanted the satisfaction of riding a good horse once in his life, so I let him ride “Glen.”

We started from the Sunny Slope ranch to take a forty-mile ride to Bland. I was on my pet mare, Lula.

Now, Hart was an expert as a carpenter and contractor, but as a bronco buster he proved a total failure before we had gone ten miles on our journey. Saying, “Come on Hart,” I started Lula off in a swift gallop. In a moment I looked back just in time to see poor Hart in the air and “Glen” running towards me. Hart swore he didn’t do a thing but dig the “bloody hold ’orse” in the side with his heels, after I had started. Having some sticking plaster in my pocket, Hart’s face, hand and elbow were patched up. He said the hard stony ground had come up and struck him before he was ready, for he figured that one-half of a somersault more would have saved his face by landing him on the fleshy part of his pants.

Hart rode Lula the balance of the trip.