Evening Star Newspaper, July 5, 1931, Page 54

' 2 THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JULY S, 1931. R R et s s e e e e e Jonely post of Fort Mann on the Arkansas, it is more than half a thousand milea to the next settlement, and all the country in between belongs to the Indian and the buffalo. For a hundred miles in the twilight and then la dark- ness Aubry listens to the creak of saddle . Jeather. In the dead of night he passes a Mex- ican pack train, hardly slackening his gallop while exchanges adioses with the camp guard. The dawn is not yet gray when, nearing Point of Rocks, he gives the long drawn out ‘“‘coyete yell” of the West, and a man whom he sent out a week ago stirs the coal around a pot of coffee and draws in the stake rope of a fresh mount. It is the beautiful mare Dolly, famed for her speed and endurance. On a memorable trip five years from now she will take Aubry to California and back. She nickers as she senses her master. “I'd kill every horse on the Santa Fe Trail before I'd lose that $1,000 bet,” says Aubry to his man, “but it's not the money I care about. Tl bet another thousand that I do not kill a single horse.” The man by the fire of buffalo chips does not have time to answer. He has changed the sad- dle. Aubry has gulped down a quart of boiling coffee and has mounted with a hunk of broiled buffalo meat in his hand. “Adios!” He rides on. The high, dry country recedes behind him, and a chill Autumn drizzle hides the sun. He cannot see Rabbit Ear Mounds, but he knows where they mark the edge of the wide, flat plains. He splashes into Rabbit Ear Creek and takes the bridle off at roaring Wil- low Bar. But where are the relay horses that were to be here? Indians? A dead man's scalped bead answers. Beautiful Dolly must go on. On, on, until she has carried Aubry 150 miles, Dolly gallops. At the Cimarron of the quicksands there are three fresh horses. Aubry mounts one and cracks his whip over the others. He need not spare horseflesh now. He is 350 miles from the old church at Santa Fe, and his ride is not half done. Past Coon Creek he rushes, past Pawnee Rock, where so many good men have bit the dust and about which for ages to come men will tell a strange Indian legend. Then suddenly the last of the three horses— Aubry having ridden the other two down and left them behind—sways, drags his feet. In a minute Aubry has unsaddled, hidden his saddle and blanket in the grass, and bridle in hand, is trotting on East afoot. For 20 miles he trots like & coyote and walks until he reaches the crossing of the Arkansas that is still called by his name, Aubry's Crossing. It is well that a fresh horse awaits him there. The water looks a mile wide. At Fort Mann Aubry is compelled to see a certain man on important business. The man is away shooting buffaloes, expected back im- mediately. Aubry lies down and sleeps two hours while he waits—the only sleep out of the saddle that he gets on the entire trip. At Council Grove he pauses only long enough for coffee to boil; then, tying himself to a fresh horse, rides on. He legs are dead, and it is 150 miles to Independence yet. It takes him 2 full day’s time to make that last lap. For 24 hours the sky has rained *pitchforks and bob- tailed heifer yearlings.” At Big John's Springs he meets a trapper and swaps horses With him. WHEN he draws rein in Independence town his words are a whisper. It is late in the night of September 17, 1848. “Noland’s,” called by some the Merchant’s Hotel, is alight, though, and men rush out from the bar and lift the rider from his saddle. It is caked with blood. Felix Xavier Aubry has won his bet. A year after the race, the newest and fastest steamboat on the Missouri River was named the F. X. Aubry. Between her smokestacks she had the earved image of a little man on horse- back. That was fame. Aubry with 5 feet and 2 inches tall. He weighed 100 pounds and was every ounce mus- cle and bone. They called him “Little Aubry.” He was a quiet and modest man, though he loved fame and adventure. He was a leader, a master of men. He admired good and brave men and good and brave horses. His ride to In- dependence was the greatest ride recorded in history. It will never be forgotten. The legends of the Tartars and Scythians do not recall its equal. - Nof one man in 100,000 coul ride like Aubry. The strain of hard horseback riding is terrific. Baffalo Bill knew whereof he was speaking when he declared that “15 miles an hour on horseback would in a short time shake any man all to pieces.”” Aubry was made out of rawhide. Rawhide does not shake; its elasticity is proverbial. Yet Aubry was not singular; he represented a varied and numerous class. Pony Express men relaying each other to bridge 2,000 miles of wild lands in less than eight days belonged to the class. Cowboys who rub- bed tobacco juice in their eeyes to keep awake while riding after stampeded cattle up the Chisholm Trail and who night and day fought Comanches and held their thirst-maddened herds along the Goodnight-Loving Trail across the Pecos Desert became glorified figures in the class. Outlaws and rangers who tore down mesquite brush and plunged through hot prick- ly pear thickets in Southwest Texas added im- mensely to its riding tradition. Men who fol- lowed Custer through the snow and ice of the bitter Northwest belonged to it, too. The dust from the hoofs of these riding men’s horses has mingled with the dust of the stars. The Pony Express men will always be heroes In the romance of the West. They had an astounding endurance. But in contrasting their rides with those of lone horsemen, like Aubry, out on their own hooks, certain facts should be remembered. Behind the Pony Express men was an extraordinary system. Under normal conditions they changed horses every 15 or 20 miles.. A fresh horse freshens the rider. No two horses on earth have the same gait. Jaded cowboys on jaded ponies sotnetimes swap with each other, to the relief of both man and horse. In his noted ride of 322 miles in 24 hours and 40 minutes; Buffalo Bill, Pony Express man, used up 21 head of horses and hands of a score of station men to speed him along. Nevertheless, it was a magnificent i A generation accustomed to gas and electric power, and largely ignorant of everything ex- cept their own mechanical environments, might regard these records as paltry. Nobody nowa- days knows how far a mile is. The only way to know is to walk 10 miles or ride 50, either on a horse or in a wagon. It must be remem- bered that in the horse age 50 or 60 miles on one mount was considered a fair day's ride. Eighty or a hundred was something to mention. After all, speed is always relative. The rate of the swiftest monoplane is a snail’'s pace com- pared with the rate at which light travels. The sense of speed realized by modern trav- elers has not at all been intensified by in- creased velocity. A runaway team of mustangs hitched to a buckboard will give the driver a much more intense sense of motion than will the fastest moving limousine. A powerful horse racing down a trail, stones and fire glancing from his hoofs, his mouth tugging against the bits, his heart drumming against the rider's legs, the play of his muscles and the fact of his vitality all passing into the rider's body will give to the rider a sense of motion far keener than that conveyed to its pilot by an airplane cutting through the clouds at the rate of 100 miles an hour. 3 NLY a few men are alive now to tell the story of the ride made by John Booth in Texas 60 years ago. It has, I suppose, never been mentioned in print, but once it was the talk of the cow camps and ranch homes from the Nueces to the Trinity. Along in 1858 two men with® their families, one named Booth and th- cther named Gedrie, were neighboring on the Trinity River in East Texas. Each had a little patch of corn fenced in with brush. One day some cattle belonging to Booth broke into Gedrie's patch and ate up most of it. Gedrie saw them and killed two or three. Booth protested and Gedrie dig with him as hé had done with the cows. Now the dead ranchman had a boy, John, 12 years old, and John shook his fist in the face of his father’s slayer and said, “Gedrie, when I am big I will kill you for killing my pap.” Then the widow Booth moved 300 miles west to the Nueces River—“the dead line of sheriffs,” as it used to be called. The Civil War came on and John enlisted. When the Confederates Stopped fighting he was 19 years old and had been a man for four years. He returned to the Nueces and made open boasts that he was now “big enough” to kill Gedrie. He made the boasts so that they would reach Gedrie and keep him uneasy with the vigilance of the hunted. When Fall brought cool weather he quietly arranged a string of horses so as to have 1 every 30 or 40 miles between the Nueces and the Trinity. It was his private pony express. He had friends. One evening he rode up to the house of a neighboring ranchman. After supper he asked the rancher the date of the month, the day of the week, and even the hour by the clock. In such out-of-the-way places such questions were not unusual. “Would you swear in court that I was at your ranch on the date and at the hour you have given me?” asked Booth. “Of course 1 would,” replied the rancher. “Then write the time of my visit down in the Bible.” The great family Bible was brought out and on one of those pages provided for vital sta- tistics the facts were slowly written, the wit- nesses signing their names. It was October 20, 7 o'clock (sun time), 1865. John Booth said good night, mounted his horse and was lost in the darkness. According to evidence later brought out, when Gedrie on the morning of October 22 started to ride away from his ranch shack in the Trinity Valley his wife came running out with a shotgun in her hand. “Here,” she called, “you are getting too care- less. You know that John Booth is going to try to kill you sooner or later.” “Oh,” replied Gedrie, “I have had so many messages from him that I am getting to be- lieve he is nothing but a bluff. Besides,” slap- ping his hip, “I'm purty well heeled with this here old hogleg.” EVERTHELESS, he took the shotgun and rode off. Twenty-four hours later a rider- less horse hung his head against the gate cpening into the Gedrie horse lot. As in the old border ballad, recited by David Crockett on another occasion, “To hame came the saddle, all bluidy to see, And hame came the steed, but hame never came he.” It was about an hour by sun on the morning "of October 25 when John Booth walked his horse up to the ranch where his last visit had been recorded in the family Bible. Right under . the record was added, at his request, the hour of his return. Some weeks passed, and then one day the rangers appeared at the Booth ranch with a warrant of arrest for John. He peaceably sub- mitted. In the session of District Court that followed he was charged with having killed Gedrie. A jury was impaneled to try him; witnesses were summoned. The State proved that John Booth had threatened to kill Gedrie; it proved that Gedrie had been killed. The de- fense proved that John Booth had been on the Nueces 300 miles away two days before Gedrie met his death and that he had again been seen on the Nueces hardly more than two days later. The alibi was incontrovertible. The jury to a man said that no human being could have ridden 300 miles, killed a man, and then have ridden back 300 miles in the four days and five nights that Booth had not accounted for. Booth was freed, and many times afterward he told, not without pride, of the wonderful ride and the vengeance he had done. The law is that after a man has been tried in the courts and declared innocent he cannot be tried again for the same offense. An encyclopedia might be compiled of tales still current about cowboy rides. Many of them are more interesting for some issue involved than for extraordinary endurance horse. Here is one such story that man in a neat little meeting of the Trail San Antonjo. He would be spotted as a cow- man anywhere, and a biography of him would be the history of the cattle industry since it became recognized as an industry in America. His name is W. B. Slaughter; his friends call him “Bill”; some people refer to him as “Buf- falo Bill” Slaughter—from his having driven a herd of 104 buffaloes from the Texas Panhan- dle to Fort Garland, Colo. The Slaughter men have been riding in Texas for 100 years. The father of the family was a cowman on the New Orleahs Beef Trail at the time of the battle of San Jacinto. After the Civil War the Slaugh- ter brothers handled cattle by the tens of thou- sands from the Rio Grande to the Platte, driv- ing them over a dozen trails. Their descend- ants still ranch over Texas and Atizona. When Bill Slaughter was 15 years old he rode half way across Texas with $20,000 in gold in a pair of old saddlebags. But the ride he recalls oftenest was that to Fort Mason with $25,000. “Early in 1875, as he tells the story, “just before grass had started, my brother, J. B. Slaughter and I—he was 19 and I was 23— came down from North Texas to Mason County and contracted for 1,500 head of steers at $16 around, delivery to be made two months later. I had already handled two herds up the Kansas Trail and figured that we could make some money out of this bunch. 1" [TROM the day we made the contract cattle went up, ard by the date set for delivery those $16 steers were worth $26. Naturally the owners were feeling sore. If they could break the eontract they would make $15,000, and they were the kind of men to break contracts. When we got to Mason with our outfits to receive the cattle and start up the trail, we found a spllen bunch. “‘Have you got the money to pay for these cattle?’ they demanded first thing. “We answered that we had the money. “ ‘Show it.’ “At this time the cattle people were beginning to use bank drafts instead of carrying coin around in Mexican morals and on pack mules. We produced a letter of credit for $50,000 on a Dallas bank. Thdse fellows laughed at it. There was a little bank in the town of Mason, and we took the letter of credit there, but the banker had only $1,000 or so in his safe®and couldn't do a thing for us. The only thing to do was to go to San Antonio and get the cash. I took the stage. “In San Antonio old Col. Breckenridge, the big banker, advised me as to the best kind of money belt to buy and helped me pack $25,000 worth of gold into it. The coins were in de- nominations of $10 and $20. When the money was all packed away, the belt weighed 104 pounds. > “Then I went to a cheap store and dickered for the sorriest hat and the most run-down pair of boots I could find. At one of the horse pens I picked out a pony that looked worthless, but was tough and wiry. I paid $15 for him and $5 for an old shell of a saddle. Toward ‘sundown I set out. My route was across the open range west of the stage road. If I met anybody I was to pass as a greener from Gon- zales looking for a job. “I was expected back in Mason with the cash, and I did not care to meet some of the men expecting me—not until I had got rid of my load. The rough Llano country was at that time the hiding-out place of about the toughest set of outlaws Texas ever had. There were so many of them and they were so bad that two years later the rangers rounded up every man in the country, put the whole herd in a corral, and cut out the goats from the sheep just as you would cut cattle. The good men had noth- ing to fear and were glad to be rid of their neighbors. “The first night out I rode about 50 miles. At daylight I watered my horse and staked him in a little opening surrounded by brush. Then I crawled into a thicket. If the horse was lo- cated by a gang of outlaws, I and my money belt would still be to capture. Of course, I had a six-shooter. At dark I saddled up again and rode on north. About every 15 miles I'd unsaddle and let my pony graze for a spell. When I got close to Mason, instead of going straight in, I made a big circle and came in from the side opposite to that on which I was being expected. I learned later that a few miles down the road the stage from San An- tonio had been carefully looked over by some well armed men. “After we had planked down the cash for our steers, the Mason banker refused to take it on deposit for the ranchmen. No, sir; he did not want any gold in his bank. I guess the owners took it back to San Antonio. Nobody in the country cared to let even his brother know that he had money about. We trailed our cattle on up as far as Red River, and there we sold out at $28 around. After all, the ride was not a hard one, and I have always consid- ered that it was well paid for.” VERY section of the riding West had its riding hero, its saga of the saddle. Up on the old L F D range of the South Plains of Texas there was Charlie Miller, who rode “that brown S I horse” 125 miles in 10 hours flal and then a day or two later offered to bet all he had that he could go back over the same route in the same time. Nobody took him up. “That brown S I horse” was nothing extra —but Charlie was. On the plains at this time one test of a cowboy's ability to ‘“get all a horse had out of him” was in running down and roping “loafers” (lobe wolves). A loafer had to be run four or five miles before a cow- horse could ‘“crawl up” on him sufficiently near for the rider to reach him with a rope. The average cowboy would run his horse down before he got the loafer run down. But Charlie Miller could “fork any sort of old keg tail” and rope a loafer. In Charlie’s time the term a good rider included a good deal more than it now means in the parlance of rodeo stars. Women hardly enter into the tradition, for the range country bad few women. But the deathless theme of Mazeppa's ride is not ab- sent—Mazepps, who, because he loved the young wife of old King Casimir of Poland, was sent forth into the wilderness, e e ¢ “Bound, naked, bleeding, alone. On the back of a wild and frenzied desert- born steed.” In his valuable book “Dodge City, Cowboy Capital,” Bob Wright tells this story “as an example of plains civilization.” On the night of May 27, 1884, a Nebraska ranchman named Wilson found a young Englishmen wih Wil- son's wife. Aided by three cowboys, the *ranchman stripped the Englishman, “mutilated him,” and tied him on the back of a mustang. ‘Then they cut the horse across the haunches with a cow whip and, without bridle or hacka- more, turned him loose on the unfenced prairies. Seven days later the Englishman was res- cued 200 miles distant. During the seven days he had not had food or water and he had not been able to loosen a limb from the knotted ropes. He lived. ‘The bad men called themselves “long riders” and many a bold tale they added to the riding tradition of the West. In his very readable autobiography, “Hard Knocks” (long out of print), Harry Young, old-time mule skinner, cowboy and barkeeper, tells the boldest and most desperate “long rider” yarn that I know of. In ‘the Spring of 1872 ‘“Tucson” Kessler. a half-breed Sioux, rode up to a cabin on the Laramie, called to the door a harmless old, Mexican wood chopper who lived within, and shot him dead. Kessler was captured, taken to Cheyenne, tried and sentenced to be hanged. He was kept in jail, his hands man- acled and his féet shackled with only six inches of chains between the ankles. At the rear of the jail was a stable in which the sheriff kept his coal-black saddle horse, “con- sidered the best in Wyoming.” About 6 o'clock on the evening previous to the day on which he was to be hanged, “Tuc-* son” Kessler mysteriously escaped jail. At 6 o'clock next morning Nick Jennesse, & squaw man who had a lttle ranche on the Platte 90 miles from Cheyenne, saw Kessler swim- ming the river. The horse that Kessler rode was the sheriff’s coal-black. Nick cut the chain that bound the outlaw Indian’s feet together and filed off his handcuffs. Nick Jater described Kessler's manner of rid- ing thus: He was spread out on his stomach, his feet resting on the horse’s loins and his hands down on the horse's withers, holding the bridle reins. But how any man handcuffed and shackled as Kessler was could bridle and mount a horse and then ride him 90 miles in 12 hours is yet a miracle. The man who rides for his life has a spur that no blacksmith ever forged a cunning and power that no riding master ever divined. Still, the Texas Rangers, who roped in hun- dreds of “long riders,” set a pace on horseback that has seldom been surpassed. Sixty years ago when Cortina, “the Red Bandit of the Border,” was making raids across the Rio Bravo, Capt. McNelly's Rangers rode 60 miles between noon and darkness over § rough, brushy, muddy country that it took a troop of United States Cavalry, that followed them, two days to cover. No tale of the spur ever told is more heroic than that of the race of “Portuguese” Phillips against torture and death in the killing cold of a Wyoming Territory blizzard. ATE December of the terrible Winter of 1866 ound a little band of troops—the kind that Frederic Remington knew and made immortal —holed up at Fort Phil Kearney. There were 119 men, including all civillan employves, and there were women and children. A few miles from the fort, Red Cloud, at the head of 3.000 Sioux warriors, had just annihilated Fetter- man’s detachment of 81 soldiers. The 3.000 warriors now encircled the fort. It was the night of December 21. The thermometer stood at 30 degrees below zero. So intense was the cold that the sentries had to be relieved every 15 minutes. The drifting snow was hourly shoveled back from the walls of the stockade so as to prevent the formation of a bridge of entrance for the beleaguering Sioux. No officer slept. Destruction and worse seemed imminent un- less help could be secured. The nearest help was at Fort Laramie, 236 miles down the bleak and empty Bozeman Trail. The commanding officer, Carrington, asked for a volunteer mes- senger. “Portuguese” Phillips answered the call. He had been a Hudson Bay Co. trapper. He knew the country like a coyote. He had lived for years among the Sioux, and had married one of their squaws. He filled his pockets with dried meat and hardtack, tied a bag of grain on his horse, and about midnight began his perilous journey. The utmost precaution must be used in get- ting through the Indian lines. Red Cloud would be looking for a messenger to go out. Phillips’ plan was to crawl, leading his horse, until he could get past danger of detection. He had a lariat 60 feet long. His horse was pure white, selected on account of his color as well as mettle, for a white horse cannot well be seen against white snow. A horse carrying an empty saddle is likely to shake himself, making con- siderable noise. So Bhillips led his horse forth without saddle. . For hours he crawled, paused, listened, felt his way, led his horse. Then he mounted bare- back and headed for Fort Laramie. He knew that the Indians were waylaying the trail; so he avoided it, picking his own route, sometimes 10 miles off the beaten road. The snow on the ground was from three to five feet deep; the blizzard blowing down from the Big Horn Moun- tains never laid. Each morning at daybreak he took cover in brush; his only chance was to travel in darkness. At dawn of Christmas day, after four nights of riding, he reached Horseshoe Station, 40 miles from Laramie and 196 miles from Kearney. There he telegraphed. But he did not—with reason—trust the tele- graph, and as soon as darkness fell he rode on. At 11 o'clock that night, his hands, knees and feet frozen, though he was swathed from < head to foot in buffalo skin; shaggy with snow, his beard trafling icicles, gasping out that he was a courier with a desperate dispatch, he reeled, then fell upon the floor of Bedlam. Bedlam was the officers’ club house at Fort Continued on Fourteenth Page