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LET 'ER BUCK
A STORY OF THE PASSING OF THE OLD WEST
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LET 'ER BUCK
A STORY OF THE PASSING OF THE OLD WEST
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CHARLES WELLINGTON ^URLONG, F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF "THE GATEWAY TO THE SAHABa"
WITH FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS TAKEN FROM LIFE BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
^be IKnicftetbocfter press
1921
0
COPYRIGHT, 1921
BY
CHARLES WELLINOTON FURLONG
Printed in the United States of America
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TO MY SON
ROGER WELLINGTON FURLONG
AND
IN TRIBUTE
TO THE AMERICAN PIONEER
THE ADVANCE GUARD OF EUROPE'S LAST FRONTIER
AND TO THE COWBOY
THE WEST'S FIRST BORN
BOTH OF WHOM
THROUGH AN INTREPID FAITH
AN UNHAMPERED BELIEF
HIGH IDEALS AND A DYNAMIC GOGETTEDNESS
EPITOMIZED THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA
AND
CEMENTED THE GREAT NORTHW'EST
INTO OUR NATIONAL BODY POLITIC
PUTTING ON THE BRAND
If I had never seen a Umatilla "fuzz-tail," didn't know what "bulldogging" meant, and was altogether a stranger to the Pacific Northwest — if, I say, such misfortunes were mine, yet would I revel in Let 'Er Buck, because of the downright dramatic interest of the book and its extraordinary illustrations.
But as I happen to have had the good fortune to reside in Oregon for some years, and as I know at first-hand somewhat of the range country and its people, Let 'Er Buck has found an especially ap- preciative publisher. It is truly a breath of the real West of yesterday and today, alluring for us in the East, inspiring, I am sure, to every reader to whom the West means home.
Charles Wellington Furlong is an ideal author for such an epic of the out-of-doors. He knows. He has lived the life of which he writes. He has worked and played in the cattle country; its people are his friends and its ways are his. He understands the Round-Up intimately, not only as observer but as participant. It violates no secret to state that the buck- aroo pictured riding Sharkey, the bull (page 176), is Furlong himself; he broke the world's record — and his wrist! ,
vii
PUTTING ON THE BRAND
What an adventuresome, varied life our author has led! Explorer, painter, writer, university professor, lecturer, soldier, publicist! He has painted in Paris and been a Professor at Cornell. He has written half a dozen successful books and countless magazine arti- cles. He has slept in the guanaco skin tents of the primitive Patagonians, and has crossed the Atlantic in a twenty-two ton schooner. He has lectured on art in Boston and fought desert thieves in the Sahara. He has ridden with the wild tribesmen of Morocco and cow-punched with the Vaqueros of the Venezuelan llanos. . . . And naturally he loves the ways of the Old West, so gloriously repictured, in action and spirit, each year at the Pendleton Round-Up — and loves the Round-Up itself, whose story as here recorded be- comes a lasting chapter in the history of the well-won West.
Last autumn Furlong and I were automobiling near New York City. We talked of Oregon, because we both love its mountains, forests, and far-flung grain and cattle lands.
"The Round-Up's a book in itself," said I, remi- niscing of Pendleton.
"Of course," he replied. "And I am going to write it. You publish it."
He did.
We did.
There is a very large measure of personal satisfac- tion in being associated with this book, and an equal pleasure in recalling the characteristically enthusiastic support which the project has received from Pendleton and her people. . . . And it is a further satisfaction to realize that Let 'Er Buck undoubtedly will cause many Eastern readers to go West and see for them-
viii
PUTTING ON THE BRAND
selves this wonderful Round-Up spectacle — which is only another way of predicting their ultimate gratitude to author and publisher !
G. P. P.
New York, June, 1921.
IX
THE FIRST THROW OF THE ROPE AND WHY
"Sh! — She's asleep!" The tallest, roughest appear- ing of five big, hard-boiled looking men raised a quiet but warning finger to a newcomer and pointed farther down the car. The train was a little freight with a passenger annex that runs over the dust-swept plains and through some little jerkwater towns of central Washington.
Pretty Miss Virginia had heard the call of the West and came. Fatigued by a year of teaching and repres- sion in a tight, little sectarian college she was now speeding toward freedom and the great outdoors to a Western uncle's ranch.
The newcomer now made the seventh passenger — six were men — she was the seventh. Her eyes had wearied of the miles of fascinating, desert-looking country with no signs of life, except little, timid, crawl- ing things that scurried or slunk along through the sage brush. But the one thing she had desired the last month of her busy year more than anything was sleep — so she curled up and — slept.
When she awoke, the well-worn coat of one of the five was spread over her, another rolled up, had been tucked gently under her head. No one was talking or making the slightest sound. At noon the conductor
xi
FIRST THROW OF THE ROPE
came, sorry not to be able to offer her a regular lunch, but said he would stop the train somewhere and get her a cup of tea. When they did stop, each man debouched from the freight and brought her something.
It was warm and dusty, the poor, rickety little car had seemed impossible but Miss Virginia obtained a new perspective of the real spirit of the West. The West, that in many places still feels life is too big to give change for a nickel — (all coppers taken in the saloon at Ennis were flipped over the mirror top behind the bar) , the West, where in some places it is still more polite to ask a man what he calls himself than what his name is, the West where it matters little what a man's folks were or to some extent even what he's been himself, it's what he is. Miss Virginia had pryed open the heart of the West — and this happened today, since the first of this book went to press. The reason the book has gone to press is threefold.
To help to preserve one of the most important pages of American history — the Winning of the West and the part the pioneer and the American cowboy have played in it.
To show the significance of the cowboy contests which are fast disappearing, and particularly of that passion play of the West, The Round-Up held at Pen- dleton, in Eastern Oregon about which country so much of the history of the Northwest is wrapped.
To help to perpetuate and enlarge the ennobling and just Spirit of America through the true and positive Spirit of the West, that in so doing, we may be ener- gized to a greater national consciousness.
Our Atlantic seaboard is established, our western still in the making. Our trade Star of Empire is still West, the Far East. Puget Sound and its contiguous
xii
FIRST THROW OF THE ROPE
ports will some day be the great western mouth of America, one of the greatest trade and transit em- poriums of the World, a healthy competitor of, and worthy cooperator with. New York.
America's greatest trade success lies in the Pacific and beyond, likewise its greatest problem, its greatest danger. America must know its own problems, get acquainted with itself, see itself, know itself first, adequately to protect and find itself. So too, America must also follow and understand the movements of the world tides, not just its own political eddies.
The Great Epic Drama of the West, the Round-Up, is but an atomic episode in the modern, forward-mov- ing West of today, but a drop of the red blood that surges through the great throbbing heart of America, but it helps us to understand its pulsing. H there was never another rounding-up of the range clans in Pendle- ton, its Pageant has already been a rich contribution to the Spirit of America.
There is something in every healthy nature that re- sponds to the spectacular and dangerous. When the restraints of some artificialities of society are removed, certain deep powerful, oft-times long-buried instincts, irresistible and unfathomable, assert themselves. It were better for the Nation if the blase, effete, lily-liv- ered youths, which the complexities and hectic move- ment of our modern life tends to develop, learned through honorable physical contest the satisfaction of a well-balanced body and character, the power of self-control, the constructive force of positiveness and that joy of spiritual uplift through a frank and sym- pathetic contact with Nature and a certain healthy re- version to type.
In this book I have sought to incorporate enough of
xiii
FIRST THROW OF THE ROPE
the early history of Oregon and the West to enable me to paint with a broad brush in the simple, primary colors of fact, a background which will serve as an adequate stage-setting for the actors and episodes of Pendleton's great annual epic.
I have sought to portray the big, free spirit and sig- nificance of range life through type similes, simple in- cident and outstanding feature and thus record a verse or two of the swan song of the cowboy before his range cries die away.
This book represents the results of some seventeen years of close personal study of and participation in the life of the range in our West and in the countries of South America and also in four annual Round-Ups at Pendleton.
But within these pages, one can but touch upon a few of the many stirring performances and present only a small portion of that lore and custom linked with them. On each of the three days of the Round-Up, a lifetime on the frontier is lived in an afternoon. The picture drawn here is a composite one, extending over more than a decade of round-ups. Contestants have come and gone and some have ridden out into the Farther West. But I have tried to make the picture a true one, though composed of thumb-nail sketches, snapshots caught as it were, through the open noose of a flying lass rope.
As the cowboys are being run off the ranges and cowhands are yearly less in demand many are turning the art of their calling to more profitable use, by "ridin' the shows," that is, competing for prize money in the rodeos — little round-up shows held all over the West — in which some make several times their forty bucks and found. Still others, mostly star perform-
xiv
FIRST THROW OF THE ROPE
ers have gone from rodeo to movies and almost any night you can see Hoot Gibson, Art Acord, Jane Ber- noudy, Walter Sterling, Ben Corbett and others rep- licating on the film some real romance of their adventurous lives.
But of those big-hearted, open-handed, courageous souls in the Great Game, none have followed the romance of life or death, none played more headily, yet openly with fate, than the cowboy of yesterday and today. Of those buckaroos and Round-Up officials who have graced the great Pendleton arena, there are some familiar figures who have ridden out and beyond across the Great Sunset — Bert Kelley, Mark Moor- house, Harry Gray, Otto Kline, Floyd Irwin, Del Blan- cett, Newt Burgess, George Peringer, Til Taylor, Earl Pruitt, H. C. Caplinger, Homer Wilson, Winna- mucca Jack and others. You see their silhouettes in the passing, against its golden afterglow.
Some errors are naturally unavoidable, one cannot always rope a "critter" right, but if anyone picks up any "strays" both publisher and author will appreciate it if you'll rope 'em and lead 'em in and we'll put on the right brand if we ever make a second throw with this rope. But I'll offer no apology to the West for having slipped over a highbrow expression or two — or to the East for having dropped into the vernacular of the cowboy — because when you're through jogging along chapps to chapps, in this story, you'll both know the other feller better.
C. W. F.
XV
i
SLAPS ON THE BACK TO THOSE WHO HELPED
A SMALL portion of the material in this book has ap- peared in the form of magazine articles in Harper's Magazine and World's Work.
My sincere acknowledgments are due to the follow- ing:— Mr. Robert Swan of New York and Canton, Mass., former ranch owner, for stimulating my inter- est in the West through his own love of God's country and for bringing me into first direct contact with the cowboy and range on the old Nine Quarter Circle in the Taylor Fork country of Montana : the late William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), who through his striking per- sonality and healthy romance embodied in his Wild West Show concept, first set my boyhood imagination westward working.
To the following Pendletonians : Mr. James H. Sturgis, of Sturgis and Storie, rancher and business man and former Round-Up Livestock Director, whose close friendship and generous assistance, not only helped inspire my initial interest in this book, but aided in the solution of some of the practical problems con- nected with it; the late Sheriff Tillman D. Taylor, eight years President of the Round-Up; the late Mark Moorhouse, first Arena Director; Samuel R. Thomp-
xvii
SLAPS ON THE BACK
son, Rancher and Livestock Director and Lawrence G. Frazier of L. G. Frazier's Bookstore and Grounds Director for kind personal assistance in facilitating my work with the Round-Up. To J. W. Earl, Non-Com- petitive Events, R. E. Chloupek, Treasurer, George C. Baer, Business Manager, D. S. Tatom, Accommoda- tions, James Estes, Parade Director; Thomas Boylen, Rancher and Judge and other members and ex-mem- bers of the Round-Up Directorate for the granting of privileges in the arena.
To Mr. Roy T. Bishop of the Pendleton Woolen Mills, former Director of Indians and Mr. Chauncey Bishop of the same firm and present Director of In- dians for privileges extended and kind assistance in the Indian section of the Round-Up; to Mr, Glenn Bushee, Deputy Sheriff and Indian authority for much personal assistance in gathering Indian data; Captain Lee Caldwell, formerly commanding Troop D, 3rd Oregon Cavalry — rancher and buckaroo, for detailed facts on rough-riding technique; Major Lee Moorhouse, lead- ing Oregon authority on the Northwest and the Indian, for generously placing his invaluable illustrative and literary collections at my disposal and aiding in veri- fying certain moot questions.
To Mr. Charles H. Marsh, Attorney-at-Iaw and Round-Up Secretary for invaluable personal assistance over a period of nine years and particularly for aid in compilation of the Round-Up tables at the back of this book : to Mr. Henry W. Collins, President of the Col- lins Flour Mills and President of the Round-Up for helpful personal and executive action in furthering the writing and publication of this book: To Mr. J. Roy Raley, Attorney at law, of Raley and Steiwer, first President of the Round-Up and Director of Happy
xviii
SLAPS ON THE BACK
Canyon for specific and valuable information : to Mr. Herbert Thompson, rancher and Round-Up Assistant Livestock Director for many personal favors in secur- ing material, both on ranch and in arena.
To Mr. E. B. Aldrich, Journalist and Editor of The East Oregonian for exceptionally kind and valuable assistance since 1913, both through personal courtesies and the use of the valuable files of the East Oregonian; Mr. Harry Kuck, Journalist and Editor of The Pendle- ton Tribune for numerous courtesies extended; Mr. Samuel Jackson, Journalist and Editor of The Ore- gon Journal for courtesies; Mr. Merle Chessman, Journalist and writer and authority on the Round-Up for information placed at my disposal ; Mr. Ernest L. Crockatt, Secretary of the Eastern Oregon Auto Club, for published material generously placed at my disposal from which I have drawn freely in Chapter Two; Dr. Cyrus C. Sturgis, of Peter Bent Brigham Hos- pital, Boston, and formerly of Pendleton, for many kindnesses; Elmer Storie, of Sturgis and Storie, Walla Walla, for generous application of the balm of both horse liniment and friendship when sorely needed; Mr. and Mrs. F. Gordon Patterson, of Bos- ton, and the many friends whose kindly interest and helpfulness furthered the successful completion of this work.
To Edwin P. Marshall, rancher and authority on range life, for kindly rendering exceptionally useful information; Mr. David Horn, early settler and pioneer stage driver for information in regard to stage- coaching and early Oregon conditions; Mr. Fay S. LeGrow of Athena, rancher and banker, for field in- formation and other assistance ; Mr. George and Allen Drumheller for field and technical information and
xix
SLAPS ON THE BACK
courtesies; Miss E. J. Frazier of the L. G. Frazier Book Store, Pendleton; the late Mr. H. C. Caplinger of Athena, old time pioneer, for glimpses of the old West; Mr. William Switzler of Umatilla, rancher, and Mr. Ben Hutchinson of Crab Creek, Washington, rancher and old time buckaroo, for numerous eye openers.
To Mr. Fred Earl of the firm of The Peoples Ware- house; Mr. Charles and Willard Bond of Bond Bros, and Mr. J. K. Thompson of the Thompson Drug Co., for information and loyal support; Mr. James S. Johns of the Hartman Abstract Co., Pendleton, for courte- sies; to the People of Pendleton for kindly coopera- tion and many courtesies.
Special acknowledgment and thanks is hereby ex- pressed to Mr. Walter S. Bowman, Major Lee Moor- house, Round-Up Association, Mr. Marcell, Electric Studio, Doubleday, Dr. Tameisie and Mr. G. Ward, for the use of the splendid photographs as credited under the reproductions respectively.
To the Tantlingers (Mr. and Mrs.) of Lawton, Ok- lahoma, formerly in charge of the cowboy and Indian contingent, Miller Bros. 101 Ranch show for many useful facts ; Mrs. Earl G. Reed, nee Jane Bernoudy of Hollywood, California; Cuba Crutchfield and Chester Byers for many points in roping; to Bertha Blancett for illustrations and points of riding technique ; to the late Dell Blancett of the Canadian Cavalry and buckaroo and to all my friends and pals among the cowboys who have given me points and initiated me into the fast-dis- appearing vernacular, colloquialisms and ways of the Umatilla Reservation, the Blackfeet Reservation and Crow Agency, Montana, and elsewhere who have re- vealed to me some of the secrets of their people. And
XX
SLAPS ON THE BACK
not least, though last, to Maj. George Palmer Putnam, of G. P. Putnam's Sons, publisher and writer, be- cause of his faith in the idea of the book and its author, for his unusual personal encouragement and practical cooperation and particularly for his unpublishery, un- arm-chairy imagination, all of which is so essential to book success.
Let 'er Buck!
XXI
FRONTIERSPIECE
BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE FRONTIERS OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY
We sat on the top rail of a corral fence, my pal and I. We had ridden nearly one hundred miles over the Montana Rockies, from Nine Quarter Circle Ranch in the Taylor Fork country, loping into the little town of Ennis in the Madison Valley to witness a local buck- ing contest, the first I had ever seen.
The top rail was the grandstand, the gaps between the logs were the bleachers, well crowded by the people of the little hamlet and the outfits that had ridden in. Montana Whitey was riding old Glass Eye, a brute of a bucker, who, not satisfied with trying to scrape off his rider against the corral fence, nipped viciously at the quickly-hauled-up legs of the ''grandstand" specta- tors. Crash I A tenderfoot fell backwards thru an automobile top, landing squarely, if unexpectedly, in the lap of a lady.
"Who's the tall, goodlooking cowboy, with the red feather dangling Indian fashion from his Stetson? The one in charge of the stakes," I asked Judge Call- oway of Virginia City, who on the morrow was hold- ing court in Ennis, but who now helped me hold down the top rail.
xxiii
FRONTIERSPIECE
"What! Don't you know V ? He's not a
bad sort, but I had to send him up last spring for two years — horse rusthng."
"Speaks well for him that he is out so soon."
"Out? He's not out. You see, he's one of the best riders in the valley and the people hereabouts wouldn't
stand for keeping V in jail while this bucking
contest is on. But he goes back tonight."
This episode not only prefaces this book and my own experiences in the life and sports of the old West, but epitomizes those great human virtues with which the West is replete — courage, daring, belief in work, love of play, optimism, and above all, that balance- wheel of life, humor; virtues which were not only nec- essary to the winning of the West, but were those com- posite constituents which enabled the early pioneer to cement later the great Northwest into our national body politic.
Five nations for two centuries, seeking the Oregon country, tried to discover the great rumored "River of the West." Then the New England skipper, Captain Robert Gray of Boston, first cargoed by Boston mer- chants and later sent by General Washington, let fall the anchors of his two vessels the Columbia and Lady Washington in the long sought River of the West, later christened after the name of his flagship — and Oregon was found. This great River of the West as expressed in the poem picture of Bryant's imagina- tion is supposed to be the waterway mentioned in Thaftatopsis in the line "where rolls the Oregon."
A scant three hundred years ago, the Atlantic sea- board was the frontier of Europe. But that eternal urge, that migratory instinct — wanderlust — found from man to butterflies, saw the eastern settler push
xxiv
FRONTIERSPIECE
over the Appalachian passes, onward to the Mississippi and Missouri, and the frontier of Europe was advanced. s
The search for the Northwest Passage had of neces- sity brought those early explorers in close contact with the Pacific coast, but the immense supply of skins to be purchased from the Amerinds^ sidetracked the navi- gators. It was no wonder that when one could pur- chase two hundred otter skins for a chisel, as did Captain Gray, that their passion was shifted from "passage to peltries." Gray later traded in China his cargo of skins for tea, and returned to Boston around the Cape of Good Hope, the "first sailor under the American flag to circumnavigate the globe."
About fifteen years later, those courageous young explorers, Lewis and Clark, starting from St. Louis and following the Missouri River, explored portions of the Northwest clear to the Pacific. Despite the fact that the Hudson's Bay Company pushing on to the Columbia and south of it, had thrown out a west- ern flank of conquest, Lewis and Clark's exploration coupled with Gray's discovery established for the United States a definite and recorded claim upon the Oregon country, which at that time included the great- er portion of the Northwest.
Americans pushed their claims and trade still harder when John Jacob Astor of New York, the founder of the great line of merchant princes, outfitted his ships
*The term Amerind derived by combining syllables of the words American Indian is used to signify an aboriginal inhab- itant of North or South America in order to distinguish be- tween him and the Indian, the autochthonous inhabitant of In- dia. The term Amerind was first used by Major Powell of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
XXV
FRONTIERSPIECE
How many died of those who started westward dur- ing this sixteen years of migration orhow many eventu- ally arrived at the Ultima Thule will never be known. But there is a record of a single column, fifty thousand strong, and five hundred miles in length. The old em- igrant road, like the Saharan trails, may be said to be paved with the bones of wayfarers.
In 1852 was the fatal cholera. Between two cross- ings of the Snake River eleven of twenty-three people died in one wagon train, while one day and two nights saw forty people of another train buried opposite the trail. Seven persons of one family were interred in a single grave. At least five thousand emigrants found their last resting-place on the prairies in that fatal year. The dead lay in rows of fifties and groups of seventies; and many claim ten per cent is too low an estimate for a single twelvemonth.
A scout, following over the trail from the Platte to the Laramie, reported that on one side of the river alone he counted six fresh graves to the mile for the entire distance of four hundred miles. When it is born in mind that on the north bank was a parallel col- umn where the same conditions prevailed, some concep- tion of the fatalities may be had. How many died? Even the approximate number of the total toll paid by these pioneers of the plains will never be known; the roll call was never made.
The march of the Oregon pioneers was a vast move- ment of families, a romance of adventure, enterprise, patriotism and lofty ambition peculiarly characteristic of America. We of this more effete generation, of this day of steam heat, hot water and upholstered Pullmans, may well pause a moment in our excession of the human economic speed limit and pay tribute to
xxviii
FRONTIERSPIECE
these pioneers of the interminable forests, mighty rivers, exhaustless mines and Hmitless plains, who have made all these comforts possible. Well, too, if we curtail our misuse of this heritage which tends to that depleting epidemic of civilization, civilizitis.
The printed story of the adventures and sufferings of these pioneer caravans over the great trek from 1843 to 1859 is a mere synopsis of the actualities. The story of The Old Emigrant Trail, the only name by which the pioneers knew it, is an epic in American life, and the emigration to Oregon marks an era in American his- tory— "Its like is not in all history."
In these pages it is my privilege to pass on in a meagre way fragments of the pioneer's message and to portray remnants of a portion of his pioneer life. Altho those who read may have known him not, it is believed that they will feel in these episodes and de- scriptions at least a faint echo of his heart throbs which have become the pulse beats of a nation's life.
The Star of Empire, ever beckoning toward the Eldorado of man's hope, brought the last shift of the frontier of Europe to the Sundown Sea. Our country is productive, our position is strategic, and our climate produces an energetic population ; all this coupled with the fact that the United States was fundamentally peopled by an Anglo-Saxon race, determines our des- tiny.
The Orient, through the great tide of the Jehad or Holy War of Islam, really the great Arab migration, reached the very gates of Poitiers, before it was stemmed and turned back by Charlemagne. The tidal wave of the Orient is now flowing on the other flank of Western civilization. On this last frontier of Eu- rope our West meets East. Our trade expansion is
xxix
FRONTIERSPIECE
westward. China is the great trade emporium of the future.
It is not the Cahfornia- Japanese question, Lower CaHfornia, or even Yap as such, which raises the threatening cloud on the western horizon of the Land of the Rising Sun, but the control of trade in the Gold- en Land of the Black Dragon. The movement of Western civilization has met a counter-current of the East, eddying about that pin point in the Pacific — Yap. Hence we must not underestimate the importance of the development of the West as a basis of those new world influences, and we must be alive to the signifi- cance of the Pacific.
From Cape Cod to Cape Flattery the country with each shift of the frontier became Americanized, and each shift produced its type. Each type whether he be Easterner, Middle State, Southern or Western, pos- sess those salient characteristics which stamp him with the unmistakable hall mark — American.
The great emigration but placed these pioneers on the threshold of that era which makes for the winning and building of the West; and it is to our forefather pioneers of this era that we owe the results of their elemental life in conquering the desert plains, trackless forests and great rivers of the vast American waste they sternly invaded. The freedom of that elemental life, the daily association with its poetry and charm as well as its dangers, has developed a virile American type. It is a debt of loyalty and understanding that is imposed on us of this generation to pay tribute to these scouts of a dawning civilization and to preserve the heritage which these intrepid layers of the foundations of the great West have bequeathed.
The stranger in the West is particularly impressed
XXX
FRONTIERSPIECE
with the fact that the West still retains its frontier characteristics, its lore and songs. There are even now living pioneers who, through the round openings at the end of the ox-drawn prairie schooner, saw the East diminish and the West grow big; who have lived through the days of the log cabin with its puncheon floor and the "shake" house, and stocked their first larders with buffalo, antelope and bear meat from plain and mountain.
Through arduous days and nights, hard at their best, and rendered desperate by Indian wars, whole scattered settlements had to "fort up"; through those days when defiance of law was in the foreground and out- lawry ruled, they endured until the level-headed better class organized the "vigilantes" and "passed on" some of the notorious bad characters by the "short cut" in- stead of the usual "highway round" and brought the "bad man" to the realization that human law is a neces- sity. Thus through the pioneers' progress they have passed to the today of palatial homes, protection of the law, the telephone, telegraph and canned foods.
Many an actor who carried the principal parts against the background of this greatest of national melodramas still stalks in the flesh. There are yet to be found, tucked away in stray corners, the cattle rancher, cowboy, sheriff, horse-thief, ranger, road agent, trapper and trader, the old stage driver, freight- er, gambler, canoeman, the missionary, pioneer woman, old-time scout, the placer-miner, the Indian — all pioneer types, primeval actors in this great dramat- ic Odyssey of American adventure and development, the building of the West.
Yes, many of the actors are here, but the scenery has changed and most of them are out of a job. Yet in
xxxi
FRONTIERSPIECE
some parts of the interior country the last vestige of pioneer and range hfe, and the art of its calHng is still carried on. Times are changing, the march of progress is fast obliterating the dashing cowboy and those other picturesque characters of the passing of the old West. The Old West is dying out; but if one thinks the spirit of the Old West is dying, a certain three days of any September spent at the time of the gathering of the clans in the little city of Pendleton in Eastern Oregon, will soon change one's mind and will convince one that here is seen the metamorphosis of the Old West into that of the New.
Man ever seeks to perpetuate himself and his his- tory. In almost all lands there are certain feasts and carnivals. Sometimes they take the form of pageants to commemorate certain anniversaries, the founding of the nation, the founding of cities, to honor saints' days, or in commemoration of historic individuals, events or episodes. This idea is simply a symbolism of the spirit of the people, the most precious, concrete, prac- tical and ideal asset that a people may have.
The oldest national carnival, the Olympiad which im- mortalized the art and athletic powers of classic Greece, still calls to its Olympic Games in the stadia of the western world the youthful contestants of all nations. Perhaps the greatest and most famous of community symbols is the Passion Play in the little hamlet of Oberammergau, symbolizing a great relig- ious idea; while the Mission Play at San Gabriel out of Los Angeles has both a religious and historical incentive.
Each year at Pendleton, Oregon, there occurs in the fall a great carnival which epitomizes the most dra- matic phases of the pioneer days of the West — and its
xxxii
FRONTIERSPIECE
spirit. There the real, practical work of the trail, cow- camp and range is shown, through the sports of the pioneer; for the play of a people is usually but a nor- mal outgrowth and expert expression of its work.
This great carnival is supported by the community spirit of Pendleton and the surrounding country. It is essentially an American pageant and typifies a phase of American life which will soon have passed forever below the horizon of time, but should be eternally en- graved on the escutcheon of our history.
The Round-Up is an epitome of the end of The Great Migration on this continent and stands not only as typical of Pendleton, but of Oregon, of the West, of America. This panorama of the passing of the Old West is a page torn literally from the Book of our Nation, and it is for this reason that I offer this little volume as a chapter of the pioneer story as shown in the Epic Drama of the West. .
xxxm
CONTENTS
PAGE
Putting on the Brand vii
The First Throw of the Rope and Why . xi
Slaps on the Back to Those Who Helped . xvii
Frontierspiece xxiii
CHAPTER
I. — Out Where the West Begins ... 5
IL— Til Taylor— Sheriff .... 40
III. — Corral Dust 59
IV. — Milling With the Night Herd . . 98
v.— The Round-up 134
The Bucker's Own Table . . . 228
The Rode and Thrown Table . . . 230
The Bucking Time Table . . . 232
Tips to the Tenderfoot .... 235
XXXV
ILLUSTRATIONS A Fight to a Finish .... Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Pendleton and Its Wheat Lands From the Air 6
Pageant of the Passing of the Old West . 7
The Sheriff 54
The Epic Drama of the West on Parade . 55
A Shooting Star 68
Sailing High . 68
Spinning the Wedding Ring .... 69 Pawin', Hoofin' and Rarin' Ter Go . . .94
Saddle Him or Bust 95
A Pioneer of the Old West .... 106 Type of the Manhood and Womanhood of the
Range 107
A Mad-Cap Ride, Everybody For Himself . . 142 A Wild Swing and Tear Through a Smother
OF Dust 142
Swift and Reckless at the Turns . . . 142
Swinging the Turns Like Galleons in a Gale 143
Catch as Catch Can 148
Bidding the Steer Good-bye .... 148
Hook 'im Cow 149
The Cow-pony's End of the Game . . . 152
Hogtied! Hands and Heads Up . . . 152
A Merry-Go-Round 153
Stay With 'im Cowboy 153
xxxvii
ILLUSTRATIONS
AND
Dare Devil Riding at Top Speed
That's Tyin' 'im .
A Pretty Throw ....
An Epic Fight
The Navy Taking on Fresh Beef
Bite 'im Lip !
Thumbs Up!
Grabbed For the Horn of the Saddle
Picked Up a Handful of Dirt When Beef is Highest Landing at the Round-Up . Seated on a Ton of Living Dynamite Hitting the Grandstand Between the Eyes All Wound Round With a Woolen String The Ceremonial War Dance of the Red Men Hop to it ! Charlie Irwin Wrangling For His
Daughter in the Relay
Two Indians
FACING PAGE
156
156 157 160 160 161 161
164 165 165 168 169 169 174
175 175
Ride Him Cowboy ! 184
Even the Horses Ride at the Round-Up . . 184
The Queen of Reinland Gracing Her Throne 185
A Pretty Ride With Hobbled Stirrups . . 185
Why This One Was Not in the Finals . . 190
We Would Ride That Way . . . . 191
All Over But the Singin' 191
Art in the Rough 202
Looking For a Soft Spot 203
The Greatest Rider of the Red Race . . 203
Let 'Er Buck! 210
Stay a Long Time, Cowboy! .... 211 One of the Greatest Rides Ever Made . .211
Hell Bent , 220
xxxvin
LET 'ER BUCK
LET 'ER BUCK
CHAPTER ONE OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
"From the East?" and the speaker, a husky lad, whose voice occasionally skipped its lower register, cast a furtive glance at my headdress — that inartistic abomination, the derby; then he scanned my trousers, still retaining a faint semblance of creases, despite the long journey from the City of Public Spirit and East Winds.
"Yes," I replied. "Ever been there?"
"I rounded up at Lincoln, Nebraska, once," and another geographical illusion was dispelled. We were jogging along on the tail-end platform of a train from Walla Walla through Eastern Oregon toward Pendleton.
"Coin' to the Round-Up?"
"Yes."
"That's some show. The boys have been riding in for a couple of days now."
"You're going, I suppose?"
"Not and hold my job. Yer see" — ^and he tapped his
water-filled pail and fire-fighting apparatus with his
foot — "the country's pretty dry. I've got to hang to
5
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
What ! You don't know this country — never saw that mar- velous view from pine-clad Cabbage Hill in spring, that won- derview on the new highway of the Old Oregon Trail?
Spread over the lap of the Umatilla Valley, nestling on the gently undulating bosom of its hills, lie the cultivated lands. Over the valley floor is a marvelous, magic color-carpet of Na- ture. Into this design, she has woven the yellow, pink, brown and old rose rectangles of stubble fields and summer fallow, alternated it with the emerald and distant turquoise of luxuriant, verdant fields of spring sowing, and dark-accented it with rich maroons and distant purples of the near-summer plowing. Into it she has dabbed some odd plays of shadow which dash it with lapis-lazuli, levantine, and violet and finally, has stitched through its center, the careless-rambling, silver thread of the river. Nature through her mist-charged atmosphere holds before you crystal globes of amethyst, opal, tourmaline and bids you gaze into this Valley of Rainbows.
Week by week one may see this restful Eden of Colors meta- morphose through summer to fall. Again Nature holds before your gaze a transparent crystal now of iridescent gold, waves her wand of time over the magic carpet and bids you behold the products of one of earth's richest granaries.
Journey now by aeroplane over this huge, earthen bowl called the county of Umatilla of nearly two million acres in extent, and drained by the numerous streams from the Blue Mountains. Over mountain slope and upland valley we skim the tree-tops of forests of standing timber, fly over irrigated lands of vege- tables and fruits and the fourth crop of alfalfa purpling in the sun ; speed over grazing lands dotted with a million sheep and a half million head of other livestock; glide over the vast areas which are sown with softly, undulating seas of grain products, producing five million bushels of wheat alone.
Swing over Hermiston, Stanfield, Umatilla, Milton, Athena and Pendleton, the county seat, which here and there checkerboard the landscape, their modern mills, factories and industries taking care of the predominating agrarian pursuits. Hover now over the Round-Up City, Pendleton, the trade emporium of eastern Oregon. It lies like a clean-cut gem in a band of green, sur- rounded with a setting of gold. But for the whir of the motor you might hear the drone of its industry, for here the manu- facturing of eastern Oregon centers. Main Street defines the center of this biggest little city of its size in the West; the great oval and the little cones of white to the left and almost beneath us define the Round-Up Park and the lodges of the Umatillas. Here we alight, for tomorrow the great carnival of the cowboy and Indian is on. This is indeed "Out Where the West Begins."
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©
p p >
THE PAGEANT OF THE PASSING OF THE OLD WEST
This greatest of all human shows is a magnificent three-day cowboy carnival, given over to the old sports and passing life of the frontier, characteristic, unique, thrilling, a classic in which the Old West stalks before one in the flesh. Here gather over a thousand cowboys, cowgirls, Indians, stage drivers and cow- country people. They ride in from Tum-a-lum to Hidaway, they come from California and the Dakotas, and from beyond the Mexican border and the Canadian line. These actors are real range folk fresh from the ranges and reservations and include the most superb contingent of rough riders ever brought together.
From the time the starter's first pistol shot rings out at one each afternoon until the wild horse race is finished there is not an idle moment in the spectacles spread out before one, not a break in the unbroken chain of head and heart thrillers, in the wonderful feats performed.
In this pageant of the old range sports and pastimes, men of agile body and iron nerve vie in fancy roping and trick riding; compete in cowpony and standing races, in the relay and pony express, in roping wild steers and bulldogging Texas longhorns; participate in the grand mounted parade; dance in Indian cere- monials; race with the old stagecoaches; contest on famous bucking bulls, steers, and buffaloes and on the backs of the world's worst outlaw horses. There is no set stage effect, all events are competitive, the climaxes impromptu. It is all "best," marvelous, new and — all American.
It is the child of Pendleton's sturdy citizens, who have, as though by magic, created a fascinating instructive object lesson in Nature and modernized humanity. It is owned by the mimici- pality of Pendleton, pays neither dividends nor profits and is staged by a volunteer association of young men who serve with- out salaries. Its money goes into prizes for the contestants and the improvement of the city. The arena is enclosed by a quarter mile track which is almost entirely surrounded by grandstand and bleachers with a total seating capacity of 40,000, the largest west of the Mississippi River. It is a monument to the little city who birthed and matured it.
In all the world there is no more thnllmg impressive spec- tacle, it nurtures the wonderful heritage our forefathers created for us, it puts a glow into the minds of youth, it strikes you squarely between the eyes, and reveals the great living, panting West before you.
LET 'ER BUCK
the tail-end of this puffin' cayuse 'cause it snorts cinders and I've got to watch out for fires along the trail."
The country was indeed dry. Some of the grain still lay in the sheaf. Miles of golden-yellow stubble- fields undulated away in the distance; willows and cottonwoods stenciled green along the watercourses or clustered about an occasional ranch-house or "nesters" cabin. A few scattered herds of live stock grazed here and there, where buffalo wallows still show green and the slopes are scarred with the parallel trails of the Great Herds which have passed, but whose remnant have now moved back from the lines of steel to the "interior country."
Wherever the railroads have thrust their antenme, the open range becomes dotted with the homesteaders' shacks and webbed with wire ; dry farming and irriga- tion turn a one-time half-desert into fertile fields and blossoming orchards. Thus agriculture crowds out the pastoral, and industry in turn both aids and crowds out agriculture; and the "chapped" (schapped) and "booted" cowboy and stockman retreat to their last stamping-ground, where the Indians, trappers, pros- pectors, and buckskin-garbed scouts have preceded them.
In Oregon, however, there remains even today some interior country where the free life of the open is still unhampered by a useless and deadening veneer of paternal regulations and effete conventionalities. There are still a few out-of-the-way corners yet un- turned by the plow and unvexed by wire fences; and a day in the saddle back from many of the railroads brings one to a ranch country yet awaiting the settler where the cowboy still "ropes" and "busts" steer or
bronco, "brands" and "hog-ties" calf and longhorn,and
8
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
occasionally rides into town a-whooping; where the rustler still "rustles," and the sheriff and his posse pur- sue with the same cautious dash or reckless bravado that have given these unplumed knights of the range a permanent place in American history.
The frontiersman, often the unnamed explorer, was always the advance-guard of civilization, who, with the cavalry outposts, held and ever advanced the fron- tier. They were the pioneer winners of the West, the protectors and sponsors for a thinner-blooded civiliza- tion which followed in their wake.
Through the West of today one skirts fruit-laden hillsides and valleys larger than many Eastern counties, rolls past vast wheat-fields, as big as some nations, and pauses at the cities — big, white, and new — seemingly grown up in a night out of the prairies. There is a breezy frankness in the way of the well-paved, broad "Main" Street, wonderfully lit up with its cluster of lights, strikes out at right angles to the track from a well-designed station, inviting you through the town, to let you out as frankly on to the prairie. It all be- speaks, youth, growth and optimism.
Suddenly a small black wraith of smoke smooched the low-rolling hillsides. The lad yanked the signal cord, and before the train had stopped, was speeding pail in hand, toward the cinder-started blaze.
"He'll pick us up around the bend at Athena," the brakeman said.
In less than an hour we rolled into Pendleton. I swung off the train in the tang of the September morning. Ill suppressed exuberance and expectancy seemed to emanate from the quiet stir of the attractive little city. Bunting, streamers, and flags bulged and flapped gracefully in the soft laft of air which draws
9
LET 'ER BUCK
up the river valley from the prairie. Two tented cities had sprung up near the city edge and hundreds of sin- gle tents white-dotted the yards of residents. The charch, where one turns to go up the hill, hospitably announced both cots and meals within. Months pre- viously every hotel room had been engaged and every private citizen who could do so offered accommoda- tions. Now even box cars for quarters had been shunted in on the sidings.
If you lived within a thousand miles of eastern Oregon, you would know why, and if you were a ten- derfoot, even from as far as the outer edge of Cape Cod at low tide, you ought to. In fact, some travelers journey across the seas, that for three whole days they may live the spirit of the Old West and feel them- selves a part of that epic drama for which Pendleton stands — the Round-Up.
For some days before the Round-Up the vanguard
of visitors comes in, in the comfortable Pullmans, on
the smooth lines of steel laid along trails where once
hardy pioneers, with bullock-spanned prairie schooners,
had pushed back the frontier toward the western sea.
Even today, however, one feels the touch and senses
the romance of the passing West, as along every
trail and road which converges toward Pendleton,
cowboys and cowgirls come riding in to the jingling of
spur and the retch of leather. So, too, come the
Amerinds from their reservations — bucks, squaws, and
papooses — with tepee-poles and outfit, stored in every
kind of wheeled rig, and drawn by every variety of
cayuse, nigger pony to "calico." A few traveled as did
their fathers — with belongings lashed to long, trailing,
sagging travois (travoy). Over half a thousand strong,
these redmen of mountain and plain soon had their
10
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
lodge-poles pointing skyward, and, like mushrooms in a night, a white tepee village had sprung up in the picturesque cottonwoods near the Pendleton ford by the old Oregon Trail.
Even before the first day of the Round-Up, Main Street, which shoots over a rise into wheat fields, was in gala dress. Beneath the banners and flags strung overhead, lifting lazily in the soft stir of air, cowboys in gaudy shirts of red, blue, purple, yellow, and green, and kerchiefs of many hues, cowgirls in at- tractive dresses of fringed buckskin, and Indians with multicolored blankets and beaded moccasins, move like an everchanging chromoscope among the neutral- clothed townsmen.
Yes, it was "goin' to the Round-Up," as the lad had said, which brought me like thousands of others to this "biggest little city of its size" in the West.
The term "Round-Up" is taken from the old range expression meaning the "rounding up" — encircling and herding together of the cattle previous to the spring "branding," "cutting out," or fall "drive." When the Round-Up is spoken of, the carnival held at Pendleton is meant. It is a grand carnival of the frontiersman in commemoration of that fine old life with its thrills and its dangers, many phases of which have already passed into history.
The dynamic forces of modern "civilization" — ^ap- plied science and industry — have caused most of the old range country of the United States to be re-mapped into town and homestead with astonishing swiftness. In the old days — within the memories of men still in the prime of life — the west country was essentially a "cow country." Every ranch had its "cow hands" who could rope and ride. Every ranch had its horses,
n
LET 'ER BUCK
those indispensable factors of range work, to break and train. Often a man's standing or usefulness depended on his ability in this work, so it was but natural that each "outfit" tested out their men in bucking contests. This led to these champions meeting in competition, often at town or ranch on certain holidays or festival occasions, usually at a time of year when work was slackest in their locality.
But a few years ago, every camp and hamlet in the cow country had its bucking contests. As the range began to disappear before the wire fence, the cultivated fields and the railroads, so did the cattle and the cow- boy and the bucking contests. But his is a tenacious clan and 'dies hard, as do all inherent potential elements of a nation or civilization. Many a remote ranch or hamlet still "pulls off" its old time bucking contest, tho they are more centralized now in certain local points. The contestants come in from greater distances to com- pete, and give to many the character of great range shows or carnivals.
Such carnivals are held in certain centers of the West; to each is given its name. Cheyenne has its "Frontier Days"; Fort Worth, Texas, the "Cattle Men's Carnival"; Denver has its "Festival of Moun- tain and Plain"; Winnipeg, has its "Stampede"; Grangeville, Idaho, its "Border Days"; Kearney, Nebraska, its "Frontier Round-Up"; Idaho Falls, its "War Bonnet Round-Up"; Salinas, California, its "Rodeo"; Ukiah, Oregon, its "Cowboys' Conven- tion"; and Walla Walla, Washington, has its "Fron- tier Days"; a civic show in which there is more real competition than in any other outside of Pendleton. Then there are minor and more sporadic contests held in Belle Fouche, South Dakota; Billings and
12
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
Bozeman, Montana; Bovina, Texas; Sioux City, Iowa; Battle Ground, Tacoma, and Seattle in Wash- ington, with others in Arizona and New Mexico, as well as a thousand less known little ones.
To Cheyenne must be given the credit of presenting what was probably the first big contest, Frontier Days, staged as a show. This was indelibly put on the pages of history by that ardent lover of the West and its spirit, — the great American, the late Theodore Roose- velt. Different ranch outfits put on the Frontier Days exhibitions — McCarty and Guilford one year for instance, Charlie Irwin another. The tremendous success of these shows will always stand to the credit of those efficient and enthusiastic managers.
Each show has a slogan, as indispensable as that of clan or college, expressed in terms of the cow-camp. A few of the words of that terse and expressive phraseology are arbitrary and carry no special signifi- cance of their origin or of themselves, but those in common usage are wonderfully to the point to one who knows chaparral and sage-brush and loves the smell of leather. At Walla Walla the slogan is *'Let 'er kick"; at Grangeville, "Hook'em cow," a term of encouragement to a roped or "bulldogged" steer. At Pendleton it is "Let 'er buck," a phrase which, briefly in- terpreted, means "get busy", but is primarily applied to a cowboy about to mount the hurricane deck of a "buck- ing" broncho; and when you hear that cowboy yell, whether in the arena at Pendleton or on the range, it is a safe bet that something startling is about to begin.
Human actions are but thoughts expressed, and when a group of Pendletonians desire to start some- thing distinctively original, yet adapted to the Pendle- ton country, it is a safe bet that it will be put over.
13
LET 'ER BUCK
In the pioneer days when the long, tempestuous journey around the tip end of South America, where it was said men hung their consciences on the Horn, was the only way of bringing freight to Oregon. In those days before "Bill" Cody rounded up buffalo meat for the Union Pacific and the railroads were built, Uma- tilla, sixty miles down the river from Pendleton, was the head of navigation and the focal point of depart- ure for pack-trains to the placer mines of Idaho, which were the great things in those days, as agriculture had not then developed. Anybody who lived anywhere at that time lived in Umatilla which had almost as large a floating population as its permanent one, for it was the center both for supplies and a "fling" to the far-flung population of the greater portion of three states.
The rest of Eastern Oregon contained only scatter- ing settlements; for instance, Pendleton itself at that time consisted of the stage-stop hotel, the Pendleton, a general store and the few typical false fronts of a Western pioneer town. There were only two resi- dences, the house of Judge Bailey and one other. Thus Umatilla became the county seat of Umatilla County, which at that time, 1863, included practically all of Oregon east of the John Day River, as it was the metropolis and great trade emporium of Eastern Oregon, which included most of Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
As the ends of those great ever-projecting probosces of civilization, the railroads, thrust their feelers further west, the Horn route fell into disuse and the overland routes from the East increased the development and population of Eastern Oregon. When in 1868 the Cen- tral Pacific pushed into Nevada, the bulk of the Idaho
trade followed it. This killed Umatilla — which was
14
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
"some town" in its day — and decreased its population ; while that of Eastern Oregon especially between '66 and '68 increased, and Pendleton became a more nat- ural and easily reached center for the inhabitants.
These were the reasons advanced for the transfer of the county seat to Pendleton, and this question was agitated. All the settlers of Eastern Oregon now de- manded by a signed petition that the county seat be moved nearer their center of population. Pendleton considered itself the logical site and when the petition was granted by the legislature, tho no definite place was decided upon, Judge Bailey in January, 1868, ordered the county officers to remove the records to Pendleton. This was done, but in lieu of a courthouse, Judge Bailey's cellar was the official repository. Judge Wil- son of Umatilla declared this removal premature and the records had to be carted back over the old Oregon Trail again to the Umatilla courthouse.
While the question burned, Pendleton worked The change and location of a seat for the county, was not going to be delayed through any fault of theirs, besides, it was obvious that it should be at Pendleton, and now that they had made up their minds, they built a court- house in short order before the question was settled. But the matter held fire too long for the "go get 'em" spirit of the little town. Anyway, what's the use of having a courthouse and nothing to put in it ?
On a certain week-end, a score of men, heavily armed, rode down "The Meadow," lying to the west of Pendleton along the river, across the desert, and under the cover of darkness that Saturday night entered Uma- tilla. Early the next morning at the hour when men and dogs sleep heaviest, in the very heart of Umatilla, they piled not only all of the records of the county and
15
LET 'ER BUCK
the county seal, but the county officers themselves, in a commandeered wagon and under heavy mounted es- cort departed quickly, and deposited their official booty in the "courthouse" in Pendleton.
"Why didn't they recapture it?" Well, they say because it was Sunday.
In brief, they stole the county seat and have been sitting on it ever since.
This happened in 1869, So when in 1910 a half dozen young men of Pendleton sat down over an im- promptu luncheon in Portland during the Rose Festi- val and originating the plan for the Round-Up, agreed to "Go get 'em", it was also a safe bet that they would put it over.
The year before at the Pendleton Fourth of July ball game a saddle had been put up for the bucking event, and Lee Caldwell won it. The enthusiasm over this phase of the celebration left no doubt as to the eternal human interest in riding and horsemanship, and in the fight for supremacy between horse and rider. Roy Raley laid before the others a plan to stage a big fron- tier exhibition in which rough-riding for the cham- pionship of the Northwest should form the main feature, and the idea was then and there roped and hog-tied.
Besides Roy Raley, Mark Moorhouse, Lawrence Frazier, Tilman Taylor, James Gwinn, Harry D. Gray, Lee Drake, Sperry and some others were the prime movers and organizers, but to the two former men should be credited the building of the framework of the show. Of those outside of Pendleton perhaps no sin- gle individual achieved more for the Round-Up than Samuel Jackson of the Oregon Journal, a former Pendleton boy.
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OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
Under the name of the Northwestern Frontier Ex- hibition Association, "The Round-Up" was born, this name having bobbed up several times in repHes to the advertisements of the Association for a suitable appel- lation for the show.
Six officers and a board of nine directors picked solely for their individual qualifications led the organi- zation, which comprised about two hundred and fifty of Pendleton business and financial men. Roy Raley, the first president and prime mover and organizer, wrote the initial program, which, it is interesting to know, has never been practically changed, starting fast and snappy with the cowboy pony race and following through a well-planned gamut of range sports of var- ious sorts ; races, steer bulldogging and roping, grand parade, and last but not least, that king of sports, buck- ing. Eventually the contests led to the world cham- pionships competitions in these sports.
Shares of ten dollars each were sold and but one share to a man. Supported by the citizens of Pendle- ton, the idea was backed up with a capitalization of $5,000, and $3,200 worth of stock was sold. Then a first directorate of fifteen prominent men of Umatilla County were elected to take charge of the Round-Up. Besides the president there were six officers, including the secretary and those in charge of grounds, live stock, arena events, Indians, transporta- tion, parade and publicity, and last those who acted as guardian angels over the Round-Up's interests to pre- vent profiteering.
The problems were by no means simple ones, but as one of the original directorate remarked to me, that first Round-Up compared with the later great show, was like a couple of kids playing ball in the sand lot
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LET 'ER BUCK
as compared with a major league. The principal prob- lems were publicity, transportation of the attendance, and accommodation of the great crowds by the little city, then a trifle over five thousand. But the great problem was the show itself, as well as the arena, track, and methods of entrance and exit, not only for the crowds but for the contestants and animals. The en- trances and exits were uniquely and carefully planned, so as not to interfere with each other ; a quarter of a mile track was determined upon as against the custom- ary half mile oval in order to bring the events within the easy vision of all the spectators.
Then came the program itself. The events were di- vided into three classes, the competitive, non-competi- tive and Indians. Pep and snap must always be the prime characteristic of the show so there must be con- stant contact between the contestants and audience. No waits could even be chanced. There were always three events ready or on; always three paddocks and three openings, so in case any horse or contestant was not ready, they always had one and to spare to shoot in.
It was at first suggested that a sham battle between soldiers from Vancouver Barracks and the Indians would splendidly depict the passing of the last fron- tier and furnish a thrilling climax. Here the first snag was encountered when they could not get soldiers ; and the second was the refusal of the Indians to come in and be shot at, even with blank shells. However, some of the old bucks agreed to come in if they were allowed to do the shooting, regardless of the nature of the shells. Then it was that the roping and bulldog- ging and horse-bucking ideas went over big.
Old circus bleachers were placed around a track
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OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
fenced in only by a three-board fence, and a grand- stand capable of seating three hundred, if crowded, was the crowning feature of the structure. Some of the directorate were so confident in the success of the ven- ture that they figured a maximum of about three thousand on the biggest day and bet hats and cham- pagne (sic) on the size of the crowd.
Four thousand five hundred, a population almost as big as the little city itself, poured in on the banner day, giving receipts of about eight thousand dollars, and leaving a net profit of three thousand dollars for the stockholders. The price of single shares went from ten dollars to fifty and a telegram from a New York theatrical syndicate offered to buy the controlling in- terest at fifty dollars a share.
Pendleton sat up and took notice, and right here the Pendleton spirit manifested itself. A stockholders' meeting was called. The stockholders were asked to give up their stock, practically to throw away not only the ten dollars they had paid for each share, but also the opportunity to sell that share for five times what they had paid for it, to give their show to the City of Pendleton, and then dig further into their pockets for an additional ten thousand to buy and build the present Round-Up grounds. What did they say? Let 'er buck!, that's all. And let 'er buck they did to the tune of an additional ten thousand dollars with which to buy and build the present Round-Up grounds.
This property, the Round-Up Park, was deeded to
the City of Pendleton, to which the Northwestern
Frontier Exhibition Association pays one dollar a
year for its use. The Association is a corporation in
name only, and the stock is of the nominal value of
ten dollars a share; but its only real value is the fact
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that it has voting power. The stockholders still elect three directors and for that purpose alone the stock is worth thirty dollars a share.
The compensation to the directors consists solely in being a director of the Round-Up. That's all. In fact it costs each one of them considerable money in addition to actual time and labor. They have to buy seats for themselves and folks, and sometimes being a director costs them another $52 for a box or what- ever it is, for friends. However, they did vote themselves one favor. On the night before the ticket sale numbers from one to eleven are put on pieces of paper and shaken in a hat. Each draws a number rep- resenting his place in the choice of seats, providing he pays for them out of his own pocket. The first presi- dent even was the seventh in his drawing; yet no men in any private business work more indefatigably and with greater sacrifice than do the directors to insure the success of the Round-Up, and the entire community stands back of them to a man. This is why the Pendleton Round-Up has developed from a little community affair to a national one.
The first show was held in 1910 on what was then the ball park and on a little dinkey track, egg-shaped on account of the form of the grounds, hardly one- third as large as the present one. The home stretch in front of the grandstand probably did not exceed one hundred yards in length. The two or three Indian tepees skirting the other side were on the very edge of the river. The present copse of cottonwoods which forms the background of the great Indian village was then on an island, which the next year's improvement included in the Round-Up grounds.
The second year saw the track extended to its pres-
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OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
ent dimensions, its sudden enlargement being due to an incident which happened the first year in the Indian race at the opening of the show. The rules provided that all Indians should be clothed only in breech clout and paint and should ride their own ponies. One In- dian was painted from scalplock to toe In a vivid blue, standing out strikingly in contrast with the others.
At the crack of the pistol they were away on a wet, muddy track. They struck the first turn, which was sharp and a veritable mudhole at the small end of the egg-shaped track. Down went the leader, the others piling on top. Every man went down and every horse piled up. Few escaped without some cut or bruise, while the blue Indian when he scrambled out had turned black in the mud; in fact there was not enough blue on him to make even the seat in a sailor's breeches. Raley was terribly perturbed, but Mark Moorhouse said, "Roy, the show's made." It was the first thrill, but to obviate such dangers, the plan of the quarter-mile track was put through before the show last year.
Speaking of thrills, it will be interesting to comment on the careful and basic consideration given to the study of the psychological aspects of the plans. In or- ganizing the features of the entertainment, the meet- ings lasted often far into the night, the committee agreeing that the essentials of entertainment could be reduced to three — thrills, the spectacular and laughter.
In their consideration of the thrill element they con- cluded that contests would take away all the element of affectation or acting in the mind of the participants, for in a contest of the kind adapted to the purpose of the Round-Up the contestant would have to concentrate
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his attention on what he was doing and not on the impression he was making on the audience. So to achieve this as well as to hold the attention of the audience itself, it was decided that as far as possible, all the elements which went ';o make up the Old West were to be translated into competitive form.
In consideration of the spectacular element they decided that the proper landscape eflfect and setting was the primary consideration. A small gully, a remnant of the river bed, was left unfilled, which really pre- vented anything being built directly in front of the Indian camp and gave a sunken landscape foreground from which the Indian camp could be seen. Next, by leaving the back stretch of the track free from bleach- ers and filling this in with mounted cowboys, these hundreds of horsemen in colored shirts, kerchiefs and garb produced a magnificent spectacle as seen across from the grandstand with the Indian tepees and the cottonwoods for a stage setting, framed by the golden hills of Oregon behind. The climax of this spectacle was the great number of cowboys and Indians in the arena in serpentine and other convolutions, terminat- ing in a great charge across it, almost into the laps of the spectators — it hit them in the face with over- whelming numbers.
Laughter, strange as it may seem in the humor-lov- ing West, was the hardest element of all to handle. It was impossible to figure out any comedy that would not be produced at the expense of the naturalness and historic quality which above all they decided to retain, and which above all must be retained as the vital ele- ment in the show. They wisely decided they would not make any deliberate attempt to plant comedy, and that they would leave it to accidental incidents.
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OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
Thus the fundamental and basic asset of the show was its psychological verity. But its success could not possibly be assured, unless there was a spirit and community interest back of it. So its organizers wisely aimed to make everybody feel himself a part of the show. This spirit exists in both grandstand and bleachers and in town as well, and is contagious to both the contestants and visitors. Everybody in Pendleton begins a week before the Round-Up to bring in their saddle horses from the ranges and don their ranch clothes to swell the mounted contingent, both in the parade and in the great spectacle of the arena.
And here are the two feature results — the feeling of community spirit in townsman and visitor, and particu- larly the fact that the cowboy and Indian consider the celebration as their own : the spectators are incidental, they do it mostly for their own satisfaction. And if the future Round-Up committees and the people of Pendleton hold fast to these guiding principles which the primal organizers and time have proved out, the Round-Up and its spirit will endure, as long as there is a bad horse to ride and a cowboy to ride it, a steer to be roped and a "boy" to rope it, or an Indian with a war-bonnet and a squaw to make it.
The "Round-Up" means the gathering together of the men, women — ^yes, and animals too — of the ranges for a three-days' festival of cowboy sports and pas- times. It is to that section of the West what the county fair is to certain sections of the East, but with this dif- ference : the seventy thousand people who journey to the little city of Pendleton, with its seven thousand population, are drawn from all quarters of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and even from across the oceans.
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One may well ask why this little through-track town draws such a stream of humanity on such a pilgrimage, and holds them in a tense grip for three days and then sends them away satisfied and enthusiastic. First and foremost, the Round-Up is clean, pure sport, and makes its appeal to the thousands who journey to Pen- dleton every year to see those three primary attractions of a frontier exhibition — the riding of a bucking horse, the roping of a wild steer, and the bulldogging of a Texas longhorn.
Pendleton is in the heart of the range country and was once an outfitting station on the Umatilla stage route. Thus it is particularly adapted in location, set- ting, and understanding, but perhaps preeminently through its united effort, to give full measure and to eliminate graft. In fact, although $1,500,000 has been spent by the Round-Up attendance and $35,000 cleared as profits, this community play of the West is not a money-making scheme, staged as it is by a volunteer organization and paying neither salaries nor dividends. The directors are leading business men of the city, many of whom are also ranchers, who serve without pay; all citizens cooperate with them, keep open-house, and outdo themselves in extending hospitality to visitors.
Prior to the first Round-Up the committee had hard work convincing the railroads that it was necessary to plan ahead for accommodations, but after the Pendle- tonians got behind it, the interest spread like a prairie fire. There was such a demand that the railroads themselves began to get uneasy and sent their agent a number of times to Pendleton to advise them that the crowd would be so great that Pendleton itself did not know what they were up against. Didn't they?
24
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
But here again the loyal and efficient backing of Sam Jackson bore fruit, for through the Oregon Journal he organized parties, himself guaranteeing the first train, and then through the splendid cooperation of the railroad and Pendleton established the custom of or- ganizing parties, from Portland and elsewhere. These round trip tickets covered all accommodations includ- ing meals — not only while on the journey but while in Pendleton, — reserved seats in both the Round-Up grandstand and Happy Canyon, the night show. Visi- tors came on special trains which were parked on sidings in the heart of the town in full view of the Main Street and the Westward Ho Parade. Here water, sewage, electric light and telephone connections were at once installed in the cars.
After the first Round-Up it was Sam Jackson who realized the underlying spirit which has made for the success of the Round-Up, and expressed it so clearly when asked by the first president what he thought of the show, in the reply, "You haven't got a show here; it's an institution."
"What is done with the profits?" There is a man who, like many others in the throng, wears a red badge. On it letters in gold read : "Ask me, I live here." He will tell you that the profits go to the city of Pendleton for the next year's Round-Up, but, principally for the benefit and improvement of this progressive and at- tractive city, primarily for the making of the city park which includes the Round-Up Grounds.
Moreover, when the great call came to stem and hurl back that colossal martial Juggernaut, the vehicle of that Organized State of Mind called Germany, which threatened to quash the spirit of humanity and lay waste the fruits of world democracy of which Amer-
25
LET 'ER BUCK
ica is the outstanding symbol, then the spirit of the peo- ple of little Pendleton and hereabouts, laid in the lap of Liberty at her first call over one million golden dollars and consecrated their Round-Up to the Nation to which it belongs and poured its proceeds into the cof- fers of the American Red Cross. Thus, little wonder is it that, altho the Round-Up is essentially a local insti- tution, a civic possession just as much as is the school system or fire department, it is more than that. Be- cause of its significance and because of its spirit it be- longs to all Umatilla County and the whole state of Oregon, and has become a part of the great American play-book.
They were driving cattle out of Pendleton as late as 1888. From there they were driven across Idaho to Wyoming and some clear to Montana, in herds of a few thousand, where they were sold to some of the big outfits. The biggest outfit was Ryan & Long. There were also Ray & Steadman, the Swan Company, a big English concern which came West, and others. These big outfits would buy from ten to twenty thousand head of beef cattle from Pendleton, by which is meant cattle old enough and heavy enough to sell.
Then the country changed over from a cattle to a wheat country, and changed pretty quickly. But still quite a lot of sheep are run, and there are still a few small herds left, while horse ranges may be found in the Crooked River and Harney Valley country; and there is also a lot of open country around Camas Prairie, where the Indians used to dig their camas, and from the Pendleton point of view this means the region be- ginning about twenty miles south and running to the Nevada line. While this country is farmed some, it really is range country for three hundred miles.
26
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
Any time during the year one may see cowboys, ranch hands, old-timers and Indians about the streets of Pendleton, but a few days before the Round-Up Pendleton has all the appearance of a cow town. Chapped and booted cowboys, riding that inimitable close saddle, pass frequently to the jingle of chain and spur, or loll in picturesque groups at the sidewalk edges, where, in characteristic, well-modulated voices, the relative merits of "bucker" and "buckaroo" are discussed at length.
The "get up" of the American cowboy comes the nearest of any we have, to being a national costume and is by far the most picturesque, as well as practical, from Stetson to spurs, for like most national costumes there is a practical reason for every appurtenance of it. His broad-brimmed hat with its soft color, casting a softer shadow beneath, has become the crown of these mon- archs of the range and is usually his first consideration — his hat, which must be of a cliaracter to protect his eyes against scorching sun and driving rain, is often ornamented with a woven silver star or circled with a multi-colored horsehair band of Indian workmanship, or with a leather strap, black and silver studded. The sombreros vary in styles and shapes, all of which have their names, and the method of creasing, pointing, crushing or rolling the brim varies with the locality or with the individual whim of the owner; but in what- ever shape or form, this characteristically American headgear is one of the most becoming and practical types of hats to be found.
The cowboy's loose flannel shirt with turn-down collar is warm and comfortable, and protected at the wrists by long leather cuffs of brown or black, tight- fitting at the wrists, which keep the wind out of his
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LET 'ER BUCK
sleeves and protect his wrists and forearm from being burnt with a rope. His chapps, from chappareros, the leather over-breeches, were first worn to protect clothes and legs against the thorny chapparal or brush of the southwest, and the old-time fringes, or more modern broad wings, shed rain — as do the more dis- tinctively Northwest type of angora goat's hair chaps — ^and likewise keep the wearer warm.
His boots, often fancifully stitched with colored thread, their tops slit front and back, with heels high enough to inspire the envy of a little French grisette, serve the purpose of preventing his being hung up in his stirrup. His dull-pointed clanking spurs are for emergency on the range, and whether they should be worn, shanks up or down, depends on the part of the country he is from and is one of the moot questions of the West. About Pendleton the downs have it.
That fluttering, shimmering thing of color, the ker- chief, is most characteristic of the Round-Up. You will notice that its small end is tied with the loop worn in front — ^just the reverse from a sailor's kerchief — but there's a reason. Run cattle in the choking dust of a corral or follow them in the blinding dust storms of the range, and your kerchief will soon be drawn tight over the bridge of your nose.
It is on Saturday nights, or more especially during the Round-Up when the boys ride in from the ranches, that you see them outfitting in the high-grade shops of the city, which carry for this occasion particularly gala- colored shirts of sheening silk or rich velvet, and stud- ded on collar, front and forearm with pearl buttons as flat and big as dollars, and kerchiefs which would make any self-respecting rainbow pale with envy.
On the corner a big-sombreroed, swarthy Mexican
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OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
puffs silently on his cigarillo; moccasin- footed Uma- tilla Indians pigeon-toe along, trailed by heavy-siet pa- poose-bearing squaws and beautiful daughters, paus- ing before the allurements in the display windows. Among the fancy and useful objects, naturally the beautiful blankets and shawls make the greatest appeal not only to the passing Indian woman, but to the white. Altho these are of local manufacture they find their markets in the shops of Edinburgh and the bazaars of Peking.
An occasional cowgirl, in fringed buckskin or riding costume, strolls by with that unobtrusiveness which is a salient characteristic of these range women. Any reader of men sees, however, beneath this natural care- free poise a glint in the eye which tells of a self-control and fearless courage that is also capable of reckless daring.
The harness and saddlery stores naturally attract. Worm through that crowd screening the show win- dows of a big harness and saddlery store — there where it's densest, — and you will see the most coveted prize of the whole show, the Round-Up saddle which will go to the winner of the cowboys' bucking contest for the championship of the world. It is exquisitely hand- tooled from horn and cantel to skirts and tapideros; but that's not all, — it's artistically studded and inlaid at certain points with big silver medallions; this year they happen to be very finely etched discs, last year they were silver butterflies.
"That's sure worth five hundred bucks, just as it sez on the card, with all that sculpturin' 'n' everything," remarks the new comer.
"You tell 'em, stranger, that's branding it," chimes
in "Red" Parker, and he ought to know for he rode in
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LET 'ER BUCK
for it last year. "But say," he continued, ''There's more than one kind 'o strings ter that saddle. There's four hundred and fifty bucks and a fancy plaster hitched to it ter put on yer wall if yer don't need it ter take yer soreness out. The next feller gits two hun- dred bucks and the third an even hundred."
"Ugh! Hi-yu-skookum saddle," grunted old Chief Little Hawk with a grin.
Those two sturdy buckaroos beside the drinking fountain are Jim Roach of Bell Cow Canyon and Bert Kelly of Walla Walla, both champions among the early contestants who helped to make the Round-Up a success. Jim Roach is the star maverick race roper. There is Ella Lazinka, who finished in the grand finals one year in the cowgirls' relay race, though a large fence splinter had torn her leg in the second lap. She will be at her high-school lessons the Monday after the Round-Up.
When the stranger is not at the "tryouts" and elim- ination contests he will find much of interest in the bookshops, photographers and other splendid stores in the center of the city; or on the way to the iron works, he can look over the splendid big stores of agricultural implements, tractors or farm machinery, see how the Indian design blankets are made at the woolen mills, or inspect the great flour mills which hum their grinding night and day. Pendleton is not only the focal point in, and county seat of one of the greatest wheat countries of the United States, but is the great emporium for trade for much of Eastern Oregon.
When the call for men to help their country in the war against autocracy came, Pendleton said, "Let's go!" When the news spread over the range country
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OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
that a troop of cowboy cavalry was to be organized to whip the Kaiser and his ranch hands, of course the cowboys "saddled on" and came riding in from the Blue Mountains and the John Day country, some cover- ing over one hundred and fifty miles.
The first move made to secure this cavalry troop was by Dell Blancett; but our government did not move fast enough for Dell, and he was shortly on his way "over there" with the Canadian cavalry.
The troop, like the Round-Up, was promptly organ- ized through the cooperation of leading cowboys, busi- ness men of Pendleton and ranchers. Probably that company of a hundred, hardy, courageous Umatilla County cowboys — every one of them could ride and shoot — was the greatest rough-riding contingent ever organized into the United States army.
Lee Caldwell, the greatest rider of bucking horses in the West and the second man to enlist, was elected captain. James F. Cook, who had served as sergeant of Troop A on the Mexican border, was appointed First Lieutenant; Marshall Spell, who had served in old Company L in Pendleton, was Second "Lieuy." Eu- gene Walters, top sergeant, and other members who had had some military experience, were appointed "non- coms," over as fine a looking lot of horsemen as ever sat saddles, but the rawest kind of recruits.
Roll call mustered famous names in Round-Up an- nals, with which you will be familiar after you have seen the great show. There was Ben Corbett, one of the first to sign up, all-round cowboy and champion relay and Roman rider, a former top-sergeant in the regular cavalry, but who later transferred; Frank Cable, former bulldogger, was stable sergeant; there was Tracy Lane, the cowboy poet and songster, and
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one of the greatest horse-gentlers in the country, who with "Jock" Coleman, cowboy, ranch-hand and Scotch comedian, made a top-notch pair of entertainers. There, too, were CharHe Runyan, who has ridden at nearly every Round-Up; Leslie McCubbins, a well- known rider, and many others.
By the middle of July the troop was mobilized, with the Happy Canyon dance-hall as their temporary quar- ters. The strenuous daily routine of foot drill was pretty hard on many of the cowboys, unused to walk- ing; but the big blisters didn't lessen their enthusiasm. It wasn't, however, the easiest thing to make all of these individualists see at once the necessity of exactitude in the method of drill and obedience to orders.
Many of them figured that, give them a good horse and a six-shooter, they'd undertake to ride into Berlin. If it was not necessary to get the Kaiser and Von Hindenburg dead, why, they'd rope 'em! But they sure could not figure out why they had to stand guard and drill on foot when they went into the cavalry.
"Aboot face !" commanded Sergeant Coleman, who had served his time with a "Ladies from Hell" regi- ment before the war.
Jess Brunn, a tall, finely set-up type of cowboy, later as snappy a soldier as there was in the outfit, could not seem to connect. Time and again he tried, but the high heels of his boots seemed as rebellious as their owner.
"Place th' toe of yer-r-r-r-r-r-ight foot behind and to the left of the heel of — "
This was a little more than Jess could stand. It was the most sudden breaking of ranks the outfit had seen, when the strings of control of Jess's otherwise quiet
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OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
demeanor snapped, and like a mountain lion he sprang from the line, fists up and clenched.
"Look here ! I'm man enough to lick any
man in this
outfit, or any officer either, that tries to tell me how I've got to turn around."
Orders to entrain for Camp Withycombe at Clacka- mas came. Portland, always such a loyal friend to Pendleton and the Round-Up, seemed to turn out en masse as the outfit went through, while word that the Pendleton bunch was arriving, set the entire camp agog. But if they expected a slicked-up, uniformed nurse- maids-to-horses troop to march with eyes front and 120 steps to the minute, they had a surprise — for of all the picturesque, care-free, self-contained contingents that ever pulled into camp this "wild bunch" was the wooliest outfit. There was no senti- ment lost in their make-up, although there was a lot to be found in it.
The only uniform they swung, was that of their calling. Their broad-brimmed sombreros with leather strap or braided band of horsehair went a-wobbling and a-milling by like a herd of steers; red or other colored shirts and kerchiefs with heavy trousers, most of them tucked into high-heeled boots, covered their lean, hard-muscled figures as they clumped along through the company streets. A few wore chapps, but under the coat of almost every man-Jack of them there slightly bulged the handle of a .45, concealed like a bustle on behind.
It was a hard, he-man bunch, but no harder than the big barrel of cider which headed the procession, flanked on either side by the captain and lieutenants respective- ly, followed by the thirsty gang.
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Then came the weeks of whipping into shape. Rifles had been issued but two days, when they got some ammunition — heaven knows where they rustled it. Suddenly the entire camp was greeted with a fusil- lade which might have been mistaken for a Boche bar- rage, only to find that Troop D was tossing into the air from the middle of their company street, tin cans, bot- tle-necks and nickels, and shooting them on bets — hit- ting 'em, too.
The other companies stood in wholesome awe and respect of the men of Troop D. This feeling was somewhat crudely expressed, perhaps, by one recruit from a little jerk-water town on the other side of the state line to a new recruit in his company. "Don't get mixed up with any of that Pendleton bunch. They don't fight with their fists, — they just shoot."
Well, it was not a bad "rep" to have, as none of the Pendleton outfit denied it^and there were a few who did not have to. Even nickels flipped high in the air dropped plugged, before the unerring aim of many of these men. But, probably, no more marvelous shot was found in the entire United States army than "Tex Winchester," as Howard L. Knutson was called. He was an old ranger and the quickest on the draw in the outfit. Their confidence in Tex, as well as their nerve, was shown when any one of Troop D would stand with a cigarette in his mouth and let "Tex" shoot off the ashes. The climax of his remarkable feat was reached, though, when he did the same trick with his front sight covered with a piece of paper, slipped on the muzzle of his rifle.
Perhaps the hardest nut for the saddle-warming out- fit to crack, was why they had to drill on foot when they went into the cavalry. Charlie Runyan never did
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OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
quite figure it out. He'd never walked before, and until he was shod with the Munson last, he was foot- sore and worn down to the quick, marching up and down in riding boots.
One night along came Major Charles McDonald, courageous, loyal McDonald, one of the first of Ore- gon's sons to make the great sacrifice, Runyan, seeing him approach in the darkness, gripped his shooting iron.
"Hell! Look who's here!" says Charlie.
There was dead silence for a minute. Then follow- ed an introductory calling-down, which we will omit.
"What were your orders?"
"Well, sir — I was told to say 'Halt! Who goes there!'"
"Well, you didn't. You said, 'Hell ! Look who's here!'"
"Beg pardon, sir. I meant to say. Halt! Who goes there 1' "
Runyan, in many ways the life of the company, survived the above mentioned ordeal with the major, to come near not surviving the deadly German gas.
The soldier timber of this outfit as soon as they had barked a little of the rough off, proved to be sec- ond to none and Troop D, 3d Oregon Cavalry, was later turned into one of the most efiicient batter- ies— the 148th Field Artillery. They swung their 155 millimeter G. P. F.'s into position at Chateau Thierry. Over the shady roads of fair France, beyond the Hindenburg line, along the shell-pockmarked roads and landscape blighted by the Teuton scourge, their guns, limbers and trucks rattled their way to skilful and determined driving. The ruined walls of St. Mihiel, the Woods of Belleau and the Valley of the
35
LET 'ER BUCK
Argonne echoed to their old slogans, "Powder River" and "Let 'er buck." Every American regiment within their line of march, as well as the French, be- came well acquainted with this little bunch of Eastern Oregon cowboys and their slogan, and more particu- larly with the spirit of the West and the America which they symbolized.
On every article of furniture of that outfit, guns, trucks, cases, was painted the Round-Up's epic slogan and graced too with a picture of that Pegasus of the West and his rider — the cowboy on a bucking horse.
At the end of the great drive, this outfit was cited twice by the French government and once by our own. Back in Pendleton, as quickly as they could corral their range togs, they dove again into their chapps and high- heeled boots and dispersed to the ranges; and true to cowboy nature left other bards to sing their praises.
Pendleton has a way of its own in extending its hospitality in receiving its city's visitors, and William McAdoo and his party will remember for some time the long line of chapped and booted mounted Pendle- tonians drawn up on the sidewalk at the railroad sta- tion to receive him when his train pulled in to the Round-Up. He was promptly adorned with full cow- boy regalia and a splendid mount. In these he made a great hit in the Arena when, instead of the conven- tional rocking-horse lope of the average dignitary, to the surprise of the crowd he gave his horse free rein like a real cowboy. He will remember too how they boosted the well-known Cheyenn*. prima donna, big Charlie Irwin, up on a cart while he shook his ropes off, from his famous world's championship love dit- tie Alfalfa Hay, and sang it in his droll, serious man- ner to the tune of "Bury My Bones in Alcohol,"
36
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
"Alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, "You're the sweetest weed that grows, alfalfa hay."
The chorus was equally touching :
"Alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, "You're the sweetest weed that grows, alfalfa hay."
Bill will also remember "Slim" Allen, the tall, husky cowpuncher who measured over a couple of inches taller than McAdoo himself. When Slim had got acquainted a bit he rustled up to him and seized him by the arm, saying :
"I'm going to whip hell out of you this afternoon !"
Pendleton will always remember McAdoo's reply, when, looking his man in the eye he quietly replied, "Well, we will see about that later."
But the "McAdoo" Slim referred to was the horse named in honor of the distinguished visitor whom he had drawn to ride in the bucking contest — which to Bill's satisfaction, in about five bucks landed his rider in Round-Up park.
Just as in the Round-Up arena the events portray more especially the work of the range, and in Happy Canyon, the night show is shown the life of the fron- tier town, so the Westward Ho Parade, as it wends its way along the pavements of little Pendleton on the Saturday or last morning of each annual Round-Up, presents a panorama which epitomizes the Old West — the Old West on the move. Led by the mounted cow- boy band, with the Governor of Oregon usually in the place of honor, 'came the president and members of the Round-Up committee, clean-cut ranchmen and stockmen types, heading the parade. These committee-
Z1
LET 'ER BUCK
men have turned their attention also to manufacture, merchandise, banking and law, and are the brains of this marvelous passion play of the West. Then come the range types that delight the painter and molder of clay, vigorous, keen eyed, modest, and primitively natural and likable. You see all the familiar charac- ters you have become acquainted with at the tryouts or seen in the contests.
There, too, you see the old time West literally stalking in the flesh. The floats of the hunter, the pioneer, the Indian, the gambler and others symbolize its epic episodes. There go the oxcart, the chuck- wagon, the freighter, the prairie schooner and the In- dian travois. No advertising, no autos or any modern innovations are allowed to mar the historic pictur- esquesness of this revival of the past, then come the Indians in a swirl of color and trappings which sight is alone worth your long journey.
That heavy-set packer with the long string of pack mules is Bill Russell. Bill's hospitable ranch home nestles invitingly under a grove of trees just this side of Walla Walla. The old hide packs, so well "hitched" on, have a history, too — they are what the Indians didn't want or didn't have time to take when they were left strewn along the slopes of the Little Big Horn after the Custer massacre. Bill's father was with Reno at the time they gathered some of them up, so here they are.
Anyone would know by the way that old-timer maneuvers the reins of one of the stagecoach outfits that it is but second nature, and so it is to old Dave Horn who has handled reins, brake and lash over the trail on his daily runs from Cayuse to Umatilla in the old days, and has been recognized for years as the
38
OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS
best six-line skinner that ever drove over the Blue Mountains. Along behind, trudges gray-grizzled, bearded Frank Beagle, another old-timer and pros- pector, his burro loaded with the same outfit he panned and dug with across a span of years.
I rode beside an old scout, H. C. (Hank) Cap- linger, and somehow — just by fate perhaps — old "Hank" was left out of history along with Peg Leg Smith. We halted for a spell for the line to lengthen out. "Yes, it's a Dutch name," old Hank told me, "but I guess I'm Irish."
"When did you come out?"
"Crossed the plains with an ox team in '45. Scouted for the government and fit in Indian scraps; two in Montana, others in Southern Oregon, Northern Cali- fornia, and in the Pitt River country. That's where I was wounded. Of all the damned renegades that crowd was the worst. I was with one hundred and thirty Warm Spring Oregon Indians and Donald McKay, a half-breed ranger and scout, and by God, the best trailer that ever started out. Run 'em for over two and a half months through the mountains. Run 'em down and got every mother's son of 'em. And scalped every one of 'em, too. Been buckarooing in every country where a white man dared to go and never been arrested for stealing yet. Most of the time I was with Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson and Peg Leg Smith, and Peg Leg Smith was the gamest man in the whole damn outfit, but he was never writ up."
Then the contingent moved on through the crowds. Yes, there is many a hero of the West, unheralded, be- cause "he never was writ up."
39
CHAPTER TWO
TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
Many an old-time pioneer of to-day of scarce four- score years, need but close his eyes to vision backward to the time when the star empire rested on Oregon's in- terminable forests, flowering, undulating prairie lands of limitless bunchgrass, and on her fish-filled cascad- ing streams, to trace through her eight decades of ad- venturous, romantic, progressive story. This story was not a tale of a contest with nature only, but with men, of law and order against lawlessness and terror — the ever-old story of the frontiers of civilization. These sturdy, self-respecting pioneers, settlers and mission- aries of Oregon, ahead as they were of territorial gov- ernment, were a sufficint law unto themselves and it is recorded that the first decade of Oregon history was without law-statute law — and yet not a crime was com- mitted in the American settlement. In 1841, however, the first provisional court west of the Missouri River, a probate court, was organized.
When that beckoning Circe of man's cupidity — gold — was discovered in California, then in Oregon, the promise of easy wealth flooded the country with out- laws— the gambler, highwayman, horse and cattle thief and all-round bad man, while saloons and gambling
joints sprang up like mushrooms in a night. During
40
TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
these formative days when law was flouted and defied by these desperadoes, many of them gravitated to the mining camps of Eastern Oregon. They seemed to be a conscienceless type. Many were men "wanted" or not wanted in the East; many of them not only made highway robbery a profession, but openly boasted of it.
Thus a form of organized brigandage developed. No sheriff could bring in a criminal to justice without becoming a victim of the "gang." This order of things held sway and whole communities were terror- ized until the law-respecting citizens organized into vigilance committees and courts against these outlaws, these law-preservers being known as "vigilantes." The "short cut" was sometimes administered to some of the worst by way of the "short end of a halter rope."
Among the names written blackest in this North- west story are those of Romaine and his terrible band, one of whom remarked to the outfit when about to swing for his crimes, "Good-bye, boys. I'll meet you in hell in fifteen minutes." There was the famous McNab and the notorious "Hank" Vaughan raised in The Dalles, who always slept with gun in hand. It was he who, when fleeing from pursuit with a band of horses he had rustled, killed the sheriff of Umatilla and wounded the deputy.
Since then, there have been and probably always will be, men who for one reason or the other live outside the law. Those days were days of frontier terrors in which the outlaw outdevilled the Indian and where the .45 was often a man's best friend. They were days, too, of romance and adventure, a vestige of which still remains here and there in the dying embers which the flame of conquest has left on scorched remnants of a primitive frontier.
41
LET 'ER BUCK
Such were the conditions which molded the stal- wart, dauntless men who held taut the reins of order and government. But perhaps to no one class of men can the law, pioneers and our government ascribe greater tribute than to the western sheriff, watchdog of the peace and upholder of justice. To the memory of no recent sheriff can Oregon, the West, the United States pay greater tribute than to that of the late Tilman D. Taylor of Pendleton, "Til" Taylor to Oregon and the Northwest — just plain "Til" to his friends and acquaintances. Not only as sheriff of Umatilla County and as second president of the Round-Up, which office he held for eight years, since the first year of its inception, but as the outstanding figure among the sheriffs of the West of to-day, Til Taylor's character and record is as remarkable as it was romantic.
His career of upholding the law began twenty-two years ago. The railroad had reached Pendleton a short ten years before and the country was still in its meta- morphosis from stock ranges to wheat lands. Pendleton was very different from the trim progressive city of to- day. It was then a small town of about three thousand people. Like many a western town of that day, gam- bling houses were run wide open, and there were at one time twenty-seven saloons. Those days were a bit wild and wooly, and the sheriff could walk the streets and know just what criminals were in town; so when something happened he could almost pick the man who had committed the crime.
The horse thief, "stick-up man" and "cattle rustlers" were wary of the late sheriff, for he had never lost a horse thief and could identify a horse regardless of its condition. He had an intuition that was almost uncan-
42
TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
ny in handling criminals, and his abihty to spot men with whom he had come into previous contact, or of whom he had received descriptions, was exceptional.
One remarkable illustration of this occurred in 191L Taylor was after a man sixty-five years of age on a local charge, and to identify him had nothing but a photo- graph which he selected from the files of the Walla Walla penitentiary. This picture was of a man twenty years old, and clean shaven, but proved to be the same man arrested forty years later who had a heavy growth of beard and mustache and features con- siderably altered.
His ability to recognize criminals was attributed to his manner of studying men. He had a system of observation of his own, which was to study carefully the features of the upper face, particularly the nose, eyes and ears. The application of this can be appre- ciated in a country where the mask often consists of a kerchief tied over the bridge of the nose and whiskers were not an uncommon hirsutian adornment.
Three men who broke jail in Pendleton in 1915 were run down after a twenty mile chase in the mountains and captured single handed by Sheriff Taylor. They were drinking at a spring, when what was their con- sternation to find themselves covered by Taylor's gun before they had time to draw.
Out of twenty-eight men who broke jail from Uma- tilla County, Sheriff Taylor returned twenty-six to the same cells, while the other two were located elsewhere in the country, one now being in a penitentiary in the East. Over two thousand five hundred arrests, the vast majority of which were followed with convictions, and much work in connection with famous crime mysteries, as well as the apprehension and bringing to
43
LET 'ER BUCK
justice of many escaped convicts from eastern and southern states, are credited to his office. In fact, a record of the daring captures of this noted typical sheriff would fill a volume with true stories, vying in thrills with those portrayed on the movie screen or read in the pages of Wild West magazines.
One of the most desperate episodes occurred after bank robbers had blown a safe at Hermiston, forty miles from Pendleton, toward the Columbia River, to which place Taylor immediately and unerringly track- ed them, and captured them single-handed. While holding the struggling prisoner with one hand, he fought a revolver duel with the pal of the prisoner, who first opened fire from a telegraph pole. This was the only time in the memory of those who served under him that the late sheriff ever shot to kill.
A strange fate caused Taylor's cartridges to jam in his gun, forcing him to quit firing; but he brought back the first prisoner. Tracing the second robber through three states, Taylor finally checked up on him in Montana. The bandit was then brought to the Mult- nomah County jail in Portland, and here occurred an example of Taylor's uncanny ability to visualize a man and unerringly memorize his face, for out of a group of sixty men, Taylor picked him out, identifying him weeks, possibly months, after having seen him only once under distracting circumstances and then from behind a telegraph pole.
In early July of 1920, about the time the great com- bines were starting to garner the first of Umatilla County's vast golden wealth of wheat, word came into the sheriff's office at Pendleton of a hold-up staged a few miles east of the city by two bandits showing all the earmarks of desperadoes. Taylor and deputies
44
TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
soon picked up their trail and came upon them near the Httle hamlet of Reith in the canyon.
Then came a running gun fight. Deputy Jacob Marin captured the first bandit who traveled under the alias of Neil Hart; — but his "pardner" under the alias of Jim Owens, the more desperate of the two, took to the hills pursued by Taylor, and a hide-and-seek chase and gun duel, with life and death the stakes, and odds even, was witnessed by the people of Reith in the valley below. Playing one another, crouching like panthers, they eventually closed in, Taylor getting the drop on his man.
Like a flash Owens with the movements of a cat grabbed the sheriff's gun, attempting to turn it on his captor; but he did not count on the power of Taylor's grip. Most men would have shot his man, but Tay- lor, adhering to his policy of never killing a man to capture him, soon had the outlaw in front of him covered, and jailed him in Pendleton.
On a hot Sunday afternoon two weeks later, the streets of little Pendleton were all but deserted. Those who were not at the ball game at Round-Up Park were resting in the cool shade of house or veranda. Even the courthouse, in which the jail is ensconced, was de- serted. About a quarter of two Deputy Sheriff Jacob Marin with the help of Louis Anderson, a trusty he had taken out with him, entered the jail with the mid- day meal for the prisoners. Anderson, having noticed that no one but the deputy was about the courthouse, signaled to his companions that the coast was clear. Marin was shortly dispensing the dinner to the prisoners.
Crack ! He was felled from behind by John Rathie, a prisoner, with a heavy stick of cordwood, striking his
45
LET 'ER BUCK
head against the iron raiHng. All but stunned, half crouching, he reached for his gun. But his arm was seized by Neil Hart, who dodged just in time a power- ful swing of the bunch of keys by the gritty warden.
Thud! Again a terrific blow crashed upon Marin's head. Even then, unable to tie the hands or stop the calls for assistance of the half -dazed but struggling warden, it required the combined efforts of the prison- ers to carry him to a nearby cell and throw over the bolt. Taking no chance with such a desperate fighter even though imprisoned, they left one man, Dick Pat- terson, to guard him while four of them, Hart, Owens, Rathie and Lingren having the keys, entered the sheriff's office. Lingren lit out at once for fresh air. Led by Owens and determined to escape at all cost, the others immediately began ransacking the office. Re- volvers were secured at once, but not the ammunition which it had always been the sheriff's habit to keep hidden.
Papers, books, everything was being strewn all over the place in their hurried search, and it was upon this scene that Taylor and Guy Wyrick, a close personal friend, unexpectedly entered, returning from their ride.
There was no time to draw a gun ; Taylor grappled Owens, the biggest of the three, and threw him to the floor; while Wyrick, who was ably handling Hart, was struck from behind by Rathie upon whom he turned. The two men fell fighting to the floor.
There, too, lay the sheriff's gun which had dropped from his holster in his hand-to-hand fight. With a bound Hart, now free, snatched it, and in response to Owens' call to shoot, raised the gun. The sheriff, re- leasing one hand from his grip on Owens', with re-
46
TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
markable quickness again grabbed the gun barrel in time to divert the shot.
"Shoot him again," commanded Owens, as the two men locked in a struggle for life and death.
Drawing the gun down to Taylor's heart he fired again, the bullet entering the sheriff's chest just below the throat.
"Guy, I'm shot," gasped the fatally wounded man as he crumpled to the floor.
With the muzzle of his gun and a threat to kill, Hart forced Wyrick to release Rathie, then again drawing on Taylor cursed them both and demanded the loca- tion of the ammunition, but received no response. Again he threatened to fire, when Wyrick shouted. "You wouldn't shoot a man when he's down, would you?"
Taylor, realizing he was fatally wounded, in order to save Wyrick told the men where the cartridges were. The effort was a severe one for the dying sheriff, and he asked for water. After some debate, in which no little cursing figured, it was brought to him by one of the men, while Wyrick under the muzzle of a gun assisted him as much as possible, placing him on a bed in an adjoining room. Meanwhile the other two des- peradoes searched for a full supply of revolvers and ammunition.
"What is the trouble?" asked R. E. Phelps, county road master, who, hearing the noise, ran up to the sheriff's office, accompanied by another man.
"Just a little jail riot," answered Anderson, standing at the jail door, and whom Phelps did not realize was a prisoner.
"Everything all right now?" queried Phelps.
"All right," came back from the adjoining room.
47
LET 'ER BUCK
"Let's go," shouted Owens. Patterson, leaving Marin, joined the others, now all armed with loaded revolvers, and the five lit out, heading for the railroad tracks. Here one of those strange coincidences we call fate, seemed to favor them — a freight train, an extra, which was promptly jumped was just leaving the city east-bound for the Blue Mountains.
Wyrick, caring for the fatally wounded sheriff under cover of a gun until the five men fled, immediate- ly upon their departure telephoned for a doctor. Phelps, however, had been suspicious, but being unarmed, walked slowly away until out of sight, then speedily notified the chief of police, who gun in hand, rushed to the jail to find the birds flown.
"Til's shot!"
The word was passed by mouth and phone. It was a rude awakening which aroused the slumbering little city from its Sunday siesta. The quiet, empty, hot streets immediately became spotted with little groups of people talking — at first in subdued tones. Then came the second word — "The jail's broke 1 Til's mur- derers have made a getaway."
Then the storm burst. People scurried to and fro, autos shot down street, up street, and across street. Telegraph wires were hot with messages to head off the prisoners or asking for information. Determined men mouths grim set and eyes steady, went quietly but quickly to their homes and loaded their rifles. Hard- ware stores were unlocked and their owners, with a wave of the hand towards the gun racks, told the man- hunters to help themselves. Deputies, headed by the released Marin, took charge and the entire surround- ing country was notified.
Wild rumors and groundless clues of the flight were
48
TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
plentiful, but the first clue came from the brakemen bloodhounds on the west bound extra, No. 21136. They had seen five men drop off the freight at Mission, six miles east of Pendleton, and make for the brush near the river. Posses, hastily organized, struck out in every direction, but when it was known a clean get- away had been made, returned for definite orders and found that Sheriff Taylor was dead. As men came into the office of the late sheriff for orders, tears glistened in their eyes, but their eyelids did not quiver and their hearts were hard.
Following the clue, armed to the teeth, they shot out in cars. One large posse thoroughly searched the wheatfields and brush about Mission. Lingren, the first to skip out and who had no hand in the fight had evidently boarded the same freight, and was shortly captured about twelve miles from Pendleton at Cayuse. In less than ten hours he was again behind the bars, but gave absolutely no information of the where- abouts of the other five fugitives. Evidence was ob- tained later, however, which proved that the posse was within ten yards of where they were.
Bloodhounds from the state penitentiary at Walla Walla, fifty miles from Pendleton, were rushed to the scene ; all points on the railroads were carefully guard- ed, even mountain cabins were notified, and the hunt reorganized. Twilight found over one hundred men at Mission with the hounds in leash. They stalked the fugitives throughout the night, the largest posse, whip- ping one long canyon, saw daylight on Cabbage Hill in the foothills of the Blue Mountains eighteen miles away.
Here they found that the meat house of a construc- tion camp had been robbed. Cheese, sausage and
4 49
LET 'ER BUCK
dried codfish had been carried away. In a muddy spot at the spring nearby a tell-tale footprint was identified by one of the posse as corresponding to that of a shoe worn by Owens. Thus the first clue was obtained and bloodhounds were placed on the scent.
The heavy brush in the deep canyons and the ex- treme dryness of the rocky hills greatly hampered the hounds. When the trail was hottest, a hurry call came from a town about thirty miles away to the west of Pendleton, requesting all available posse men to help close in on the fugitives who had been surrounded. There was no time to debate the matter, and much against the will of the officer in charge of the dogs, the whole party of man-hunters was streaking down mountain toward Pendleton. The report proved false and the chase was again up in the air.
The courthouse in Pendleton now saw the hunters gathered in and new plans were systematically laid, maps of creeks, canyons, springs, cabins and every possible point where the desperadoes might go were made; stations were established at all points and tele- phones taken to many of them from which reports were phoned hourly. W. R. Taylor, "Ji^^s" Taylor to those who know him, brother of the murdered sheriff, a prominent rancher of the county, was ap- pointed by the court to fill the unexpired term of his brother, while posters announced a total reward of six thousand dollars for the capture of the fugitives, dead or alive. Invaluable assistance in the planning and or- ganizing was rendered by two additional Oregon ex- perts in this line of work — "Ace" (A. B.) Thompson of Echo and E. B. Wood of Portland.
The search was now re-planned in a scientific man- ner. All traffic was stopped through the county ; busi-
50
TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
ness houses closed down and allowed their employees to join the posses; sheriffs, deputies, government de- tectives and railroad officials joined in the hunt; In- dians of the Umatilla Reservation joined the friends of the dead sheriff as they rode horseback over the hills, while on all possible trails scouts were placed.
Not until after four days of exhaustive effort did any of the posses get within sight of the outlaws ; then two men were seen at a distance and shots exchanged. Reports of various robberies committed in the nearby cabins indicated that the fugitives were in the vicinity, and after three days of the hardest trailing, sometimes by tracking, sometimes with the aid of bloodhounds, over rocky hills and into deep canyons heavily masked with brush and almost impossible of penetration, a posse of Pendleton and LaGrande men under Sheriff Lee Warnack came to a deserted campfire.
Reaching a telephone they notified a posse from La- Grande on the other side of the mountain to head the bandits off. In response the LaGrande posse, scouring the hills for isolated sheep camps, working on to the Daxe Johnson ranch, came upon the darkened tent house of a French sheepherder, who lay soundly sleep- ing on a rough couch in the dark and obscure interior.
"Have you seen any strange men in this section?" they called loudly.
The man roused himself. "Non, I have not," he re- plied, rubbing his sleepy eyes.
Meantime, however, he pointed significantly toward a figure asleep on the floor to one side of the door of the tent. Again the Frenchman raised his swarthy arm, this time pointing to a sleeping man on the couch beside him.
Carbines were quickly unlimbered. Flashlights lit
51
LET 'ER BUCK
up the scene, and before they could awaken from their deep slumber, the two sleepers in no uncertain manner were roughly jerked to their feet. There stood Owens and Hart.
"Search 'em," and as they went thoroughly and quickly through the captives a big gun slipped from Owens' holster and fell to the ground. With the quick- ness of a cat he reached for it, and as he stooped over to seize it he ran plumb against a rifle which one of the possemen jammed square in his face.
"Move another inch and I'll shoot you dead in your tracks," he threatened.
"To hell with you; shoot and be damned," mutter- ed Owens but shoved "hands up" as the gun came into play.
Half-starved and exhausted from their flight over the mountains, cheeks sunken from loss of food and sleep, feet bruised and blistered from six days of cease- less hiking, the two were then with scant ceremony bound together hand and foot.
Thus, after six days of trailing foot-prints and fol- lowing with bloodhounds over some of the roughest kind of country, the two most desperate of the quin- tette were caught like rats in a trap, in a lone sheep- herder's cabin six miles east of Toll Gate on the top of the Blue Mountains. The pair were taken to the Union County jail in LaGrande, again within the clutch of the law.
Shortly after, Til's brother, "Jinks" Taylor, now acting as sheriff, arrived in LaGrande and gave Sheriff Lee Warnack a receipt for the "live bodies" of Owens and Llart, who were immediately bundled into the ton- neau of a high-power machine and the car made for Pendleton.
52
TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
The day proved to be a complete round-up of the entire five, who on the third day of their flight had split up. Rathie had been going it alone, and had eaten only six times in six days under the terrific strain of being hunted. He had thrown away his revolver, and made no resistance when captured in the mountains twenty miles from Pendleton at Gibbon, where he had ap- peared at a cabin demanding food. It was over this same country and at the very point at Gibbon on the mountains, that the late sheriff, after a chase of many days, had run down and captured the bandits who blew a safe in Helix. At Toll Gate, Rathie's attempt to pass over the mountain had been foiled by guards, and the moves he made show that the posses were close on him all the time. Though Rathie was captured after Owens and Hart, he was the first to be brought to Pendleton, few knowing until evening that he had been smuggled into the jail.
The last to be run down were Patterson and Ander- son. They, too, when captured by sheepherders, were suffering f i-om hunger, having eaten nothing but green oats picked from the grain fields since the previous Sunday. In fact, so great was their fear of being lynched that breaking down and crying, they pleaded not to be placed in the same jail with Owens and Hart.
News of the capture of Owens and Hart spread like wildfire. Extras were issued and the courthouse lawn was black with men waiting the return of the captives to Pendleton. They were, however, rushed into the county jail by a side entrance before the angry mob could take action. The crowds outside, increasing every moment, were so threatening when later Patter- son and Anderson arrived, that the sheriff placed the
53
THE SHERIFF
Many were the romantic characters in that cast of unapplauded pioneers and adventurers who culminated the last act of their Odyessy in the great original epic scene of their drama "The Winning of the West." Their stage was the prairie ; the wings — the rivers; the foothills and mountains, the scenery; the drapes — the sun, sky and stars ; the red-flickering campfires their foot- lights.
But of that cast none played a more prominent part, none could be less spared than the sheriff. The old time sheriff with his deputies, not only symbolized the law, but generally zvas the law — the only legal protection the law abiding had against the lawless. He was often the court, police department, judge, jury, jailer and executioner all rolled into one. It was a dangerous roll compared to that of the average sheriff of today.
In some instances, as at Virginia City, Montana, in the heyday of the gold rush, tlie bad element predominated and elected one of their own ilk as sheriff, as was the case of Plummer whom Langford mentions in "Vigilante Days and Ways." My friend Pat Sheehan, who was a "nestler" in the Gallatin Valley and whose yellow fishing rod I once spied among the quaking asps along the Taylor on my way back from a "drive" can bear testi- mony to that.
I dismounted and clumped along beside him leading old Glass Eye. As we walked toward his cabin where he had staked out a claim, he told me he had struck it rich in the Vigilante Days and late one afternoon set out toward Virginia City but was waylaid by two stickup men not far from the town. But he sent one of the pair on by the "short cut," the other took one of his own, so Pat kept his gold. Naturally he told his story to the next man he met just out from the town as he chanced to be the sheriff.
"Well!" said Pat, "Fartunately a frind o' mine happened along and after he'd poured o' drink of wathcr on me face and a drink o' red eye down me mouth I came around alright."
"What happened," I queried.
"Give me yer hand." Shifting his rod he seized my free hand and shoved it into his grizzly white hair hard against his skull. My thumb sunk half way into a deep depression made by the blow of a pistol butt.
"Do yer fale that?"
"Sure," said I, "how did that happen."
"Ploomer did it."
Even in these early days we see political power germinating in the hands of the gangster and the gang, justice aborted and its sacred dispensation held in the hands of the grafter and his henchmen.
It was such conditions which led the better element to organize their vigilantes or citizens protective committees during those formative days and which brought the office of sheriff as one of the most honored a community could bestow and its duties among the most dangerous and arduous.
The demand for the work of the old-time western sheriff has almost disappeared, likewise that noble, picturesque, courageous type of citizen of whom Til Taylor, Sheriff of Umatilla County, was an outstanding example.
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THE EPIC DRAMA OF THE WEST ON PARADE
On Saturday morning the last day of the carnival, the Round- Up marshals its page and pageantry into a great panorama of the Westward Ho parade — the Old West on the move. Pendle- ton is filled to the brim with holiday humanity. Here, indeed, you see the efficient, courteous character of its community for a com- munity's real nature is usually worn on its holiday sleeve — and you agree that Pendleton's faultless carnival jacket needs no mending.
Preceded by the mounted cowboy band, the Governor of Ore- gon heads the march, followed by the clean-cut western types of the Round-Up president and committee. You now look into the kaleidoscope of time; revolve it and its color particles on your field of vision evolve into rainbow shirted, kerchiefed cow- boys, hundreds of them four abreast, range types you'll never forget. As they ride by, stir in you a forgotten, primitive, natural something, an atavistic element you didn't know existed. Again they evolve into cowgirls, scouts, old-timers, miners, mules, oxcarts, prairie schooners, stagecoaches pack trains which shape up and then disintegrate by. Now they dissolve into form — the hunter scene which float by — and the pioneer, the Indian, the camp fire, and all the principle epic episodes of the old life of the hunt and range. And lastly into a magnificent, galaxied mass of color which falls transforming into the mobile shapes of Indians. You catch your breath, is this riot of color Indians or an interweaving of broken up rainbows as the glorious chaliced spectrum of the Indian section passes in its shifting variety, — a seemingly endless human chromoscope — you agree it is the most gorgeous mass and merge of color you have ever conceived.
So it passes, this picturesque, romantic, adventurous Old West in its last review, passes between the solid banked phalanxes of neutral clad spectators, along these less inspiring gray lanes of modernity, passes under the triumphal arches of color, bunting, banners, and flags which gracefully back and fill in the soft lift of air which breathes down Main Street. The most conspicuous banners, next to those of America are those of the Round-Up bearing its emblematic symbol, a rider on a bucking horse and the Round-Up slogan— "Let 'er Buck."
The parade of Westward Ho, did they say, soft pattermg down the pavements of Main Street? It is Westward Ho, re- echoing down the corridors of time.
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prisoners first in the city lock-up, afterwards smug- gling them into the county jail.
That five desperadoes could be captured at different points in the same day without the firing of a single shot, seemed unbelievable to the citizens of a region where, throughout its pioneer history, the revolver had been, and in some parts still is, regarded as a man's best friend. When, however, the realization was borne in upon them, that only a meager wall screened from them the men responsible for the killing of Til Taylor, the crowd about the courthouse was augment- ed. As the evening wore on, the tense atmosphere in- dicated that a break was inevitable.
Milling about the courthouse, a salient of the black mass finally surged inside and packed the hall about the office where the life of their well-beloved friend and sheriff, less than a scant week before, had been snuffed out. Here was no doubt of the guilty and their accomplices. Men's hearts burned within them and their souls surged with intense resentment. Law, justice, yes, and that inherent man-thirst, revenge, seemed to them best served by summary punishment. Outside there was an ominous murmur from the con- stantly swelling ranks of determined men.
Then above them in the open door of the courthouse appeared a figure with bared head and in shirt sleeves. It was the newly appointed sheriff. Beside him stood a guard with carbine in hand.
"Boys, if Til were alive," the gleam of the street- lamps reflected in the moist glisten in his eyes, "he would want you to let the law take its course. You who are friends of Til, I ask you to do as he would wish if he were alive. Rest assured justice will be done."
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TIL TAYLOR— SHERIFF
For a moment there was silence ; then from here and there words of approval came from the compact group. Calmer citizens supplemented the sheriff's appeal.
Little Pendleton upheld its record for intelligent ac- tion, common sense and upholding of the law. Slowly, haltingly, still in a state of partial indecision, the crowd turned its back on the jail and trailed to their homes. As the sheriff had promised, law took its course and justice was done.
Til Taylor had those characteristics which engender respect and endear a man to those with whom he came in contact. Generosity was as much an inherent part of his character as courage, and any man, regardless of his crime, could go to him and get money — some- times in gifts and sometimes in loans. Of the many he had trusted, his murderers were the only men who went back on him. Many men whom he had arrested thanked him in later years and credited him with turning them from criminal paths to lives of useful citizens. Criminals knew they were going to be caught when he took their trail; yet when he occasionally visited the state penitentiary prisoners he had placed there would ask permission of the warden to "talk with Til." Perhaps the most remarkable tribute to his rec- ord as sheriff was not alone the fact that he never lost a man but that he never killed a man. But, in the end, it was the man whose life his mercy had twice spared who shot him.
There was a touch of pathos in the act of an old, but reformed culprit, who came into the office of the secretary of the Round-Up, the headquarters of the Taylor Memorial Fund, with a tear glint in his eye, and deposited his humble contribution with the remark •
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"Til did me the best turn a friend ever did — he set me straight."
Perhaps this humble act of an old enemy of the law not only best symbolizes the love and esteem in which Sheriff Til Taylor was held by all who knew him, but magnifies the indelible record he left as a sheriff, when in the line of duty he rode over the Great Divide.
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CHAPTER THREE CORRAL DUST.
"Coin' to the tryouts?"
I replied by swinging my horse into the little group of riders on their way to the Round-Up grounds. On my off side rode Buffalo Vernon, one of the contest- ants in the first Round-Ups and who set the pace in the roping and steer bulldogging. Besides Vernon was Art Acord, another first class bulldogger and one of the best all-round buckaroos ; on my nigh side was Jane Bernoudy, the attractive California girl and one of the greatest of fancy ropers. Next to Jane was the marvelous relay rider, Jason Stanley, and on the out- side long and lanky "Skeeter" Bill Robbins.
We jogged along to the soft clink of spur, champ of bit, the jingle of rein chains and softer retch of leather trappings, music to the ear of range folk. This level road, elm shaded, from between whose insterstices pretty cottage homes peep out, along which we ride to the soft putter of our horses' hoofs, was first a trail, hard-padded by centuries of passings of the mocca- sined feet of the Amerinds; then, after the acquisi- tion of ponies, it widened into a series of parallel paths, perhaps eight or ten, a little more than a rider's distance apart. Then the prairie schooner, the stage coach and the freighter rutted it and the scout, cowboy and ponv express rider packed it harder.
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This road that leads past the Round-Up grounds, was a part of The Great Trail of the Indians of these latitudes; the great Amerindian highway — the first recorded highway to cross the divide which separates the Eastern and Western oceans, over which traveled Pawnee and Blackfoot, Bannock and Shoshone. In- stinctively the white pioneer followed these primal trails which searched the best passes, the smoothest ground and easiest fords.
Thus this, The Great Trail of the Amerind, became the ox-team road of the emigrant, the stage and the freight route of the pioneer, the modern highway of present travel. The Old Emigrant Road through Ore- gon, known later as The Oregon Trail, reached the Co- lumbia River at The Dalles, but some contend that it actually terminated at Oregon City where the emigrants "called the journey over and separated to find homes." The main ford, hereabouts, was like the stage station and first settlement, about two miles below Pendleton at a place called Marshall, and the road we now turned off from into the arena, is the old Oregon Trail, So history rides into the very gates of The Round-Up.
To one to whom the smell of sagebrush, the feel of the stirrup and the whole gamut of the life of range and cow-camp are endeared through associations, the morning "tryouts," which occur on the days just pre- ceding the great show, and the elimination contests on the second morning of it, make an inherent appeal. The elimination contests are just what the name implies — contests to eliminate the many newcomers who cannot class with the greatest riders of the world, or as "Buff" Vernon would express it, "ter cut out the mavericks and strays." At the tryouts old friends from British Columbia to the Mexican border meet again. There
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is a comfortable naturalness in the way they lounge about the arena or watch with keen interest as they see the chances on their "stakes" rise or fall as un- known riders or new buckers battle for supremacy.
There, a bit in the shadow, some of the most ex- pert fancy ropers living — Chester Byers, Cuba Crutch- field, Bee Ho Gray, Sammy Garrett, Jane Bernoudy, Tex McLeod and Bertha Blancett — play with their ropes as though those serpentine coils are living things.
Lassoing, rope throwing or just "ropin' " has its many styles, such as horse roping, steer roping, calf roping, done on the open range from horseback or in corrals, from the saddle or on foot, each an art in it- self. It by no means follows that a good steer roper is a good calf roper, and few good straight ropers do fancy roping. Trick and fancy rope work, according to Will Rogers, one of the best in the game, was first brought into the United States about twenty- seven years ago by Vincenti Orespo, a Mexican.
Rogers says that Orespo was the first fancy roper that any of the present day fancy ropers ever saw. No other man had such accuracy and style as he did. Though he had a less extensive routine of tricks his catches were long and clean and what was particularly to his credit was his standing as a great roper. In catching horses he was a wonder, always throwing a small loop and catching them right around the throat latch, not by the middle, a hind leg or the saddle horn.
Fancy roping, such as spinning and making tricky catches, may have originated through the play in tak- ing the tangle out of ropes. Unlike straight roping, fancy is advancing all the time, while due straight rop- ing like the range and the cowboy is dying out. It was
a wonderful aggregation that each day opened the
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performance in front of the grandstand or "worked their hands in" at the tryouts. Watch Sam Garrett, resplendent in purple shirt, make his rope hum and twist as if charged with an electric current.
Swish! Tex McLeod has roped four horses and riders in a single noose. Zip! and Chester Byers, so easy and slow of action in his fancy roping, has while nonchalantly standing on his head suddenly thrown his noose and roped a passing horse by its fore feet. Pick whichever part of a horse you wish captured and they'll rope it, whether it be by the neck, any or all feet, or even with a flip, after the horse goes by, by the tail itself. They all make their ropes take every con- ceivable gyration, from the wedding ring or simple circle to the ring spinning vertically through which they skip. Standing, jumping, sitting, and even lying down makes no difference as they spin circles with eyes open or blindfolded. Then Jane Bernoudy places her jacket on the ground and now dons and removes it to the ceaseless spinning of her magic tord.
How simple ! Try it ! Any of them will be only too glad to show you. Snarled first try. "Just a bit of a knack," Cuba Crutchfield will encouragingly tell you. He thinks nothing of jumping backwards and for- wards in his vertically spinning loop or even inciden- tally turning somersaults through it. Yes, a knack that takes years of experimenting and an inborn "feel" for a rope to accomplish.
The "bunch" has already rounded up in the arena,
by the grandstand — every type — but all branded with
the hall mark of the range. Yes, the great days of
the cowboy have passed and he is now riding against
the sunset of his time. His trails and camping grounds
have blazed his path through Texas, New Mexico,
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much of Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Western Kan- sas, Nebraska, Montana, throughout the so-called "arid lands" and "bad lands," also up through Dakota to the Canadian Northwest territories of his range, reaching at one time or another from the alkali dust-coated plains of Mexico to the cool verdant mountain forests of Peace River.
Perhaps the strikingness of his sombrero and chap- perajos, and the jingle of his spurs have so struck the imagination that they have blinded it to his qualities and services. His is a highly skilled profession; if you doubt it, try it. An early initiation, a long appren- ticeship and years of training are required, both with rope and horse, and that is only the manual part of his work. To know the signs of the trail, the ways of cattle, of horse and men almost a law unto themselves, and all the innumerable arts of their calling is not learned in a night or by looking at printer's ink on a piece of white paper.
If one considers the kind of fighting, unbroken or half broken refractory horses, the cowboys had to ride in a country rough with rocks, or what was worse, badger and prairie-dog holes, yet withal maintaining a supreme and perfect control of their mounts which must be handled with a manner and style peculiarly effective for their purposes, they must be classed as among the best horsemen of the world. Those of the clan you now see about the arena, walking or lounging with an easy grace, are the very pick of these knights of the quirt and the stock saddle — the last of their clan — a modest-talking, quiet-moving, humor-loving, he-man bunch — yes, and a few women thrown in too.
That cowboy packing his saddle across the turf is
"Hughey" Strickland, game, quiet, a thorough sports-
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man, a great rider and one of the best all-round cow- boys that was ever in the arena. In this class is Eddie McCarty of Cheyenne, as well as A. E. McCormack, and Tex Smith, both also world's champions in the bucking game. Following on their heels were Dell Blancett, Johnny Judd and others.
None is more typical than Johnny Spain. He's that strapping buckaroo there with silver cuffs to his leather chapps and heavy silver-studded trimmings and fringe on his pocket covers. His right arm is gone below the wrist — "burnt off" — got caught in a hitch in his rope • — with the horse on one end and a steer on the other pulling different ways. But John's there, with a happy smile and his ever genial "that's right" reply — no mat- ter if you tell him it's a pleasant day when it's raining. John goes in for everything and is always right on top, even as "lasher" on the hurricane deck of a rolling stagecoach — and only one hand to work with, too.
Just beside John is Frank Carter, from Wyoming. While he has never won a championship here or even a place in the finals, he is a splendid rider and a classy one, but he was used to riding with two reins and ap- parently lacked strength when it came to riding here with one. In fact, any man who rides into the main lists must be a real rider, for all the good ones are eliminated and only the best ride. There is also Ray Bell, one of the best of the younger all-round men, good at each of the three major sports — riding, rop- ing and bulldogging — and who won all three at Boise, Idaho.
"Hootcha-la! I'k out!" and Charlie Irwin neatly drops his rope about the neck of Fred Spain, John's brother. Fred, who is one of the best all-round buck- aroos, slips off the noose with a laugh. Yes, of course
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you know Irwin, he's the biggest man in the arena — as big in heart and good nature as he is in body and full of high Hfe — a natural born organizer and leader and probably the greatest maker of buckaroo champions. He won't have a cowhand on his ranch in Idaho who isn't a top notcher.
Irwin is now general and live stock agent for the Union Pacific, and one of the greatest characters in the West today. From his ranch he and his brother put out on the road the Irwin Brothers Wild West Show with cowboys from their own outfit. He was one of the prime movers of Frontier Days at Chey- enne and knows the game from every angle. He's here with his string of relay racers.
The whole Irwin family, both the boys and girls are experts, who usually capture many of the prizes at Tiajuana, Mexico. Young Floyd Irwin, Charlie's son, who rode into the Great Beyond on the track at Chey- enne in 1916 while roping, could do anything in the buckaroo game and was in a class by himself. Even the 'boys' say he was the best all-round buckaroo that ever hit a saddle.
In the crowd of riders looking over the saddles treed on the arena fence, are some of the stars of the rope and saddle. That good looking, short but well-pro- portioned chap with "Le C." on the light field of his black-bordered, silver-studded chapps is Caldwell, con- ceded by the buckaroos themselves to be the peer of champion rough riders. In the course of one morn- ing after Lee had made a ride, he was hung up in his stirrup and dragged part way across the arena and through the fence, the horse meantime kicking at all creation when the defenceless man put out an arm for
a post. The speed and force tore the ligament fright- 6 65
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fully but also tore the rider loose where he lay uncon- scious on the track.
It was here I made my first personal acquaintance with Caldwell when old Winnamucca Jack, the In- dian wrangler and I helped pick him up and then helped hold him in Fay LeGrow's flivver. He insisted upon returning to ride, but we rushed him to the doc- tor instead. He carried his arm in a sling and cast the remainder of that Round-Up. Fay LeGrow's fliv- ver Lee was rushed to the doctor in sprung a leak so we came back in his yellow-brown touring car.
"Ugh !" gutturaled old Winnamucca, "buckskin hi-yu-skookum — bobtail no go!"
Amongst this arena group, are other of America's greatest buckaroo rough-rider champions — Yakima Cannutt, who won two world's bucking championships at the Round-Up and rode in second and third in two other years. There's "Hippy" Burmeister and Rufus Rollen, who both have ridden in for second world championships, and picturesque Jackson Sundown, the Nez Perce Indian who won a first ; then there is Dave White who rode in third in Nineteen Seventeen, standing with his arm over Arizona, who pulled in second the following year. That fine type of hard- boiled cowman at the end is Red Parker, of Valentine, Nebraska, that auburn-haired boy who, though he has never ridden into the finish here, is a real rider. Those two lolling out there in the sun are Jesse Stahl who holds the bulldogging record, and George Fletcher, — both ride well.
One of the old "cowhands" best known to Pendle- ton is missing this year, detained somewhere in Idaho, they say, — started to run a "butcher shop" and got his
cattle "mixed."
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"Corralling a bunch of yearling mavericks ?" grinned buckaroo Roy Hunter, a cavalryman from Vancouver Barracks, to Walter Bowman, the photographer, who had rounded up a laughing group of pretty cowgirls.
"Yes, but they are more than you can brand, Roy", chirped back Hazel Walker of riding fame. With her were those four marvelous riders of outlaws. Bertha Blancett, Fannie Sperry Steele, Nettie Hawn, and Tilly Baldwin, an unequalled quartette that had the unique record among the women riders of "riding slick" — that is without hobbled stirrups. There was also "Prairie Rose" Henderson, auburn-haired Minnie Thompson, Eloise Hastings and "Babe" Lee.
The well-proportioned, golden-haired cowgirl is that queen of ropers, Lucile Mulhall of Oklahoma — the only woman to successfully get a steer down on time, and the only woman who has bulldogged a steer at the Round-Up. She is a marvel at all three major sports. She and Bertha Blancett have no superiors as all-round cowgirls.
There, too, is Vera McGinnis, in the brown fringed skirt, one of the greatest of all-round contestants, and pretty Ella Lazinka who is a good all-round cowgirl. But the palm, as an all-round cowwoman, must be given to Bertha Blancett, probably the most daring, gamest and as sportsmanslike a woman as ever rode at a Round-Up, and as efficient as many a cowboy on the range.
Out on the track, champion riders are exercising their relay strings in turns, and are themselves getting used to the one quarter mile track. There are Lorena Trickey, Mable DeLong Strickland, Tilly Baldwin and Ruth Parton, who owns and rides her own string. They are training the horses to the track and the
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A SHOOTING STAR
And Others Go SAILING HIGH
They indeed catch 'em young, treat 'em rough — but — they tell 'em everything at Pendleton, at least they give them every oppor- tunity to find out for themselves. I refer to the aspirants in the buckaroo game. Hot Foot on the right, is again up to his old tricks and keeping this young buckaroo guessing whether he's about to be a-foot or a-horseback, but he's staying with him well.
I remember seeing Morris Temple, a wee laddie of barely five years, knocking about Main Street alone on a big dobbin', and a few Round-Ups ago I watched that young buckaroo Darrell Cannon, an embryo new "star" on the Round-Up firmament, make his first appearance in the arena heavens at thirteen years of age.
Not only the game, but the prizes are enough to inspire any red- blooded boy or man of the range country, to aspire to win them. When he thinks he is all set and rarin' ter go, he can show up at the Round-Up, sign up, get his number, and draw his boss, and if he can — go get 'em. What can he get? Well, if he can ride into the world's bucking championship, he rides home a $500 sad- dle, made and presented by a Pendleton harness and saddlery store, the biggest and most complete in the Northwest, and $450 in cash; the second place buckaroo totes home a magnificent Stetson hat presented by a leading department store and tucks $200 into his wallet; the third man in the grand finals buckles round his waist, a beautiful sterling silver belt presented by a leading jeweler, and jams $100 into the pocket of his chaps — some of the rest of "the bunch" collect what their luck in riding or judgment in horseflesh has won. But all have ridden into three days of the old life, if not into the prizes, and get set for another year.
Each outlaw bucker has his way of bucking and many have many ways. Some "cake-walk" like Hot Foot, others "straight buck," "weave," "double o," "cork screw," "circle," "pivot," "side-throw," "fall back," or "side wind" to rid themselves of the clinging man thing.
Then again they initiate their riders into their "sky scrape," "sunfish" and "high dive" as Speedball is doing while "Sailing high" with Corporal Roy Hunter, 21st United States Infantry, formerly of Vancouver Barracks. Both of these buckaroos are riding well, for they are riding "slick," that is, riding close seats, fanning, avoiding all artificial means of support and riding in good form and have scratched their mounts at every jump. The most complete example of this, however, caught in the camera, is the remarkable photograph on the cover, of Bill Mahaffey on Iz which, when he said "Let 'er Buck," he said a mouthful.
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SPINNING THE WEDDING RING
No more subtle art is required, or delicacy of skill exemplified, than in the captivating exhibitions of trick and fancy roping. No fancy roper ever won greater applause or popularity, not only through her supreme grace and variety of fancy roping but through her character and attractive personality, than Jane Bernoudy (now Mrs. Reed) the pretty Californian from Santa Monica. Whether on foot or on horseback, Jane was equally at home in the control and directing of that elusive thing the "lass rope." These qualities are no better shown than in the ease, beauty and perfect manipulation of her rope when "spinning the wed- ding ring."
Cowboys, even those who are top-notch steer ropers rarely attempt fancy and trick roping. It is an art in itself and bears no direct use to the work of the range. It is but a recent ad- junct to the varied forms of roping and probably originated in the play of taking the snarls out of the rope.
There are several other fancy and trick ropers who stand as top-notchers. Among the women known to the Pendleton arena are Tillie Baldwin, Lucille Mulhall, and Bertha Blancett. While among the men are Cuba Crutchfield, Chester Byers, Bee Ho Gray, Sam Garrett, Leonard Stroud and Tex. McLeod. The standing of a fancy and trick roper is judged by the greatest variety of tricks both in spinning and catching on foot or a "horseback" coupled with the ease, grace and general skill displayed.
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changes. Watching them are two other cowgirl riders, Donna Card and Vera Maginnis.
Bertha Blancett, the veteran at the relay game, has entered six different years for this contest, winning two first world's championships, in two seconds and two-thirds. Ruth Parton has ridden away with two championships and Mabel DeLong Strickland with three, holding the second Round-Up record of 11.55 1-5 seconds, riding four horses two miles each day for three days and changing horses and saddles. Lorena Trickey holds the top-notch record in 11.40 4-5 seconds, also the best time — 3.52 — for one day's rac- ing. Katie Cannutt won in 1918 and holds third record, while Donna Card's close second place for four consec- utive years will be remembered in this event as well as Ella Lazinka's game racing and that of Fanny Steele, Vera Maginnis, OUie Osborn, Miss Oughy and Jose- phine Sherry. In these women is represented a resource- ful self-reliance, yet they are intensely feminine withal.
"Shake hands with Allen Drumheller, down from Walla Walla." He's the peer of relay riders and an all-round sportsman, and holds the Round-Up record in the pony express race. He rides for the pure love of the game. He is the son of George Drumheller, one of the biggest wheat and cattle farmers in the North- west, and not only owns a wonderful racing and relay string of horses but rides them as well — so does his sister Jessie.
Come over here, and let me introduce you to some other relay and pony express riders.
"This is Scoop Martin," — he holds the relay record for 12 minutes 7 seconds.
"This is Darrel Cannon," — he first rode backers at the Round-Up when only fourteen and now is one of
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the best relay riders here — in fact, he pulls down second place in the record column for 12 minutes 21 1-5 seconds.
"I want you to know Knapp Lynch," — he follows with third time.
"Meet Lloyd Saunders," — his time on the pony ex- press is only two seconds behind Drumheller's and is only 2 2.5 seconds better than Floyd Irwin's of 6 min- utes 22 3.5 seconds, made three years before in 1916. But you'll learn more about these records when you see the races in the Round-Up itself.
"You've met Fred Spain, 'Sleepy' Armstrong, Chester Parsons, Roy Kelly who rides Fay LeGrow's famous string, A. Neylon who won in 1918, Bob Liehe, Braden Gerking, Wade, Abbot, Zedicar and all that bunch."
As you know, most of them ride pony express as well as relay, but in this historic race, besides Drum- heller, Saunders, Irwin, Spain, Lynch and Gerking, you will get such names as Jason Stanley, who first won in 1912, and Hoot Gibson who rode in for second honors, Harry Walters who pulled in first in '18, and Kenneth Kennedy who took the premier prize in 1920, Jack Joyce is one of the old timers at the Round-Up and is good at the other sports; also there's Johnny Baldwin and Tommy Grimes.
It is but natural that men entering races requiring such horsemanship as the relay and pony express, should enter the list in the standing race, so you see Hoot Gibson, one of the cracker- jacks in this race, who took second in 1912 and first in 1913 against three of the greatest riders in this line, Sid Searle, first both in 1913 and 1915, Otto Kline, champion in 1914, and Ben Corbett.
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Corbett, short, well built and gritty, is the top- notcher in the standing race, having the distinction of riding six consecutive years at the Round-Up in this contest in which he won two third prizes, three second places and pulled off one first world's championship in which he set a new record in 1916 by beating out Hoot Gibson's 1913 record by only one-fifth of a second.
Other names rank high in this eight-footed tandem race. Cannon, Kennedy and Walters have all made championship rides, also Jimmy Taylor in 1920, Saunders, Joyce, Zedicar, Leihe and Homer Wilson go in for this, and a new rider Walter Sterling.
Among these race entrants are six of the greatest trick and fancy riders of the world. Take that clean- limbed, fair-haired chap, as modest and likable as he is good looking, — that's Otto Kline, star performer. Then there are the two Scale brothers, Sid and Walter, also Leonard Stroud and Johnny Baldwin. Just wait till you see them. You will be interested in that buck- skin horse, it's Tillie Baldwin's pet. The one with those unnaturally long, curved up eyelashes which fringe out like a pair of old paint brushes. Some of the boys believe these bristles should be clipped, one remarking "Tillie you ought 'er roach his blinkers."
"No sirree, Sampson had his hair cut and you know what it did to him," came back Tillie with a twinkle in her eyes.
Just before you reach the entrance of the grounds, you recall we passed a line of old time stagecoaches drawn up outside the gates. What a story some of them could tell — so, too, could some of the drivers who have raced them in the arena. Joe Cantrell, a remark- able driver, holds the record on championship drives
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having won three different years. H. W. Smith there, is another old-timer at this game, and has driven here off and on from 1912 to 1920 and always drives a hard race. E. O. Zeek, Johnny Spain, Clarence Plant, Jim McDonald and Bill Hogg can all claim championship drives, while Fred Spain, Guy Hoyes, Frank Roach are all on record for second places, not forgetting the two Indians, Gilbert Minthorn and Otis Half Moon,
Most of the buckaroos who go in for steer bulldog- ging are agile but powerful men, for it takes weight to throw a big-necked steer by the horns.
"Meet Ray McCarroll and Yakima Canutt."
They are both considerably over six feet, but Canutt is one of the most powerful buckaroos in the arena. McCarroll won the championship in 1918, throwing two steers in 1.26 3-5 seconds, and throwing one in 29 1-2 seconds. Canutt won in 1920, downing two steers in 60 1-5 seconds, his best throw being 28 1-5 seconds. Canutt has the unique distinction of having taken the Police Gazette belt for the all-round cow- boy championship three times in 1917, '19 and '20, it being taken in 1918 by "Hughey" Strickland, in 1915 by Lee Caldwell and in 1914 by Sam Garrett.
Garrett won the steer bulldogging championship in 1914 and holds the third record. Dell Blancett who twice won second place holds the sixth best time ever made here, while Jim Massey holds fifth, winning the championship in 1919, and Siedel who was second in 1920 and whom Canutt beat out on the time of two steers by only a second and two-fifths, is the holder of the fourth best time made. Paul Hastings in his win in 1917 also holds second honors as to the grand time record, while Jesse Stahl's record of 18 1-5 seconds
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stands as the official one, although there is an unofficial record in 12 1-2.
Some of the other husky, nervy boys at that game are not in the arena just now, — some are up town, a few have not shown up at Pendleton yet this year — among them are Art Acord and Walley Pagett, the champions of 1912 and '13, Lou Minor, Frank Cable, world's champ in 1915, and Frank McCarroU in '18, Bill Nevin, Fred Spain, Henry Warren, Jim Lynch. Oh yes, there's Mike Hastings and Orvil Banks — they are just ridng through the gate now, they each won third in 1919 and '20 respectively.
And we mustn't forget "Buffalo" Vernon. Vernon hasn't showed up for some years now, but in the first two shows, particularly 1910, "Buff" was it, — he was half the show. He was one of the very first at the bull- dogging game, won the first championship and showed a lot of the aftercomers the way. In his ornate chapps, yellow shirt and big well-seasoned sombrero which he wore in a way to the manner born, he will always be remembered as one of the most spectacular performers in the early shows.
The last night of the 1910 Round-Up will also be remembered when enthusiasm for Vernon ran so high at the dance that "Buff" went home minus the famous yellow topside clothing, for the dance wound up with a maverick race by all hands, girls included, for pieces of Vernon's shirt as souvenirs — such was the way popularity was roped at the Round-Up that year.
Steer roping being one of the three major sports one naturally expects to find contestants listed not only from the fancy and trick roping contingent but from that of the two other major sports, for roping is one of the events for the all-round championship prize.
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The star ropers are particularly well-proportioned, clean-limbed men — take, for instance, that wonderful trio there, the George and Charlie Weir, and Eddie McCarty. McCarty is well known at Cheyenne as one of its prime movers and organizers. He won the world's steer roping championship here in 1913, also in 1918, and has always been in the finish, his best time for a single steer being 26 2-5 seconds, made with a total of 55 4-5 seconds for his two steers in 1919 when Fred Beeson, a marvel at roping, beat him out in 47 seconds, Beeson's best time for a steer was 20 seconds flat that year, which stands as the top record here.
George and Charlie Weir are experts par excellence in the steer roping game, George probably being slight- ly the better of the two, although in 1917 Charlie beat his brother out for first place, each roping two steers in the remarkably fast time of 1 minute 7 2-5 seconds and 1 minute 26 2-5 seconds respectively, Charlie's best single throw being in 7 2-5 seconds above the 20- second Beeson record, and that of George only 5 2-5 seconds away from it. George Weir was first world's champion in this event in both 1915 and '16, while his brother rode close behind him for second in the former year. This quartette, I believe, cannot be equalled in the entire country.
There's good old Jim Roach who rides in from the tucked away Cabbage Hill, which does not mix much outside and raises some of the best strawberries in the country. Jim's an old hand at the range game and a wizard in the maverick race. He won out first in the steer roping in 1912 in the fast time of .55 for two steers. Tommy Grimes in 1914 took the twelve hun- dred dollar purse and the three hundred fifty dollar Hamley saddle in 1914 with C. Prescott second and
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Jack Fretz third. In 1920 Ray Bell roped the cham- pionship in the splendid average time for two steers, one in 33 3-5 seconds the other 29 seconds, totaling 62 3-5 seconds. Roy Kivett was second and J. H. Strickland third, both Roy's and "Hughey's" best time being within four-fifths of a second and three-fifths of a second respectively of Ray Bell's best time, and in each case shorter than Bell's lowest time.
Sam Garrett, Red Parker, Johnny Judd, Tom Grimes, Phil Snyder, Jason Stanley and Chas. Rein- hardt have all ridden into the finals for second or third championships — Joe Gardner taking third money in 1919, though a top-notch roper.
Another well-known roper, occasionally seen in the arena contests, is Dan E. Clark, live stock agent for the Oregon Short Line Railroad Company of the Union Pacific System.
Three steers apiece were turned in from the pad- docks by the Round-Up for the 1916 championship contestants and it was a remarkable trio which rode into the finals and hopped to 'em — George Wier, Ed. McCarty and Chester Byers. They rode to the cham- pionship in the order given and made the average of 2 minutes 5 1-5 seconds, 2 minutes 22 2-5 seconds and 2 minutes 52 seconds, all three together running down, roping, busting and hog-tieing nine steers in 7 minutes 19 3-5 seconds. How long would it take you to drive one of the long-horned brutes into a barn?
Wait just a minute. Let's watch this buckaroo — he's tried out one bucker successfully, but this horse is a bad one — Thrown ! but he "rode pretty" while he rode. The old timers seem to know him.
"What's his name?"
"Helmick — Dave E. Helmick, of Madison County,
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Iowa, he came out to Kansas in '68, farmed, rode and trapped," says Jinks Taylor, leaning over from his sad- dle. Helmick has just come from the John Day country way where the miners struck it rich in the sixties. Today this rough country with its many bluffs south of The Dalles, particularly between the Forks of the John Day and in the Harney River country, pro- duce some of the best buckaroos in the world. They sometimes begin to ride at the age of three and break horses at ten in this country, and only quit when they are stove up old cowpunchers.
Helmick's probably the oldest living active cowboy in the country and is here to compete. Last year ne won the championship bucking title at the Grant County contests at Canyon City from eleven contest- ants, all young fellows. Helmick insists on riding the same old turtle-back saddle he has ridden for the past twenty-nine years. The bucking board of Canyon City offered him the best Thomas saddle that could be made but he would not take it. His old standby has just been repaired here this week, but despite its long service the committee feel that it's not strong enough for the Round-Up outlaws. How old is Helmick ? Oh ! yes — why sixty-eight and not stove up yet.
At the tryouts, or the morning contests, one forgets the arena and the all but empty bleachers ; one lives in the spirit of the real life, with its settings of a memo- ried past framing the background. One is just in a big cow-camp, with saddles and blankets lying around; cowboys, cowgirls, horses and Texas longhorns, knock- ing about in a devil-may-care sort of way as though on a range round-up or at a branding. One looks away through the gap between the bleachers to the smoke-tipped lodges of the Umatillas.
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Long before the coming of the paleface, the red man had pitched his tepees along the banks of the little river which carries down the rains and the melted snows of the Blue Mountains in northeastern Oregon to the Columbia. These Amerinds were of the Uma- tilla tribe from which the river itself and the town of Umatilla at its mouth derive their names. How fitting that in these cottonwoods, but a stone's throw from the arena, the descendants of this and neighboring tribes, these children of forest and plain, should come to live again the old tepee life of an almost bygone day.
Where do they come from, these autochthonous Americans? A few miles east of Pendleton in the Umatilla valley and on the slopes and in the draws of the Blue Mountains lie their homes on what is left of the Umatilla Reservation. This reservation was at one time a territory four hundred and fifty miles square bordering Pendleton on the southeast.
Following the treacherous killing of courageous Dr. Whitman, the Presbyterian missionary and pioneer leader, at Wai'-letpu station by the Cayuses in 1847, the going on the war-path by the Indians was the greatest dread of the pioneers. These uprisings oc- curred against settlers and United States troopers every now and then, while the lone dweller in the wild- erness often had much reason to fear attack at any time. After the noted massacre of Whitman and his associates, others occurred — from the Rouge (later Rogue) River massacre and the Modoc War, down to when the Snake tribe stole over the Blue Mountains from Pocatello and slaughtered the unwary ranchers in the vicinity of Pendleton, and to this day they are known to many old pioneers by no other name than " 'Twelka" — enemy. These conditions resulted mainly
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from the usurpation of the red man's hunting grounds by the whites.
In 1856 a treaty was enacted with the Indians and thus war was ended as far as the Umatillas were con- cerned. But it was not until three years later that the President of the United States ratified the treaty. This resulted in the Umatilla Reservation being estab- lished and assigned to the three neighboring tribes — the Umatilla, Walla Walla and Cayuses, as a home territory. There they lived under the United States Agency until 1882.
Then a large portion of their land was sold and the remnant of these tribes, only eleven hundred, including breeds, were assigned allotments on the remainder of the reservation. The Indian's lands have been so cut up through sale and lease that now they are often de- prived of range for their grass-fed horses, which may be seen any day getting their meager picking along the grassy spots of the roadside, and reaching as far as their scrawny necks will permit over the barbed wire to the green selvage of the wheat fields. Their feed is so scarce and their condition so poor, with range so curtailed, that this forage is not sufficient to prevent many from perishing in any continuous cold stormy weather, when their carcasses will sometimes be found by hundreds over the country.
It is claimed by some that the first house erected by a white man in the county was built by Father Brouil- let. This cabin, later accidentally burned by Indian boys while at play, was on old Chief Isakaya's land be- tween the present warehouses and the new bridge at the agency. It is recorded that when the first settlers came in here from the east the nearest and only whites were twelve squaw men, employees of the Hud-
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son's Bay Company, who were living on the banks of the Willamette.
Among the more interesting characters of the early pioneer Missionaries was the young Belgian priest, Father Louis Conrardy, one of the greatest students of the Nez Perce language and who later joined Father Damien at the famous leper colony at Molokai.
Among some of the principle characters of the Indians of the pioneer period living in this vicinity is Chief Tanitau, also a venerable old Indian named Tiwelkatimini is mentioned as well as Welestimeneen. It seems, too, that Chiefs Aulishwampo, Five Crows, Alakat and Isakaya all pitched their tepees along the banks of the Umatilla itself as do the Indians in the Round-Up village today.
Here now you find about six hundred Indians, near- ly the entire population of the reservation, and among them not only representatives of the Umatilla (Yuwa- tella), of the Cayuse (Wai'-letpu) from the land of the Paska, or Yellow Flower and the Walla Walla, but of the Yakimas and Columbias with whom they have in- termarried, while occasionally Nez Perce, Bannocks and Oklahomas dwell amongst them. The three tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, brought together by the government, originally known as the Wai'-letpu, have now blended.
An open lane through the grove forms a village
thoroughfare, on either side of which the tepees are
pitched. The squaws of some of the later arrivals are
still busy unloading the cayuse-pulled rigs and pitching
with inborn know-howness, their tepees of blue, white,
striped and variegated canvas. Children rollick about,
turned-out horses feed nearby, and hunks of raw meat
are cached high up on poles out of reach of the dogs.
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That nearest tepee is of buffalo hide — most all were buffalo hide in the old days — but now a buffalo-hide tepee is rarer than the buffalo itself and brings a higher price than many a small modern house will fetch. It is also a fact that some of the native American cos- tumes are far more valuable than those made by many a king's tailor. The eagle feathers of a fine war- bonnet, which may number fifty to sixty, are valued at anywhere from two to five dollars a plume accord- ing to size and quality. Then there is the exquisite, solid beadwork of vest, trousers, belt and moccasins.
Every "tepee," which term is often used to mean a family, preserves carefully its ceremonial costumes, including among the possessions of the old people, no doubt, a number of those symbols of the victories over enemy tribes and the paleface — scalps. But these tro- phies are never brought to light as far as the white man is concerned.
It has been for many years the custom in the North- west for communities to invite in the Indians for the Fourth of July celebrations to such an extent that this anniversary of our Independence Day is observed by the Indians as their Shapatkan. At this time they pitch a village of seventy-five or eighty encircling tepees on their reservation and attire themselves as of old, and at night by the light of their campfires you behold flashlight glimpses of tableaux of a passing people. In fact Shapatkan has become a real Indian ceremonial, a celebration by the former owners of this country in honor of the freedom of its present occu- pants.
Here a wigwam is open ; you know the family is at home because the noose of the lap is not run through with little sticks. Glenn Bushee, that white man there,
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knows them all. Everybody likes Glenn; the Indians call him Tall Pine. He can deceive all but the initiated when in his inimitable chief's costume during celebra- tions.
This is Red Bull's tepee. Glenn says something and Agnes Red Bull, the pretty daughter, carefully goes through some belongings, and spreads before us on the rugs, with which the ground is carpeted, a spotted blue woolen Indian dress. The spots are elk's teeth selected for their quality and each carefully stitched on — seven hundred all told — making the value of this girl's gown about thirty-five hundred dollars.
In the corner is an Indian you have scarcely observed — she's a stranger and is visiting this tepee. You will observe her, however, intently enough in the women's bucking contests, when she rides as the star Indian girl bucking-horse rider and waves a small American flag while she does it — she's Princess Redbird.
We wend through the forest of tepees and cotton- woods. Naturally that group of Indians there are in- terested in that band of tethered horses for they are some of the Indian relay strings. The young buck who is giving them some points on his relay string is Richard Burke, who with his brother, Robert, not only won the Indian relay world championship race in 1913 and 1916 respectively, but these two sons of Poker Jim hold the two best Indian relay records.
Robert made the mile relay in one day riding on the quarter mile track in 2 minutes 13 seconds, while his brother Richard made it in 2 minutes 20 seconds. Ralph Farrow rode in only two seconds behind Robert Burke's total record time and Farrow's brother Jess, who won the first honors in 1920, completes a remark- able quartette of Indian relay riders.
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However, Luke Cayapoo, Tom Shelal, Mox-mox, and J. White Plume have also taken second champion- ship places, and Lucien Williams, Bud Reed, Gilbert Minthorn and Dave Shippentower, who have won third places, have all of them given the Burkes and Farrows a hot run for their money.
Most of these riders go in for the other major events — the buckaroos in particular are excellent ropers and nervy bulldoggers. Minthorn enters his team of four horses which he drives in the stagecoach races. Then there is Burgess, the Oklahoma Indian, who competes in a number of events.
That splendid blue and white tepee sending a blue smoke against distant golden hills, is Sundown's. Jackson Sundown is a full-blooded Nez Perce, a superb type of his race. Not only his remarkable riding, but his splendid quality of mind and character have made him a prime favorite with all. Physically he is a sight for the gods with his erect carriage and lithe, agile body, which still bears the scars of three bullet wounds in fights against the whites in the long ago now, under his intrepid and famous uncle. Chief Joseph. Little wonder A. Phimister Proctor, the noted sculptor, se- lected him as nearest to his ideal type of the American Indian, and camped for six weeks on Sundown's land near Culdesac, Idaho, while Sundown posed daily for Proctor's "The Indian Pursuing a Buffalo."
The beautiful bead-embroidered buckskin- fringed gauntlets, solid beaded with decorative roses on a white background which he proudly shows us, were made by his wife of whom he is very fond. "Hi-yu-skookum gloves, (very good gloves) Sundown." Although Sundown speaks some English, he will understand our jargon, for the Nez Perce and Umatilla are linguis-
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tically the same. Or if you speak "chinook" he will understand that too for "chinook" is a universal Indian language — the esperanto of the red man understood by all tribes at least of the Northwest. The word "chi- nook" is also applied to the warm wind from the Japan current which melts the snow even in midwinter.
Numipu, as the Nez Perce tongue is called, is the mother language of the Palouse, Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla and Yakima languages. Father A. Mor- villo, the Jesuit, or "Talsag" — Curly-hair — as the Indians called him, left a remarkable dictionary and grammar of the Nez Perce tongue, but probably Father Cataldo must be conceded as the greatest authority on Indian language. But more of Sundown later.
To the initiated, the principal episode of the Indian's life, his times and seasons may be read in the painting of his person. Whether it be learning to hunt and trap; reaching manhood, seeking a creed, or meeting the spirit of his dreams, going to war, seeking a mate, going to battle, coming home as victor, undergoing de- feat, joy and feasting, death and mourning, seeking the priesthood, medicine and burying, becoming a seer and being able to travel far in spirit, of religious character and used especially at the great annual festival of mid- summer, peacemaking, traveling or visiting, — all may be expressed by appropriate symbols.
In these face and body paintings are symbols that he who runs may read, though few in this white audi- ence know — or care — what those earth and mineral colorings on face and form mean. Many of the Amer- inds themselves know but little of that fast-disappear- ing art of decorative symbolism; only the old people amongst them know. But they use today the same kind of mineral colors they used on the panels of the Buffa-
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lo Lodge and Mooseskin Lodge of the tribes, and when, after the coming of the horse, the redmen daubed and painted his mount in his ceremonials as well.
Also on the panels of his lodges he, like the white man, has put on canvas in mural decorations the life history of his race and tribe, of the courage, endurance and skill of the warrior, hunter, and lawgiver who oc- cupied them. Thus his lodges became the pantheon of his immortelles and their deeds, — an object lesson dur- ing the life-time of their glory.
Another generation will see the obliteration of the old yet fascinating customs of their ancestors. Their art, their songs, their dances, their sincere understand- ing love of nature, their simple direct communion with the Great Spirit, their admirable tribal social structure, their formerly healthy minds and healthier bodies, will have passed away, and civilizitis will have accomplished its deadly work.
The medicine man under some conditions is some- times even today brought in, and feigns to cure the sick and avert death by performing certain contortions and working his incantatipns. To some extent the old rites and superstitions of the Indians still persist; the tom-tom is their prayer, and they quite naturally cling to their beautiful old legends and customs of bygone days — days when they roamed meads and mountain glens, when herds browsed on luxurious bunchgrass on hilly slopes, and game abounded in every forest nook.
Listen! An old Indian slowly rides his horse through the avenue of tepees, and every now and then gives vent to a strange weird exclamation, continuing his calls to the end of the village and rides slowly back. It is the Indian town crier, advising the village of
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orders in regard to preparing for the parade tomorrow. They will all be busy now putting finishing touches on their costumes.
"Go get 'em, cowboy!" yelled a wrangler. In as many seconds as it takes to tell this a dozen buckaroos leaped into their saddles, headed for the open Round- Up gate entrance, disengaging their ropes from their saddle bows as they rode to head off a cloud of dust with a dark woolly object at its apex traveling through space like a comet. Luckily this quick action headed off the passage to freedom of one of the pair of buffalo belonging to the Round-Up stock.
Can a buffalo run? Well, some of those boys re- membered the vacation this animal took a year prev- ious, when It eventually traveled nearly three hundred miles across country before they ran it down. Three ropes now encircled it — over horns, on a fore and on a hind leg — then they lead the "onery" little beast back through the Indian village to the stock corrals.
Open contests are often held for the naming of ani- mals, "Sharkey" was selected for the champion buck- ing bull, and Henry Vogt for his close Jersey second. "Letta" and "Buck" won as names for the young cow and bull buffaloes. During the war Buck died. Later a war baby was born — Letta had a catteloe calf — sus- picion was said to rest on Henry Vogt.
Earlier that morning a bunch of us, mostly members of the committee, had been helping unload from the cars some wild range longhorns fresh from Laredo, Texas. A steer knows a gate when he sees it. "Whoop'ee," and the entire herd was stampeding straight through the Indian village, a wild bellowing herd, running a race with a dust storm and our ponies
alongside at breaknecking speed. Pandemonium broke
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loose among the dogs ; squaws grabbed up the younger children, while the older scudded for cover amongst the cottonwoods and tepees.
"Head 'em off," yelled Sam Thompson — and "head 'em off" we did, but some went through the nearest tent.
"Let's get these pets into the corral," shouted Bill Switzler, and in a few minutes the gate swung in on a dilatory steer and they were corralled.
Wild Bill Switzler lives most of the time up in the Horse Heaven country. The rest of the time he lives on a horse, when he is not running the Ferry at Uma- tilla. Horse Heaven country? What, never heard of it ? Well, there is lots of country, wonderful unbroken country in Oregon and the West you haven't heard of, besides the John Day and Harney Country you already have heard about. There's Camas Prairie of the In- dians, with its millions of feet of virgin timber await- ing the railroad — may it wait long, — and there's Grant County awaiting settlement. Which leads one to v/onder why we Americans don't travel at home a bit and get acquainted with God's country.
The way through Horse Heaven is only along par- allel pattle trails with drift fences ending nowhere, where man is scarce and the bunchgrass is thick and winter shelter and feed are plentiful. Here the ordin- ary wild bunchgrass grows knee high to a tall Injun. "Rolling in clover" has nothing on this for an equine dream. Here herds led by their stallions practically run wild, never even seen by man sometimes for many months at a time. Horse Heaven, indeed, — • you'll find it marked on a good map of Oregon and Washington in the center of a townless fork of country between the Yakima River and the Columbia.
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Here Bill Switzler, an all-round range man has a ranch across from Umatilla in the heart of the Horse Heaven, seventeen miles. Which trail? Take any — there are hundreds — cattle made them. They'll all take you to Bill's ranch — or beyond it.
The wild horses used in the wild horse race at the Round-Up come from Wild Bill's ranch; Bill and his father once owned twenty thousand head. He begins months ahead with his outfit to round up the wildest from their retreats far from the haunts of man. Bill had just come in with a wild bunch. There they are, safely within one of the corrals, shy, fighting, biting, kicking, squealing, cautious and cunning as the coyotes with whom they had been reared.
The director of competitive events had called for some of the buckers, as they were still trying out some of the buckaroos in the arena. There they all were. In the next corrals to the wild horse band were the buckers themselves, including famous names amongst their number, as well known in the Northwest as Ty Coljb or Babe Ruth. Get up on the fence or ride up closer here beside tall, slim Bill Ridings, one of the wranglers ; he'll point 'em out.
"That big, heavy-built, dark sorrel. Long Tom, is king of 'em all," drawls Slim. "Once he was a hard- working plow horse, till someone thought he could ride 'im. He's been just thinkin' about it ever since, and so have a lot of 'em."
"That sorrel mare is Whistling Annie. You can sure
hear the wind go by when yer on her. The white horse
with the half moon circle brand on his left flank is a
good un — that means a bad un, get me? He's Snake, a
sun-fishing devil and one of the hardest to wrangle;
so's Sledgehammer, that big dapple gray. Last year at
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the Round-Up in the Friday mornin', old Sledge want- ed to ride himself, so he just chased the boy right off the saddle of the snubbing horse and got right up in the saddle himself, but the judges wouldn't allow it.
"That white-faced black un is Hot Foot; he chills 'em when he stalls skyward and then volplanes down. There's Angel, only he is in disguise, and that there is Midnight, but mostly goodnight to those who think they can ride him; the next is Bugs, but few of 'em dare scratch 'im. Them there's Brown Eyes and Bat- tling Nelson, Sunfish Mollie 'n' Fuzzy 'n' Rambling Sam in that bunch," Bill pointed with his quirt. "And in that other corral in yonder corner is Lightning Creek, Rimrock, Corkscrew 'n' Desolation. You sure do feel lonely on him. They were all used in the semi- finals last year, and so was Bill Hart, over there under the shade of that willow. Hughey Strickland showed Sundance there a new step, though, when he rode him. That feller Black Diamond — he's sure worth his weight in gold to this outfit.
"See that hoss with his eyes closed, sleepin' like? That's No-Name because the Round-Up ain't got no name bad enough to express 'im, and the Round-Up's so hard put to it to find one, that they're even willin' to pay the feller that gits a worse name fer him than any of the rest of the bunch. Name 'im and you can have 'im, I says — he's why I'm limping — lucky fer me he wern't shod,"
"The chestnut there is Unknown, by that I mean it's
what he's called, but we know him hereabouts all right,
and so we do old Leatherneck yonder, — he's tough as
tripe. But say, pard, the horse licking the other's
shoulder 's You Tell Em — most of 'em can't, after
they've patted his back. And say, pard, take it from
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me, — them two what's together now right here by this trough sure are two of the heaviest buckers that I ever did see. The nigh un's I Be Damn and the off un's U Be Damn, and I'll be "
"Git them 'cattle,' " yelled Wild Bill as he rode for some of the wild horses to be wrangled, with Jess Brunn and other wranglers hot after him. Come on; let's help cut out this "stuff."
If you have never tried to cut out and rope some particular wild horses out of a stampeding bunch, rip- tearing about a corral in a cyclone of dust, with lar- iats, cowboys and fence splinters criss-crossing in all directions like a Patagonian williwaw there are some thrills left for you.
Any horse you may think you want, knows it as quick as you do — human mental telepathy has nothing on that wild cayuse. As quick as you think him, he will put another horse or more between you and him, and always maneuver into the most impossible position for your rope or for you to handle it after you get it. He'll dodge, duck and disappear in the herd. Even after he is roped, particularly if by the neck, he'll fight until his wind is choked off which is bad for the horse. Then comes getting him out of the corral.
I well remember one little calico cayuse we went after that morning.
"Rope him, cowboy, awful wild," yelled Ridings.
"No wild horse, it's a woman's horse. I believe you can drive him," chuckled Wild Bill with a grin, watch- ing from his saddle by the gate. "You told me you wanted 'em wild, but I could only find these pets for you," and Bill went on grinning.
S-s-r-r-r ! went Blancett's rope, but the little cayuse's head ducked between two horses.
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"If he'd had horns I shore'd've 'ad him," smiled Dell as he hauled back his rope.
"Good 'a boy !" called Winnamucca Jack, the Indian wrangler, when after ten m.inutes in the choking, blind- ing dust, Dell made a pretty throw and the calico "scrubtail" was roped.
Few phases of range work or of the Round-Up are more risky or afiford a greater variety of inducement for a man to harness up to a life insurance policy than the gentle art of wrangling wild horses. The men who have charge of rounding up, driving in, assisting in the cutting out, roping, saddling and turning the animals back to range are known as wranglers. Their business is to know the location or drift of the horses, their habits and ways.
On a cattle ranch, the horses to be used in the day's work by the cowboys are brought from range or pad- dock (and a paddock may be several miles square) into the corral in the early morning, by the wranglers. When breakfast is finished, there is no time lost in "cutting out" the horses to use in the day's work and getting at it; then the "stuff" not needed is at once turned back into the range. There has been many an unadvertised bucking contest between man and beast pulled ofif within a corral during morning saddling up.
When it is time for the round-up of cattle and horses for branding, marking, "cutting out" in the spring, or for the fall cutting out and drive, the foreman and his outfit of cowboys go out as far as he thinks cattle would go for water, say eight or ten miles, throws out two men together every half mile — strung over a dis- tance of perhaps four or five miles. Everything is then driven toward a common objective, generally, but not
always, towards water. This is a round-up.
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Then comes working the cattle or "cutting out," the strays, i. e., branded cattle of other owners, or "mave- ricks" which are the unbranded cattle ; separating those they want from those they do not want — the others they let go right back on the same grass. Say, out of a herd of four or six thousand, there might be eight hun- dred or a thousand which did not belong there. When they have finished working the bunch, they push those belonging on that range back again.
Horses always run on the range in bands and in- variably stay in the same band. Even if there are a thousand head which drink at the same water hole, when through, the entire herd disintegrates to their re- spective bands. The head stallion is monarch of his band, and if a mare lags she is not likely to again, for with the swiftness of the wind he will round her up, likely as not biting a piece right out of her.
Now on a round-up, which in the old days or on a few big ranches today, lasts a month or so, the range work was exceptionally exhausting to the horses. Sometimes a single rider would use a half dozen differ- ent horses or more in a single day. Consequently a large herd, or band of horses was required. The bands of saddle horses used on a round-up are called "cavies" and are used every day. On a round-up in the '80's in Washington where the cavy comprised some six or eight cavies — ^fifty to eighty in each — the whole number totalled some six hundred horses.
These horses were in charge of the wranglers, who were divided into a day and a night shift, for wrang- lers during the round-up which was on the move, stayed with the horses all night and brought them into the corral in the morning. Each outfit had its "chuck- wagon," in which food was carried and all the appur-
92
CORRAL DUST
tenances for cooking it. Each outfit was under its own foreman until in the saddle for the day's work, when they were then under the head foreman.
It seems hkely that the term, "wrangler," comes from caverango — the Spanish for the man who had the care of the saddle horses. East of the Columbia River the term "wrango" or "rango" was used. From "cavo" the term "cavy" was undoubtedly derived, while "wrango" was undoubtedly derived from "rango," from which in turn the anglicized ultimate of er was added with an / and we have the range term of "wrangler." Also it is not illogical to assume that "rancho," "range," "rancher," "ranger" are all deriva- tives of the same root origin.
When the rounding-up outfits are on the move, a temporary rope corral is provided. A rope corral is sometimes made of a rope simply laid off the ground on some sagebrush, being safer it is said than some fence corrals in keeping the horses in. The horses are broken to a rope corral by being allowed to try to es- cape from a fence corral over a piece of rope stretched at a certain height across the open gateway. They rarely jump clear of a rope, which gives them some nasty spills and they learn their lesson.
Horses are trained for special work — ^hence a good "ropin' boss" might not be a good "cut hoss," used for cutting out cattle from the peratha, the bunch of cattle which are being "cut into" for the purpose of being "cut out."
The Round-Up has the hardest buckers to be found anywhere and are sought everywhere from New Mex- ico to Canada; for real top-notchers, like Long Tom, for instance, fabulous prices are paid. The bucker U Tell 'Em was originally bought by his owner for forty
93
"PAWIN', HOOFIN' AND RARIN' TER GO 1"
Even the empty bleachers at the morning try outs of some of the newer horses during the week before the big show witness some bucking events which are equal to many of those in the arena. In this case Henry Warren is riding true to form on the terror Bearcat, true to his name, he is even bent on scratching the wrangler who has failed to make a quick getaway after pulling the gunnysack blind.
The rules of the Round-Up for the cowboy's bucking contest for the championship of the world, prescribe that the riders for each day shall be determined by lot, that is they group them, so as to efficiently balance and distribute the contesting on each of the three days ; that the cowboys are to ride on horses to be furnished by the management and the riders to draw for mounts. Not less than six riders are to be chosen on the third day to ride in the semi-finals and not less than three to be chosen from the six to ride in the finals.
Each contestant must ride as often as the judges may deem it necessary to determine the winner. The riding is to be done with chaps, spurs and sombrero but no quirt, with a plain halter and rope, one end of the rope free, all riding slick and no chang- ing hands on the halter rope is allowed. No saddle fork over fifteen and a half inches is permitted and when the great show opens and the first bucker is wrangled and the rider is all set, it's — tighten the cinch, take off the blind, let 'er buck in front, let 'er buck behind.
© W. S. Bowman
Pawin', Hoofin' and Rarin' ter Go"
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SADDLE HIM OR BUST
Here is one seat not taken at the Round-Up — it has been re- served for you. It shows how they wrangle a bad one at Pendleton. No more striking illustration of the entire art and technique of wrangling could be obtained though composed with the free brush of a painter — the balance of the composition, the centralized interest, the action, the story element is all there.
The bucker's dangerous forestriking made it too risky for men on foot to handle his snubbing rope, so they brought the little snubbing horse into play and with the rope have snubbed the outlaw's nose close to the saddle horn, one man beneath the horse's head handling the play or pay of the snubbing rope. With a wild leap the fighting, biting demon endeavors to reach the nervy wrangler in the saddle. He in turn, one foot out of stirrup, as a precaution, seizes his antagonist in the most approved fashion by an ear and is successfully tucking the blind under the further haltei leather. The blinded man-fighter will now probably be manageable until the saddle lying near him, is cinched up and the rider ensconced in it.
In the background on old Nellie, Herbert Thompson, assistant livestock director, and one of the pick-up men, who must be expert horsemen, "stands by" ready to "take up" the horse at the judge's pistol w'hich signals the ride is ended. Star riders like Caldwell, always help the pick-up men by handing over their halter rope as they ride alongside. In some big shows in Winnipeg for instance, straight wrangling is done away with, the horse being saddled and the rider mounting in a chute from which he debouches into the arena and thus is done away with one of the hazardous, but most picturesque phases of range life.
LET 'ER BUCK
dollars, not knowing how he could buck, and sold to the Round-Up for five hundred, an offer of eight hun- dred coming in a few minutes too late after the deal was closed.
The Round-Up buckers are given the best care which also means given a full free life on the range, and in winter no matter under what difficulties or cost are given hay; but they are never ridden except at the bucking contests.
Sometimes the buckers take it into their heads to break range and travel, and more than once the live- stock director has had to send out a "posse" of expert trackers to run them down. The last break of this sort was when the pony, donkey, and Angel led by Ram- bling Sam escaped over the hills and far away before they were rounded-up.
The wrangler, in a way, is the stable man of the range, the caretaker of the horses in use, and about the corrals and stables of the Round-Up at Pendleton one finds some old experts at handling. Fred Stickler, who has been barn boss for many a Round-Up, has that peculiar inborn knack of not only handling skit- tish range horses in the stables, but of walking with impunity right amongst a corral full of wild horses where many a man would be kicked and stamped upon. Fred has a quiet manner of gentling and speaking to them which they understand, and as one rancher re- marked, "without any fuss or feathers."
Some of the best wranglers in the country like Bill Ridings and Jess Brunn have a chance to show their caution, cleverness, understanding of horses and met- tle in the arena during the contests in this he-man's game, when the dangerous, wild, squealing, man-fight- ing buckers are brought in. Being trampled upon is
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CORRAL DUST
one of the least of wrangling evils, though Missouri Slim, one of the wranglers sitting on that bale of feed over there, has removed a boot and is nursing a badly bruised foot.
"Fixin' up yer foot?" dryly comments a cowboy as he dismounts, "Wastin' good liniment on that foot!"
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CHAPTER FOUR
MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
After the long shadows change the golden valley to night, you wander under the clustering lights of Main Street, where the crowds surge in that orderly, happy, holiday spirit for which the Round-Up stands. Dur- ing Round-Up Pendleton harks back a generation, turns back the calendar a few decades, shifts its clothes and steps into the life from which it has but just crossed over the threshold. Pendleton does this with such an easy grace and naturalness that while the Round-Up is a great community drama it is also a re- enaction of the verve and urge of its pioneer spirit, and literally reeks with the atmosphere of an old frontier town. Although any time the visitor may feel the Round-Up spirit, see fragments of its setting or some of its participants, booted, chapped or blanketed on the streets, it is hard for him to realize that for three hun- dred and fifty days Pendleton gives itself over to the busy workaday life of ranch and industry and that it is only for about seven days out of the year it lives again the life of the old West in such a vivid manner — perhaps it is still harder for the visitor to understand why it doesn't.
The old original settlement of Pendleton was called Marshall after a gentleman of the early days who, it
98
MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
was said, could make a nickel look like a tidal wave and who ran a rollicky place at that old stage-stop a few miles west of the present city. This was after- wards known as Swift's Crossing — because Swift the carpenter lived there. Things and places hereabouts or in any frontier country the world over go by the names of people who wore or made the things or lived in the places or because of certain happenings, condi- tions, people or things connected with them, hence — "Stetson" hat, chapps, Camas Prairie, Grizzly, Crooked River, Wagon Tire, Happy Canyon, Half Way, Swift's Crossing, and so on.
It was at Swift's Crossing that they changed horses between Cayuse and Umatilla — you can see the spot now down river a bit where the Umatilla makes a turn and the old road takes steep up grade — just below the new State Hospital. Later Swift's Crossing moved up to Pendleton, at least its inhabitants did; today there's not a vestige of a habitation left on its old site. So then the old Pendleton Hostelry, the first hotel in Pendleton, became the stage-stop and Dave Horn and other stage drivers changed horses here, where before they had only pulled up for passengers and mail.
The center of Pendleton, which took its name — and thereby hangs a story — from Senator Pendleton of Ohio, was marked, the old-timers will tell you, when Moses Goodwin, whose wife Aura was known as the mother of Pendleton, drove in a stake on his home- stead, when first surveyed, at the corner of the block where the First National Bank now stands, and gave this site to the county.
"Here," he said, "is where the courthouse is to be" and there it stood for many years, and this corner is now the center of the city. The reason the city is not
99
LET 'ER BUCK
Jaid ofif due north and south is because Moses Goodwin, when he laid the foundations for the old Pendleton Hotel, did not set it straight. The lines of the new hotel, an up-to-date, six-story structure, are on the ex- act site of the old tavern.
For three days now, the contestants have been step- ping into the American National Bank to sign up on the Round-Up entry books. This year there are over two hundred palefaces and over one hundred redmen. But tomorrow is the first day of the Great Show. So let's turn in here and climb the steep flight of stairs to the committee's headquarters. It is a big barn of a room ; you see it is crowded with practically the entire buckaroo "outfit," — cowboys, cowgirls, Indians and occasionally a Mexican — as swarthy, orderly and pic- turesque a crowd as you could find. The man on that table above the sombreros in the upper strata of tobac- co smoke is one of the committee. He's calling the names of the entrants for the events. See, each in turn steps up and draws from the broad-brimmed hat the number of the horse that he is to attempt to ride.
Watch "Tex" Daniels, that rangy, powerfully built buckaroo worming through the crowd. He's drawing now.
"Tex Daniels rides Long Tom!" is announced. "Wow ! Wow !" and the banterings from the crowd show that Long Tom is not only a well-known horse, but is the bugbear of the riders and king of the buckers.
"George Attebury on McKay, Ed McCarthy on Light Foot, Fred Heide on Hot Foot, Art Acord on Butter Creek, Hoot Gibson on Mrs. Wiggs," so the drawing goes on, and you become familiar with the names and faces of the greatest contingent of experts in frontier sports to be found on the globe. Among
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MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
those here just now are Hazel Walker, Blanche Mc- Caughey, Minnie Thompson, and "Babe" Lee; there are John Baldwin, Armstrong, Dell Blancett, and Gerking, also Lucian Williams and other Indians, all wonderful riders, and many others among the contestants, from California to the Dakotas, from Mexico to Canada. There are a number new to Pendleton, but there's Mc- Cormack and Bob Gavin, besides many others who rank high among the kings and queens of reinland, whom you will have a better chance to meet tomorrow in the Round-Up Grounds at the tryouts and at the elimination contests in the morning.
Of course there were a few saloons here as every- where and many of the boys in the old days turned into one or another of the bars and their pool tables and whiled away many an evening at The Idle Hour. But, now, although an occasional tailor may inquire of the successful cattle king whether he wants the hip pocket of his new suit cut for a pint or a quart, while the shadow of the dry season of prohibition in the Northwest is probably no more of a total eclipse than in other parts of the country, about the only way, it is rumored, of getting a little reflected light is to reach down into a badger hole and accidentally find it.
How usage of terms is limited to their application and localized by the young, the untraveled, or those without the background of literature and history, is evidenced in the case of a Pendleton schoolboy, who recently in the course of his literary studies was ex- plaining a portion of Scott's Lady of the Lake. "Fitz- James arose and sought the moonshine pure," he read, then seriously, he paraphrased — "Fitz-James went out and found a keg of moonshine on the beach."
It all takes one back to stirring border days, but the
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LET 'ER BUCK
symbol conspicuously absent is the six-shooter or a pair of 'em, lazing from the flapless western holster. There are a few around, but out of sight. There's enough of gun-play from grandstand and bleacher in approval of the riding in the arena, at night in Happy Canyon, or in appreciation of the dance-hall band to lend color, or to satisfy any small boy. The ammuni- tion is quite harmless, unless you try to use the gun barrel as a telescope when the trigger's pulled.
There are probably more guns packed by law-abiding American citizens today than is appreciated. But there is at least one section of Oregon, not far from Grant County and the John Day Country, where they aren't satisfied with carrying only one. This was strik- ingly evidenced in the case of a shooting scrape which was recently brought before the court. The witness was testifying for the purpose of showing that it was a habit to tote guns.
"Is it the custom for people where you live to carry guns ?" he was asked.
"Yes, sir-r-ree."
"More than one?"
"Yes, sir-r-ree."
"How many?"
"Well, sometimes mebbe I tote two 'n' sometimes mebbe I tote three."
"What for?"
"Well, I dun'no, but they all do — mebbe I might see a coyote or sumthin'."
The truth was, it is a habit from childhood, a relic of border days. The railroad doesn't go through there yet. They just don't think they are dressed up with- out them.
In many corners, you find a last remnant of the old
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MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
frontier life, of those days of the survival of the fit- test when it was most unwise to hold, and often dan- gerous to apply an impractical theory. In a country built by an empirically-acting generation, everything had to relate and adapt itself to the positive conditions to be faced there.
These border days imposed a peculiarly practical application even of religion to daily life. Within the memory of some Pendletonians church hours were ac- commodated to horse races. More than one dance was given in a saloon to raise money to furnish a ^hurch. Even pleasure was not always allowed to interfere with religion. Once the superintendent of the union Sun- day school kept his expectant flock of lambs and angel- children impatiently waiting for a considerable space of time. Upon his tardy appearance, he confidently as well as confidentially remarked, as though the reason for the delay was a most worthy one, that "the poker game I was sitting in on was so plumb interesting, I couldn't break away from the boys."
Now turn into that Pendleton institution of human ingenuity, Happy Canyon, which means a spot right in the heart of Pendleton where every one can com- plete a day of frontier fun. The main structure was completed in 1916 at a cost of twelve thousand dollars, the bleachers having a seating capacity of about five thousand people. Out in the arena you see the rip- roaring life of the range in its fullness, and at its best, but in Happy Canyon you see, drawn more vividly than any pen or brush can depict, the life of the fron- tier town.
If you follow the Umatilla down from Pendleton, it will take you to where nature has sculptured out a wide defile before it broadens into the prairie. Today
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LET 'ER BUCK
a store and three or four houses called Nolin nestle here. This little hidden-away spot, in the days of the stage coach and pony express, was the most fertile spot of the surrounding country, a veritable little Garden of Eden with its vegetable lands and orchards. Here in this tucked-away paradise, many a dance was pulled off, not to mention other episodes, when the crowd rode in to the ranch house of one or the other of the settlers.
The fiddler and the doctor were two of the most im- portant adjuncts to the community life of the frontier. Of course, it was possible to get along without the doctor, but the fiddler was indispensable, and as much in demand as ice cream at a church picnic. It was often necessary to scour the country for hundreds of miles to locate and engage the music. Then there was his side-partner, the "caller." Although month in and month out the dancers stepped through the figures of the quadrille, it was about as useless to hold a dance without a caller, as to brand a "critter" without an iron.
How they did "hop to it" to the fiddle of "Happy Jack" Morton and the resonant calling of Jimmie Hackett's —
"Honors to your partners,
Yes, honors to the left.
Swing that left hand lady round
And all promenade."
Then the midnight supper, and after the tables groaned less heavily under the sumptuous "muck-a- muck," on again whirled the dance. It was "al-a-man (a la fnain) left" and "Sasshay and swing your part- ners," and the other fellow's too. Then each "boy" with all the strut and grace of an old gamecock, with a scratch or two and a drag of his high-heeled boots
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MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
on the floor, a-cavorting and a-bobbing naively, did his prettiest to outvie old Chanticleer. What with the ever onward swing of the quadrille, spiced with an occasional wink of "red eye," the party, though the men were down to shirt sleeves, would begin to get pretty well "het up." Even the old fiddler now roped in a few maverick notes and skipped a bar or two, and "Onery Missouri" Joe didn't want to "know why," when the big paw of a sheepherder left its black im- print just above the waistline of the new "tarltan of his little prairie chicken."
"Sass-shay all round. Promenade to your seats."
Dawn would be stealing over the horizon. Most of the guests rode, it might be just a nearby twenty miles, or it might be over the country a bit, fifty or sixty.
There would also be he-nights in that little gulch with only the males rounded up. Then the stepping would be high as well as lively, and they say — well, no wonder they called it Happy Canyon; and no won- der when the Round-Up staged the evening show of the frontier town, they named it after the settlement in the halcyon days of the gulch, and made much of the program in replica of its "goin's on" and reproduced as well the canyon walls and snow-capped mountains behind it.
For the time being you are in a little frontier world of fifty years ago. You look out from the bleachers on its "Main Street," backed by the saloon, Chinese laun- dry, millinery shop, a few smaller shacks, and the hotel all bedecked with signs as witty as they are crude. The hotel is an actual replica of the old Villard house, one of Pendleton's early pioneer hostelries.
Every phase of the town of the days of Kit Carson,
Buffalo Bill, "Peg Leg" Smith, and old "Hank" Cap-
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A PIONEER OF THE OLD WEST
A Type of Those Who Helped Cement the Great Northwest Into Our National Body Politic
The Pilgrim was the outstanding figure on Europe's first frontier of Atlantic America, the Pioneer of the Old West is the outstanding character on Europe's last frontier, the Pacific United States. The Mayflozver was the argosy which carried the American Republic, and Capt. Gray's Columbia an ark of covenant which extended its foundations and carried its laws and life into the Orient.
The old time pioneer, typified the adventurous spirit of our restless race: he typified the urge, the expression of that ever- moving dynamic force we call human progress — the under- standing, control and right use by man of nature and its forces.
The vast areas of the Pioneer's El Dorado have now been mapped, rivers whose surfaces were scarce alien-disturbed, save by the Indian's paddle or a salmon's leap, now are harnessed to mill and canning factory; lairs of the wild things have given way to cities, forests to cleared lands, prairies of bunchgrass to teeming counties of grain, the lone square-rigger and clipper ship of Massachusetts Bay and Manhattan Island no longer "Round the Horn" and have given way to fleets of modern turbine Leviathans.
We vision the slight figure of the pioneer, now sitting silently on his horse or standing thoughtfully beside his ox cart. His journey is done, but his eyes are turned toward the light still farther West. Whether he came as explorer, missionary, rancher, cow- boy, hunter, trader, teacher, artisan or intellectual, through his far-seeing vision, intrepid faith, undaunted courage and positive character he has handed to us, the Nation, this Territory of the Northwest, so vast, so packed with riches, so girded with high- ways of trade, so filled with chosen peoples that it staggers the imagination. The pioneer of the Old West has left us indeed a vast heritage — but also a vast responsibility.
The new West is the high school of an advancing democ- racy. It is the geographic position from which we obtain our moral, religious, and psychological viewpoint of Asia. Hawaii is the key to the Pacific ; the Philippine group is the doorway to Asia; China, India, Japan and their Islands of the sea have turned their faces usward, and have set their feet on our shores. We have already entered the gates of the Oldest World — the Orient; our destiny is Pacificward.
The Northwest is still a giant in its needs, but also in its pos- sibilities. Puget Sound is two steamer days nearer China than San Francisco because of the curvature of the earth and five hun- dred miles nearer Chicago by rail. Puget Sound is destined to be the Great American Gateway to the Far East, for trade like water takes the channel of least resistance. Portland by canal connection and harbor developments should form an integral part of this great outlet of the resources of the Northwest and beyond. Providence has placed the Northwest geographically in the Zone of World Power.
By Charles Wellington Furlong
A Pioneer of the Old West
Type of the Manhood and Womanhood of the Range
TYPES OF THE MANHOOD AND WOMANHOOD OF THE RANGE
The buckaroo is a cowboy who can ride — and then some. No pair of contestants on the Round-Up lists stand out more definitely as strong types of the range or played the all-round game longer or with a better spirit than the late Dell Blancett and his wife Bertha Blancett, who has now retired from the contests.
They had competed in the Round-Up since its inception until we entered the world war. But we didn't move fast enough in that contest for Dell, so he joined the Canadian Cavalry in the great war for civilization and now lies with the other heroes under the poppies of Flanders Fields.
The American range man and the range woman, designated by that picturesque title "cowboy" and "cowgirl" have no prototype, any more than has that great, epic, pioneer movement which re- sulted in the settling of the West. That West bore and bred in the cowboy type, a character, a point of view and a soul with a timbre quite his own.
His lonely life in the old days on the plains, when he had often only his herd to sing to or only the coyotes to sing to him, made him contemplative, introspective, strikingly individualistic, at times a bit iriste and occasionally a bit "onery." Normally he is quiet, generous, courageous, conservative, exceptionally mod- est, loyal in his friendships and with a keen original sense of humor, yet he is capable of great recklessness and daring and not a man to trifle with.
He is a son of contrasts — in the day under a blistering burning sun, at night under the cold bite of darkness; — a. full belly one week, a flat belly the next, monotonous days suddenly turned to hours of utmost excitement; long vigils under these conditions generally far from the centers of population, broken only by the seldom occasions in town often with a wild let-loose of repres- sion. Most of his similes, adages and comparisons in life are distinctive and local in color, taken from the life he lives and its environment. He has an inherent deep-lying chivalry, but while he'll ride fifty miles each way in the saddle to spend a few formal hours with a pretty girl, he'll ride two hundred to run down a horse thief.
We were ridin' along homeward one night below the lowest river bench in the Madison Valley — "Scuttle," my pal Rob Swan and I, chapps to chapps, you know* the feel. I had seen Scuttle shoot pieces of broken glass no bigger than a nickel and then pul- verize the smaller bits with a "twenty-two" against the twilight that evening. Now the moon was half -set and a thin mist hung in the valley bottom.
The Whitney outfit had been operating up from the Jackson Hole Country, ten thousand reward had been offered and they were now reported hereabouts. What's the chances I asked Scuttle of the sheriff's posse getting them.
"Well mebbee they will, but more'n likely they Won't."
We jogged along for sometime the only sound the soft putter of hoofs, the retch of saddle leathers and rub of chapps, then Scuttle broke the silence.
"Say pard, d'ye know I've been thinkin' about them 'sassins — they ain't men, 'sassins what I call 'em, and d'j'^e know, that mor'n likely the feller what gits 'em meb'll be some ord'nary kind'er cuss, just like me."
LET 'ER BUCK
linger, and others is shown. In it men of the cow-camp and from many of the remote Oregon towns play their part in such a natural way, that you in the bleachers forget you are sitting on the soft side of a board. Here ranger, Indian fighter, cowboy, and sheriff are off duty, but hotel proprietor, barkeeper, and John China- man are decidedly on. It is a drama in which many of these players are in reality the characters they por- tray. Not even a rehearsal is held. The "boys" are simply told what is expected of them and when they are to do it. The stage coach dashes careening in from a hold-up, the town is shot to pieces by outlaws. Then Indians creep stealthily in while Happy Canyon sleeps and attack in the early morning hours, as in the days w^hen the Snakes and Bannocks went on the warpath and stole in on the settlers hereabouts forty years ago.
One of the most dramatic climaxes in the old life of the red man of this continent will probably be that re- markable scene witnessed by the va^t throng in Happy Canyon the fall after the Armistice. It was known among old settlers and others here in Pendleton that some of the Indians still possessed scalps which, how- ever, they kept carefully concealed from the eyes of the paleface. No persuasion would induce these sons of the forests and plains to produce them.
Suddenly just before the 1919 Round-Up the Indian interpreter, Leo Sampson, came to Roy Raley, the director and organizer of Happy Canyon. He said that the head man, a sort of sub-chief, Jim Bad Roads, had sent him to speak on behalf of the Indians. Many of their young bucks, he said, had joined the army and gone overseas and had helped in the defeat of the enemy. His people, particularly the old people, wanted to dance their Victory Dance in honor of their victor- ies
MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
ious warriors and their dead. If then, the program of Happy Canyon could be arranged for this, they would like to give this dance there and as scalps were a ceremonial symbol used in this dance, they agreed for the first time to bring out their scalps.
The dance was a never-to-be-forgotten one. The Amerinds were marvelously attired and painted in special war victory symbols — unusual trappings of which no white man understood the significance or nature. Very old warriors and old gray-haired women came, and half blind, took part — who had never par- ticipated in the other Amerindian ceremonials at the Round-Up before. There, too, were the scalps, symbols of conquest over an enemy, carried on the staffs called cou sticks. In the course of the ceremony, when an Indian representing the dead enemy was brought down the mountain side to the camp ceremony, the old squaws gave vent to the pent-up fierceness. It was like one last, wild, exulting cry of the imprisoned heart- burnings from the remnant left of a stoical, courage- ous, repressed generation, the last flickering of the spirit of the old-time Indian before the flame goes out. And in those weird cries of victor over vanquished, to those who witnessed and listened, was brought home the full significance of why
"When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons
and Choctaws, They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of
the squaws; 'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those
stark enthusiasts pale. For the female of the species is more deadly than the
male."
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LET 'ER BUCK
Interestingly enough, I have observed this same practice by the women of the southernmost Amerinds of the Yahgan tribe of the regions of Cape Horn, but it was in the case of a hve enemy Indian or one who had committed a crime against the tribe, until they beat him either into unconsciousness or to death.
It was a peculiarly striking testimony that the Indian hereabouts not only regards The Round-Up as his carnival, but considers it a true celebration of the red man. So, too, was it fitting that here should occur probably the last Victory Dance of the aboriginal American, in actual tribute to their fallen as well as their victorious warriors over a defeated paleface foe.
"Whoopee! Wow! Wow!" emanates from the open space — yes, and from the bleachers, too, and with a rattling fusillade of gun-play the show is on. You see bad men and vigilantes come riding into town ; the bar- room has its shooting scrape, and cowboy and cowgirl gracefully reel through their dances on horseback and take part in ranch and town games of various kinds, but realism reaches its climax when a furious, long- horned Texas steer is turned loose in the town street.
At the end of the "Street," the church building, is, as one of the arena hands put it, "where they kept that there wild steer." The brute had been con- fined in a strong pen during the day and by way of expressing his dissatisfaction, had hoofed a foot-deep hole six feet in diameter out of the entire center. He emerges from the corner behind the dummy church- front with head down and tail up, charging everything in sight.
The scattered population of Happy Canyon became
more scattered. The "caste" shin up the veranda
poles of Stagger Inn, dive through the windows of the
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MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
Chinese laundry, dodge up the alley by the blacksmith shop, and now enter the doors of the lady milliner. Up the alley follows the steer; out of another alley pours the crowd. Buckskin-clothed scouts, cowboys, fringe-skirted cowgirls and whiskery old-timers peek round corners, from behind barrels, and from windows and doorways. Slam go doors, and furtive faces dis- appear again, surging in the opposite direction as the bovine reappears and changes his course.
One old-timer, minding his own business, is comfort- ably seated smoking his piece of pipe in peace, on the veranda of the Inn, entirely unconscious of the steer's debut, is picked up bodily, chair and all. Fortunately the steer reaches low enough to catch the chair first, depositing the occupant some yards away. He runs like a hothead while the steer, with the chair dangling by the rungs on one horn, puts after him. A steer is no respecter of persons, and I have come to the conclu- sion has no conscience.
Great Scott he's following his victim into the big, empty dance hall. Crash ! he's through the partly opened door, and is putting on by himself one of the fastest "grizzliest shimmy-bear" effects ever seen in Pendleton — as graceful as a hog on ice — for you see by his reflection the floor was waxed to a finish. It was all funny enough Rattlesnake Bill said to make a jackrabbit jump in the air and spit in the face of a bull- dog. At last he's back in "Main Street" where the feel of terra firma seemed but to increase the virility and fighting vim of this "onery beef -critter."
This steer was apparently not chosen for his lamb- like qualities, but rather because he had been taken from the Round-Up herd of wild Laredo steers, and
sold for butcher meat on account of his proclivity to
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gore horses in the arena. So they thought he was good enough — or bad enough — for a Happy Canyon steer fight.
As toreadors, well-known cowboys who had won championships in the arena, entered this fight in which the odds are all against them and in favor of the steer, as nothing is done to hurt the steer while the only pro- tection of each is a large square of red cloth, called a scrape. There they are Dell Blancett, Ben Corbett, Otto Kline, Bufifalo Vernon and a tenderfoot.
See they are on foot, armed only with those small red cloths, but willing to take a chance, and now put on a bull-fight which for daring is worthy of Spain's most intrepid toreadors. By this time the steer is "plumb cultus" and the bleachers now find no fault with the heavy screen of wire fencing which separates them from the arena.
It is a game which requires head, surefootedness, and a bit of foolhardy courage thrown in, to play fast and loose with the five-foot spread of stiletto horns and the sharp hoofs of an eleven hundred pound steer.
Buffalo Vernon makes a daring leap and seizes the steer's horns, a dangerous act on foot, — proceeds there and now to bulldog the heavy brute. But the steer is stronger-necked than he counts on. He loses his foot- ing and is in danger of being gored but the tenderfoot of the quartette of toreadors comes to his rescue. The other evening his rescuer essayed the same feat, but after a ten-minute struggle in which the enraged, horned beast sought to crush him time and again against the fence posts, he in turn was released by the rest of the outfit.
This would-be bulldogger afterward said that when
he had seized the horns of the steer and could not let
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go, he remembered he had a broken bone in his band- aged right wrist, having been thrown the afternoon be- fore from Sharkey the bull.
Time and again the cowboy toreadors seem to escape the mad charges by a hair's breadth, making skilful use of the red scrapes which flipped and snapped in the melee. Rip 1 the tenderfoot is caught on a horn and tossed aside; but it was only the chamois skin of his jerkin and not his own hide which is torn. Each is ever ready to attract the steer from or go to the help of a comrade when necessary.
Charging, the beast heads for a retreating cowboy, who springs suddenly to one side amongst the scant- lings of the bleachers. The steer plunges on and sud- denly is lost to view in the dark corner where the bleachers join the eastern end of the town. You can hear the clatter of hoofs on boards even above the din of spectators but only the two toreadors nearest in his wake disappear after him at increased speed.
The previous number on the program you recall was a beautiful, dramatic spectacle of a dance of mountain nymphs in the hill scenery above the town, staged by a bevy of pretty Pendleton girls. The two cowboys know that these young women are about to shift their scenery in the dressing room for something more sub- stantial; they know only too well that the board walk terminates in this room beneath the bleachers toward which the steer is heading.
Their worst fears are realized, for the steer does not stop to knock. Into the room, of none too ample dimensions, in the midst of Diana and her maidens, he bolts. For a moment clothes, draperies, chairs and tables are brought into play in a swirl of which the steer is the vortex. Some courageously wield the
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chairs, but for most of them a mouse has nothing on that steer.
But the two cowboys followed close, one buUdogging him to starboard and the other throwing his stern hard a-port, using his tail as a tiller, and guiding the plunging, rampant beast out of the door, escort him back from his rude intrusion into the boudoir of the ladies. Thus ends a number not listed on the pro- gram— The Bull in the China Doll Shop.
A little bewildered, the angry brute now takes his position in the middle of the ring. He paws the earth and shakes his lowered head threateningly and utters an occasional warning moan. In a semicircle the four contestants radius him. There is one "boy" directly in front. It was his move. The steer didn't, so he must.
From a scant twenty-five feet away, steadily, stealth- ily, never taking his eyes from those of the steer, he moves forward step by step — and at each step willing to give his horsehair braid, or even his new sombrero, if that steer would move while there was still time to dodge. The distance is shortening, he is now but ten feet to the lowered head.
"Look out ! You won't be able to get outside those horns," cautioned Dell Blancett.
A strange fascination draws him on. Five more feet are cut down. Still the big brute paws the earth but does not charge.
"You've hypnotized him," comes from a seat in the bleachers.
A thought, as thoughts will, flits across the ap- proacher's mind. Can he close in quickly enough to seize the steer's horns, and bulldog him before the charge and beat the steer to it ? But something quick- er than mere visual perception even, that telepathic
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sixth sense, registered the thought in the mind of Blan- cett.
"You won't make it. Don't try," he remarks in a low, even tone.
The position was tense. To step back now would invite a sudden onrush while he is not in a position to make a getaway. There is little chance by jumping to one side of eluding that spread of horns, which seem even from where he stands to half encircle him. A thought comes. He had always heard a bull or steer did not attack an inanimate body and men had saved themselves by lying prone and still. The experiment is worth trying. The nearer the steer when a man is safely prone, the less chance of the steer getting his head low and of the man being horned. Slowly, with even movements, with eye ever on that of the animal, instead of holding the serape square out as a screen, retaining one corner in his left hand, for he was a southpaw, he worked his right out arm's length behind him to the opposite diagonal corner.
Snap ! The serape slaps forward square between the eyes of the longhorn who simultaneously shoots forward like a bolt from a gun ; but the man is quicker and has dropped flat on the ground, not a bit too flat for the vicious side sweep, — one horn barking a four- inch souvenir of the pleasant occasion from his right shoulder.
The steer hurdles the prostrate form. All is quiet; even the spectators are still. There is the slightest move of the head of the prone figure as he cocks an eye to starboard to see the cause of the dead calm. But it is not too slight for the steer.
Whang! he again barely misses his antagonist's
head. The recipient of this moon-dance and partici-
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pant in this fool stunt, afterwards remarks, when Elmer Storie rubbing horse liniment on his bruises asked how the steer felt on him ; "I thought he was a stone age centipede doing a four-step."
The public now have the coveted opportunity to pour through the gaps of this same wire fence and stroll through Happy Canyon.
"WELCOME STRANGER HOP TO IT,"
one sign invites.
You may enter its shacks and stores — yes, and saloons, too, if you are content with soft drinks. Your next move is made clear — "PROMENADE ALL TO THE BAR." When you get there whether you believe in signs or not, "COME ON KID. BUY YOUR LIZZIE A DRINK— SHE AINT A CAMMEL." In fact you may buy anything under the sun with Happy Canyon ten-buck notes, which it is absolutely necessary to provide yourself with before entering, at the rate of ten cents per of Uncle Sam's legal tender.
One may enter the front door of Stagger Inn and stagger out the back door, but stagger in a right and decorous way if you expect to get by the sheriff and his deputies into the great dance hall with its superb floor. There you may go, and to the music of the splendid Round-Up band "DANCE YOUR FOOL HEAD OFF," as that sign over the entrance suggests. "ONLY REFINED DANCING ALOUD," you are warned ; and the management advises you frankly, "WE WANT NO BLUD OR TOBAKO JUCE SPILT IN HEAR."
If you are not au fait on the finer points of ballroom etiquette a way out is plainly indicated — "GENTS WILL KINDLY SPIT OUT THE WINDOW—
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WE USE WAX." So the life of Happy Canyon is brimful to overflowing with excitement and the atmos- phere of the old frontier days. There is enough fun for all. So stay with the bunch and '*DONT AKT LIKE YOU WUZ THE ONLY BRONK IN THE CORRAL."
The night life is not the least interesting of the many Round-Up attractions, and nowhere can it be seen as well as entered into better than on and off Main Street where the milling of the night herd centers. Here you rub elbows with old-timers and strangers, bankers and cowboys, business men and ranchers, preachers and Indians, doctors and ranch hands, judges and sheepherders.
You can turn with any bunch of strays into the dance halls, shooting galleries, restaurants, movies or the cowboy theater; or you can follow the trail of tobacco juice to the principal hangouts of some of the buckaroos. The poolrooms are all full, almost as full as they were in the days of bars and "sunshine."
Here a bunch of the cowboys line the curb and win- dow sill outside one of their main resorts. Let's go in. Never mind that quartette at the little game in the corner. It may be seven-up, California Jack or solo ; but more likely the brand is poker.
"What's the verdant wad that feller's pulling from his chapps, big enough to choke a cow ?"
"Oh! I reckon that's a plug of chewin'," says Red Parker, with fingers crossed.
"Come over, Furlong, park in here. There's room for your friend, too — move over there, Jock."
We work our way through chairs to a corner table
about which is a bunch of my old Pendleton cronies,
Jimmie and Cress Sturgis, Elmer Storie, Merle Chess-
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man, Guy Wyrick, Brook Dickson, R. Chloupek, Ly- man Rice and George Strand. They had rounded up "Jock" Coleman and song was rife.
"What ! You don't know Jock — that well knit, good looking laddie with a brogue as refreshing as the scent of heather?" In his early days as a lad he had "sailed it" on windjammers along the Highland coasts, but came out from bonnie Scotland to the West in 1906 to go into the steel business as a steelworker, but, as he put it, only found bronchos and sagebrush. He cowboyed it, ranched it, then his inherent highland humor and love of music saw him in vaudeville, where through his original compositions and inimitable im- personations he was termed the Harry Lauder of America; then back to ranching, in charge of a big combine crew, and now he's railroading it — happy-go- lucky, good-natured Jock, the best sort and a prime favorite with all. In the minds of many, Jock's rich, Scotch baritone should have made its impress on many a gold disc record along with McCormack and others.
It was in this same hall that one night I sat in this corner quietly alone, unobserved, and just as tonight I listened and looked out on the same scene. You know the sounds when a herd like that gets to milling in a roofed-in corral — the murmuring drone of men's voices, the occasional outstanding ejaculation, flavor- ed with poetic vernacular or spiced with occasional un- camouflaged profanity. Then the expectoration pause before the expectant remark, the deep-toned, shake and rattle of the leather cup and the softened rattle of the edge-worn bones. A bit crude, yes. But only a primi- tive shellac, which seems to bring out even more clearly those splendid, fundamental, inherent qualities which
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one has often to scratch much deeper to find beneath the veneer of a more effete order.
The hght filters its golden way through the half- wafting fog of tobacco smoke onto the great baize tables sprinkled with their ivories like drops of a rain- bow on a lawn of green; upon forward tilted sombre- ros with a cockeyed slant shading keen eyes, deep set in shadowed sockets; upon the sheen of colored shirt as the strong figures reach in their play with the cue, their clean-cut faces chiseled by a life and work in which they ask of nature no compromise. All is a great delicious, impressionistic splash of color on a canvas soon to be grayed with that dull mediocrity we call civilization.
The smoke grew thicker, the backgroimd turned to a dark nothingness, the murmur of men's voices merged with it and only the shirted, chapped, sombreroed fig- ures moved across my vision. The lights were the lights of campfires, the shadows on the men's faces those cast by them, and time filmed backward a space of years. I saw the western plainsmen on the great stage of their calling. Perhaps no type of men or call- ing have ridden into publicity and the interest of people of all countries more completely than the vaquero and particularly the vaquero of our western plains — the cowboy. No vocation is so constantly spiced with ro- mance, adventure, fight and fun as that of the cow- boy— those elements which make an inherent appeal to mankind.
Nor is any "getup" used in practical everyday work more picturesque than the broad-hatted, chapped, care- free, spur-jingling one of the American cowboy. One of its charms lies in the fact that it is worn for business and not for effect, and you know it. Look about this
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crowd now with the added color of his best "harness," which he sometimes "shcks up" with for a Saturday night in town, but more particularly as you see him now during the Round-Up.
Perhaps, too, no phase of calling and type of man so much in the limelight of the world is quite so little really known and appreciated. Its very picturesque- ness has thrown an eclat and a veil over the popular vision and hidden not only many of the cowboy's true, manly, and generous qualities, but has perhaps ob- scured the value of his service to civilization, which by the great majority is scarcely thought of. It was the cowboy who was often the first discoverer of "some- thing lost behind the ranges"; who first "entered on the find" ; whose pony was the first to lead "down the hostile mountains where the hair-poised snow-slide shivered, and through the big fat marshes that the vir- gin ore-bed stains." His ears were often the first to hear the "mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers"; his eyes the first to see beyond "nameless timber the illimitable plains." He has often been not only the forerunner, but the pioneer over wide regions now dotted with towns and cities, rivers hemmed with water frontage, throbbing with industries and dammed for "plants to feed a people." He may well say in the words of The Explorer, of the clever chaps that fol- lowed him that they
"Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted. Used the water holes I'd hollowed. They'll go back and do the talking, They'll be called the pioneers."
Who is the cowboy and where does he come from? Why, the cowboy fundamentally is the son of the pio-
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neer, for often the rancher in the old days was the range master; the cowboy is not an imported product, but was born and brought up in the Old West and was the West's firstborn. Many newcomers from all nations and callings of an adventurous or elemental nature hired on as cowherds, and after serving their apprenticeship, were enrolled in the ranks of the cow- boy. The romance of this life made a particular ap- peal to the men of red blood who realized the danger of sedentary occupations and the stupidity of sitting two-thirds of one's life on the end of one's spine, to the man who loved nature, to the laboring man re- stricted by overcrowding in his trade in his old world ; even to the man of culture, of whom perhaps no one section of the country, except possibly the old South, has contributed more recruits than New England, which also sent out the early explorers and a large por- tion of the pioneers. Even today the most popular pictures on the walls of many a school and college boy of the East are those of Frederic Remington and Charlie Russell, our two greatest painter historians of the West.
Banded together the cowboys have dispensed wild justice to many outlaws. There occurred sometimes the inevitable war over property between ranch and ranch, and the stockmen's wars between sheepmen and cattlemen. But the cowboys have essentially stood for the protection of law and property in a territory where the only writ that ran was that signed by the strong hand. Their fight against thieves has been a good fight, especially against horse thieves, the arch crimi- nals in a new country where everybody must ride.
A part of the day's work may be dragging a steer out of quicksand and then dodging the grateful beast
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to save being gored; to ford a freshet-swollen river; to struggle through a blizzard, while cow-punching in a stampede is not play for a floorwalker.
Such work demands not only a perfect presence of mind but a perfect co-ordination of mind and action. The picture of the cowboy as he is portrayed in his reckless moments when he crazily careens a-whooping and a-shooting through the town when he rides his horses into saloons, or at the times of his gross merry- making is a distorted one; and you are likely to for- get in the whoop, the gun-play and the curse, the fringe and the jingle, how much hard work, often under most difficult conditions, he is doing. The cowboy, while a type and adhering to his clan, is a marked individu- alist, and anyone who knows and loves the open and the great range of freedom, knows that the men who live in those great expanses of life, who often must be a law unto themselves, who carry dangerous weap- ons and know that their associates carry them, are usually self-contained and courteous. The cowboy is of a keen-thinking, clear-eyed and resolute clan, far from quarrelsome, but sudden in a fight, though not seeking it, and doubly quick on the draw. This is the true son of the plains, if you eliminate some recent hands who have stepped into his chapps and think that so doing and jamming on a Stetson, and looking tough makes a cowboy. The cowboy is honest, hard-work- ing, truthful and full of resource — and of course brave, not merely in action but in endurance.
It was logical that when the railroads brought beef- cattle on the hoof to be shipped to Europe by way of the great cattle boats, Boston should become the great porv of export and center of this trade. By reason of its great shoe and textile industries it had a very direct
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and vital connection with the cattle and sheep indus- try of the West.
The life on these cattle boats with their congested, seasick, stench-reeking, bellowing, bovine cargo and the dangerous work of cleaning out, bedding down, tending, feeding, watering, and removing carcasses of cattle that had died on the voyage — often in a heavy seaway and storm — naturally did not appeal to the landsman of the western interior. Besides the few at- tendant cowhands, who had come as far as the Chica- go stockyards, most of them had hit the trail back West. So the stevedores were generally picked up somewhere along that attractive mudhole, Atlantic Avenue.
The red-blooded youths whose homes were on or near the stern and rock-bound coast of Massachusetts, many of them descendants of the hardy Yankee skip- pers or the seafaring folk of the North and South Shores and "The Cape," shipped on Gloucester and Boston fishermen for the dangerous cruising on the "Georges" and Grand Banks. They were the progeny of those sailormen who taught Britain on the sea in 1812, and the Dey of Algiers in 1815 to respect the American marine; whose clipper ships outsailed the craft of every nation, flinging our flag from their mast- heads in every port of the globe, and whose clumsy whalers out of the ports from Cape Cod to Cape Ann outsailed and out-whaled the combined whaling fleets of the world. It is not to be wondered at that the Massachusetts school and college lad with such a heri- tage chose during his summer vacation to take his Odyssey as nursemaid to a lot of wild, seasick, long- horned steers, and all for only his keep on the way over
with a five-dollar bill on arrival and a free passage back.
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Many of these youngsters doubtless met up with some old hands, and were initiated into an interest in the West. Thus the ancestral urge of adventure strengthened the trade relationship of industrial Mas- sachusetts with the agricultural West, which began when Captain Gray sailed out of Boston harbor to trade a chisel for otter skins with the Indians on the Columbia. So we see an unbroken and very close re- lationship between Massachusetts and the Northwest and between her sons and those of Washington and Oregon.
There was a time but a few years ago when the call of the wild made such an appeal to many of the East- ern college men that cow-punching became almost a mania. There was almost an epidemic of reversion to type. Cultivated youth, fascinated by the free open life of the far West, obeyed Horace Greeley's injunc- tion and went there. If he was not too much of a "dude," he survived his dancing lessons to the tune of a six-shooter, his saddle soreness, chuckwagon dodgers, wet, cold, heat, isolation, deserts, swollen tor- rents, swollen lips, sometimes swollen eyes, horns, hoofs, rope-burns and rattlesnakes, and became a man.
Many of these Easterners assimilated rapidly the contagious life and spirit of the West, for after all they had only skipped a generation — it's only one gen- eration from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves. They contrib- uted to the West the culture and breadth of viewpoint which this reciprocal intermingling helped to create, emancipating the West from many prejudices and localisms and helped to bring about that superb bal- ance which characterizes the average Westerner of to- day.
From the intermingling of these types, particularly
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in Colorado, a curious and delightful society arose. The ranchman was "only a cowboy in chief. ... In particular it was noticed in El Paso and Denver in the most high and palmy state of the cattle business that cow-punching was a sure recipe for reducing the Bos- tonian morgue." In fact there are many delightful and social colonies of ranchers composed in greater part of Eastern college and educated men and their families who have formed delightful communities, as for in- stance, the famous fruit region of Hood River Valley where they have a better University Club than in many a large city. Thus the call of the West of yesterday echoes into today and will re-echo into tomorrow ; and the call will be answered.
But I forget — this is not "the other night" and I'm not sitting in this corner alone. The figures I see in the smoke are not phantoms of the campfires or sil- houettes against the horizons of time, but real, honest- to-God plainsmen and ranchmen of now on the real stage of their today.
The murmur of men's talk about me has softened — vibrated away into almost a node of silence, only a single voice, a voice you feel has breathed the fullness of great distances, chronicles an episode in the life of the buckaroo
The band it plays,
And a cowboy sways On the back of a bucking horse.
He looks around,
Then he hits the ground, But the bucker keeps his course.
Thundering applause shakes the whole structure. The reason ? Why, Tracy Lane, the cowboy poet laur-
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eate of the Round-Up, has just "busted" into verse about the show. Tracy not only has written some western verse, but is also one of the best horse-gent- lers in the country. He does wonderful things with horses — teaching riding-horses in particular, their numerous gaits and many other things.
"Give us The Old Cowhand's Wish, Tracy." Tracy spits, shifts a bit and wipes his hand across his mouth.
"All right, fellers, here's hoppin' to it," he spits again — "Well, boys, I'll throw you somethin' that I wrote after a spell back East a-gentling some 'dude' horses. It kinder expresses my sentiments better'n I can talk 'em myself and I guess it kinder expresses yourn."
Gee, but I am growing weary of the city and its glare ; Weary of the blocks and blocks of crowded street and
square, Weary of the noises, of autos and of cars; I sometimes wish that I could fly upward to the stars.
I am longing for the prairies, where I rode so long ago, Longing for the springtime, longing for the snow, Wishing I was punching cattle on that horse I used to
ride; The one I always was so proud of, the one that always
bucked and shied.
He was a bay and rather rangy, and he sure could kick
and snort. And every morning when I'd mount him, he and I would
have some sport, But after we had had our battle, and his bucking it was
done, He'd be as nice as any horse that ever lived beneath the
sun.
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I broke him with a hackamore, and he sure did know the
rein, And I could rope and tie a critter, in the hills or on the
plain. And no matter how he'd paw, how he'd bawl or how he'd
. fight, This horse he'd stand and hold him, and he'd keep that
rawhide tight.
Then we used to drive the beef herd, to the railroad far
away Then we used to ride for slick-ears, and we'd ride both
night and day, And we took in all the dances, we would go for many a
mile. Just to swing some pretty maiden, hear her talk, and see
her smile.
But alas ! the range is ended, for the settlers they came
west, They brought hammers and barbed wire; well, I think
you know the rest, They run the cowboys from the ranges, chased us to the
hills and town, And they run me to the city, the damnedest place I've ever
found.
So now I'm old, I'm feeble ; soon I'll make another change, And wherever I do go, I hope I'll find a bunchgrass range, I hope I'll meet all those old cowhands, the cowhands that
I used to know When I rode the Western ranges, over forty years ago.
When the crowd gets through hollooing and stamp- ing and Tracy modestly rustles his seat, some one bellows,
"Jock Coleman — ^Where's Jock ? Oh, there you are,
Scottie. Come on with one of your kiltie songs, Jock,"
and the well-knit, smiling Jock is pushed to the front.
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There is a hush. The card games ceased as Jock's melodious voice breaks into the Highland pathos of Annie Laurie and Highland Mary. Even the clicking at the pool tables stops. Perhaps it was the under- standing which comes from familiarity with the knocks and nuances of life that enriched the remarkable quality of his voice, which could cause a smile to spread over the visages, or a wet glint to glisten in the eyes of the roughest-cut diamond of any crowd.
Round after round of applause showed there was no sitting down for the singer; so it was "I hate ter-r-r get-tup in the mor-r-rnin','' 'T love a lassie," and so on, until an old skinner of a combine crew and a bunch of ranch-hands called for the song they had heard Jock had composed about working on the big combine.
"Well, y' see, fellers, I'll tell y' how I came ter-r write this wee bit song. Y' see last year-r I was on the big MacDonald Ranch near Pilot Rock wor-r-king as header-r puncher-r, and for th' benefit o' th' tender- foots in the crowd I'll go a wee bit into detail — and I have nae doot they'll understand the meanin' o' the song better-r.
"Saturday nights the wheat r-ranchers would gi' a party fer-r th' harvester-rs and most o' th' hands would round up at some ranch hoose. Weel, at one o' these someone suggested that as I had written a Roond-Up song, why not one on th' big combine, per- haps the most important and certainly the most strikin' featur-re on a wheat ranch today — the big combine which mows, winnows, thr-reshes and sacks up the wheat — does what it used to take a hundr-rud men and as many horses to do, and in half the
time.
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MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
"Weel, some o' the boys remarked that I was sort o' quiet the next week, as though I was thinking aboot somethin' an' I was. Weel, I decided I'd just tell aboot the wor-rk while the great combine was a-r-rollin', and bring in the wor-rk of the four men which for-rm the crew and make it a bit o' a play on the character of each . — not fur-r-getting the horses, thir-r-ty-two o' them. You see, the crew is made up of the header-r punch- er-r, the separator-r puncher-r, the skinner-r-r and the sack sewer-r-r-r. Thaire was Oscar-r-r Nelson, — he sewed up the sacks. Oscar-r-r traveled a' la side door-r-r Pullman, a 'bo-socialist was Oscar-r-r and a Wobbly (I.W.W.) forby. He'd be happier-r-r in the jungles than in the Waldor-r-f Astor-r-ria.
"Then thaire was Floyd Smith, a healthy wee lad frae the 'Valley.' He was the long-line skinner-r-r-r, although only eighteen he could drive thir-r-ty head — and he could eat like a bear-r-r-r,
"Then there was meself header-r-puncher-r-r. I had to run the ootfit and tend the knives and had char-rge of the wheel that raises an' lower-r-s accor-r-ding to the height y' wish tae cut th' grain. So, I set my song tae th' tune o' Casey Jones, but said nothin' until I sprung it at the next big party. The combine crew wer-r-re all thaire. Some of you hae hear-r-d it I've nae doot, so y' can all jine in the chorus o' Working on the Big Combine. All right wi' the ivories thaire, Mister-r-r Pianer-r-puncher-r-r yer-r-r-r foot off the soft pedal and hit 'er-r har-r-r-rd."
Now come, all you rounders, if you want to hear The story of a bunch of stiffs a-harvesting here. The greatest bunch of boys that ever came down the line, Is the harvest crew a-working on this big combine. 9 129
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There's traveling men from Sweden in this good old
crew, From Bonnie Scotland, Oregon and Canada, too ; I've listened to their twaddle for a month or more, I never met a bunch of stiffs like this before.
"Come awa wi' the chorus lads — swing tae it !"
Oh, you ought to see this bunch of harvest pippins You ought to see, they're surely something fine
You ought to see this bunch of harvest pippins, This bunch of harvest pippins on this old combine.
There's Oscar just from Sweden — he's as stout as a mule, Can jig and sew with any man or peddle the bull, He's an independent worker of the world as well. He loves the independence but he says the work is hell. He's got no use for millionaires and wants ter see Them blow up all the grafters in this land of liberty ; Swears he's goin' ter leave this world of graft and strife And stay down in the jungles with the stew-can all his life.
"The chorus noo, hop to it."
Oh! Casey Jones, he knew Oscar Nelson, Casey Jones, he knew Oscar fine;
Casey Jones, he knew Oscar Nelson, When he chased him off of boxcars on the S. P. line.
Now the next one I'm to mention, — well, the next in line, Is the lad a-punching horses on this big combine The lad that tells the horses just what to do. But the things he tells the horses I can't tell you. It's Pete and Pat and Polly, you come out of the grain, And Buster, there you are again, you're over the chain, Limp and Dude and Lady, you get in and pull. And Paddy, you get over there, you damned old fool.
130
MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD "Altogether-r-r, boys — noo."
Oh ! you ought to see, you ought to see our skinner
You ought to see, he's surely something fine;
You ought to see, you ought to see our skinner, He's a winner at his dinner at this old combine.
Now I'm the header-ptmcher, don't forget that's me
I do more work, you bet, then all the other three, A-workin' my arms and a-\vorkin' my feet, A-picking up the barley and the golden wheat, I got to push up the brake and turn on the wheel, I got to watch the sickle and the draper and the reel. And if I strike a badger hill and pull up a rock. They holler "Well, he's done it, the damn fool Jock."
"Hop tae the chorus, cowboys — knock 'em dead!"
Oh! I'm that guy, I'm the header-puncher, I'm that guy though it isn't in my line,
I'm that guy — I'm the header-puncher
I'm the header-puncher on this old combine.
It was a remarkable portrayal of one of the by- phases of modern ranch life. It got under the skins of the crowd and a full five minutes elapsed before the applause died away.
"Give us your Round-Up song, Jock, before this 'er corral puts up the bars for the night."
"All r-r-right, boys — My Heart Goes Back to Dear Old Pendleton. Now, you fellers put some high-life into this chorus. Make it snappy Mister-r-r Piano- puncher-r-r; put a handle on it and tur-r-rn it."
Now I've sailed the sea, I've seen gay Paree, I've seen the sights of old London. Though I'm far away, I never stray from that dear old town I was born in ;
131
LET 'ER BUCK
Now once ev'ry year there's one town looks dear, Pendleton, you know the town; My heart seems to cling, so that's why I sing Of Pendleton's Round-Up renown.
We've fairs ev'rywhere, some good, some just fair. Some towns went broke when 'twas over. But there
won't come a time That this town don't shine, when her people won't be in
clover ; Her women are fair, her business men square, Good fellowship night and day; From the mayor to the cop, she's always on top, A hummer, a dinger, she's there.
CHORUS
For my he.iitt goes back to dear old Pendleton,
That's the on -ly place for
MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD
Pen-die - ton-Sep - tem-ber-Let'er buck. That's the place
for me.
Only a small group hangs outside after the doors close and the lights go out, but the others scatter to their homes or hangouts — soon only an occasional song, a whoopee, a fusillade of shots, or a wild "Let 'er buck" breaks the night stillness. The big little city sleeps on into the great tomorrow.
133
CHAPTER FIVE
THE ROUND-UP
Shortly after noon, if you do not want to walk and haven't a horse, take one of the gray, "bus-Hke jit- neys" and follow with that veritable human river — spectators and contestants — which flows on the open- ing day to the Round-Up Park. Like a gigantic herd on the drive, this vast mass of humanity streams through the gates and goes milling to their seats. Be- fore you the broad quarter mile track, defined from the centre arena by a low fence, lies empty and quiet. On either side the bleachers are packed to the utmost. Ex- pectancy can be sensed throughout the great amphi- theater, where everybody wears the glad-to-see-you, glad-to-be-here, "let 'er buck" smile.
Across the arena behind a wire fence, a long phalanx of cowboys and Indians sit their horses as spectators or as waiting contestants. Beyond these, the pictur- esque tepees of the Umatillas snuggle in pyramids of white or color in the shadow of a soft green grove of cottonwoods suffused in the haze of Indian summer; and beyond, the low hills seem to meet a turquoise sky and drift lazily out to ranch and range. Near you the Portland Band and the famous Round-Up Mounted Cowboy Band, headed by Bob Fletcher, occupy the mo- ments with well-rendered "rags" and martial airs while
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THE ROUND-UP
thirty thousand people eagerly await the things which one reads and dreams about — the West stalking in the flesh.
You will undoubtedly meet up with old friends but you are sure to see many people of note. There is Proctor the sculptor's family, in the third box from the center, and Anna Shannon Monroe, the authoress, is with them. Proctor, himself, is in the arena, — there with his sketch book getting material. In the next box with Dave Horn is another old six-line skinner,
C. W. Barger, from 'Frisco, who has driven for Wells Fargo, Farlow & Sanderson and others. He began to handle the lines in 1874 and not only drove from La Grande through Pendleton to Umatilla, but has driven all over the Western country, through Eastern Oregon, Montana and from British Columbia to Ari- zona, winding up in the Yosemite sixteen years ago.
The man in the dark, slouch hat with his arms on the rail, is Governor Olcott of Oregon, he is so in- terested he prefers standing in the pen with the timers.
Of the many guests of note who journey to witness this great pageant none have expressed their enthusi- asm in a more concrete way than that man you see with a group of friends in the center box — that's Louis
D. Hill of St. Paul. As long as he could not freight the whole show back home with him over the North- ern Pacific Lines, he invited the Round-Up Committee and nearly a half hundred other leading Pendletonians as guests of honor and to let-'er-buck at the great St. Paul mid-winter ice carnival.
So next February with their wives, — those who had
them — ^they rounded-up in the beautifuf Snow City
in cowboy regalia. No visitors ever received a more
royal welcome or were encouraged to take greater
135
LET 'ER BUCK
freedom in any city. Among them was Bill Switzler and Glenn Bushee (Tall Pine) in his inimitable Indian- chief's costume, and few ever penetrated his disguise.
When the horses Louis Hill provided were brought out, Wild Bill's keen eye focused a dotted line on one particular animal in the bunch with the bridle bit
brand ^^ ^^ seared on its right stifle, and an
Xon its right side — Bill's own brands. It was a long way from Horse Heaven Country, but only goes to show how small is the world of men and horses.
Though snows have come and gone, St. Paul will long and pleasantly remember that Pendleton outfit; riding horses into elevators of the leading hotel, light- ly roping skilfully any pedestrian who crossed their path in the parade, small boy, dog or pretty girl pre- ferred— were some of the episodes in their whole- souled merrymaking.
They had by no means reached the end of their rope, when they lassoed Jinks Taylor out of a barber chair and shaved the nigh half only, of his pet hirsutian ap- pendage from his upper lip, for they shortly discovered Wild Bill Switzler in a quiet corner having his fore- hoofs roached by a pretty manicurist — didn't even give him a chance to have the polish put on, or explain why he was going — Swish ! and a dozen hands suddenly hauled him backwards and out of the door.
Then there was that crowning episode of western
chivalry, which Glenn Bushee staged on the Capitol
steps. In the parade most of the Pendleton outfit had
fair partners in their saddles, while they rode behind
their cantles. A flight of Capitol steps meant nothing
in the young lives of men used to chasing longhorns
over rimrock, so up the steps they went. Suddenly
136
THE ROUND-UP
on the icy granite a horse fell. Tall Pine in his Indian regalia went down. But the old arena instinct and his inherent western chivalry caused him to think first of his fair partner. Throwing himself, war bonnet, feather, trapping and all under her. Tall Pine lit flat on his back — she lit flat on his nose.
So, many humorous incidents paved their way, not only in St. Paul, but on to New York, where the re- nowned hospitality of the Pendletonians, was only equalled by that of their gracious host. After a round-up of every entertainment the Cosmopolis of America could produce, they were willing to admit that New York compared favorably with Pendleton.
Perhaps you recognize the man in that front seat talking to Merle Chessman of the East Oregonian, the one with a square set to his jaw, immaculately dressed, straw hat at a slight independent angle, and a red car- nation in his lapel, — that's Thomas W. Lawson of Boston.
Tom Lawson, author, copper and stock-farm king with his five children has come here all the way from Egypt — Massachusetts.
He's always positive in his opinions as well as his remarks, and you know by his manner he means it. "It's all best, grand, marvelous and all new — all Ameri- can, the greatest human entertainment shown on earth. Another thing that strikes me forcibly is the absence of what comes under the general head of brutality — I have never seen any physical contest less brutal than Pendleton's great human nature exhibition. It puts a glow into the minds of youth and nurtures the won- derful heritage our forefathers created for us."
Well, he has not only expressed tersely your thought,
but those of every normal human in this great epic,
137
LET 'ER BUCK
But there are some, not without honor in their own country, occupying some of the humblest seats in the bleachers whom you don't know. But as Rattlesnake Bill says, "Them strangers may be top-notch salubri- ties back from whar they hails from an' I've no doubts but they're corn fed on thar alleged brains. I never heard o' them before but I know a few salubrities right 'n town 'n likely's 'nuff right 'n these bleachers now — thar's 'Baldy Sours', he's a woodcutter — and sure kin wrangle an axe, thar's Harry McDonald, they sure rubbed soot in his Irish eyes, then thar's John Jigger, the well digger — everybody's heerd tell on 'em, why "
To the minute at 1 p. m. on each of the three days these contests for world's championships begin, — and almost to the minute at five they end. Roping, racing, and relays, by cowboys, Indians, and cowgirls; steer roping, maverick races, steer bulldogging; riding bucking horses, steers, bulls, buffaloes, and cows; stagecoach racing, Indian ceremonial and war dances, trick riding, mounted tug of war, the grand parade, and that wonderful finale, the wild horse race — and to any one not versed in the ways of the open West all of this is as instructive as it is entertaining.
A glance convinces you that the men, women, horses and steers are the real thing, and the sport — an out- growth from the range — is genuine. It is the fastest fight and fun to be found, in which a gripping, fas- cinating life is enacted every moment.
From grandstand to bleacher you will soon look out on the swing and swirl of movement of a great sun- flooded oval, framed by the rolling hills of Oregon, where meet the greatest roughriders of the globe, com- peting for world's championships on the worst outlaw
138
THE ROUND-UP
horses, bucking bulls, and buffaloes; in roping wild steers, in bulldogging Texas longhorns, and in the various races — the cow-pony, relay, pony express, and stagecoach.
The whole drama with its atmosphere and charac- ter gives the Round-Up its charm, and makes it pre- eminently the peer of all cowboy carnivals. This is the great magnetic force which draws a vast audience to Pendleton for three whole days of each year.
Just before the opening of the program it is the custom for the President of the Round-Up Associa- tion to appear on the track riding the first prize saddle for the cowboy's bucking contest for the championship of the world. Perhaps no more striking figure was ever seen in the arena on this occasion than the late Sheriff Til Taylor. Many will recall Til when he rode in one year escorting Miss Jane Bernoudy, prob- ably the most popular fancy roper the Round-Up has ever seen. She was ensconced in the seat of the first saddle for the girl's bucking contest dressed in her well-cut pretty maroon-colored velvet suit and natty sombrero.
Beneath the man's broad-brimmed Stetson you saw a face — strong in character as well as physique — square, but not heavy-jawed, eyes narrow, deep-set but smiling, a mouth with the kind of firmness that lent a charm to his quiet laugh, a man as big and noble of heart as he was stalwart of body — a man's man. His whole timbre and appearance was surcharged with that peculiar type of virility and quality that lends itself to the inspiration of the sculptor and makes him itch to put it in bronze.
The saddle the President rides, covering the back
of his prancing mount, is a work of art, enriched with
139
LET 'ER BUCK
its heavy hand tooling, its long tapideros jauntily swinging and flipping from his stirrups, the big silver medallions heliographing to nearly a hundred thousand eyes the message and the spirit of the Round-Up.
Some of the contestants leisurely cross the arena. There's Dell Blancett, tall and rangy, followed by Cor- bett, short and thick-set, and others of the well-known contestants, each packing his own saddle, with latigo trailing and spurs clinking. There's Bill Riding and Jess Brunn, two of the wranglers, six foot plus, rangy, clean-cut, and narrow-eyed, typical cow-punchers. But whatever their set or hang, all carry that simple, natural pose of men of the range — in manner straight and quiet, in bearing fearless, and in nature generous, but individualists all. They are a type in the passing — a type which Pendleton holds at its true value.
You sit tense on the edge of that opening hour.
HOP TO IT
"Let 'er buck 1" With a thundering roar the slogan rings out and the great epic drama of the West has begun.
Bang! They're off!
A score of plains-bred men and horses flash from the start, swing around the track in a wild, mad tear and smother of dust, a rattling, hammer-and-tongs run. For wild rush and reckless speed and turns, nothing can outrival the cow-pony race. Yes, they crowd at the turns, these chapped and booted cowboys, they cut in on the stretch and they do everything that the skill of those rough-riders of the range can do to beat out their adversaries. It's a fight of man and horse against men and horses, with every art known to
140
THE ROUND-UP
these centaurs of the plains thrown in, a cowboy and horse is down, he's up before his horse — he's mounted and is off again.
Bang ! There they go again.
But this time it is a band of mounted Indians, each one of which, save for a breech clout and the paint his squaw had decorated him with, is as unhampered by the garb of conventionality as September Morn. They shoot down the wind — see how they lash hide and cling to pole in their mad hurly-burly sweep around the oval, in a way which for utter fearlessness makes tenderfoot and stranger catch their bieath.
Out come a score of mounted cowboys — each kicks off his chapps onto the ground beside him and mounts. They are facing the opposite direction from the way the other races start, you wonder why. It's the quick change race and shows skill in preparing to ride and changing saddles. They start in a flash but bring up as suddenly after a scant one hundred yards, swing horses, dismount and remove saddles; mount again and back ; jump into chapps, and now leaping through the air they are back to saddles, which with astonishing swiftness they have put on properly cinched up. Seem- ing to shoot through space they have crossed the line at the starting point.
The squaw race is announced, and the mounted phalanx of full-blood, Umatilla Indian girls on Indian ponies line up at the pole. For gameness and fine rid- ing the twenty squaws who run the squaw race, also on horses that are bare-back save for surcingle, are worthy representatives of their tribe.
*'Go!" In brilliant garb, like a moving bouquet of
color, their black braids streaming in the wind, they
shoot like iridescent streaks around the great oval.
141
A WILD SWING AND TEAR THROUGH A SMOTHER OF DUST
Swiftly FoUoii'ed by the Indians in
A MAD-CAP RIDE, EVERYBODY FOR HIMSELF.
Then the Relay
SWIFT AND RECKLESS AT THE TURNS
The maverick race "through a smother of dust" is one of the most picturesque and characteristic events. Twenty to thirty- cowboys in a turmoil of ropes, hoofs, horns and dust take after the most "outrunningess" kind of a steer. The first rope over the horns wins.
The bewildering, quick changes of the relay and pony express are indescribable. Both closely akin, are a survival of the old dare-devil riding of the cowboy mail-carriers through the coun- try of hostile Indians. In both races, each rider has two assistants, one to hold and one to catch, saddles to weigh not less than twenty-five pounds, any cinch allowed, same horses to be used each day barring accidents, each race a three-day con- test, best total time winning. In the cowboy's relay champion- ship, the rider has four horses. He must saddle, unsaddle, mount, and dismount unassisted, ride two miles each day and change horses each half mile. On the first day, riders draw for place in paddock, afterwards they take them in the order in which they finish.
Two timers are assigned to each horse in both pony express and relay, as one relay between George Drumheller's and Fay LeGrow's strings ran so close that at the end of the three days' racing there was but 1-5 of a second between them. LeGrow's string ridden by E. A. Armstrong winning in 12 minutes 56 1-5 seconds. The Round-Up relay record of 12 minutes 7 seconds was made by Scoop Martin on a Drmnheller string in 1911, also the best single day record of 4 minutes 1 second. Darrell Cannon holds second record of 12 minutes 21 1-5 seconds made in 1920.
Watch Allen Drumheller on Lillian Ray as with hat gone, he races apparently "swift and reckless at the turns." See his style, far forward, low and close on his horse, riding zvith him, prob- ably sitting thirty pounds lighter than either of the other men.
The most important thing in the relay is horsemanship in arriving at stations. Drumheller after dismounting takes one step to grab cinch to unhook, one step ahead to throw on saddle to waiting horse, and one grab in hooking up, then on and away. A steady head may win a relay or pony express race for it's a long one and many things may happen.
Allen Drumheller's record makes him the most remarkable all-round racing rider who has ever run at Pendleton. He has ridden into two world's relay championships and one second in the three consecutive years he raced, with Sleepy Armstrong a close second. Allen not only holds third record in the cow- pony race, but first in the pony express, time 6 minutes 18 1-5 seconds; also best time one day 2 minutes 5 seconds. In 1915 he took first in all three, relay, pony express and cow-pony.
Jessie Drumheller, petite and the very essence of refined fem- inity, is a splendid counterpart of her brother, a superb relay rider and holder of the 1918 girl's cow-pony championship and also the record time of 54 seconds on the Pendleton track.
boto by W. S. Bowman
A Wild Swing and Tear through a Smother of Dust
Photo by W. S. Bowman
A Mad-Cap Ride, Everybody for Himself
Photo by Maj. Lee Moorhouse
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SWINGING THE TURNS LIKE GALLEONS IN A GALE
The stagecoaches, those old caravels of the plains, are guided in their courses around the quarter-mile track with no slowing down at the turns and horses on the dead run from start to finish. It is little wonder that only one year in Round-Up his- tory has seen the three days running go through without one or more accidents.
Wells Fargo, one of the first and the first thoroughly organized express, ran their leather, thoroughbraced. Concord coaches with four to six horses in the finest Concord harness wherever a train did not go and there was enough of a demand. Their first stagecoach came around the Horn in 1852 and may be seen in their stables in San Francisco.
In. the old days a stagecoach generally made forty to sixty miles a driver, with a relay every twenty miles or so. Some of the well-known Wells Fargo six-line stringers like Dave Horn and C. W. Barger of Pendleton have gone sixty miles each way, being "on the seat" for forty-eight hours.
The "stages" in the stagecoach race are genuine old timers and are furnished by the Round-Up management. Each race goes to the "best time," winning each day. Each contesting driver is allowed as many assistants as desired. These comprise the driver or stringer, the "lasher" who wields the whip, as may be seen on the near and winning coach driven by Jim Roach, and the passengers. The passengers are the two or three extra cowboys who barnacle on the side of the coach nearest the arena, from where they hang far out to keep it from capsizing at the turns.
H. W. Smith is the veteran driver here having driven of? and on from the first contest in 1912 until 1920 with a once around the track record of 32 seconds. The race is a half mile, the record being 1 minute 14 seconds made by John Spain in 1913, with E. O. Zeek second in his 1912 record of 1 minute 14 1-2 seconds. Joe Cantrell, who thrice won the championship, is a close third on time with 1 minute 18 seconds.
The race is purely a Round-Up product. Although wanted the first year it was considered too dangerous but finally made its appearance the third year being established before the safety first idea.
LET 'ER BUCK
There are Kamay Akany, Mary Joshua, Wealatoy, Lucy Luton, Sophia Amika, Nelhe Minthorn, Wyna- poo and Georgia Penny, well bunched and all splendid riders. Now they string out a bit, now more and more and Lucy Luton pulls in first. The Indian girls have marked up a record of .58 seconds in the squaw race.
This daring racing is attended with some spills and injuries, but as I help to carry from the track one of the riders before the galloping hoofs again encircle the track, her finely featured face, while bearing a bad gash, also shows through her suffering that superb self-control and stoicism of her race.
There now quickly follow others of the never-to-be forgotten races. Whether it be cow-pony, Indian, quick change, squaw, or catch saddle and ride, they but create in you an anticipation for the greater thrills later of the maverick, relay, or pony express. In the whirlwind rush, amazing dexterity, grit and headwork is a desperate daring, and each teems with a nerve- racking, devil-may-care riding which characterizes this feature of the Round-Up.
A thrill of the past must be felt by everyone in that vast throng when in the late afternoon glow the three lumbering four-horse stagecoaches draw near to the start. There are men sitting among the spectators watching, who in the holding of the reins in days gone by, held life as well. The rules prescribe a driver, lash-plier, and passenger.
Crack, go the long whips, and they are off. Break- ing into full speed the lumbering old carriers rattle and swing as they rock on the turns like galleons in a gale. They circle the track as they once circled the - foothills or sped on twist and turn through canyon
and gulch, going at a gait that surprises even some of
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THE ROUND-UP
the old timers — and well it might for H. W. Smith's outfit is running away.
On the back stretch a wheel horse stumbles and falls, the pole breaks, and with a smash heard over the entire audience, you see driver, lash-plier, and passenger cata- pulted from the coach headlong into the melee of struggling horses. Ordinary folk would have been killed, but, being merely dare-devil cowboys, they spring for control of their horses, and cuss a blue streak at their luck.
Who would ever think of continuing to drive a horse in a team of four after one of its forefeet had been caught up in the trace of the horse ahead of it ?
"Pull out of the race, driver?" — Not on your life, or on his, either. So driver and horse hang to the game and around they go — once — twice — the plucky little horse galloping the whole distance on three legs and helping to pull in a close second to the winning coach, driven by Clarence Plant of Long Creek.
A yell, there is a dull, scraping sound — the crowd springs to its feet. At the most dangerous turn of all — ^the one before the homestretch, a brake has acciden- tally jammed on one of the age-worn vehicles, and the momentum and swing has caused the whole body of the coach with hind wheels spinning, to be thrown absolutely vertically in the air, where it travels like a moving watch tower with a shuddering sound.
Crash! it careens onto its side and though buried from sight in a cyclone of dust its course can be traced by the crackling, splintering sounds in its wide smoky trail. See! it suddenly rights as unexpectedly as it has capsized, and one of the most exciting runaways ever witnessed full-tilts by the grandstand.
"> 145
LET 'ER BUCK
What of the buckaroos left in the walks of the dis- aster? They have all picked themselves up out of the dust and the wreck — only a bit bruised and cut up. The worst one hurt is Braden Gerking, who had the biceps muscles of his left arm torn and laid down near the hollow of his elbow — enough of a shock to make many a stout man faint. Braden, however, is walking off the track alone, nursing his injury with his other hand, but now the first aids have collared him. He walked away between two of them with a sickly smile. This ends one of the most spectacular episodes ever witnessed in an arena.
If at first you could not get hold of the imagination and the sentiment that is back of all this, and if it seems only a rough and tumble cowboy carnival, nevertheless, you find yourself on your feet, whooping, cheering with the rest of them.
ROPE 'IM COWBOY
To rope, "bust" and "hogtie" a wild Texas long- horn single-handed, within two minutes, is a sport which represents the daily work of the range. Unus- ual turns and incidents may easily send hopes glimmer- ing as the precious 120 seconds slip by. Men of quick eye and steady nerve each start their thirty feet behind the longhorn, who may jump the arena fence like a deer and again and again dodge when it hears the first swish of the rope.
The rope may break on the tautening, or the saddle may slip, as in the case of Bill Mahaffey, who landed on his head with foot caught in the stirrup and but for the splendidly trained cow-pony might have been drag- ged and killed; or as in the case of the intrepid Floyd
146
THE ROUND-UP
Irwin who rode into the West at Cheyenne through a most unusual accident. The cowboys were running steers across the arena under false throws in the try- outs, to train them so they would make for the exit after being roped in the show. Irwin supposed he had missed and turning, swung his horse away to join his pals who were just leaving the arena. But his unerring skill had made it impossible for him to miss even when he tried. Thus unexpectedly his rope taut- ened with the tremendous pull of the steer. The horse was thrown violently sideways on Irwin in a fatal fall. Irwin was such a marvelous roper that, like Ed McCarthy, he could "down and tie" a steer from a bridleless horse in better time than many good ropers could make with a bridle on.
A steer is loosed ! It's Buffalo Vernon after him — Swish ! he is roped — ^thrown, but the little cow-pony, Spot, too, plays his part well, for now that the steer is down he must hold the rope taut, while Vernon dis- mounts and with surprising dexterity "hogties" the steer, looping a number of half hitches about the hind feet and one fore foot, thus lashing three legs of the steer together. All from start to finish in twenty-two seconds. Busting! Well! right under your nose, all through, is proof that the art of the lariat or rope, as your cowboy has it, is not lost. "Down and tying" — the finest wrinkles of the art of the old range, are all there.
A sudden hush; every eye is focused toward the western side of the arena. The "first-aids" go scurry- ing to cover, as with a fierce snort a rangy Texas steer dashes into the great open space, and with the ease of a greyhound leaps at will the three-foot fence separat- ing race-track from the arena center. As the steer-
147
CATCH AS CATCH CAN
Until They Are BIDDING THE STEER GOOD-BYE
Steer bulldogging? Well, you'll learn all about it in good time. Steer bulldogging is perhaps the most daring sport of all — and is a feat one must see to believe. In comes a full grown, strong-necked, Texas steer, its stiletto-like horns glistening in the sun, thirty feet start over the line and the starter's pistol barks out and the contestant — the steer buUdogger, is away with his "hazer" as his mounted helper is called. The hazer assists in helping to keep the steer on the track and "stands by" with lasso to keep the bulldogger from being gored in case of emer- gency. He also assists the bulldogger in getting up and away from the steer after he has bulldogged, as shown, where they seem to be affectionately "bidding the steer good-bye." Mean- time the hazer is holding the struggling brute down by the most approved method — the tail, then on releasing him both run for their horses.
This contest consists of three phases — running down and jumping from the horse, wrestling and throwing the steer and — making the getaway. In the first phase which is here described the man rides alongside the steer, reaches forward, judging care- fully his distance without hesitation, springs forward and out from his saddle and literally plunges — dives head first — seizes the steer by its horns, though it is running like a deer. He is now, if he maintains his hold, carried or dragged, as in the case of Frank McCarroll in "Catch as Catch Can." Sometimes a man falls short of the horns and gets a nasty fall. Sometimes he over-reaches, accidentally or on purpose and thus "hoolihans" the steer by causing a complete somersault. This, however, is not permitted at Pendleton and disqualifies a contestant. All ques- tions of cleanness of throw and fall lie entirely with the judges whose decision is final.
The "hazer" as he is shown, "Bidding the Steer G9odbye," assists in keeping the steer on the track and stands by with lasso to keep the bulldogger from being gored in case of emergency. He also assists the bulldogger, who in this case is Art Acord, in getting up and away from the steer after he has bulldogged it. The hazer is holding the struggling brute down by the most approved method, the tail and horns, then on releasing him, both run for their horses.
o by Charles Wellington Furlong
•'Catch as Catch Can"
^ Maj. Lee Moorhouse
Bidding the Steer Good-bye
I O. G. Allen
Hook 'im Cow!
HOOK 'IM COW!
It is a grim tussle, this second phase of steer bulldogging, in which Lafe Lewman is engaged in a fierce hand-to-horn tussle, as barehanded, the man against brute, seeks to throw the animal by a wrestling twist of the neck, using the horns and muzzle as leverages. Time and again, his horned adversary resorts to a little habit steers have, of trying to crush a man against the fence posts. Sometimes they endeavor to break away or shake him off.
This bulldogger, is in a somewhat precarious position, having missed his first attempt of twisting the animal's neck clear over when his body weight was on the lower horn. The steer having thwarted this move, now has the man between his horns. If the bulldogger succeeds in his present move of twisting up the head by the muzzle and throwing the steer off balance, he wins, but the fence is in the way for this move and at present the odds are with the steer. Time and again the brute tries to crush the man, grimly, the man too, plays the game, asking no odds, receiving none. Sometimes the steers win out, sometimes the men.
LET 'ER BUCK
roping contest is on "time," these conditions put the knights of the range to the severest test.
There goes Fred Beeson. He overtakes his steer. Swish! swish! his lariat zips through the air — a beautiful throw over the horns; his cow-pony, respon- sive to the slightest lay of the rein, swings off at just the right angle. The rope tautens like a harp string; something seems to snap — to give — but it's not the rope and it's the great horned adversary who suddenly describes a complete somersault. Thud ! and the steer is thrown — "busted." The rope is now held tight by the cow-pony; the rider is already running afoot with a short length of rope in hand toward the steer, de- pending for his own safety on his trained cow-horse to hold that rope taut and the steer in position. With marvelous speed he "hogties" the steer, stands erect and snaps both arms in the air. Beeson has not only won the steer roping championship this year, but has ridden down, roped, thrown and hogtied a steer in twenty seconds fiat and established the best record ever made here, and this made on the Pendleton steers, which are, as one cowboy new to the Round-Up re- marked, "the outrunniness lot of steers I ever did see."
BITE 'IM LIP
Steer bulldogging? Never heard of it? Turn to any Westerner on these bleachers and he'll tell you that it is one of the most "knock down and drag 'em about" events of the Round-Up. When you under- stand that it is a battle of skill and science on the man's part, in which he must leap from the back of his run- ning horse, catch and throw a Texas steer with bare
hands then hold it motionless by its upper lip with
ISO
THE ROUND-UP
his teeth, and all this against the strength — yes, and sagacity, too — of a fighting steer, you'll agree that it is a man's game and one of the sports of the range which is not overrun with competitors.
At Cheyenne the object used to be to force the ani- mal's horns into the ground; thus man and steer turned a complete somersault. This has an unneces- sary element of danger — to both man and steer — the man may be crushed under the steer, while the steer's horns or even its neck broken. But this "hoolihan- ing" is not allowed at Pendleton, where the rules favor the steer.
When the fifty megaphone horns with which the arena is installed announce the steer bulldogging con- test for the championship of the world, there is a hush ; all eyes turn toward the stock pens at the western end of the arena.
Here he comes 1 The long-horned brute, with head and tail raised, glaring defiance at the vast throng safely screened behind the strong wire fencing, flaunts down the track with that half hesitant, shufiiing gait which bespeaks the angry steer. Thirty feet is his start from a mounted cowboy and his helper called a "hazer"; then, on signal, the pair "hit the wind" at breakneck speed. As the bulldogger swings to the left, his helper swings to the right, for the helper's main purpose is to keep the steer in the track.
In a perfect turmoil of hoof, head, and huddle, Run- yan, the bulldogger, dives from his saddle for the steer, but instead of landing on the steer's head, lands on his own. Visitors from large cities and sedate centers of learning gasp.
"Whoop!" goes the cowboy and ranch contingent. "Go get 'im steer 1" "Hook 'im cow 1", while Runyan
151
THE COW-PONY'S END OF THE GAME Until All Is Well at the Other End and It's HOGTIEDI HANDS AND HEADS UP
The cow-horse is a specialist, he's a skilled laborer. When cattle roamed the plains, they were generally disturbed only in the spring gathering when calves were branded and then were thrown back on summer ranges ; and again in early fall when they were rounded up, late calves branded and all "beef" "cut," driven to nearest railroad station and shipped to market. In all this work, no adjunct was more necessary to the cowboy than the cow-horse. He, like his master, must serve his apprenticeship on the plains ; without him steers could not have been captured, "cut," tied, branded, penned or shipped and there would have been no cattle industry on a large scale.
His feed was bunchgrass, his drink water, often poor and alkali-spoiled and he frequently went twenty-four hour stretches without a drop, yet standing up to fifty miles a day, often includ- ing his work.
But as has been seen the cow-pony's great use is as a "cut boss" and "rope boss." When the rope over the imprisoned horns tautens, he knows just the right angle to swing off at and the exact moment to make the sudden halt to throw or "bust" the dangerous steer. He knows, too, how to withstand the physical shock, which sometimes will not only tear a cinch like a piece of paper, literally wrench a saddle horn from the saddle tree, but occasionally violently throws down the cow-pony sideways, often to the injury and sometimes to the death of its rider.
H the cowboy is alone or working separately, he must capture the animal by his rope, then dismount and hogtie the thrown steer before it can rise and charge him. It is at this stage of the game that the supreme test of the cow-pony's work and in- telligence comes — he here often actually holds his master's life in his keeping. Alone now, the cow-pony watches the steer, re- sponding to the slightest change in the unbound captive's position made through its struggles to rise. If there is the slightest slackening of the rope, the knowing cow-pony at once moves so as to take it up and thus constantly maintains a taut rope. This always keeps the steer head down and helpless, while the cowboy securely ties his legs together.
In this case of old "Spot," a well-known, beloved character at Pendleton, and probably the best trained cow-pony in the coun- try you see him well upholding the cow-pony's end of the game while Buff Vernon hogties the steer. In the picture of "Hog- tied ! heads and hands up" you see one of the cleverest cow- pony veterans "Sunrise" signalling to the judges, along with his master, that expert roper Dan Clark, General Livestock Mana- ger of the O. W. R. & N. Little wonder that the cowboy grew to love his faithful ally upon whom not only his vocation but his very life frequently depended.
loto by W. S. Bowman
The Cow-pony's End of the Game
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3to by Ward
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Photo bv W. S. Bowman
A Merry-Go-Round
Photo by Burns
A MERRY GO ROUND
And Then
STAY WITH TM COWBOY!
Steer bulldogging originated in cowboys first wrestling with young calves, then gradually larger and larger animals were taken on. It is one of the few sports that does not appear to have been a recognized ranch sport emanating from the work of the range, but it has now found its place as a Round-Up classic. It was first introduced into Pendleton by Buffalo Vernon, that first king of bulldoggers. He bulldogged at the first Round-Up in 1910 for exhibition, then the next year along came Dell Blan- cett and entered the contest as they had both done it at Chey- enne and at the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch in Oklahoma.
Buff Vernon also introduced bulldogging at Cheyenne and with a sprained wrist to boot. This was when Colonel Theo- dore Roosevelt was there and put Cheyenne on the map as a result. "Teddy" shook hands with Buff and complimented him in the inimitable way that T. R. had.
As far as it is possible to find out, a man named Pickett seems to have been the first buUdogger on record. He even tackled, barehanded, a thoroughbred, imported, Andulusian bull with a reputation to bulldog it at a Mexican bull fight. When their pet toro was actually getting the worst of it, the crowd showered Pickett with bouquets — oh no ! boiiteilles instead — ^and knives to express their appreciation of his nerve, with the result, that poor Pickett was forced to let go and only escaped death by another man flagging the angry beast.
Each phase of this contest is exciting, but this second phase of the struggle is its main feature. The power and size of the brute is shown in the case of Henry Rosenberg of Pendleton, who though a big man is for the moment being swung a la merry- go-round, after receiving a bad gash on the knee. Ray McCar- roll of Pendleton, who is going to "stay with him" is a superb boxer, wrestler and buckaroo and is exemplifying the power and endurance of a man over his horned and heady fighting adversary. Rosenberg is in the first position of the wrestling or second phase, McCarroU in the last just as the steer is about to fall.
LET 'ER BUCK
gamely picks himself out of the dust, shakes some of it out of his system, and waves a hand as a signal that he is unhurt.
There were many game fights put up, for it was a contest of champions, the best total time for the three days winning. The first day the steers had the best of it, not one being thrown ; and the second day was nip and tuck; but Saturday the cowboys came into their own. But it must be remembered that there were no half-grown, underfed animals in the Pendle- ton outfit, which were from the herd that had been brought from Laredo, Texas, the year before, and had been roaming free on the range with the best of feed ; as fine a lot of big-necked longhorns as one would wish to see.
Here comes Jack Fretz — a pretty catch. He's wrestling with only a one-horn grip; the steer drags him to the rail and there tries to gore him, and the plucky cowboy finally lets go. Now he's lost his hold and the sharp-hoofed brute proceeds to jump on him with all four feet. Still the bulldogger' fights on, ward- ing off, dodging the hoofs above him, actually fighting now for his life, until the steer puts for a photog- rapher.
Bang! it's "Mike" Hastings, whose all-round bull- dogging record proclaims him one of the peers among bulldoggers. Once around the track, he swoops down upon the longhorn before the grandstand; a short tussle, and the animal falls amid a roar from the audience.
"Bite 'im lip!" — This culmination of the contest Hastings proceeds promptly to do by leaning over and fastening his teeth into the upper lip of the steer, and while maintaining this hold, raises his
154
THE ROUND-UP
hands in the air, all accomplished in twenty-three seconds.
John Dobbins puts up a game fight but the judges decide a foul in favor of the steer and disqualifies Dobbins for tripping. Jim Massey fights his steer for almost ten minutes and is finally hung up on the arena fence in the steer's last efforts to free himself. Throughout all the events we see that some of the most remarkable features were the game and superb exhibitions by the losers; but one of the greatest hand-to-hand struggles between man and brute is the harassing battle between the soldier cowboy, Cor- poral Roy Hunter of the 21st United States Infantry, and his wild-eyed, long-horned foe we are now wit- nessing.
He has disdained to chase his animal until it is tired, and has run it down in a scant hundred yards. He ap- proaches the grandstand at a furious pace and now directly in the center of it reaches forward, plunges from his running horse, seizes the big horns in a powerful grip, swings and drags another hundred yards before the steer's impetus is even checked. Twice Hunter brings the steer to a standstill.
Look! he works more in front of the wild-eyed animal, more between his horns, and essays the second phase of the game — the twisting of the brute's head for a fall.
Every muscle is tense. Using the horns as levers, he slowly and surely twists the steer's neck; the nose gradually comes up. See! Hunter feels he can hold his advantage by the weight of his body on the lower horn. He reaches an arm over the strong neck and grasps the upturned muzzle. Both hands now slide under it, tighten on it. Watch now — he's making a
155
DARE DEVIL RIDING AT TOP SPEED
On the Track, But in the Arena You'll Admit
THAT'S TYIN' TM
In the third phase of the steer roping contest the cowboy dis- mounts and hogties the steer by crossing its three feet, and securing them by two wraps and a half hitch with a hogtieing rope which he carries about his waist — sometimes the cowboy crosses three fingers at the same time. "That's tyin' 'im," the way Homer Wilson of Oklahoma is doing it. The importance with which this event is regarded is obtained by the amount of the prizes offered, which in cash value totals nearly $2,000.
The world's champion roper receives $600 and a $350 saddle presented by the Pendleton Commercial Association, including the jack pot divided into day money on a 50, 30, 20 basis from the $25 entrance fees charged in this event.
George and Charlie Wier and Ed McCarty stand out as the top-notch championship Round-Up ropers, but the best official record for a single steer here is 20 seconds by Fred Beeson with Joe Gardner second and Ed McCarty third. These three ran down, roped, threw, dismounted and hogtied six Texas steers in the remarkable time of 2 minutes, 8 1-5 seconds, an average of 21 3-5 seconds for each steer. How long would it take you to drive one of the longhorned brutes into a barn?
One event here is as old as the hills — even the Seven Hills of Rome. It is the standing or Roman race — for as far back as the days of Ben Hur we find its prototype. It is a race which demands consummate clear-headedness, agility, balance, horse- manship, coordination and endurance. _ The trick and relay riders are also in this class. The riders, each allowed an assistant, start at the gong and must rise to a standing position within fifty yards and remain standing until they have circled the quarter-mile track.
Ben Corbett, in 1916 broke the men's record in 59 1-5 seconds, beating Hoot Gibson's 1913 record by only 1-5 of a second. But the most superb Pendleton record is held by Bertha Blan- cett, four times first champion in the cowgirls' standing race — being but once beaten for first place by Vera Maginnis. In addition she also holds the supreme time record on the Pendleton track of 59 seconds flat.
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Hootcha la! If you have never seen the "outringess" kind of steers overtaken by the "knowingest" kind of cow-ponys, and roped and thrown by the cleverest experts of the lariat, you still have something to live for.
The cowboy's success in range work with cattle depended first on possessing a cow-pony, secondly on his own roping ability with all the innumerable minor arts of the vaquero's call- ing. The cowboy who was a handy roper easily found com- petitors to determine who was the best of "the bunch." Men of a ranch or champion ropers from neighboring ranches held rop- ing contests on the open prairies with only cowboys as spectators.
Thus these contests developed into open-to-all competitions and today we find the public interested and these roping contests brought to cities. In the arena at Pendleton the great experts of the lasso, compete in the steer-roping contest for the cham- pionship of the world. Certain rules have been adopted by the ropers. At Pendleton the contests in this, as in all the competi- tive events, are done on "time." The steers must be roped, thrown and hogtied within a minute and a half. The purpose of throwing a steer on the range may be to brand, mark, identify or inspect an animal or perhaps to kill it.
The chase and capture of a wild steer is so familiar to an ex- perienced cow-horse that even bridle, reins and a guiding hand are not necessary. Into a moving prairie herd he will proceed knowingly toward a certain steer. Furtively, avoiding any haste which might cause a stampede, he quietly forces the animal out of the herd where danger of excitement is over.
Responsive to the slightest lay of the rein, or often without guidance he follows the quarry at every turn, bringing the cow- boy into the best position for the throw. So these cow-ponys used in the Round-Up contests are some of the best the ranges of the Northwest produce, bringing even five hundred dollars in the open market.
Bang ! The steer shoots into the arena like a deer. Thirty feet start and the cowboy and cow-pony are after him on the jump. Around and above the cowboy's head swings the revolv- ing noose of his rope. Swish ! and the long coil snakes through the air, the noose opens fairly then drops in a neat throw over the horns and tightens on them. The pony changes his direction at an angle. Thud ! the steer is thrown. So ends the first and second phases of the steer-roping contest.
LET 'ER BUCK
courageous effort for the throw. Missed! the steer is as crafty as the man and changes the position of his body. He now has the man on the defensive.
Look! the man has worked his steer to the same position a second time, and now to the surprise of the great crowd the steer has suddenly dropped — thrown from its feet. Bleachers and grandstand now go wild.
"Stay with *im cowboy!" "Bite 'im lip!" encour- agingly yip and whoop the vast throng. But too soon ! The steer is again up — and coming. Before Hunter could take advantage of the fall, his hold was broken. His position is now critical for he is off his feet and being dragged. But Hunter's life on the range, coupled with his superb army training, come into obvi- ous play. Though weakened, he is undaunted. Again he grabs the horns, but this time to save himself from being gored. He is even forced to wrap his body about the fighting brute's head and in this grim grip the fighting demon dashes the cowboy-soldier into the fence in a vicious effort to crush him.
Whack! Crack! Splinter! but the soldier stays. In a supreme effort he half rises and attempts another throw but now slips again under the onrush of the horned devil. With strength failing fast, he makes a last but futile effort to regain his feet, an almost im- possible act when once way down and the steer mov- ing forward. Hanging by the horns, he is dragged a full quarter of the way around the track; again and again the heavy brute, gouges and bruises as he treads him with his sharp hoofs.
It is a grim fight : but the soldier still refuses to
release his hold. Now hanging on to a single horn
only, utterly exhausted, clothes torn and body cut, the
steer with a final, vicious, side swipe flings him off,
158
THE ROUND-UP
But Hunter has still head enough to save himself from being gored by lying motionless face downward in the dirt.
Whish ! his helper's rope sings through the air just in time. Herders now quickly lift him to his feet. A wave of his hand assures us that, at least from his point of view, though a bit mauled, he is uninjured. A mighty cheer goes up in recognition of the gamest fight in this contest ever witnessed at the Round-Up. Hunter's battle is an epic. Even the hard-boiled buck- aroos agree that he was beaten by a steer that would have beaten anyone.
In these contests of men and brutes on even terms, often with all the odds in the favor of the latter, one sees men with determined souls win out in struggles which grip deep and make the blood tingle, and cause a latent call of the wild to surge in healthy response to the great living, panting West before him.
You hasten to record in your note book that your evening and morning calisthenics and your setting up exercises, even your work with the gloves of which you are rather proud, is child's play beside steer bull- dogging.
HOOK 'EM COW
"Let 'er buck!" This slogan generally signifies that some famous outlaw horse is about to be mounted by the rider who has drawn him the night before at the Round-Up headquarters. But this time it is black "Sharkey," the famous nineteen hundred and twenty- five pound, unridable bucking bull, who, in charge of his "wranglers," is just poking his nose from the corral and is soon followed by the contingent of bulls,
buffaloes, and steers.
159
MAN VERSUS BEAST
While "Below Decks" Is
THE NAVY TAKING ON FRESH BEEF
As they play this sport at Pendleton, steer bulldogging is one of the most novel and man-nervy feats of the Round-Up. The steers often big, strong, four year olds and have often won out.
Roy Hunter, the cavalryman, to the astonishment of spectators and judges had sprung a surprise, by jumping his steer, forcing its head and horns suddenly down into the ground, causing it and himself with it, to turn a complete somersault plumb in front of the grandstand, while Roy lay smiling amidst the debris, the steer bulldogged fiat out in tlie best time that year of 24 1-5 seconds, but the judges disqualified his throw for "hoolihaning." The contest of the "man versus beast" is a dramatic moment, when Hunter with a gradual weakening is being dragged around the arena track in the famous epic of this game described in this chapter.
Yakima Cannutt the big buckaroo and winner of the world's steer bulldogging championship in 1920, when he bulldogged two steers in just 1 minute and 1-5 second, the first in 28 1-5 seconds, the second in 32 seconds flat, decided, that during the war he'd serve in the Navy. He considered two world championships on the hurricane deck of a bucking bronc would well qualify him to ride the waves or buck any sea his country might require — so he just slipped down to Pendleton for the Round-Up to take on a little "fresh beef for the Navy."
Photo by Charles Wellington Furlong
An Epic Fight
I
Photo by W. S. Bowman
The Navy Taking on Fresh Beef
Photo by Maj. Lee Moorhouse
Bite 'im Lip!
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Photo by Round-Up Association
Thumbs Up !
BITE 'IM LIPl
Is Now THUMBS UP
The vast oval gasped at the cjaring of those who indulged in fast play and danger of this one of the three major sports of the Round-Up. Bite 'im lip ! this is the yell from the bleachers when anticipating the last part of the second phase of buUdogging a Texas Longhorn.
Bite 'im lip ! and Dell, having thrown his steer has now reached over from between its horns, in accordance with the rules and classics of the game, seized the upper lip between his teeth and is now holding his hands up for the count of four seconds. But that was before some agents of the honorable society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, which has done splendid work in its own field, overstepped its mark when one year they objected to this phase of this contest. They failed to realize that there was no harm or hurt to a steer in having a man hold a steer's lip, merely as a matter of form, for the space of four seconds in his dull teeth without even bruising the skin. The neck twisting is no more injurious or hurtful than that of wrestling. However, the Round-Up complied and now the rules prescribe that the steer must be thrown flat on his side and held with one hand released, as Orville Banks is shown with his "thumbs up." Unless a steer is thrown within two minutes the bulldogger is disqualified.
The best time for two steers wins — the best time on record is that of Yakima Cannutt of 1 minute 1-5 second, beating Jim Massey's championship record of 1919 by only 1 3-5 seconds. The best time recorded for a single steer being that of Jess Stahl in 18 1-5 seconds with Paul Hastings record of 23 seconds made in 1917, next.
The champion in this contest takes home with him besides the $330 purse, one of the finest of Stetson's, the pride of the cow- boy, that a leading Pendleton furnishing house can secure, the second and third presentation of merchandise certificates go to the second and third winners in addition to the $150 and $100 prize money respectively. Well they have earned it, for while each has downed his steer within 30 seconds he has risked his life and limb more times than the average man does in thirty years.
LET 'ER BUCK
The buffaloes give their wranglers no end of trouble as they viciously charge this way and that, but no wrangler cares to tackle these vicious, powerful, little brutes on foot. Not only a nose ring, but a rope about both a fore and hind leg and a horse on each end of the rope holding taut in opposite directions, is neces- sary to hold the half -grown bison for the blind and saddling. A buckaroo mounts. A rough ride for a second or two and he's thrown, narrowly escaping being gored by the sharp horns of the animal.
The two young Jersey bulls discharge all obliga- tions to their riders with interest but without trouble, much to the delight of the spectators. There's "Lovin' Louise," the bucking cow, but the only affection in her nature she shortly proves is her love to get rid of her man. So, too, with Hereford Bess. The big red bucking steer is being mounted — he's off and the rider, too. "Did the cowboy ride the calf?" laconically re- marks a wrangler, amid the uproar from grandstand and bleachers.
A murmur of satisfaction now goes up— they are saddling Henry Vogt, whose fame is second only to Sharkey's.
"That's the original cow that jumped over the moon," comes out of the audience, as Tex Daniels, who had once managed to stick to Long Tom though he double-reined, stays just one buck on Henry's broad back, and also Harris Thompson shows how easy it is for a man to lose his breath as well as his bearings. The best time that has ever been made was 6 1-2 seconds; the average time is less than one second.
The bulls are certainly invincible and one may well ask why they are so much harder to ride than the
162
THE ROUND-UP
horses. I asked that question myself in the cowboy's mess-tent one day at the midday meal.
"Say, Furlong!" and "Skeeter" Bill Robbins from California craned his long neck forward from the other end of the long pine board table. "The best way ter find out th' difference between th' way a boss bucks and a bull bucks is ter git on th' bull."
I caught the challenge in his glance.
"Well, name your bull, Skeeter." There was nothing else to say. In consequence Mark Moorhouse, director of arena events, assigned me to ride Henry Vogt the next afternoon.
Well, I grabbed for the horn of the saddle and picked up a handful of dirt. The kind-hearted judges generously offered me another try on account of not getting my stirrups, but the three and a half seconds of this trip on Henry were so occupied with problems of applied kinematics that it was not until some time later that I was able to draw a few conclusions and these are that the bull's back is so much broader than that of a horse that no grip with the legs can be ob- tained. He is saddled far back where he can concen- trate his strongest buck, the saddle skids with his hide over his backbone, he concentrates a tremendous amount of energy in a buck, and his movements are hard to anticipate. It is in this anticipating what a bucking animal is going to do that makes a good buck rider, for the man must out-think the animal and be prepared to meet every movement.
Happy Jack Hawn of Fresno, California, who sold Sharkey to the Round-Up, with that smile which drew him his name proceeds to cinch up the bull trapping on Sharkey. The prize is five dollars to anyone who gets on him and $100 for any broncho buster who will
163
i
GRABBED FOR THE HORN OF THE SADDLE AND PICKED UP A HANDFUL OF DIRT
Exactly the easiest way in the world to lose one hundred bucks in ten seconds. Sharkey was invincible, he had thrown thirty-six riders in three days at Salinas, California; none stayed more than two or three seconds and continued that way all down the line.
Beef was never higher than when Sharkey and his contingent bucked at the Round-Up.
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When Beef Is Highest
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Landing at the Round-Up
WHEN BEEF IS HIGHEST
Is When It's
LANDING AT THE ROUND-UP
Just one d-
bull after another.
LET 'ER BUCK
stay on him ten seconds. There is no halter rope, but you are welcome to take hold of anything you can get. Cowboy Yeager lasted about one millionth of a sec- ond. Hawn himself tried next and hit the dust so hard with his head that it looked as if he landed about three feet in it. Henry Vogt near by was fast making a reputation like Sharkey's farther down in the arena.
The year following my "ride" off Henry, I had no sooner stepped from the train at Pendleton than one of the Round-Up committee asked one of the most un- kind questions ever put to me.
"Say, Furlong! going to ride Sharkey this year?"
I looked around for a post to lean against, failing which I stuttered, "Well. I haven't been asked to yet."
"Oh, we'll arrange that."
I was assigned for Saturday afternoon. I had seen Earl Patterson dragged and trodden on by the brute when his spur got hung up in the cinch, and carried off with three ribs fractured and his whole left side like raw meat, and decided to ride without spurs.
In thinking it over, I concluded that one reason a rider lets go his hold on the bulls was because the tre- mendous force made him think his joints were coming apart at each buck and his teeth shaking out in be- tween, but that they really weren't — he only felt that way. H I could convince myself of this, I might keep my attention concentrated on the ends of my fingers and the grip on the saddle horn and strap behind the cantle. The philosophy then of bull riding is simply — - hang on — convince yourself you're not coming apart, you only feel that way — just hang on.
Sharkey, both days, had deposited all comers with
clocklike regularity and demonstrated as one cowboy
confidentially confided "the quickest way in the world
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THE ROUND-UP
to lose a hundred bucks." There was nothing from volplaning to tail spin that Sharkey couldn't do — an airship run loco had nothing on that jerked fresh beef. The colossal proportions of the ton-and-a-half black brute looked even larger to me as I watched Happy Jack tighten up the double cinch with a smile. Well, Jack could afford to smile — he wasn't going to ride him.
Squarely seated in the saddle, the blind was jerked off. Buck! the great mountain of concentrated ex- tract of beef — buck ! — beneath me — buck ! did gyra- tions that for rapidity and variety — buck ! — buck ! — would make a whirling dervish — buck ! — giddy with envy — buck — buck — buck! No! my joints weren't — buck — coming apart — buck — they — buck — j ust — buck — felt — buck — that way — buck. I was — buck — hold- ing a ton, weight — BUCK — by the saddle horn — buck — buck — with my left hand — buck ! It suddenly shifted — buck — and I held a ton in my right — BUCK — by the strap behind — buck — buck ! I felt like an ani- mated— buck — walking beam — buck — of a ferry boat with the engine gone crazy — buck — buck — BUCK! but my fingers held — buck — buck — He's only jump- ing now, — but nearly ran down a herder who sprang aside — jab! went his goad — only the herder — jump — knows why or how and perhaps he doesn't — jump — but jab went the point into Sharkey's flank — He wasn't expecting it — BUCK — neither was I — buck — I was slightly off balance, which an animal detects instinctively — I could feel the play and concentration of his great muscles — BUCK — something hit me under the saddle — BUCK — pulled out my spine then jammed it together like an accordion — BUCK — something else hit me under the chin — BUCK — something else on top
167
SEATED ON A TON OF LIVING DYNAMITE
"Sharkey the famous bucking bull, $100 to any man who rides him 10 seconds," ran the Round-Up Announcement on poster and program. Then they offered five dollars to any man who would try him. Many tried for the world's bucking bull cham- pionship, few lasted after the first buck or two on the mile wide back of that redoubtable, bucking, black, Belgrade Bull — famous in the annals of the Round-Up. The old veteran was in a class by himself.
There were no rules — the rider was supposed to hang on to the horn and the strings, hands and feet if he could and just grab anything. The bull-rigged saddle was cinched far aft and skidded all over his backbone with his slippery-elm-lined hide, but the philosophy of bull riding as with the horses is to stay on.
The same applies to Henry Vogt the Jersey bucking bull — the author tried him in 1913 and went the same way as the rest — twice in one day. In 1914 on a bright sunny afternoon on the last day of the Round-Up he found himself seated on the top of that ton of living dynamite, Sharkey — then some one touched it off. He made a twelve-and-a-half second ride on jerked beef, then bit the dust — this is not in the way of pilfered litera- ture either. He broke the record as well as his wrist.
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Hitting the Grandstand Between the Eyes
© Major Lee Moorhouse
All Wound Round with a Woolen String
HITTING THE GRANDSTAND BETWEEN THE EYES
Is One Thrill, Another Is When Four Cowboys Are
ALL WOUND ROUND WITH A WOOLEN STRING
That's what nearly happens when at the finish of the cow- boys' and cowgirls' grand mounted march, this great horde of horsemen sweep across the arena in one tremendous stampede. Over the fence, they rush, kicking the dirt into the very lap of the grandstand as they bring up short under the very noses of the spectators in a wild, terrific climax of overwhelming numbers. Then as suddenly wheeling back, they retreat, disappearmg through the gates in the gap toward the Indian village, and an- other thrill is marked in your diary.
This picture of the vanguard of this mounted phalanx was taken when William McAdoo was a guest of honor of the Round-Up. The ex-Secretary of the Treasury proved an able horseman. In this picture, he may be distinguished m light som- brero, white shirt and light gray trousers, on the next horse be- yond the late Til Taylor, the Round-Up president who is the nearest horseman in the picture.
"All wound round with a woolen string" as the old song goes, has nothing on the captivating qualities of Lucille Mulhall's hemp "lass rope." See this attractive, golden-haired daughter of Oklahoma, handle the lariat and you will realize there are ways of spinning yarns you never dreamed of. Lucille Mulhall, with Bertha Blancett, ranks as one of the two greatest all-round ranch women in the buckaroo game and in the game of the lass rope. It matters little to her whether it is fancy roping, lassooing an outlaw or roping and hogtieing a Texas steer. Many a fair Circe finds it difficult to rope in a single man, but Lucille with perfect grace and ease captures four horsemen in a single throw of her magic noose.
LET 'ER BUCK
of my head and slammed my t-t-t-teeth t-t-t-together — BUCK — my joints really were coming apart — BUCKl —BUCK!!— BUCK!!! I looked down and saw- way, way far down below me — my saddle — that's the last I remember until I dug my way out of the dirt — only a wrist broken,
"Who'd yer say that is?" said a newcomer.
"That's the original cow that jumped over the moon," says a squint-eyed spectator in chapps — but Sharkey never fans an ear to the laughter.
OFF IN A CLOUD OF DUST
You now see twenty horses, each led by an Indian, brought out and banded up in bunches of four horses each, take positions at regular intervals by the grand- stand fence. These are the relay strings, all on edge; they indeed need a man to a horse. There are the five riders mounting. They're away — these full bloods and on bareback horses, too. It's a thrilling event, this mile race, with each rider changing at every quarter with a drop and a bound, leaping their horses at full speed. Poker Jim's sons are both ahead, the Farrows are riding on their heels, but this is a three days' race and we will see more of the relays in which both men and women ride.
Over by the paddock a bunch of some thirty mounted cowboys on restless whinnying mounts are bunching forty to a line, completely filling up the track for the maverick race.
In the early days of the Panhandle, Samuel Maver- ick was so successful in claiming unbranded cattle that any "slick-ear" — a steer not marked on the ears or
branded — found on the range, about which inquiry
170
THE ROUND-UP
was made, was said to have been assigned to his owner- ship, and "slick-ears" eventually became known as "mavericks." An unbranded calf becomes a maverick anywhere from ten to ^fifteen months old when it leaves the mother or when the cow has another calf. Hence the first to rope an unidentified animal could claim it, so the significance of term "maverick race" is easily understood.
For a wild, devil-may-care, madcap, everybody-for- himself rush and the most realistic incident of range life, take a maverick race. A bunch of two dozen cow- boys line the track across the arena. In the corral ahead, the steer is already poking his nose through the gate. But the cowboys must hold their horses until it has a one-hundred- foot start; the first man that gets a rope on the steer's horns and holds it, wins. But this steer was not born yesterday. Dodging the encircling ropes, he clears the high board fence then smashes through the wire fence and is among the spec- tators on the bleachers.
The first straight run, and Jim Roach throws and holds an ugly gray maverick in the press. One maver- ick, instead of fleeing, with a snort of mingled rage and fear, charges through the centre of the awaiting cowboy outfit. There is a melee — two horses go down, but with a yell they are after it in the opposite direc- tion; and Narcissus McKay, an Indian, is the winner.
THE PASSING OF THE OLD WEST
After such a whirlwind of excitement, a moment's pause gives the crowd a chance to catch its breath and the dust to settle. It is a pause well-timed in the rapid movement of the nerve-thrilling feats. Then, from
171
LET 'ER BUCK
in front of the cottonwoods, the mounted cowboy band swings into the track, and to music of the famous mounted cowboy band led by Bob Fletcher, the cow- boys' and Indians' mounted grand march is ushered in.
Following the directors, many of them ranchmen, two, three or four abreast, about three hundred cow- boys, cowgirls, scouts and old timers pass in review to the jingle of chain and spur and the retch of leather. See how all sit that close saddle characteristic of riders to the saddle born and bred. The girls are in colored corduroy and khaki or fringed and embroidered buck- skin, the men in the ever-picturesque chapps, those of Angora hair often brilliantly dyed, those of leather glistening in their studdings of silver; while loosely, freely, and generally askew about their necks, brilliant- ly colored kerchiefs flap or flutter in the breeze.
Striking in this ride of romance and kaleidoscope of color is the Indian contingent on their gaily capari- soned horses. Their long-tasselled trappings flap about them as the copper-colored, painted faces of old chief, young buck, pretty squaw, and little papoose, stencilled in imperturbable profile, ride by the grand- stand. Though there is never a turn of a head, one who understands the Indian knows that little was missed by those eagle eyes.
The guidons now dash to their posts, and to music
this wonderful cavalcade serpentines its way back and
forth across the arena; the guidons acting as corners
are just markers for the column to swing around.
Jinks Taylor carries the national emblem which adds
the glory of color and symbol to this unhyphenated
American spectacle. Dell Blancett is just ahead of me
as we swing around guidon Fay LeGrow.
"Are you a statue or a real human?" grins Dell as
172
I
THE ROUND-UP
he passes. On one of the days, from a specially con- structed stand a great panoramic camera slowly swung in revolution, recording the event ultimately in a photograph thirty-two feet in length.
Attention! In the arena the great megaphone vol- umes out its great arc of sound. All the riders come to a standstill, the great audience arises en masse, even the horses seem unusually still and motionless. Every hat is doffed, as for a whole full minute the arena is as silent as the prairie at sunset, while the entire Round- Up pays silent tribute to Til Taylor whose spirit will always ride abroad amongst the men who knew him.
The grand finale of this spectacle occurred when the entire cavalcade which had swung into line on the other side of the track, swept like a prairie fire in a terrific charge, with wild yells, over the fence, checking their furious dash at the very feet of the spectators. The stampede almost hits the entire grandstand in the face with its overwhelming numbers. There was truth in the remark of one of the noted spectators, Maynard Dixon, the artist, when he said of this spectacle, "My, you do get an eye full."
Swinging out of the arena, the present occupants of the country leave before you its former owners — the Red Men. For a time the vast audience is held spell- bound by the marvelous riot of color of the Indian ceremonials — the crowning "glory" of the Round-Up as one witnesses it within the great open-air stadium — the magnificient pageant of the Red Man, pulsing with the barbarous, rhythmic thrumping of Amerindian drums.
Listen! Through the curtain of settling dust, you still hear that fascinating, rhythmic beat, that peculiar sensate rhythm whose primitive prosody leaves no
173
THE CEREMONIAL WAR DANCE OF THE RED MEN
Te-tum, turn, turn! Te-tum-tum-tum ! go the rhythmic bar- baric beat of the Indian drums.
Haya I Haya I Haya-ya- ! ya-a ! cuts in the shrill, aspirant voices of the dancers, as now they straighten up and throw back their heads, now bend and crouching low, articulate their supple bodies through weird postures to the short staccato step move- ments of the Amerindian dances.
Glistening, vibrating in the sunlight, in a color and movement like a hundred interlacing rainbows their costumes bedecked with eagles* feathers, bead work and elk's teeth, and representing nearly a million dollars in value, they weave and interweave through their ceremonials.
It -is one of the most superb Indian spectacles produced today anywhere on the American continent. A few more short years and this sunset glow of the old day of the North American Indian will have sunk forever below the horizon of time.
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Two Indians
Hop to it! Charlie Irwm wrangling for his Daughter in the Relay
TWO INDIANS
By Themselves But Plenty of Company in the
Cowgirls' Relay For Those Who HOP TO IT I
In the picture of two Indians taken at Pendleton on the levee of the Umatilla one will recognize that superb type of his race Jackson Sundown, the Nez Perce, the 1914 rough riding cham- pion. Beside him is the author.
They indeed "hop to it" in the cowgirls' relay, the aria of this grand opera of the West. The rules are the same as m the cowboys' relay except that the horses must be saddled when brought to the track and riders must touch the ground with feet when changing. In the Indian relay, the distance is one mile each day, four assistants allowed, riding is bareback and horses changed each quarter.
A thousand dollar purse is offered in this race besides cer- tain appended prizes given by Pendleton business men. Five hundred dollars cash goes to the world's relay race cowgirl champion, three hundred cash to the second winner and beau- tiful ivory manicure set— What? certainly they use them— and two hundred to the third. ... , . ,
Bertha Blancett holds the record on wins in the relay with three first, two seconds and two thirds. Ella Lazinka was also a star rider but retired in her third year of riding through the serious accident elsewhere referred to. She won the first relay held here against Bertha Blancett, who paid her the tribute saying that Ella Lazinka was the only rider, horses being equal, she
ever feared. , ^ , j ^ i vu
Mabel de Long Strickland holds second record not only with three world's championships but with second time of 11 minutes 55 1-5 seconds. Lorena Trickey holds the championship record of 11 minutes 40 4-5 seconds and the best one day time of 3 minutes 52 seconds. Katie Canutt rode in the 1918 cham- pionship and third best time. Dona Card, a splendid and sports- manlike rider rode into three seconds while Vera Maginms, Fanny Steele and Josephine Sherry all have done top-notch
riding in this race. ^, . ,• x
In "hop to it" Charlie Irwin of Cheyenne is wrangling for his relay rider who has just dismounted and now hops to it on the second horse. The first is held by the assistant on the right, the third and fourth horses by the assistant on the left.
In the audience are many well known faces and characters among them the two famous old time stagecoach drivers, Dave Horn and Chas. W. Barger, who may be seen just above the cantle and horn respectively of the saddle of the horse on the left.
LET 'ER BUCK
doubt that it belongs to the ceremonial or War Dance of the Red Men, of the Umatillas. You are looking out upon the descendants of the tribes that composed the great dominating Shahaptian stock of Amerinds, whose hunting grounds were the vast territory of the Snake River and the middle Columbia, from the Bitter Root Mountains to the Cascade range, and as danger- ous a race as the whites ever encountered in their march across the continent.
Rainbow blankets, eagle-feathered war bonnets, with their long streamers down their backs, necklaces of bear's claws, embroidered moccasins, blankets and shirts bedecked with elks' teeth, fantastically painted faces and near-naked bodies streaked in broad bands of ochre and black : squaws dressed in beautiful, beaded buckskin jackets and skirts, ornamented with their wealth of elk's teeth, with leggins of red and green flannel and plain buckskin moccasins, still seem to ex- press that stoical kinship with sun and earth, water and sky, that their ancestors felt before the coming of the Paleface.
It all goes to form a multicolored, snake-like line as it winds its course — a colossal, coiling serpent shim- mering in iridescent scales of reds, greens, yellows, blues, violets, blacks, orange and whites. Now subtly twisting it resolves itself into a mammoth circle of ever- changing harmony on its mat of yellow sawdust. Here it metamorphoses into a great human kaleido- scope, designs a new spectacle at every turn and out of this living rainbow evolves the "War Dance" and the "Love Dance" — the "Indian step and a half," as one cow-puncher facetiously put in.
"Haya! haya! haya! Hay-ya! — ya-a!" intones the weird accompanying chant as hundreds of Amerinds
176
THE ROUND-UP
articulate and mill in the great, pulsating ring, now waxing into a wild swirl of throbbing rhythms that seem to strike something deep at the very roots of your nature. You realize that you are looking upon one of the most wonderful ceremonial aggregations that can be gathered together on this continent, and your eyes drink deep of that riot of color to the last draught.
A flare of the drum — a single beat — and you have that unexpected termination so characteristic of almost all American-Indian dancing. Tinged in a saffron blaze of glory, the dancers pass out to their tepees in the cottonwoods.
SPINNING YARNS AND OTHER THINGS
For a few ecstatic minutes the remarkable group of fancy ropers electrify you. You met them all at the tryouts, you delight in their wonderful feats as their spinning shapes up the graceful "butterfly," fascinat- ing "ocean wave" and the marvelous "wedding ring" and the many other forms of juggling and control at will of that most elusive thing — the lass rope.
Trick riders like Otto Kline, Sid Scale and Crutch- field, these you notice, think nothing of standing in light straps on their saddles, horse on the dead run. Sid sways, he's gone, no he recovers from out of bal- ance. It is the inimitable drunken ride. Now he leans dangerously far back, pours down a long draught of "nose paint" from a bottle, the dangerously lurching horse is on the dead run. Now look, he throws the bottle high up in the air. Hootcha' la ! and with a wild whoop drops into his saddle. Just to show you it isn't the real stuff in the bottle, they show you their
riding is the real stuff by all manner of wonderful 12 177
LET 'ER BUCK
jumps and vaultings off and on and about their horses. One not satisfied with the others crawHng around the neck of their horses while on the run, proceeds to crawl under the belly of his horse and come up the other side without slackening its pace.
SWING TO IT!
But no less courageous and daring are the women who ride. Whether it be cow-pony race, standing or relay, when you get such an aggregation of riders in the lists as Bertha Blancett, Mabel Strickland, Vera Maginnis, Donna Card, Ella Lazinka, Katie Canutt and Lorena Trickey and others, the last word has been said in this style of racing. These women are skilled in the lore of the race and the horse no less than the men of the range. They not only put their horses to the utmost, but ride with consummate knowledge dis- played in every form of generalship in the race. Yet some of these women in another week, perchance, will be about their domestic duties in house or ranch. Re- grettable incidents which happen occasionally go only to show the kind of stuff of which these riders are made.
The relay for both men and women has been most popular from inception here. At Pendleton was the first contest which required the girls to change their own saddles, but they did compromise a little by allow- ing a "drop" stirrup, a heavy leather strap below the stirrup to enable them to mount more easily, for the relay takes a great amount of endurance.
The first contest ever run here was between Bertha Blancett and Ella Lazinka. Ella brought in her own string from her father's ranch and won the first silver
178
THE ROUND-UP
cup, also the second year. She was one of the best relay riders ever seen on the track here and an all- round cowgirl. Unfortunately the third year she com- peted, she was riding a strange string and lost the race through her horse crashing against the fence. A large splinter tore into her leg, but notwithstanding she gamely finished the race.
There they go again and as you see the relay with its zip and thrills and vacillating leads — is a race in which the enthusiasm of the crowd bursts all bounds.
Now, three pairs of beautiful animals are led out on the track — each pair mounted by a rider. At the crack of the pistol they're off, like the Roman riders of old. It is the cowboys standing race. But it is a safe bet, that no ancient Bellerophon ever rode his Pegasus with greater temerity than Ben Corbett, Hoot Gibson, Otto Kline and their ilk.
Just watch them go! — How they do it is a marvel. Hoot Gibson is now on his second turn around the quarter mile track astride on his pair of horses on the run — and letting out all the way. The arena of Rome's ancient Coliseum in the days of Ben Hur never saw faster travelling than this.
Hoot shoots over the line in 59 2-5 seconds — re- markable time on a quarter mile course.
They're off again ; but this time it's the girls stand- ing race with Bertha Blancett and Lorena Trickey in the lead. How they fly ! Six consecutive years Bertha has competed in this event with the marvelous record of five world's championships, being defeated only once and that for second place by Vera Maginnis.
Here they come ! It is a close race — Lorena is right on Bertha's heels, but it takes the best woman rider living to outclass Bertha Blancett and none have so far
179
LET 'ER BUCK
found it possible. This Round-Up will see her retire- ment from arena contests and she means this race shall be her best. Watch, how she makes that last danger- ous turn not a degree of slackening her beautiful black mounts — Bang! over the line — in 59 seconds flat, being 7 1-5 seconds under the best record time ever made in the cow-pony race. This establishes not only a new record for the girls standing race but 1-5 of a second under the best record ever made — which was Corbett's, and 2-5 of a second better than that of Hoot Gibson. All hats are off to the greatest known all-round woman rider of today!
All through these days of hilarity and excitement tear the races — big, fast, free-for-all races with a thrill at every turn. But none excel in sustained ex- citement or better exhibit the art of mounting and riding or are more gripping than the relay and the pony express.
The relay is closely akin to the pony express, but is a test of those prime requisites of the cowboys — to on and off saddle, mount, and ride. No less than ten strings are entered and half that number have been selected to compete in the men's relay. They include the famous strings of George Drumheller, "Sleepy" Armstrong, J. A. Parton, Charlie Irwin, Fay LeGrow, Roach Brothers, Spain Brothers and of Ed. McCarty.
Look over the string right in front of us, being held now by two wranglers. One is to hold the three spare horses and one to catch that of the relay rider as he rides in to change his mount. Allen Drumheller is here in front of us; further along is Nep Lynch, and on this side is Armstrong by his string. The other two riders will not have a look in with this trio, so pick your man. You haven't much choice. Although
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THE ROUND-UP
Drtimheller holds fourth record in this event, he holds first in the pony express and is considered as all- round pretty and clear-headed a relay and pony express rider as has ever been seen on the Pendleton track.
Then Sleepy Armstrong — well, don't worry about that boy's lids shutting down so he can't see when there's a relay, or pony express on, not to mention the cow-pony race in which he rode down the whole bunch in the best time on record here of 51 3-5 seconds in 1919.
A signal! A rush, and four sets of stirrups and latigos simultaneously fly through the air. You crane your neck to watch the saddles adjusted. You're too late — four riders shoot out and away, having saddled within five seconds, and in a whirlwind of dust they swing around the track.
The dilating nostrils and nervous, moving ears of the waiting horses, fresh from the range, have caught the spirit of the crowd and at the second change some- thing happens when number three horse prefers kick- ing to saddling, and then bucking, leaves his rider hopelessly in the rear.
Here they come for the first change, Drumheller in the lead. De Young, the first relay rider on the Round- Up track, is his helper now and a better, cleverer wrangler could not be found. Watch Allen — he's off his horse, has off-saddled and on and is away again with a bound in less time than has taken to tell this. But "Sleepy" is right there, scratching his heels, and Lynch is only half a length behind the others who now string out a bit.
They're around again — Armstrong a little in the
lead, but look quick — see that marvelous dismount,
while his horse is on the run still by Lynch, whose
181
LET 'ER BUCK
horse is secured by the wrangler, Ben Corbett, with one of his spectacular jumps for the horse, seizing him by the neck as he comes in. Here Lynch gains and is off almost at the same moment as Drumheller but in the fore part of that moment which beats Drum- heller out by a length. The crowd thunders its ap- plause at such marvellous work. It's the last lap and the last day. Lynch seemingly does not gain another inch, neither does he lose an inch and rides over the line just ahead of Drumheller by a fraction of a second.
The quality of the riding was the finest ever seen at Pendleton. That every man was an expert was at- tested by the totals of the three-days' heats, in which was a difference of only 2 1-5 seconds between the win- ner and Drumheller and 10 1-5 seconds between the winner and Armstrong who finished third. The light- ning changes of all three were marvelous, off-saddling nine times, on-saddling twelve, one riding a six miles on the quarter mile track in 12 minutes 24 2-5 seconds making third best time ever made, the record being 12 minutes 7 seconds made by Scoop Martin. At the end of the third day the three riders have off-saddled twenty-seven times, on-saddled thirty-six times, ridden eighteen miles on a quarter mile track in thirty-seven minutes and twenty-seven seconds.
The relay has keyed the crowd to a pitch which has but whetted its appetite for the pony express. The old-time pony express with its thrills, spills and light- ning changes is the ancestor of the mail and parcels post of today. The primitive messenger of this mail service was strong as he was light, cautious as he was fearless, a quick thinker and hard rider, a man with a determined soul and picked for his job.
There were men, old and grizzled, who looked out
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THE ROUND-UP
from grandstand and bleacher, hardy riders of a day gone by who rode many a grim race, often pitting wits and strength against death in a hundred forms on lonely, wild races with no plaudits sounding in their ears. Many unknown graves mark where they fell by arrow, bullet or stumbled horse, and history has yet to pay due tribute to the pony express rider.
We now see the strings of two cow-ponies in charge of two assistants led out in front of the grand- stand, and we realize that the pony express has be- come the pastime of the cowboy, and the race is run to commemorate the skill of the old pony express riders. Like all the events of The Round-Up, it has its rules which are rigidly enforced. It is run on each of the three days with cow-ponies, and no racer or professional horse can enter. The first pony must run first and third quarters, and the second pony go the second and fourth quarters, while riders must mount "pony express" which means the riders must hug the saddle, suspend and hit the ground at least once with the horse in full stride before vaulting into the saddle. When you get such riders as Drumheller, Saunders, Floyd Irwin, Tommy Grimes, Jason Stanley and Braden Gerking, in the bewildering quick changes of the "pony express" — you see a survival of the type of the old dare-devil riders — the cowboy mail carriers through the country of outlaws and hostile Indians.
The horses are pawin', hoofin' and rarin' to go. They're off ! The grandstand rises en masse as the rid- ers play for the pole. The crowd lets loose, the high- pitched range yells echo from the cowboy contingent, some Indians yip, others watch stoically, while the helper awaits the arrival of his riding partner with a cigarette airily hanging from a corner of his mouth.
183
RIDE 'IM COWBOY
For
EVEN HORSES RIDE AT THE ROUND-UP
Up goes Hotfoot, "skyscraping" and "cake-walking" and often down goes the buckaroo, but not so with Wiley Blancett, who is making a splendid ride. This is but one of the many ways buckers have of unseating their riders. Blancett will be for- tunate if Hotfoot is satisfied without throwing himself over backwards.
"Even horses ride at the Round-Up." If you are skeptical, it is proved by this picture of the big, fighting, dapple-gray, Sledge- hammer. He is well named, for whether under a buckaroo or in the saddle himself, he never does anything other than in a thor- oughly pile-driving way.
In no phase of any event does there occur a greater variety or more unusual happenings than in the wrangling, and this episode was one of the most unique.
Sledgehammer has been "snubbed" by the wranglers, to the saddle horn of the snubbing horse, where not content with fore- striking at the mounted wrangler until he has forced him out of the saddle, has literally jumped into the saddle himself with all four feet, which eventually bore the little snubbing horse to the ground. Such is the gentle art of wrangling.
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A PRETTY RIDE WITH HOBBLED STIRRUPS
Has Nothing On
THE QUEEN OF REINLAND GRACING HER THRONE
Perhaps no phase of the Round-Up produces quite the same psychological sensation as the women's bucking contest, for at its easiest it is hard and dangerous. Consequently the Round- Up permits only the most skillful and proven cowgirl riders to enter. But a few of those entrants ride "slick," that is ap- proved form and without "hobbled stirrups." In fact in the entire history of the Round-Up the women who have ridden slick can be numbered on the fingers of one hand — Bertha Blancett, Nettie Hawn, Fanny Sperry Steele and Tillie Baldwin.
The rider is Prairie Rose Smith making a pretty ride on Wiggles with hobbled stirrups, but hobbled stirrups or not it takes courage and a splendid rider to stay these buckers. If you doubt, try it.
Few queens have vouchsafed to occupy thrones less secure than that supreme one offered by the parliament of the Round- Up each year — the world championship saddle of the cowgirls' bucking contest. No cowgirl queen reined as completely or as often as Bertha Blancett, who has over a period of six con- secutive years ridden into four cowgirls' world's bucking cham- pionships and into two hotly contested second places.
Among the Round-Up horses she has ridden are Spike, Demp- sey. Snake, at Cheyenne she rode the famous bucker Dynamite and at the Calgary "Stampede" rode that equine devil Red Wine which killed Joe Lemare.
Bertha Blancett always rides "slick" and is not only one of the greatest all-round horsewomen of the world, but the best all-round range woman America has produced. She had the remarkable distinction in 1916 of having come within one point of winning the all-round championship on both cowboys' and cowgirls' points, and would have done so, had not one of her horses in the relay race jumped the fence.
How did she learn? Why this daughter of a rancher from childhood was bred on the range — got her schooling on the barebacks of wild colts and took her domestic science lessons by making butter of her father's dairy ahead of time by riding her dad's milch cows nearly to death.
LET 'ER BUCK
One man is bucked clean off; another's mount leaps the fence into the arena. They swing around the nar- row curve, where the rider's game is to guide his horse to his relay without slackening speed too soon.
Then occurs the special event of this race — chang- ing horses. Each swings from his horse, still on the run ; his helper springs to it and at the same time turns the relay over to the rider, who, without a second's pause, makes the "pony express" mount. This is a flying leap, without the use of stirrup, into the saddle after the horse starts and is off on the run. One man's horse breaks clean away on the change but from habit due to training them in the tryouts for this run, it circles the track once and returns to his own mate.
There — a horse is down; it's Gerking, but he's up again and has not lost his horse either, for all in one motion he seems to be in his saddle again, eventually pulling in for second place. With tear and rush off they go again, and when Allen Drumheller, after three days' races, pulls out his three miles with his twelve flying mounts and nine changings of horses in 6 min- utes 18 1-5 seconds and establishes the high record of all championship riders in this event, you admit there never was a play with faster action or more vivid touches of reality.
LET 'ER BUCK
There is a stir in the crowd as it readjusts itself.
Heads bob and necks crane now to glimpse the few
little bunches in the arena, each with a snubbing horse,
bucker and the wranglers. Nearer us where the
saddles are parked on the ground about the big
pole surmounted by the announcer's crow's nest, the
186
THE ROUND-UP
contestants await the call. The women are now to compete.
Sensational rides are always made by every one of the cowgirl contestants, but all save Bertha Blan- cett, Nettie Hawn, Fanny Sperry Steele and Tilly Baldwin ride with hobble stirrups ; but hobble stirrups or not, the hurricane deck of a bucking bronc is no place for a clinging vine, and it was a close contest between these champions.
When Bertha Blancett's father took all the docile horses away to prevent his little seven-year-old from riding them, she learned to "handle and ride," by cap- turing wild colts and riding the milch cows nearly to death. In 1904, she not only rode the famous bucker, Dynamite, at Cheyenne, but at Calgary drew and rode that wicked animal. Red Wing, which killed Joe Le- mare. Out of five annual contests she entered at Pen- dleton, she rode out of the arena with three world's bucking championships and two second trophies — the greatest record made by any woman rider here.
In the cowgirls' class none but those who have been tried out and proved star riders are allowed to take chances, whereas any old cowboy is welcome to risk his neck; and in this contrast is an interesting phase of the psychology of the crowd, who dearly love to see a cowboy bucked off, but who take no delight in seeing a cowgirl go the same way.
"Going up!" says someone behind us, and sure enough, auburn-haired Minnie Thompson in her at- tractive leather-fringed skirt is swinging into the saddle over Sugar Foot and the bucking is on — and Minnie stays her horse in a pretty ride. Katie Can- nutt, Lorena Trickey and Mildred Douglas, all of whom have won first honors in recent Round-Ups
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LET 'ER BUCK
ride into rounds of applause. Nettie Hawn makes a beautiful ride on the wicked Snake, the kind which in 1913 made her the cowgirl champion of the world.
There are rides and good ones, too, by Princess Redbird, the Indian girl, Ollie Osborn, Prairie Rose Henderson, Ruth Roach, Eloise Hastings, Peggy Warren, well known here through several years of game and classy riding, all of whom have won second or third places in the contests. Then, too, there is Blanche McGaughey. She's ready to mount. Wait a minute; and she tucks a pretty embroidered handker- chief in her belt remarking : —
"I don't want to lose my powder puff."
"Does yer nose need some nose paint?" remarked the male brute who was handing her the halter rope.
Scar Leg did his best, but Blanche rode like an Amazon and another sensation is added to your collection.
That chivalric attitude which permeates spectators is also characteristic of the buckaroo, and was evi- denced in the quiet remark of "Skeeter" Bill Robbins when he turned to me after plucky Peggy Warren was pulled from beneath the fallen bucker, and said, "I sure hate to see a girl git hurt."
Bertha Blancett is climbing into the saddle of Ram- bling Jimmie, who takes a small fraction of a second to bear out his name and not only rambles in great jumps across the arena smashing through the arena fence, but, not satisfied, hits through to the outer fence before he is taken up. Now again, you see Bertha away in great swinging, snorting bounds on that buck- jumper Dempsey. All through this marvelous rider shows a headiness and control never before demon-
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THE ROUND-UP
strated by any other rider of her sex. Look at the superb saddle she sits, riding straight; but she rides slick from start to finish in a way to satisfy the most keen-eyed, hard-boiled judge — see, fans him, too, at every jump, and on the last jumps into the world's cowgirl bucking championship.
"Ride 'im! Ride 'im! Sit up on that burra," yelled Jess' Brunn to Eloise Hastings of Cheyenne as he jerked the blind off of Bug's blinkers — and ride him she does into third place. As she alights from the bucker, you see her hand fumble indefinitely around her waist to the pocket-flap of her skirt.
"Is she hurt?" you ask. — Listen!
"Gee, Jess! I kept my chewing gum just where I stuck it."
What is the peculiar psychological phenomenon that now seems to sweep around the great living oval of humanity like the soft fanning of a warm chinook wind. You feel it — everyone feels it a great, invisible mental rustle which sets the whole arena on edge — then you know, when from nearly forty thousand throats the Round-Up slogan ascends in one vast roar — "Let 'er buck!" It echoes and reechoes until it dies away in the interest of the king of range sports which it proclaims — the cowboy's bucking contest for the championship of the world.
It is the rough-riding in which the greatest interest and keenest judgment centers, for Pendleton brings together the great exponents of the art, most of them fresh from corral and sagebrush. The restive, furtive outlaws are now led out. The buckaroos troop across the arena and park their saddles in front of the judges' stand. The crowd is on edge with expectancy for the thrills of this most nerve-tightening event.
189
WHY THIS ONE WAS NOT IN THE FINALS
The main reason being that one must not get so far away from the saddle even if the horse does play "peek-a-boo" with it. But that able and game little rider, Bonnie McCarroll, knows that Sil- ver let 'er buck. To analyze the cause, one has but to take note of the broken hobble strap on the up-thrown stirrup.
Hobbling stirrups, consists in strapping them together under the horse's belly which keeps them down and greatly aids the rider in keeping a seat. How important this is, this picture amply illustrates. It also demonstrates that hobbled stirrups have their distinct disadvantages in that, when they break, the rider is taken off guard and finds it impossible to so suddenly adapt herself to the other form of riding.
Also, if a horse falls, the rider finds it much more difficult to disengage herself or keep her form or position in relation to the saddle, all of which greatly increases her danger. But the inherent chivalry of not only the public, but the cowboy, makes them shrink from witnessing injury to a woman. This was evidenced by Skeeter Bill Robbins after Brown Eyes fell and rolled on Peggy Warren's foot; crossing half the arena in about three leaps to rescue her, he then rubbed his sleeve across his sweaty forehead and remarked, "I sure do hate ter see a girl git hurt."
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With the Other It's ALL OVER BUT THE SINGING
The incidental ups and downs of the buckaroos' and buck- ers' lives during even the three days of the Round-Up, would fill several books and each book would have a kick in every sentence. Cowboys will come and cowboys will go but the spirit of the Round-Up will go on forever.
Newcomers will ride in future Round-Ups and leave their mark and a second edition of this book may carry on the record but they'll have to aim high to beat the standard the past and present contestants have set. But they'll ride fair, play the game and do their part to keep it a pure sport. The cleanness of the sport is no better evidenced than in the consideration and fair- ness shown the animals, not to mention the credit and admira- tion given them in the part they play in the game.
The Round-Up rules prescribe, that a rider may neither knot his halter rope at the end nor wrap it around his hand ; he may not touch any portion of his saddle. This act is known as "pulling leather" or still worse grasp the horn of his saddle which is "choking the biscuit." He may not show daylight under the sad- dle, loose a foot out of the stirrup even for an instant or in any way artificially support himself; a violation of any of these will disqualify him in his ride, even the observance of them in a sloppy manner or in a fearsome or too safe a way will deny him even a look in to the finals.
There are many rules it is true, but the big idea is to stay on top. There is no rule, however, against cinching in spurs but it isn't desirable and sometimes is most dangerous if a horse falls or the rider is thrown and hung up in the cinch. Of course such accidents as a halter coming off is the least of a top-notch buck- aroo's troubles, likely as not he can ride him without. A stirrup breaking gives him a little more bother, but the saddle slipping either over the bucker's head or under his belly is more serious, for the rider has either to stay with it or leave it, which dashes his hopes if not him. To be hung up in the stirrup and dragged is a most dangerous proceeding although Buddie Sterling rode C. Cross that way. But C. Cross had a powerful manner of bucking and an indelicate way of trampling on his rider when down, at which times it was "all over but the singing." This rider kissed the dust after choking the horn of the saddle which is the S. O. S. of the bucking code. This horse he gave a buck or two and — nearly killed the buckaroo.
LET 'ER BUCK
You see at a glance that those big, raw-boned cow- boys striding across the arena with their saddles are real cowboys who have ridden long hours in all sorts of weather. Most of them have mingled with des- perate men. There is one among them who unfor- tunately has "time" to serve — they say it was horse rustling — but he rides too well to let a little thing like that prevent him entering these contests, so for a few days he is out on parole.
There is no more important adjunct in cowboy routine than the cow-horse, worth $300 today in the open market, a horse which knows the art of the game — how to ford, swim, and avoid quicksands, dodge the traps of the prairie dog and gopher, to move furtively in a prairie herd so as not to stampede it, how to "cut out," and then to follow the quarry advan- tageously in every turn, to withstand the sudden shock of the tautened lasso, and finally to hold it when the thrown steer is to be tied. But before the cow-pony goes through this schooling he must, when about three or four years old, be brought wild from the range, roped, and ridden. From this phase of ranch life — broncho busting — has developed the sport of riding, particularly bad bucking horses, and those ridden at the Pendleton Round-Up are as bad as they make them, whether they be "show bucker," "trained bucker," "outlaw," or "wild horse."
A horse that bucks hard, straight away, with nose between front feet, is not necessarily a bad kind of bucker for the expert to ride. Still he looks well from the grandstand, and in consequence is known as a "show bucker," but he is never used as a semi-final.
A "wild horse" is one that has roamed the range and has never before known the feel of headstall or
192
THE ROUND-UP
saddle. A "wild horse" in nine cases out of ten puts up a live and game fight, but may or may not be difficult for the broncho buster.
The trained bucker is in the middle class between the "show bucker" and the "outlaw" and usually ap- pears in the semi-finals. However, the term "trained" is somewhat a misnomer, for the horse is not trained in any sense but has simply been encouraged to excel in his wicked ways.
It is the "outlaw," however, that is the bugbear of the buckaroo, a persistent bucker, which, if he cannot unload his man one way, tries another and still an- other. Both trained bucker and outlaw, with all fours off the ground, often make such gyrations known as the "side wind," "cake walk," "the double O," "the cork screw" or perhaps they "sunfish," "twist," "weave," "straight buck," "circle," "sky scrape," "high role," "high dive," or put on the most dangerous of tricks the "side throw" and "fall back" in order 'to shake the clinging thing from his back.
It is because of their proficiency with unusual methods of bucking that they are set aside when the spring herd is rounded up; and some of the worst of these from ranches all over Oregon or even from the Mexican border to Canada are eventually acquired for the Round-Up contests at Pendleton.
Nowhere can such a large proportion of spectators be found who know the game so well from start to finish, who live it part of the time themselves, or whose affiliations as ranchers, stockmen, or business men with ranch interests qualify them so well as judges.
The remarks made from the grandstand and bleach- ers are often as instructive as they are humorous. But it is the Round-Up slogan, "Let 'er buck," that
13 193
LET 'ER BUCK
most often echoes across the arena. It is particularly in point when you see an "outlaw" horse displaying every ounce of strength, cleverness, and viciousness to unseat his rider, and the rider displaying every art known to horsemanship in his efforts to stay on — and in most cases staying on. Yet even the fearless char- acter and ability of the riders fail in many hotly contested fights. There are horses and men new to Pendleton. The latter evidently have aspirations, some of which are of short duration.
It is astonishing though, how in the excitement of the fight the human mind often loses all sense of time. One visiting lady from the Sunny South related after the show that the man rode for ten or fifteen minutes. Undoubtedly some felt that way afterwards. But even in the grandstand among the experts, old-timers and judges, claims and bets were made on time as high as two and three minutes. As a result of this discussion Judge Charles Marsh, the Round-Up secretary had the timers record kept showing the time each rider rode from when the gun was fired until the horse was taken up, including the buck and run, dur- ing the Nineteen Seventeen Round-Up. They found that the maximum time of any ride was only thirty seconds. The result of this record is interesting — here it is at the back of this volume; it is called "The Bucking-Time Table," there is also "The Rode and Thrown Table" and "The Buckers' Own Table," but glance over them later, for the buckers are being placed in position by the wranglers.
Most riders give exhibitions which last less than thirty seconds, and some of the best buckers will un- load their riders ir twenty seconds or not at all. The judges often smile tolerantly at a show bucker, and
194
THE ROUND-UP
let the horse wear himself out more before the pistol barks for the "pick up" men or "herders" to take him up," that is, ride down and seize him. But the trained bucker and the outlaw are watched carefully, and thirty seconds is plenty of time to judge the buckaroo's rid- ing ability. Then, that his bucking may not unneces- sarily wear out the horse or break him, he is taken up.
There are famous outlaw horses whose indomitable spirit has never been broken and whose names stand high on the lists of these championship contests throughout the West. When such horses as Long Tom, Angel, No Name, Whistling Annie and Casey Jones, get into action at Pendleton you see real bucking.
The buckaroo was not born yesterday. He knows only too well that to have even a "look in" at the cham- pionship he must observe the rules of the game, ride with only a halter and halter rope instead of a bridle and reins and on a saddle, as prescribed by the Round-Up.
This is minus the great bucking rolls which some riders affect and of course without locked spurs, hob- bled stirrups or unusual contrivances of any kind. He must ride not only with style, but "slick" — that is, straight up, with a close seat, and no daylight showing through — and must not shift the halter-rope from one hand to the other. He must "rake" with blunted spur by swinging his legs from shoulder to rump, and, to cap the climax, "fan" the horse at every jump by swinging his hat with a full-arm sweep to and fro, and, above all things, he must avoid "pulling leather" that is, touching the horn or any other part of the saddle with either hand or supporting himself in any way,
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LET 'ER BUCK
When one sees a rider combine these facts and as has been done add a puff now and then from a cigarette into the bargain, while a dynamo of vicious energy beneath him is trying to kick himself in the chin with his hind legs and using every resource which horse flesh knows how to use, one must admit that nowhere in the world can such riding be equalled.
"Them buckers they're wrangling sure be rarin' ter go," chews a ranch hand behind us. They sure "be."
Look down in the arena where every eye is cen- tered, on a group of four wranglers and two horses. Watch Bill Ridings, Jess Brunn, Missouri Slim and little old Winnamucca Jack, the Lidian, a good wran- gler and hand. You soon learn from his forestriking, catlike twists, turns, biting and kicks that the four-legged brute has never known man as master, and that "wrangling" is no dance hall manager's vocation.
"Slim" Ridings now gets the horse tethered up and blindfolded ready for the saddle but the cowboy or his helper will saddle. Then as on the range, the wranglers will leave the rest to the rider — taking out the rough from his own horse. The wrangler's job is in itself a very dangerous phase of the game. The first move with the horse in hand is to work an old gunny-sack as a blindfold over the bucker's eyes between his halter leathers. This can be done with many.
It's that small grey "Snake" ! Watch the beggar as on any attempt to tuck the gunny-sack blind between his halter leathers or approach him, he strikes out viciously with his fore feet; he's no beauty doctor, his massage is bad for the complexion. There 1 a wrangler
196
THE ROUND-UP
is down, and gets off with but a slight cut on the head. But the eyes of the crowd are centered on Sledge- hammer, the big dapple-grey farther along. His head is now snubbed by the snubbing rope which is "half hitched" around the saddle horn of the mounted wrangler, who, seated in the saddle, holds the power- ful, vicious brute close nose up to the horn.
Sledgehammer does all that is expected of him and a little more. Not satisfied with charging the wrangler out of saddle, he strikes at him with fore legs, clears him out of the saddle and then jumps after him him- self, landing sqarely in the saddle of the snubbing horse, all four feet gathered under him, reaching a sensational climax when he rides the other smaller animal to the ground.
"Swing to 'im Red." It's "Red" Parker mount- ing that harmless-looking little beast, "Culdesac." The bleachers tell you that both horse and rider are well known. He bucks ! Watch the lightning-like plunges of the vicious equine devil, twisting and turn- ing like an electrified grapevine.
"Ride 'im, cowboy," and ride him he does until taken up.
"Saddle 'im or bust," yells a pock-marked, freckle- faced ranch hand from up Gibbon way, as Winna- mucca Jack and the outfit of wranglers fight it out with a bad actor. It's this new horse, that spotted Indian Cayuse, McKay, to which the interest now gravitates, as well as to the youngest rider who ever rode at the Round-Up — Darrell Cannon a fourteen year old buckaroo.
Old Winnamucca after the Indian's habit of affec- tion for children seems to have a genuine paternal in- terest in the young kid. The blindfold is on, then the
197
LET 'ER BUCK
saddle — carefully now the old Winnamucca cinches up and looks everything over. The lad cautiously adjusts himself in the seat, the redman gives him a fatherly pat on the leg.
"My boy! he Tide um!" and jumps away as the blindfold is jerked off. A sudden spring, then like a cyclone the cayuse starts sunfishing by throwing his hind legs alternately to the right and left while jump- ing with all four feet off the ground.
"Stay with 'im cowboy!" yell the bleachers, as the little animal twists, squirms, jumps, and pivots as only an Indian pony can. The boy is game, and even though the halter slips off, rides straight.
"That man has only one hand," comments a stranger,
"That's John Spain!" responds a rancher. "He said he'd ride, and drew Skyrocket, and he won't back out, neither."
We soon see one of the gamest exhibitions of The Round-Up given by the former champion of 1911 when, through all the cyclonic convolutions of that outlaw, Spain shows that he can ride not only without one hand but without both if necessary.
"Scratch 'im, Pete !" And Spain proceeds through the upheaval, not only to keep a close seat but to make his legs travel free, back and forth, along the sides of the beast beneath him.
"Lo'k'out cowboy when he comes down," warningly yells an old pal. Now Spain's riding Wardalopa. Something is wrong with the saddle, the intrepid John is suddenly unloaded with a foot hung up in the stirrup right square in front of the grandstand. Everyone is on his feet ; laymen gasp with wide mouths, women —
some — emit little screams of terror and old timers
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THE ROUND-UP
show a stoical grim anxiety — it's awful to see a man dragged while you stand by helpless.
Buck — kick — jerk — buck, he flings his flying hoofs to right and left at the prostrate, dragging man. Sud- denly the inert form is seen to twist itself with a mighty effort out of the stirrup just in time to avoid — bang ! — a crash through the fence into the arena. The terrible blow splinters the boards, the rider thrown violently against a post is now clear of the horse but lies quite still.
The horse goes on his bucking way toward the pad- dock. How the rider was freed from his jeopardy is a trick which the old hands know, but few can achieve. Long boots, one of which you can still see dangling from the stirrup, is evidence — the rider had cork- screwed out — of his footgear.
But to the amazement of the crowd, as the first aids run to him, he suddenly jumps to his feet, one of which is now four inches longer than the other. The dazed man makes a couple of half-reeling, staggering turns his eyes riveted on the track then mutters :
"Where in hell's my boot?" The grandstand sits down relieved.
A wild yell of approval goes up for Long Tom when that great docile-looking plough horse up to his old tricks, rids itself of its rider in just three terrific jumps. Sometimes Long Tom was a bit lazy — for him — but when Tom "broke in two" he threw sood men as well as others; whenever too he gave that famous twist to his shoulders, it was just "peek-a- boo" with the saddle. Whistling Annie does the same trick with "Whiskey Joe" of Arizona, who just loosens up his knees a bit and the boss isn't there. Crooked River proves just as crooked as his name and
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LET 'ER BUCK
soon has his rider "choking the horn" which is the same thing as "choking the biscuit" or piiUing leather, that is, gripping the horn of the saddle or touching or bracing on any part of the saddle. This disqualifies a rider and is considered more of a disgrace than being thrown. But this rider was thrown, — good and plenty, with as neat a high dive feet soles up as a horse could wish to see.
"Sunnin' yer moccasins?" yelled an unfeeling spec- tator whose slouch hat rim had been chewed into by wood rats.
A superb figure strides majestically, yet modestly into the arena from the direction of the Indian tepees. Every eye focuses on his tall, lithe, well-proportioned body moving with all the mien and beauty of a Hia- watha. As he approached the judges to draw from the hat for the finals, this Nez Perce, nephew of the great Chief Joseph, who had fought the paleface, might well portray, Chief Massasoit, and the som- breroed president and judges, Roger Williams and his broad-hatted Puritan pioneers with whom Mass- asoit made the first peace at Plymouth. But it was Jackson Sundown, the Nez Perce, drawing for the finals. Let me picture his ride of another year, for it is one of the classics of the Round-Up.
Four annual Round-Ups had seen Jackson Sundown ride into the semi-finals, and in 1915 he had ridden into the grand finals and pulled third money. Then the Nez Perce went back to his ranch in Cul-de-sac, Idaho, done with rough-riding and the Round-Up, for his had been an eventful life and he had wintered fifty snows.
But the call of the gathering clans, as the next cycle
200
THE ROUND-UP
of the great frontier show swung round, and the per- suasions of A. Phimister Proctor, the sculptor, who was then modeHng him and Hving nearby, induced him to travel again with his family and pitch his tepee by the Umatilla.
Many remember that Saturday afternoon in 1916. Sundown was one of the fourteen riders who had rid- den into the semi-finals. He had qualified by riding a hard bucking little buckskin, Casey Jones. In the semi-finals on Saturday he rode sunfishing, twisting Wiggles in a most sensational style, and by doing so also rode into great popularity with the crowd. It was this ride that finally put him with Rufus Rollen of Claremont, Oklahoma, and Broncho Bob Hall of Po- catello, Idaho, to compete in the grand finals that year for the championship of the world.
Three wicked outlaws, were saved for the finals, Long Tom, Angel and Speed Ball. Rollen drew the redoubtable old Long Tom, and Hall the lean black plunger. Speed Ball, that has been in many a final con- test. To Sundown's lot fell Angel, the big bay on which Lou Minor rode into the championship in 1912. Despite Speed Ball's skyscraping, long, bounding buck, Hall was master of him from the start and never for a moment was off balance, although he hesitated to attempt to scratch him.
When Rollen, acknowledged as one of the best
riders in the country and fresh from wins in Kansas
City and elsewhere, mounted to the back of old Long
Tom, there was a hush over the stadium. While the
crowd's sympathies were with Sundown, they knew
that if Rollen scratched Long Tom and rode him to
a finish the championship would undoubtedly be his.
The big sorrel brute pounded across the arena with ter-
201
ART IN THE ROUGH
Good riders on bad horses give the greatest exhibitions ever witnessed. Among them none handled themselves in better form than Art Accord, now of movie fame, even in the clinch of danger beneath a struggling horse, which has deliberately, in fiercest rage, thrown himself, in order to crush his rider. If a horse breaks away from the wranglers with the blind still on and falls in con- sequence, the rider is given another show — if he wants it. But a horse with blind off which falls or throws himself and rider to earth, is counted fair to both horse and man, for it is part of the horse's game. If in spite of this the man still stays and comes up in the saddle when the horse regains his feet, meantime having observed all the rules as to not pulling leather and keeping his feet in the stirrups, it counts for the man.
In this unusual picture. Art is indeed in the rough but still true to his name and calling. Note the remarkable control of the rider's hand, still firmly on the rope and away from the saddle horn, foot still in the stirrup, but ready to disengage should the horse decide to roll over on him. His other leg is undoubtedly snuggled under the withers, free from the saddle, yet Art is alert, poised, watching every movement of his dangerous adver- sary like a panther. He means to stay with him if there's a ghost of a chance — and he did.
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But Not For THE GREATEST RIDER OF THE RED RACE
This is a fine example of showing daylight or playing "peek-a- boo" with the saddle. You are now witnessing the "peek," the "boo" follows instantaneously. The rider isn't going — he's gone already. Even if this rider stayed on, such unfriendly coldness toward the saddle would disqualify him.
No horse of the Round-Up string of buckers ever rode into greater fame as "an honest to God" bucker than the redoubtable but departed old Long Tom. He was first known hereabouts when acquired through a debt by Alfred Smith of Pendleton of the J. E. Smith Livestock Co. about fourteen years ago, having previously passed around through many hands, which had not helped his disposition. For two years the old outlaw was used part time as one of seven in a plough team in which, although he worked fairly well, he was always flighty.
One day, someone to save time, tried to ride him, but he lost a second or two and then decided his time wasn't worth saving but his neck was. No one on the ranch could "stick." This con- vinced his owner that he was bad enough to be good enough for the Round-Up so they brought him in from his bunchgrass range near Pilot Rock, Til Taylor and Sam Thompson looked him over and he was bought by the Round-Up.
Champion caliber riders have essayed to ride Long Tom but of the nine who mounted his back, four were thrown and only one of the five who stayed dared scratch him.
Of all riders of the Amerindian race, none have ever ridden into such popularity at the Round-Up as Jackson Sundown the Nez Perce, of Culdesac, Idaho, nephew of Chief Joseph. He is the only Indian who ever wrested the most coveted cowboy and Indian trophy — the Round-Up prize bucking contest saddle and money for the championship of the world.
This Sundown did in 1916, making a most sensational ride on Angel, shown in this picture. Although wings would never even have sprouted on Angel, it was certainly not because of his cherubic disposition, he really never needed them to reach heaven, as can be seen in this one of his famous sky-scraping bucks.
It is interesting to mention in connection with two bucking champions of the Red and Paleface Races, Caldwell and Sun- down, that, the great outstanding features were their clear- headedness in out-thinking and out-enduring their horses. The secret lay primarily in the unusual care each took of his health. Caldwell weighed in at 155 pounds. He had always adhered to early, regular hours, avoided over-indulgence of any kind and intelligently considered his diet and long runs had been a part of his training program. Sundown weighed in at about the same, was married and happy, had never touched either liquor or to- bacco and made his championship ride at fifty years of age.
LET 'ER BUCK
rific force, and the figure of his rider survived the terri- ble punishment, but failed to scratch the canny, hard- fighting, old outlaw.
Angel was saddled.
"Swing to 'im, Injun," called the bleachers.
"Think yer can stay with 'im?"
Then in true Indian style, the Nez Perce swung gracefully into his saddle from the right side. He watched with the slight suspicion of his race every movement of the white wranglers for fear they might be "gypping" him. His figure, straight as an arrow, leaned forward a moment and old Jackson peeked over his saddle horn when they went to hook in his halter rope, to make sure that it was snapped in the lower and proper ring of the halter, then looked at Lee Caldwell, who, stepping nearer, sized it up and nodded. Old Jackson was satisfied.
"Scratch 'im from the start. Make a ride in the first three jumps," Lee had advised, "and then clamp down on him and get set for the rest of your ride."
"Ugh! me ride him for everything." By which he meant he wanted first or nothing.
When the blindfold was pulled off the big bay piv- otted twice and then seemed nearly to reach heaven in a series of high, long jumps of the kind which have spelled defeat for many a rider.
Sundown dug his spurs into Angel's shoulders, stuck them into his flanks, and then clamped down on the third jump as Caldwell had advised. Once set, he then goaded him to his worst. It was a supurb figure, beautifully proportioned, narrow-waisted and riding like a centaur ; his hat, bound with its shimmering, silk- en-colored kerchief, swung out and down at every leap;
poised for an infinitesimal fraction of a second seem-
204
THE ROUND-UP
ingly in midheaven. It was, indeed, a sight fit for the gods. Long braids of crow-black hair tied in front looped and wafted against the cinnamon brown cheeks of the rider; his colored shirt and kerchief flattening and billowing against his muscle-articulating torso in the movements of the wind; his long-haired black- spotted, orange chapps flapped and fluttered, as the horse rose and fell, while the wild-fighting beast, fol- lowing the inner side of the fence, bucked, twisted, high-dived and did his best to break in two.
On he went ! It seemed no man could stand the pun- ishment, but never for a moment did those long-haired chapps pause in their rowelling from withers to rump during the entire fight of the ride, nor did the big som- brero cease for a moment to fan the air. Sundown was indeed riding to win everything or lose everything, on his last throw of the dice.
"Stay with him, Sundown!"
"Ride 'im, Injun!"
But Jackson did not hear. The shot rang out.
"Take him up!"
Herb Thompson rode alongside and helped Sun- down dismount from one of the two most thrilling rides ever recorded. The crowd was cheering itself into a frenzy. One name was borne out from ten thousands of throats. "Sundown! Sundown!" came from the grandstand: "Sundown!" echoed the bleach- ers; "Sundown!" re-echoed the mounted contingent and the Indians.
"Ugh!"
It was the epic ride for his race which this son of Chief Joseph made in his fiftieth year. It was indeed the grand championship in the grand final not only of the Round-Up, but probably of the history of his race.
205
LET 'ER BUCK
Jackson Sundown, the Nez Perce, was a fitting repre- sentative as the first and only red man to wrest this title from the Paleface.
"What inscription do you want on the silver plate, Sundown?" was asked him at the saddlery store as they viewed the beautiful, coveted prize-saddle.
"You put wife's name," was the quiet reply.
The entire throng lets loose when the three outlaws, Light- foot. No Name and big-boned Long Tom are led into the arena. There is no question about deci- sion as to the champion calibre of the horses. C. C. Couch, Bob Cavin and A. E. McCormack are picked. Couch draws first and secures the sorrel, No Name.
Watch that little dynamo! His satanic majesty re- fuses to be saddled and strikes, kicks, and bites at the wranglers with all the ferocity of a wild beast. If the wranglers never had their hands full before, they have now. His vicious fore-striking is so intelligent it has them buffaloed and they reach very gingerly toward his head to slip in the blind, but his foot reach is longer than their lanky arms.
"Or man 'im!" advises the bleachers, and "old man him" they do, which consists in throwing a looped rope over neck or back, moving him over and passing the free end of the rope through the loop and thus roping him anywhere one sees fit, for greater control or se- curity. Still their efforts to saddle him are futile.
"Can't yer teach a tame boss?" comes from the bleachers.
A wrangler makes a sudden spring and throws both
arms around his neck well under the jaw, and with the
assistance of the others, No Name is thrown, the
wrangler still maintaining his hold.
206
THE ROUND-UP
"Mercy! Why, what on earth is that man doing?"
"Chawing his ear, mum," raphes a big sombreroed man to the lady visiting from Chicago.
Couch mounts cautiously, feeling his way into the saddle. No Name concaves his back and crouches close to the ground like a cat, then shoots from the wran- glers like a bombshell, kicks, rears, and plunges in the vain effort to loose those clinging legs from his sides, finally displaying his temper in vain attempts to reach them with his teeth.
"That's sailin' high!"
"Another live 'un!" bellows the crowd.
Couch plays his game well and makes a wonderful ride; likewise does Cavin, who is up second and has drawn Lightfoot. See that wicked, little sunfisher hunch, dive and twist his best, but the Idaho boy does not even show daylight! There is little to choose be- tween the two rides. They have been executed in the same spirit of game sportsmanship as Corporal Roy Hunter's bout with a Texas longhorn, that thrilled the entire throng and made him perhaps the chief hero of that Round-Up.
"My I shouldn't think they'd let that lame man in the arena," remarks our same friend from the Windy City, as a bandaged-up cowboy hobbles his crutchety way across the open.
"Why, that's my pal. Bob Hall, mum ! — Broncho Bob Hall," interpolates her broad-brimmed bureau of in- formation.
"Well, but why do they let him? He may get hurt."
"Hurt ! He's already hurt, but he's goin' ter see if he can't git hurt s'more — See, he's going up. If it was any other feller he'd be lookin' for a soft spot, but
207
LET 'ER BUCK
rm a figurin' Bob's as like as not ter ride 'im." And sure enough, he does.
Look! They are going to draw for horses for the grand finals as this occurs on the grounds in the pres- ence of everyone. It's Lee Caldwell, Yakima Canutt and Jackson Sundown. These three have ridden through with the other twelve or thirteen selected for the semi-finals and now have fought their way through these into the grand finals. See ! the cowboy drawing now is Canutt, that tall and lanky buckaroo with a ranginess characteristic of the clan; there goes Sun- down, the agile, erect figure you know so well, the third is Caldwell, the shortest and youngest of the three. What a superbly proportioned body, splendid shoulders, lithe and beautifully muscled and the very embodiment of health, on whom attention is now main- ly focused. The women say he's good-looking and even the men admit it.
Last year he rode in second for the world's cham- pionship here, so close to Red Parker, the champion, that there was a division of opinion; but the judges decided it. Furthermore some member of the Round- Up committee expressed the Pendleton spirit and the clean sport of the show when he remarked "Lee, if you ever ride into the world's championship at the Round- Up you will have to win hands down, because you're a Pendleton boy."
Lee had just come down from Moosejaw, where his
winning of the All Canada championship had been
heralded before him; but he had come to the greatest
of all shows where more men ride and are eliminated
in the elimination contest than even enter the other
great shows.
208
THE ROUND-UP
Each in turn, one at a time, thrusts his hand into the sombrero held by one of the judges and draws forth a tightly-wadded, round, paper pellet. Each opens them and now reads his fate.
Sundown draws Cul-de-Sac and makes a splendid ride. Canutt draws Speed Ball and rides equally well. Although a little cautious in the way he scratches this sunfishing devil-incarnate, he seems sure of second money. Two Step from Cheyenne is the horse Cald- well draws.
In the wildhorse race yesterday you recall Caldwell s right forearm was broken. When they set it in the plaster cast last night the doctor left a little aperture in the bandage to facilitate a shot with a hypodermic to dull the pain— for he was to ride in the semi-finals. The doctor is on hand all right to shoot it to him now, while they are wrangling Two Step ; Allen Drumheller there, Lee's pal and saddler— has taken hypodermics on such occasions himself, you can see he is advising
against it.
Although a buckaroo often saddles his own horse in a contest, it is an unwritten law that a rider may ask any man he desires, to saddle for him— pick him out of the grandstand if he wants to. Sometimes a good saddler is asked by half a dozen riders to saddle for
them.
He's up and away ! a perfect ride although Two Step the tricky devil with his apparently easy straight-away, really puts in to it everything that he thinks of and you don't. The expression of the rider's face shows that the pain in the bandaged arm is terrific, but watch! Instead of fainting it makes him so "dad-burned mad," that he makes a hair-raising ride, the only qualified one on the bucker that season. Lee dismounts, walks toward
14 209
LET 'ER BUCK I
Did Bill Mahaffey ride Iz? He sure did, scratching him, fanning him, and rid- ing "slick" with a close seat and splen- did form. It is Let 'er Buck! with both horse and man. Enough said.
Let 'Er Buck
W. S. Bowman
Stay a Long Time, Cowboy!
r
© W. S. Bowman
One of the Greatest Rides Ever Made
W///, ^ ^^ -'->#-»
STAY A LONG TIME COWBOY
You're Against
ONE OF THE GREATEST RIDES EVER MADE
Long Tom has always been used as a grand final horse. In this picture of Ira de MiUe making a splendid ride Old Tom^s seen up to his old trick of his long head reach to jerk the h^Uer rope slack through the rider's hand or throw him against the sadd e horn. Of those grand final champions who have ridden this splendid outlaw he could buck hard enough for any except Cald- well. No one but that rider felt the necessity of scratching him One buckaroo admitted he contemplated it, remarking,^ i just loosened up my knees a bit and Long Tom wasn t there.
What is generally conceded as the greatest ride ever made at the Round-Up was in 1915, when Lee Caldwell rode in as king of buckaroo Viders and vanquished Long Tom, king of outlaw buckers He rode him to a finish and as the boys say sure did kick out hair." This picture shows the rider with his broken firearm fanning and was taken about the end of the first clean away buck, just before the rider's breast bone was broken against the saddle horn through too short a hold on rope. This was the result of the accident with the snubbing rope._ . k , tu,
Caldwell's marvelous record can be appreciated in part by the fact that in one season's riding he entered nine of the biggest contests in the United States and rode into seven fir,^.t/hampion- ships one second, and lost out in the third, because his fi^rst horse did not buck, winding up his season with seven prize saddles and $6 000 prize money, clear of all his expenses.
it was Caldwell's grit, brains, saddlebornness, horse knowledge and Hs remarkable ability to coordinate these.to the out-thinking of the wildest outlaw horse, that as far as is recorded enabled him to ride into more world's championships in premier con- S n a given time than any man living. Add to these qualities a Dleasing personality, and we have the reasons of his popularity with bo"h Sectors and buckaroos. But it is that last tribuna of udgment "the boys" themselves which has placed Caldwell as ?he top-notcher of their clan in the bucking game and that means the greatest living rider the world knows today.
LET 'ER BUCK
the line of saddles. His left hand steals to nurse his right which is hurting so bad Lee a second time re- fuses hypodermic, remarking, "I'm too mad to take it — I want to be a little mad — a man always rides better." "L-e-e C-a-l-d-w-e-1-1 r-i-d-e-s L-o-n-g T-o-m," clearly enunciated Fred McMonies through the great megaphone announcer from his crow's nest on the pole top.
A great roar of satisfaction goes up from the bleach- er and grandstand. They are the five magic words which the crowd wants more than anything else to hear. They have always wanted him to draw Long Tom in the grand final to see if he dares scratch him.
It is barely five minutes since Two Step was taken up, and now Caldwell is ordered to tackle Long Tom. He walks to where big Bill Ridings and the other wranglers are cautiously tucking the blind under the halter leathers of the big brute holding him snubbed. The snubbing rope, see, is run through the fork of the snubbing horse's saddle; then it passes through the halter of the outlaw beneath his jaw, and now the end is brought back and made fast with a couple of half hitches around the saddle horn of the snubbing horse. Caldwell pauses, and, as is his custom, sizes up his worthy antagonist. He has that remarkable ability of sizing up a horse just by looking at him, and knowing within two or three inches how much he will have to let out or take in his cinch before he saddles on. But for the first time he is absolutely deceived. Allen Drumheller has the saddle on, but Caldwell finds the end of the cinch comes only to the middle of his belly, and they have to "off saddle" again. Caldwell com- ments to Drumheller that old Tom has the greatest lung capacity of any horse he has ever ridden.
212
THE ROUND-UP
Caldwell knows he is up against it and watches every movement like a cat. Ife impatiently motions, says something, and the wranglers turn Long Tom's head a bit more to the southwest toward the grandstand. It is "direction," Caldwell is thinking, that which will head him just between the judges. He believes he can "scratch hell" out of Long Tom. He wants no doubt in the judges' mind, as to what he is doing. There is a bit of a struggle, then Lee snaps out a curt order. He does not want the horse frightened. There is a differ- ence between frightening a horse and getting him mad ; frightening him has a tendency to make him blunder in his own movements, because, as Lee said once "A horse like Long Tom does a lot of thinking."
Everyone knows Caldwell is tremendously high strung, trained so to the minute that a mere nothing can set him off the handle; but Allen Drumheller knows his man, knows Lee's every idea, so he makes every movement count. Everything is timed to a nicety when he tightens the cinch and fastens the latigo, for Allen knows how to handle a man as well as a horse. He passes the halter rope to Caldwell, who turns his stirrup out gently with his left hand, then, inserting his foot, seizes the horn with the same hand and swings lightly into his saddle. Even though one- handed, he avoids any pull on the saddle when leaving the ground, for, in mounting bucking horses it is this jerk that often causes them to lunge or start
"He's going up !" says a man.
"Ain't he sweet?" chimes in a woman.
The great audience rose as one man. Lee settles himself in his saddle as nonchalantly as though he might be testing his stirrup's length instead of being turned loose to vie for the world's championship on the tough-
213
LET 'ER BUCK
est brute Oregon can secure. Lee knows he is mount- ing one of the best horses in the world when Drumheller hands him the haker rope. See how carefully he takes a last look over everything and then deliberately at the judges. The judges nod. The rider wants at least two of the judges to see everything he does, readjusts himself in the saddle and his rein in his left hand, snuggles his feet right up to his heels in the stirrup — for a single foot out disqualifies the rider.
"Turn him round," he snaps to the wranglers
The rider knows that though the old outlaw is stand- ing apparently square, he is really "tense up" to "throw back." Turning him changes this position or "un- tracks" him. The blind is off. He is loose.
The wranglers spring to one side, one of them jerks off the blind and frees the end of the snubbing rope. The great brute springs into the air and the rider's legs shoot forward to scratch towards his neck.
"Let 'er buck !" comes from all sides, at this first jump. But the initiated know something is wrong. There is an unnatural throw to Long Tom's head towards the wranglers on his left — the free end of the snubbing rope has traveled too fast through Tom's halter and has whipped into a knot around its own bight and caught, causing this violent, unnatural jerk leftward. Caldwell's halter rope is on the right of the horse's neck. The sudden jerk of his head to the left will force him to either give way, be pulled forward, or let the line slip through his hand. This will cause a change of rein, and when the horse recovers will make so much slack he will have nothing to steady him- self with, and his ride will be hopeless on a horse like
Long Tom.
214
THE ROUND-UP
Caldwell is jerked violently forward, and to prevent being unbalanced, is allowing the rope to slide through his hand. See it go — a full foot and a half. Wrench ! Good, the snubbing rope is free. He is readjusting his hold by taking up the slack with the weakened grip of two fingers of his broken arm. The sudden release from the snubbing rope makes old Tom throw his nose skyward more than usual — an old trick of this bucker — and gives Lee more slack than he wants, which when now taken up gives him too short a hold.
All this occurs while the horse's forequarters are in the air, and during this first jump Caldwell has not only adjusted the rope, but has pulled off his hat with which he now fans him, gripping it with the two fing- ers of his broken right forearm.
"Look out cowboy when he comes down," yells an old buckaroo beside you.
With hindquarters snapped up, old Tom now puts his head earthward, at the same time giving one of his peculiarly violent kicks, his eyes show white, down he comes ker-plunk. Caldwell already pulled and held forward to the front part of the saddle, is now thrown violently against the saddle horn. Crack! goes the boy's breast bone, and breaks three inches above the point, knocking the wind clear out of him.
"Will he stay with 'im?" His breath is gone — his head swims — stars shoot — everything cants in a swirl
of blue For a fraction of a moment he seems
to be gone. If you know Caldwell you know if he is going to fall, he'll reason he cannot strike any harder by scratching old Tom, besides he knows he will be making a real ride when he hits the dirt. See! he's letting 'er buck now for all there is in it !
"Stay with 'im, Lee!" came the old cry, as Long
215
LET 'ER BUCK
Tom broke like a boomerang into that terrific pound- ing, bounding buck, which, if it does not unseat most riders in the first three jumps, shakes their dayhghts so that they welcome hitting the ground, it is so much softer.
Whang! in the back with the cantle of the saddle. In Long Tom's bucking nearly a dozen men have left old Tom's saddle unconscious on this account and never knew why they left it. The big, hill-climbing demon snorts, even groans with rage in the effort to shake the clinging man thing from his back.
Caldwell lets another foot of rope slide through his hand on the next jump.
"Ride 'im cowboy!" yell the buckaroos.
The rider heels withers and toes rump with his spurs.
"That's raking him !"
His spurs are dull, but a year from now I reckon there'll be scars eight inches long on old Tom's hide. See, at every jump the old outlaw deliberately jerks his head and takes more rope, a few inches at a time. If the rider's arm was straight out and the rope tight, there would be no use of any man's trying to hold it.
Three! — four! — five! — fifteen tremendous, vicious, man-killing jumps you count, spiced with every art of the old bucker's repertoire. Look, he's circling toward the corrals, still inside the fence.
Caldwell's breath is coming back a little, things have
ceased swimming. You know he is badly handicapped
through the blow on his chest and a rope too slack
to balance himself with. But his determination to
make the greatest ride of his life is as evident as is
the determination of the brute beneath him that he
shall not
216
THE ROUND-UP
It is the slack now that bothers. He reaHzes after the horse was freed and after the first buck, that if he took it up with the other hand he would be disquali- fied. But he is a heady rider.
Quick as thought on the uprise of a buck, he takes the "fuzz" of rope (the frayed end) in his teeth— which many have seen him do in exhibition rides when he held both hands up to make a hit. There is no rule against this. He now slides his hand down and is set for a new fight as he approaches the fence. He knows by the animal's actions whether he will go over it or
crash through.
"Wow! Wow! Wow! Stay a long time, cowboy !" yells the mounted contingent, lined behind the outer fencing in the gap between the bleachers. Springing skyward, Long Tom clears the fence with a pretty jump. Caldwell is sitting "straight up" in a way no man has ever sat Long Tom before. He knows he has him now. It gives him a chance for a flowery show, see he's throwing a lot of bouquets.
"Scratch 'im, Pete," yells a mounted buckaroo with a grin, as the big sorrel weaves and bounds his rocky way by the horsemen.
Caldwell now makes the fur fly in a way that is un- believable. Every previous rider has stopped at raking the famous outlaw with spurs. It has been generally admitted that the man did not live who could do that and still sit on his back.
Caldwell now confines his rowels to the great hump- ing shoulders to make him flinch — circle — before the ki-hooting hellian, who now seems to have gone plumb cultus, smashes and tears him to pieces against the posts and wire of the high outer fence of the track.
He does it barely in time; down the track by the
217
LET 'ER BUCK
yelling, yipping mounted cowboys ; along by the whoop- ing Indian bucks, shrill ki-yi-ing women and scream- ing papooses; on around the track flies the outlaw, semi-circling the entire eastern end, bounds and bucks his way, pounding the earth in a manner that must rattle loose the teeth and bones of the lithe, boyish figure of Caldwell, who still miraculously riding true to form, through
"Flip, flop, dive or hunch, Just sticks him like a burr."
See there! — Half way round to the grandstand something has happened which never happened before. The hitherto undaunted king of buckers is breaking into a run — surrenders — he's been ridden out. But even running Long Tom is hard to ride, and every step by this time is a buck to Caldwell weak as he is.
"You've got 'im, Lee," came from bleacher and grandstand.
Bang! went the judge's pistol. "Take him up!"
Herb Thompson rides alongside, Lee hands him his rope as is his custom and a great help to the herder. Pandemonium breaks loose as Thompson, himself a superb rider, snubs up the first-time-defeated outlaw monarch and swerves him around. Caldwell musters his remaining strength and springs ofi to one side, landing twelve or fifteen feet away, as is his unique habit in dismounting from bad horses. He figures he has won and would rather take a chance with a sprained ankle than a kick. In the midst of the terrific uproar of cowboy yells, shouts of his name and cheers mingle, he walks a bit unsteadily until he reaches the fence then leans against it.
218
THE ROUND-UP
But the end is not yet. Canutt and Caldwell have been scheduled to ride Spitfire and P. J. Nut. No one believed any man could scratch Long Tom and stay on — besides the program must be carried through. Spitfire, a vicious little mare, is already over there in the arena. The wranglers brought her in before the saddle was scarce pulled from the vanquished Long Tom. Lee is still resting against the fence, but he is already ordered to ride again.
Short as the respite is, it is here in the final test that his marvelous reserve strength, the conservation of his splendid health due to his intelligent training, tells. His recuperative reaction is immediate, and although Spitfire puts in an unusually, fast, tricky ride, in comparison to Long Tom, she undoubtedly felt like a feather bed. Just the same, Lee feels about ready to go home when he dismounts.
Again the unexpected happens. Canutt knows he has second money won. The ride on Long Tom can- not be excelled. Preferring to keep what he has got, which is his privilege, he withdraws his ride.
"Then it's up to you, Lee. Ride him !" you hear the judges say.
This is too much for Drumheller, who has been watching over his pal, like a cat with one kitten, and his objections are energetic if not poetic. Lee pauses a moment, a bit white. Then his dark eyes snap.
"Yes, ril ride 'im; and then you can bring out your whole damn bunch and I'll ride 'em all."
And ride 'im he does — that chunky, powerful, con- centrated extract of horse meat, P. J. Nut, which if you scratched a match in his ear he'd set the prairie on fire. He fans him — he scrapes him — and another astonishing ride is credited to the greatest living rider
219
HELL BENT !
This picture of hell bent and back again hardly describes this picture or the sensations its rider must have felt when this hell- diving demon "broke in two." The rider is Lee Caldwell of Pen- dleton, the bucker is Flying Devil. The ride was made at Miles City, Montana, which brought this peer of bucking riders the Montana State Bucking Championship. The picture was taken by Marcell and is a remarkable bucking picture, for it is seldom one catches real action on a real tough horse.
"Lee," I said one night when he dropped in to see me, from his ranch hidden away back up the Canyon. "How about Flying Devil, was he as bad as he looks?"
"Well, I'll tell you — I consider him the hardest horse I ever rode. You see, it isn't the horse that sunfishes or twists that makes it hardest for one to ride, it's the punishment he gives the rider. Flying Devil was an outlaw and came from a mountain range either in Montana or Idaho and I consider mountain-bred horses the strongest. Until Flying Devil was broken down in his knees there was practically no direction. You know, a bucking horse's muscles will indicate his action — if he's going to sunfish to the right for instance, his muscles contract accordingly and give you the cue, but he didn't, he was all pure strength and speed — every move he made was just so sudden, there was no spring, no cue. You see," and a retrospective smile passed over his face as he pointed to the extreme southwest corner of the picture, "this is where he was when he started this buck, but fac- ing the other way — you see where he is and how he's facing now. He's the only horse I ever rode that could apparently jump straight backward as far as he could forwards."
Marceli
Hell Bent!
'Hf D
ASTOR. r ^„,,,,
THE ROUND-UP
of today. But half through the ride Lee's tactics change. The grandstand doesn't notice it much, the old buckaroos do. Only Lee knows why he changed his tactics. "I realized," he tells Drumheller after dis- mounting, "that having to ride another horse with the hurt in my arm getting me so loco mad I was likely to be uncautious — so I clamped down a bit." But he rides into as pretty a finish as has ever been made.
The deafening uproar is only exceeded by a greater one. Wave after wave undulates around the great oval as though to shake the very structure from its foundations. The whole colossal saucer goes wild and even the grandstand jumps up on the seats and throws things at one another.
Caldwell has won the rough-riding championship of the world hands down, as the committee has re- quired. He has ridden everything in sight, including four of the worst outlaws that could be gathered to- gether— one immediately after another — within the space of forty-five minutes — and has scratched them all. But more inconceivable yet, he has done what no man has ever done before — he has scratched that king of buckaroos. Long Tom, from start to finish, from wither to rump and — "ridden him" — with broken bones in arm and chest thrown in.
"How do you feel, Lee?"
But Lee was looking toward the outlaw corral :
"Gad!' he ejaculates, "how he did come to pieces!'*
THE CRASHING CLIMAX
The end of those wonderful three days of thrills and spills comes with the great finale — the wild-horse race.
221
LET 'ER BUCK
Over against the dull glow of the West from where the half dust storm is now sweeping across Central Oregon, filling the air with that peculiar mellow haze, a denser cloud suddenly sweeps from the corrals as twenty wild horses, never before saddled, sweep -like a tornado around the track.
From in front of the grandstand, twenty bronzed cowboys leave as many helpers each at his assigned place, and sweep like a second tornado around to meet this stampeding herd of unbroken "bunch grassers." There is a clash. Some collide, a few go down. In this fighting, plunging, rearing, kicking chaos some rope their horses and eventually work them over to their stations in front of the grandstand. Others dash about the arena in mad pursuit. Off to the left is a roped horse on one side of the fence, the roper on the other; directly below you a dozen fight to wrangle and saddle the horses already caught — and all are caught eventually.
There in that outfit, the saddling is all but accom- plished. A rope breaks and regardless of surrounding wranglers, riders and helpers, the escaping one dashes madly through, knocking over a helper, thereby setting free another horse. Here, a tenacious little brute swings helper and rider into the heels of one of his companions. There rider and helper fall in a grim tussle with their horse, and for a moment it is hard to distinguish which is which, in the pyrotechnics of kicking, struggling legs, but one of the wranglers catches the regulation chunk of ear in his mouth and the animal is conquered.
There a roped animal madly describes a circle, trip- ping and catching men and saddles with the rope, but
no phase is too serious for the crowd to lose its humor.
222
THE ROUND-UP
As one cowpuncher takes a spill and reveals a bald head, a voice yells out above the hullabaloo :
"Look out you don't burn the top of your face there, Bill."
The crowd roars a short laugh of approval. So they plunge, rear, bite, squeal, kick and strike, roll and crowd, but it is a marvel how in the midst of this mass of untamed horses and agile, strong men of iron nerve, any escape this melee of teeth and hoofs. Somehow they do, save for a few minor injuries.
But no ! something's happened — a mounted wrangler has been yanked over sidewise — horse and all — a ter- rific crushing fall, by the powerful wild thing he's roped. See — a half dozen cowboys spring to his aid; they know horses and men too well not to know some- thing serious has happened. The limp figure, in its black-spotted Angora chapps, is gently placed on a stretcher — and they carry him to the first aid tent. But it is too late ; a big fellow draws his sleeve across his eyes. — It's little old Winnamucca Jack — he's ridden into the Happy Hunting Grounds.
The last horse is saddled, the signal is given to mount. With only a halter rope for a rein they at- tempt to ride and guide their horses around the track. Each man mounts his steed — or tries to — and in this hell-let-loose cyclone of centaurs, each endeavors first to ride and then to guide his wild-crazy, bucking animal around the track to the corrals.
Such a scene may indeed warrant the expression of one visiting onlooker who qualified it as a "god- snapped movey."
Blindfolded, with pent-up ferocity, the untamed outlaws feel for the first time, the man-things astride
22i
LET 'ER BUCK
their backs. The gunny sack bhndfolds are jerked from the animals' eyes.
"Let 'er buck!" Twenty horses are leaving undone no twist, turn, or jump to shake their riders. It's saddles to cinch-holes that a man, unless he is of the champion breed, "hits the dust" about the time he starts out.
Not a rail of the fence in front of the grandstand is left. Crash! Smash! it is ripped out in sections. One horse, not content with this, takes wire fence, post, and all, and lands in the near-by bleachers. Others are fast smashing into kindling wood distant portions of the arena fence, some bucking, others running away.
The hundred-thousand-eyed throng sees them from every angle. For three whole days the vast audience has breathed their thoughts and exclamations with one accord. Now for a full twenty minutes this vast mass of humanity has stood physically and mentally on tiptoe before this stupendous climax, and is now swept by the swift wind of a human passion, taut as steel, biting as a knife. At last Nature breaks, and, lets loose and the big arena literally vibrates with a cloudburst of pent-up energy. It eventually subsides, the crowd for a space stands spellbound where it had been stand- ing for the last half hour.
As the dust settles, some still linger to drink in the peaceful scene as the last horseman leaves the empty arena. September saffron silhouettes the rolling hills of eastern Oregon, night is silver dimming the still- ness of things, the great red lantern of the lowering sun sheds its orange-red on the silent oval, the range cries die away, and on your memory, a red-letter day is painted.
224
THE ROUND-UP
The Round-Up means more than a great, hazardous, thrilHng spectacle. Old men — yes, and old women — looked out through a mist of years and read between the lines of this page, torn from a chapter of the Old West, the struggles of a life which formed an im- portant part in the making of our Nation. By the stranger and the young too, the story is read, more vividly than any brush can paint or pen describe. For three days they had "let 'er buck." For three days Pendleton had lived in the full spirit of the open, brave humor - loving, dauntless, empire - winning, nation- holding, riding, fighting generation of the clean men and women of the Great West.
I stood beside a silent figure on a silent horse : "Old Hank" Caplinger looked wistfully toward the night- dimmed skyline. Perhaps a phantom of the days gone by blurred the scene for the old scout, and he saw the old range just before the night herder sings to his herd, and perhaps he saw
Ten thousand cattle straying,
As the rangers sang of old, The warm chinook's delaying,
The aspen shakes with cold. Ten thousand herds are passing,
So pass the golden years. Behind us clouds are massing.
Like the last of the old frontiers.
A little distance away, under the hush of blue night which pervades everything, the camp-fires of the Uma- tillas glow red among their lodges, within which dimly silhouette the shadow forms of the red-skinned inhabi- tants. They, too, have lived again in the open the
marvelous, color-reeking carnival of their race. Their 15 225
LET 'ER BUCK
tepee smokes of sage-brush and greasewood burn an incense to the god of the range and freedom; then their fires dim, the Cottonwood's soft, feathery masses stencil darkly against the silver-oxide of night. Crawl- ing slowly above them, the crescent of the new moon shadows its pale calm on the stillness of things.
It is all a chapter taken out of the history of the old West — a chapter which every American with red blood in his veins should read in the real before it passes by and, like the old West, forever disappears on the horizon of time.
But to understand, one must look with one's own eyes on these things. Then you will feel the stir and the thrill of life of these golden lands of hopes and achievements, where man extends a generous and hospitable welcome to those who cross his trails ; it is a spectacle which makes you go away with a bigger, finer feeling toward life, and a genuine respect and appreciation for the quiet, modest manhood and womanhood who have "taken chances," have risked limb and even life at times in their sports of daring and skill, that you may see how their fathers once struggled in earnest against unequal odds in order to attain the Winning of the West.
226
THE BUCKERS' OWN TABLE
GIVING A COMPARATIVE RECORD OF THE SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF SOME OF THE LEADING ROUND-UP BUCKERS OVER A PERIOD OF FOUR YEARS
Whistling Annie <
Hot Foot
Smithy
Long Tom
Lightfoot
|
Year |
Rider |
Result |
Rides |
|
1913 |
Jack Joyce |
Thrown |
|
|
Jay Miller |
Thrown |
||
|
Sam Brownell |
Rode |
||
|
1914 |
Dan Thompson |
Disqu. |
|
|
Henry Webb |
Rode |
||
|
1915 |
W. H. Chandler |
Disqu. |
' 3 |
|
Dave White |
Thrown |
||
|
John Muir |
Pulled |
||
|
1916 |
Ed. McCarty |
Rode |
|
|
G. Ghangrow |
Thrown |
||
|
Ben Dobbins |
Thrown |
||
|
' 1913 |
Fred Heide |
Thrown |
|
|
Pete Wilson |
Thrown |
||
|
W. W. Matthews |
Thrown |
||
|
C. C. Couch |
Rode |
||
|
1914 |
'.^. Mosbey |
Thrown |
3 |
|
H. Wilcox |
Disqu. |
||
|
. H. Strickland |
Rode |
||
|
.1915 |
R. S. Hall |
Rode |
|
|
1913 |
Andrew Jack |
Rode |
|
|
1914 |
Silver Harr |
Thrown |
|
|
Tex White |
Thrown |
||
|
1915 |
A. Skeels |
Rode |
|
|
Yakima Cannutt |
Rode |
||
|
1916 |
Jas. Shuster |
Thrown |
|
|
1913 |
Tex Daniels |
Pulled |
|
|
Ed. McGilvray |
Thrown |
||
|
A. E. McCormack |
Rode |
||
|
1914 |
Red Parker |
Rode |
|
|
1915 |
Ira de Mille |
Rode |
5 |
|
Earl Simpson |
Thrown |
||
|
Lee Caldwell |
Rode |
||
|
1916 |
Bob Beebe |
Thrown |
|
|
. |
Rufus RoUen |
Rode |
|
|
1913 |
Ed. McCarty |
Rode |
|
|
Harry Brennan |
Pulled |
||
|
Bob Cavin |
Rode |
||
|
1914 |
Paul Hansen |
Thrown |
|
|
N. McKay |
Pulled |
6 |
|
|
John Judd |
Rode |
||
|
1915 |
Johnson Barnhart |
Rode |
|
|
Jack Sundown |
Rode |
||
|
1916 |
Everett Wilson |
Pulled |
|
|
Earl Manderville |
Rode |
Throws
228
|
Year |
Rider |
Result |
Rides |
|
|
1913 |
W. S. MacHaffey |
Rode |
||
|
1914 |
C. Plant B. GotUef |
Thrown Thrown |
||
|
Casey Jones |
1915 |
C. McKinley Ed. McCarty Dell Blancett |
Thrown Rode Rode |
5 |
|
1916 |
Jack Sundown |
Rode |
||
|
Clay Porter |
Rode , |
|||
|
1913 |
W. E. Powell Earl Smith H. S. McCrea |
Disqu. Pulled Rode |
||
|
Butter Creek |
1914 |
Art Acord |
Rode |
4 |
|
1915 |
Cliff Gerard Jim Massey |
Thrown Rode |
||
|
1916 |
Roy Jones |
Rode |
||
|
1915 |
Henry Warren |
Pulled 1 |
||
|
Old Colonial |
1916 |
Ed. McCarty Yakima Cannutt |
Rode Rode |
2 |
|
• |
John Maggert |
Thrown. |
||
|
1913 |
Harv McCrea Henry Webb Lee Caldwell |
Disqu. " Rode Rode |
||
|
Wiggles |
X915 |
Bill Cover J. B. Woodall |
Disqu. Rode |
5 |
|
1916 |
Simon Jack M. Thompson |
Rode Thrown |
||
|
• |
Jack Sundown |
Rode - |
||
|
1915 |
Fred Heide R. S. Hall |
Rode Rode |
||
|
Angel |
1916 |
Rufus RoUen D. Henderson |
Rode Thrown |
4 |
|
■ |
Jack Sundown |
Rode |
||
|
[ 1913 |
G. E. Attebury |
Rode ] |
||
|
M'Kay |
Bill Gerking |
Rode } 2 |
||
|
I 1916 |
Joe Hayes |
Thrown] |
||
|
1913 |
Claud Franklin |
Pulled |
||
|
Crooked River • |
Henry Webb |
Rode r |
||
|
.1914 |
E. A. CalHson |
Disqu. |
||
|
1913 |
'. Ben Corbett |
Rode |
||
|
' ioot Gibson |
Thrown |
|||
|
. ack Hawn |
Rode |
6 |
||
|
Mrs. Wiggs |
1914 |
ack Fretz |
Rode |
|
|
Dell Blancett |
Rode |
|||
|
Allen Holt |
Rode |
|||
|
. 1916 |
Frank Smith |
Rode |
Throw
229
THE RODE AND THROWN TABLE
BEING A NUMERICAL RECORD OF THE ENTRIES, WITHDRAWALS (PULL-OUTS), RIDES, THROWS, AND DISQUALIFICATIONS OF THE ROUND-UP BUCKAEOO CONTESTANTS OVER A PERIOD OF EIGHT YEARS.
September il September 12, Friday
September 13, Saturday
Thursday p.m. Morning Afternoon Afternoon Afternoon
Elimination Elimination Elimination Semi-Finals Grand Finals Contests Contests
1913
|
Entries Pulled Out Thrown Disqualified Horse Pell Rode |
Not available |
40 19 14 3 5 8 I C. H. I P. I 0 24 7 1914 |
L |
|
September 24 |
September 25 |
||
|
Entries Pulled Out Thrown Disqualified Rode |
18 I 8 I P. L. 8 |
39 21 16 2 3 S. S. 4 4 P. L. I P. 10 14 191S |
L |
|
September 23 |
September 24 |
||
|
Fntries Pulled Out Thrown Disqualified Rode |
IS 3 4 8 |
18 Not available i u. II I9I6 |
L |
|
September 21 |
September 22 |
||
|
Entries Pulled Out Thrown Disqualified Rode |
16 I 3 0 13 |
30 16 7 3 8 3 0 2 P. IS 8 1917 |
L. |
|
September 20 |
September ai |
||
|
Entries Pulled Out Thrown Disqualified Rode |
17 4 4 0 9 |
SO 19 13 I 5 3 0 0 32 IS 1918 |
|
|
September 19 |
September 20 |
||
|
Entries Pulled Out Thrown Disqualified Rode |
23 3 S 0 16 |
36 3 Not available 7 0 17 |
10
10
14
I
3
O
II
September 26
September 25
IS o
3
I P. L.
II
September 23
14
I a
September 22
17 o I o
16
16
3 3 o
12
Septembei 21,
230
I9I9
|
September i8 |
Sept |
ember 19 |
September 20 |
|||
|
Thursday, P.M. Morning Elimination Elimination Contests Contests |
Afternoon Elimination |
Afternoon Semi-Finals |
Afternoon Grand Finals |
|||
|
Entries Pulled Out Thrown Disqualified Horse Fell Rode |
21 3 7 3P. L. 8 |
38 IS 6 2 I 14 |
23 IS 4 0 8 1920 |
IS 4 3 0 5 |
3 |
|
|
September 23 |
Sept |
ember 24 |
September 25 |
|||
|
Entries Pulled Out Thrown Disqualified Horse Fell Rode |
II 2 2 I 6 |
12 4 2 2 I 3 |
13 I 4 0 8 |
13 0 3 0 10 |
4 |
Pulled out means withdrew. C. H. indicates changed hand.
P. L. indicates pulled leather. S. S. saddle slipped.
On the afternoons of the first and second days (Thursday and Friday) of the Round-Up the riders contest for places in the semi- finals. A certain number of buckers are ridden and a certain num- ber of buckaroos are eliminated. Because of the great number of contestants, sometimes numbering over two hundred, it is necessary to hold an elimination contest on Friday morning as well. A fair number of the entrants pull out which indicates the number of star buckers put on at the Round-Up. Only sixteen riders having the highest rating come through these elimination contests. They are selected for the semi-finals which are the first bucking contests held on the afternoon of the last day (Saturday) of the Round-Up.
From the sixteen contestants in the semi-finals four star riders are chosen. Three only are selected to compete in the grand finals which follow the semi-finals. The fourth man is held in reserve to be put in to compete for third place in case any one of the first three chosen are thrown.
As yet, — and this is a remarkable tribute to the jugdment of the judges — the fourth man has never been used, as a grand final rider has never been thrown in the entire history of the Round-Up, though many failed to scratch their mounts.
These three riders then draw from a hat the names of the horses they are to ride, contesting respectively for the first, second and third bucking horse championships of the world.
231
THE BUCKING-TIME TABLE
showing the length of time the buckaroo riders stayed in the
saddle during the elimination contests, the semi-finals and
finals in the bucking horse contests at the i917 round-up
Elimination Contest
Friday a.m., September 21, 1917
|
Entry |
Time in |
|||
|
No. |
Rider |
Horse |
Result |
Seconds |
|
75 |
S. D. Sloan |
Bear Cat |
Refused ride |
|
|
62 |
Isaac Williams |
Mexicana |
Rode |
15 |
|
154 |
Jake Luke |
Jack Sundown |
||
|
54 |
Bob Hall |
Aragon |
Rode |
2lf |
|
146 |
Fred Harding |
Crooked River |
Rode |
i8| |
|
15 |
Silver Han- |
Okanogan |
Thrown |
I5f |
|
45 |
Lee Mathis |
Oregon Steamboat |
||
|
153 |
Isaac Anthony |
Poncho Villa |
Rode |
18 |
|
133 |
Dan Thompson |
Weiser |
||
|
160 |
Bert Gathff |
Windmill |
||
|
136 |
L. R. Kuydendall |
Snake |
Rode |
19 |
|
35 |
Pete Wilson |
Shelall |
Rode |
30 |
|
38 |
Fred Nicholas |
Buckskin B. |
Rode |
I3f |
|
143 |
Paul Venable |
Kaiser |
Thrown |
15 |
|
138 |
Francis Narciss |
Brown Jugg |
Rode |
III |
|
82 |
Dave White |
Tango |
||
|
155 |
Mack Guant |
Izee |
||
|
74 |
Scoop Martin |
Hot Lake |
Rode |
I6| |
|
76 |
H. C. Nieter |
Powder River |
Rode |
15 |
|
28 |
Harold Ahalt |
Hesitation |
Rode |
18 |
|
113 |
W. Whitmore |
Spanish Molly |
Rode |
25 |
|
34 |
John Muir |
Gipsy |
Rode |
I6t |
|
10 |
Rich Shockley |
Buggs |
Rode |
21 |
|
51 |
Tom Baize |
Introduction |
||
|
102 |
Wm. Brown |
Butter Creek |
Rode |
II |
|
2 |
Bill Baker |
King Spain |
Rode |
151 |
|
40 |
Andre Jack |
John Ice water |
Rode |
»9 |
|
97 |
B. H. Murray |
Bill Buck |
||
|
96 |
Jim Lewis |
Hot Foot |
232
Rider
80 C. Manderville ^59 Lee Monah i\26 Ora de Mille Ijj5 Geo. French
7 Jim Lynch 139 P. Scoggins
115 P. Pierce
JLOi D. Heyler
/122 G. Fletcher
157 P. Bymer
53 Ed. McGilvray
46 E. Bouchard
20 B. Ewing
104 J. Judd
26 S. Luton
120 M. Thompson
; 86 P. Shippentower
41 W. Cain
13 E. Newquist
32 T. Grimes
18 B. Anderson
158 Dave Myers 145 Narcise McKay
79 A. Spadden
27 Wilkins WiUiams 73 Clarence Plant
81 Kenneth Barrett 127 Dock Osbom 161 Earl McCullough
99 Ed. McCarty
156 Dan Condon
17 Bill Ridings
137 John Maggert
8 Yakima Cannutt 151 John Spain
105 Tom Douglas 64 Dave White 60 Jay Talbot
114 Bob Bunke
70 Ben Oakes
|
Time in |
||
|
Horse |
Result |
Seconds |
|
Spit Fire |
||
|
North Powder |
Rode |
14 |
|
Sad Sam |
Rode |
22 |
|
Squaw Creek |
||
|
High Tower |
Fell |
22 |
|
Dick Rawlins |
Rode |
I9i |
|
Scar Legs |
||
|
Black Diamond |
Rode |
7§ |
|
Nutcracker |
Rode |
I5f |
|
Hellfirejack |
Rode |
I2f |
|
D. Robbin |
Rode |
i8f |
|
Lookout |
Thrown |
9 |
|
Sundance |
Rode— Pulled |
I7f |
|
P. J. Nutt |
Rode |
I5f |
|
Bango |
Rode |
22 |
|
Wardalopa |
Thrown |
7 |
|
Dimple |
Rode |
15I |
|
G. Minthom |
Rode |
i6i |
|
Sunnybrook |
Rode |
155 |
|
Carrie Nation |
||
|
Calgary |
Rode |
15 |
|
Monkey Wrench |
Thrown |
5 |
|
Lightfoot |
Rode |
I3f |
|
Bill McMurray |
Rode |
14I |
|
Corbett |
Rode |
28 |
|
Wiggles |
Rode |
14 |
|
Cyclone |
Rode |
I8f |
|
Smithy |
Rode |
19 |
|
Culdesac |
Rode |
17 |
|
Grave Digger |
Rode |
15 |
|
Headlight |
Thrown |
9 |
|
Long Creek |
Rode |
i5f |
|
McKay |
Rode |
8 |
|
Whistling Annie |
Rode |
I7i |
|
Mrs. Wiggs |
Rode |
i6i |
|
Tom Stevens |
Rode |
m |
|
Fire Alarm |
Rode |
Hi |
|
Angel |
Rode |
26I |
|
Old Colonial |
Rode |
23i |
233
SEMI-FINALS September 22, 1917
|
Entry |
Time in |
|||
|
No. |
Rider |
Horse |
Result |
Seconds |
|
104 |
John Judd |
Wiggles |
Rode |
I8| |
|
53 |
Ed. McGilvray |
Okanogan |
Thrown |
4 |
|
2 |
Bill Baker |
Jackson Sundown |
Rode |
12 |
|
99 |
Ed. McCarty |
Sundance |
Rode |
15 |
|
85 |
Paul Hastings |
Bear Cat |
Rode |
13 |
|
133 |
Dan Thompson |
Smithy |
Rode |
i4i |
|
114 |
Robert Burke |
Lightfoot |
Rode |
10 |
|
64 |
Dave White |
Oregon Steamboat |
Rode |
i7i |
|
8 |
Yakima Cannutt |
Corbett |
Rode |
16 |
|
no |
Leonard Stroud |
Whistling Annie |
Rode |
I5f |
|
54 |
Bob Hall |
Monkey Wrench |
Rode |
23 |
|
35 |
Pete Wilson |
Speedball |
Rode |
13 |
|
146 |
Fred Harding |
Casey Jones |
Rode |
12 |
|
12 |
Tex Smith |
Bango |
Rode |
I5f |
|
39 |
: 'aul Scoggins |
Aragon |
Rode |
15 |
|
34 |
^ ohn Muir |
Wardalopa |
Rode |
I5i |
|
34 |
John Muir |
Tom Stevens FINALS |
Rode |
|
|
8 |
Yakima Cannutt |
Culdesac |
Rode |
I4i |
|
64 |
Dave White |
P. J. Nutt |
Rode |
14 |
|
54 |
Bob Hall |
Angel |
Rode |
i7i |
234
TIPS TO THE TENDERFOOT
For terms relating to "harness" see under "bit and bridle" and "saddle" ; to riding under "bucking-horse riding" ; to kinds of buckers under "bucking" ; to any kind of horse under "horse"; to any kind of range cattle under "steer" ; to saddling and "taking-up" horses under "wrangling."
BAD LANDS — alkali, clayey or desert land, poor or imcultivable.
BAD MAN— outlaw.
BAND — a very small herd of horses, cattle, sheep or men on the
range. BEEF CRITTER— a cattle old and heavy enough to be sold for beef. BIT AND BRIDLE
Bit — comprises mouthpiece, bit cheeks and chains. Bridle — comprises bridle cheeks or side leathers; brow band over eyes; throat latch, going around neck under ears and curb strap under jaw, all of which comprise the headstall which, with reins included, is considered a bridle. Halter — a simplified headstall but usually of heavier leather with- out a brow band, used for tethering or leading, for which purpose a halter rope is attached. Hackamore — comprises a bosal or rawhide loop noose over horse's nose with a light strap attached to each side and going over the head. A small light 5-16" rope to give strength is attached to the knot, under-chin end of the bosal by special knots called "theodore" knots. From this junction this rope extends be- yond the theodore knots and is used as a leading rope. Hackamore Rope — is a rope by skillful looping of which a hacka- more form of headplate is improvised. BREAK RANGE— running off the range.
235
TIPS TO THE TENDERFOOT
BREAKING— conquering and taming and training a horse by force and fight.
BOYS — cowboys or hands on a ranch.
BRONCHO BUSTER — a cowboy who rides and breaks wild or unbroken horses.
BUCKAROO — or a broncho-buster — a cowboy who can ride and then some. Applied generally to the riders who take part in the Round-Up.
BUCKER— see "horses."
BUCKING — gyrations of a horse to unseat a rider. Bucking Straight Away— bucking that consists of long jumps straight ahead without twisting, whirling or rearing. Usually not difficult for a buckaroo to ride. Sunfishing — a movement which some bucking horses have, con- sisting particularly of a posterior twist, alternately left and right, as the animal bucks, so that the horse's body, when it rises in the air is in the form of an arc. A sunfisher is generally a very difficult animal to ride.
High Roller or High Poler— a horse that leaps high into the air when bucking.
BUCKING-HORSE RIDING OR ROUGH-RIDING— riding un- tamed horses that buck. ^ Riding Slick — consists in riding with the usual cowboy equip- ment, i.e., saddle, chaps, and spurs and without aid of hobbled stirrups, locked spurs or bucking rolls. " Slick Heels — riding without spurs.
Locked Spurs — spurs in which rowels have been fastened so they will not move. When these spurs are held firmly in the cinch it is impossible for a horse to unseat its rider. They are also barred.
Throwing the Steel — synonymous with raking and scratching. Using the spurs.
Scratching — the act of a buckaroo while riding a bucking horse in using his spurs to make the animal buck its hardest. In scratching, the buckaroo must necessarily allow the legs to be free and thus take more chances. If a broncho-buster scratches a bad horse, he is generally making a good ride.
Raking— synonymous with scratching. Generally applies when rider gives his legs a free sweep, rolling the rowels of his spurs along the horse's side from shoulder to rump. Sometimes called scratching fore and aft. One of the highest accompHsh- ments coveted by the broncho-buster.
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TIPS TO THE TENDERFOOT
Riding Straight Up — the rider of a bucking horse sitting erect in
his saddle, one hand holding the halter rope and the other high
in the air "fanning" with hat. Close Seat — a seat in the saddle which is steady and firm. An
important consideration in the eyes of the judges. Riding Safe — sitting tight in the saddle, the legs tightly gripping
the horse's sides and the spurs generally set firmly in the cinch. Riding Sloppy — sitting loosely in the saddle, allowing body to
wave and flop about in response to the gyrations of the animal.
It is sometimes called "grandstand " riding but is not considered
good form in a contest. Seeing Daylight — a term applied when daylight can be seen
between the rider and the seat of his saddle. ^ Pulling Leather — holding on to any part of the saddle, usually the
horn to steady oneself. A rider who pulls leather is in dis
grace and is disqualified as surely as is one who is thrown. Most
cowboys will allow themselves to be thrown before they will
pull leather. -- Choking the Biscuit — nearly synonymous with " pulling leather."
Sometimes called "choking the horn." Consists in catching
hold of the horn of the saddle in order to keep from being thrown. Biting the Dust — cowboy term for being thrown from a bucking
horse and usually follows after "choking the biscuit." It also
often happens to many hungry for adventure on the hurricane
deck of a bucking bronc. BUNCH — applied to a small herd of horses or cattle or group of men. BUNCHGRASSERS — range horses living on bunchgrass. CATTLE — a general term sometimes used for both bovines and
equines; in lieu of the singular case the same word can be used. CATTLE RUSTLER— cattle thief.
CATTALOE — a hybrid offspring of a buffalo and a cattle. CAVY — a band of saddle horses used on a round-up. CHUCK WAGON — cook wagon which accompanies an outfit of
cowboys or others working on the range. COWBOY or VAQUERO (Sp.)— cowhand; ranch-hand, one of that
adventurous class of herders and drovers of the plains and ranges
of the western United States who does his work on horseback.
He is famed for his hardiness, recklessness and daring. CRITTER — any man or beast,
CUT OUT — to work out and separate animals from the herd. FORTY FIVE — a .45 caliber revolver, usually a Colts or Smith and
Wesson.
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TIPS TO THE TENDERFOOT
GENTLING — any gentle method of taming an unbroken or
untrained horse. GRISETTE— ask the A. E. F. GYPPING — fooling or deceiving.
HIGHWAY ROUND— the natural way of living and dying. HITCHED — a pack, a horse or anything tied up with a rope. HI-YU-SKOOKUM — Indian jargon used by Cayuse and Nez Perce
tribes meaning "very good." HOBBLES — a short rope or any arrangement used for tying the fore
fetlocks of a horse near together to prevent straying. HONDA — the mettle piece inside the " eye ' ' splice of a lariat through
which the noose of the rope travels. HORSE RUSTLER— horse thief. HORSES— often pronounced "hoss" or "hawse." Broncho or Bronch (K or without h) — a Spanish word applied to
the small native Mexican horse meaning rough and wild, now
applied to any untamed range horse. Cayuse — an Indian pony; also the name of one of the tribes of
Indians now located on the Umatilla reservation, members of
which participate in the Round-Up. Cuitan — Indian name for pony. Also called by cowboys bob-tail,
fuzz-tail and mustang. Outlaw — sometimes called a "bad one" is a horse whose spirit is
unconquerable and which can never be broken to ride. He
always fights and always bucks. The animals ridden in the
Round-up bucking contests are outlaws of the worst type to be
found in the world. Slick-Ear — sometimes used synonymously with maverick but is
usually applied to unbranded horses. Comes from the practice
among early day horsemen of slitting the ears of their horses
to distinguish them, so a horse with smooth or unslit ears was as
good as unbranded. A slick-ear can no more be claimed than a
maverick. Wild Horse — a native of the range that has never been ridden or
broken. He may be a bucker or may not. The animals ridden
in the wild horse race each day have never had more than a
rope on them since the day of their birth. Many of them have
seen but a few men in all their lives. HOBBLED STIRRUPS— see under saddle. JERK WATER — applied to a little, insignificant place where trains
stop only to take or jerk on water for the engine. LASHER — man who handles the lash or whip on a stagecoach.
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TIPS TO THE TENDERFOOT
LARIAT or LASSO— often called "rope" or "lass rope" made of plaited rawhide or hemp with a small loop or an eye splice shrunk over a brass honda at one end through which free end is run, thus forming the noose.
MOUNTING PONY EXPRESS— mounting to the saddle without the aid of the stirrups. Consists in the rider grabbing the horn of the saddle, starting his horse on a gallop, bounding two or three times by his side and leaping over the cantle into the seat. So called after the fashion of pony express riders in mounting to save time.
MUCK-A-MUCK — Cayuse Indian jargon for food.
MUSTANG — see under horses.
NESTLER — homesteader or squatter.
OUTFIT — a. term applying to the equipment of man, horse, group of men, ranch or a large concern, or to the men, horses them- selves and to the complement of a ranch or concern or any group or part thereof.
'ONERY — possibly an abbreviation for honorary, meaning mean, untractable or worthless.
PASSENGER — in stagecoach race the cowboys who ride to balance coach to keep it from capsizing at the turns.
PARD — pardner, partner.
PERALTA — the band or herd of cattle rounded up for cutting out.
PLUM CULTUS — expression meaning as bad as they make them, cussed est; cultus comes from the Indians.
POSSE — band of men organized to run down a man or a small band of men usually outlaws or thieves.
QUIRT — see under saddle.
RAN A BUTCHER SHOP AND GOT HIS CATTLE MIXED— stole or rustled cattle and was found out.
RED EYE or NOSE PAINT— whiskey.
ROPE— see "lasso."
ROPIN'— lassooing.
ROUGH-RIDING— riding a bucking horse.
SADDLE — western saddle, cowboy saddle. This saddle is a distinct type comprising the following parts: Tree — a frame of wood covered with rawhide. Horn — formerly of wood, now of steel, covered with rawhide. Fork — the front part of the tree and supports horn. Gullet — curved portion of under side of the fork. Cantle — raised back to the saddle seat. Side Jockeys — leather side extensions of seat.
239
TIPS TO THE TENDERFOOT
Back Jockeys — top skirts the uppermost broad leathers joining
behind cantle. Skirts or Suderderos — (old Spanish) broad under leathers which
go next to the horse. Stirrup Leathers — broad leathers hung from the bar of the tree
and from which stirrups hang. Strings — underlying purpose to hold saddle leathers together but
ends are tied and left hanging, which adds to appearance as well
as usefulness in tying on things carried. Fenders or Rosideros — broad leather sweat protectors swinging
from stirrup leathers. " '
Rigging — middle leathers attached to tree connecting with and
supporting cinch by latigos through rigging ring. Cinch or Cincha (Sp.) — a girth of horsehair, leather, cotton or
mohair strapped under horse's belly to cinch or hold the saddle
on. Rubber Cinch — an elastic cinch used in relay races to save time in
changing saddles. i
Cinch or Cincha Rings — on each end of the cincha. Latigos — leather straps hanging from either side from the rigging
ring, other ends run through cinch rings used to tighten up
cincha. Nigger Catcher — small slotted leather flap on one or both sides of
saddle, usually at base of cantle or fork or both. Purpose is to
hold long free end of latigo through slit when cinched up. Stirrup — foot support usually of wood bound with iron or brass or
raw hide. Sometimes all iron or brass. Hobbled Stirrups — stirrups tied to each other by a leather thong
running under the horse's belly. With stirrups hobbled, it is
almost the same as if the rider were tied in the saddle and there
is no play to the stirrups. Hobbled stirrups are not allowed in
bucking contests except that some women riders are allowed to
use them if they choose. Tapideros or Taps — leather stirrup covers which serve as protec- tion against cold and rain, especially through wet brush or
grass, from i8" to 20" in length. They are mostly for effect,
though some claim the stirrups ride better. In summer they
are discarded. Quirt — a short heavy plaited pliable leather riding whip, used by
cowboys. Seat — the easiest thing to find on a saddle but the hardest to keep. SCRUB-TAIL — see under horses.
240
TIPS TO THE TENDERFOOT
SEEING DAYLIGHT— see under rough- riding. SHORT CUT — hanging or shooting a man summarily. SLICK-EAR— see under "horses" and "steers." STEER — young male of the ox kind, usually with wide-spreading horns especially raised for beef. In the western United States one of any age. Range steers are dangerous to men on foot. Maverick — an unbranded bullock or heifer. Said to be derived from the name of a Texas cattleman who neglected to brand his cattle. Slick-Ear — sometimes applied to steers. See under "horses." STEER BULLDOGGING — a practice among cowboys consisting of wrestling with a steer barehanded. Usually the cowboy rides along-side the racing steer, leans over, seizes the horns of the animal and swings to the ground. Then, using the horns as levers, he twists the head of the steer until its muzzle points upward, falls backward, thus throwing the steer off its balance. In exhibitions the cowboy fastens his teeth in the upper lip of the steer, releases the horns and holds the animal prostrate with his teeth. Hoolihatxing — another form of buUdogging consists in forcing the horns of the running animal suddenly into the ground and thus turning the animal a complete somersault. However, this form is more dangerous to man and beast and is most cruel, inasmuch as the animal's horns are frequently broken. STEER BUSTING — popular name for roping ar * throwing a steer
with a lariat single handed. STEER ROPING — the art of capturing, busting and hogtieing a range steer single-handed. Hogtieing — tieing together of the forefeet and one hind foot after a steer has been lassoed and thrown. The process must be quick in order to prevent the steer rising after he has been thrown. STICK-UP-MAN — highwayman, stage robber. STRAYS — cattle or horses which have mixed in with a herd but do
not belong to it. STUFF — applied to a lot of cattle, horses, etc. WANTED — said of a man desired by the law. "WILD BUNCH — any untamed herd of men, women or horses. WRANGLING — rounding up, catching and saddling range horses. Wrangler — a buckaroo who handles the buckers in the arena and assists the rider in saddling his horse. This wrangling is often the most difficult and dangerous part of the task in subduing a wild horse.
241
TIPS TO THE TENDERFOOT
Snubbing — the act of tying the horse's head to some fixed object, usually through the fork and the horn of a saddle on another horse.
Pick Him Up! or Take Him Up I or Cage Him Up! — cries given by the judges to mounted helpers or "pick up men" after a horse has bucked itself out and meaning to overtake and catch the animal so that the rider can dismount and the saddle be removed. WIND-UP, THE — of the year's range work is the round-up. This is the annual gathering of cattle from the ranges for branding of young stock and selection of beef for market. In the old days large outfits of cowboys with their cook or "chuck" wagons covered hundreds of miles of territory. Some of these round- ups lasted several weeks, usually winding up with a jollification in which all the cowboys participated in their most popular pastimes and contests. The Epic Drama of the West in its cowboy and Indian carnival, epitomizes the whole gamut of range life and sounds the spirit of its clarion call in T^he Round- Up Slogan— LET 'ER BUCK!
I
242
Jl Selection from the Catalogue of
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Complete Catalogues sent on application
Handbook of
Yosemite National
Park
Compiled and Edited by
Ansel F. Hall
U. S. National Park Service
Much lias been written of " The Valley Incom- parable," and the 1 100 square miles of Scenic High Sierra which have been set aside as a play- ground for the people.
But there still remains the task of satisfying the thousands who seek definite information con- cerning its history, ethnology, botany, geology, camp- and trail-craft, natural history, and related subjects. No one man can be master of all these branches of knowledge, so the editor presents this collection of articles each by an eminent authority.
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
Prairie Flowers
By
James B. Hendryx
Author of " The Texan "
When Tex Benton said he'd do a thing, he did it, as readers of " The Texan " will affirm. So when, after a year of drought, he an- nounced his purpose of going to town to get thoroughly "lickered up," unsuspecting Tim- ber City was elected as the stage for a most thorough and sensational orgy.
But neither Tex nor Timber City could foresee the turbulent chain of events which were to result from his high, if indecorous, resolve, here set down — the wild tale of an untamed West.
A well-known writer, who has served his apprenticeship in the cow country, said the other day, " I like Hendryx's stories — they're real. His boys are the boys I used to work with and know. His West is the West I learned to love."
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
\
The
Night Horseman
A Tale of Wild'-riding Herdsmen and
Outlaws, and their Deeds of
Daring and Deviltry
By
Max Brand
A well-known English critic said of The Untamed — "There are in it passages of ex- traordinary power — the whole conception is very bold." And no less bold nor less powerful is its sequel The Night Horseman, Once again we ride in company with "Whist- lin* Dan," the fearless, silent, mysterious chap who shares the instincts of wild things, and once again we engage with him in his desperate adventures, hair-breadth escapes, and whirlwind triumphs. A novel thrilling in its reality, which will not be put down by lovers of exciting fiction.
6. P. Putnam's Sons
New York London
HS