to all ranchers, large or small, her neighbors would have stopped her, distasteful as it might have been to them to prosecute a member of the “weaker sex.”
But while Elizabeth may not have been a night rider there is a tradition that she did brand more lost calves and butcher more stray beef than less energetic ranchers might have done. There is also an undocumented story that she added to her herd by buying cattle at cut-rate prices from professional rustlers, who normally took their stolen cattle either to Rock Springs to be butchered and sold to the mining camp, or down to the Mormon farmers in Ashley Valley, always ready customers. Given Elizabeth’s character, it would not be surprising if she had done so, especially in those earliest days when the family was living hand to mouth. She absolutely had to build a herd, or “turn tail and run” for an uncertain future in California. In that sort of dilemma, Elizabeth would have put her own survival before a rich man’s property rights.
An interesting story is repeated by Burroughs, in Where the Old West Stayed Young, involving five hundred head of Middlesex cattle purportedly made off with in a single raid. “Cornered in Zenobia Basin on Douglas Mountain, it is said that Elizabeth Bassett and her helpers ’rim-rocked’ the herd, i.e., drove them over the cliff into Lodore Canyon, thus destroying the evidence that might have been used against them.”
Elizabeth’s grandson, Crawford MacKnight, made a notation in the margin of his copy of Burroughs’ book: “I think this ’rim rock’ business is all B. S. What in hell would they do with that many cows, even if they had gotten away with them?”
Crawford’s objection is practical, for rustling is a stealthy business, and hiding five hundred cows would be as difficult as hiding a Greyhound bus. Still, old-timers remember the pile of whitened bones that could be seen in Ladore Canyon for decades.*
There is a possibility that Middlesex had decided to summer some of its own cattle in Zenobia Basin and that Elizabeth, enraged at this intrusion on “her” range, told her cowboys to rim-rock the cattle. Possibly the story grew in countless tellings into a case of rustling. If, for whatever reason, Elizabeth actually did push those cattle into Ladore Canyon, she must have sincerely mourned the destruction of good beef.
A more credible story is told by Edna Bassett Haworth, who remembers Herb telling her mother Ruby about the early days at the ranch. Herb heard a terrible bawling out in the corral and went out to find that it was full of calves. The calves were not yet weaned, so the corral was besieged on all sides by cows bearing various brands, bellowing loudly for their young ones to be returned to them. In the middle of the uproar was Elizabeth, calmly using her branding iron.
Herb had a habit of clicking his heels, a silent way of showing disapproval or frustration. When Ruby asked Herb what he had done about it, Herb told her that he had “clicked his heels and walked away.”
Poor Herb! He was a strictly moral man in a world where morality was sometimes considered an unaffordable luxury. Left alone, he might have been defeated by the special needs of survival in this harsh situation. Everyone respected him—his grandson Crawford says that he was the finest man he ever knew—but his wife, his children, and his neighbors all knew that in Brown’s Park he was entirely out of his element.
NOTE
*The most spectacular elements in Brown’s Park are two cliffs between which the Green River leaves the Park. John Wesley Powell, the explorer of the Green, named them “The Gates of Ladore.” In establishing a Brown’s Park post office, the Post Office Department spelled it “Lodore.” The two spellings have existed simultaneously ever since.
THE BASSETT GANG
In the pioneer west, where survival was serious business, no decent rancher would turn away a hungry man. A traveler in strange country felt no hesitancy about stopping at any ranch house along his way if he had a tired horse and an empty stomach.
The Bassett ranch was the first one in clear view on the trail leading into Brown’s Park, and because of its location it became the nearest thing to a country inn. There was usually at least one guest at the dinner table. He might be a neighbor returning from town, a cowboy searching for work, or a suspicious-looking character of dubious reputation. It made no difference. All were welcomed and treated as honored guests, in accordance with the universal custom of the west and Elizabeth’s own Southern open-handedness. Cash might be scarce in a bad year, but food was always there for the asking.
An unemployed cowboy rode into the Bassett ranchyard in about 1883 looking for a meal and a bunkhouse with an empty bed. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, dark-skinned black man named Isom Dart. When Elizabeth asked him to stay on, she could not have realized that this new cowhand was to become a mainstay in her life and in the lives of her children and grandchildren.
Isom had come up from Texas on a trail drive of around six thousand head of cattle destined for the Middlesex ranch. His trail boss was his boyhood friend, Madison M. “Matt” Rash, who had been born near Acton in Hood County, Texas, on January 4, 1865. Matt was about eighteen years old at the time he left Texas, more than old enough to be a trail boss in those times when the Texas cattlemen depended consistently on teenagers to drive their cattle north. Crawford MacKnight describes Isom and Matt as “boyhood friends”; since Isom was ten years older than Matt (he was born in 1855) possibly Isom worked near Matt’s boyhood home or even for his family.
Isom’s powerful physique and superior coordination made him an all-around cowhand of exceptional competence. It was his personal qualities, however, that endeared him to three generations of Bassetts. He had natural dignity and integrity, and although the Bassetts would not completely erase the line between the races, they accorded him concern, respect, and a friendship that was close to love. Crawford remembered him as almost a member of the family, someone who shared their life more intimately than an ordinary cowhand would have done, and who “put a good meal on the table when it was his turn,” although he was not hired as a cook and was too valuable on the range to be kept in the kitchen.
Isom was a loner who went infrequently into Rock Springs and mingled very little there, even with members of his own race. He seemed to prefer life back at Brown’s Park, where he could play with the children and entertain them with his fiddle or the mouthharp on which he was a master. He loved to work with rawhide—Crawford called him a “rawhide artist”—and fashioned quirts and lariats of carefully cut strips of cowhide which he blended into articles of heirloom quality.
His real love was horseflesh, dating perhaps from the time in his early youth when he was stableboy for a governor of Texas. All the time he was with the Bassetts he had his own herd of cattle, which he augmented by catching the wild broncs so plentiful in those days, breaking them to saddle and then trading them to the surrounding ranchers for cows. A measure of the man can be taken by the fact that when he was breaking a bronc he took off his spurs and hung them on the corral fence. To Isom, it was cruel to use spurs on a wild creature, and he had the strength and stamina to break a bronc without them.
Isom lived on with the Bassetts, semiautonomous, with his own herd and his own ways of bringing in money. He ate his meals in the main house along with the other cowboys, played with the children, and pursued his own interests in his quiet, dignified, independent way, gaining admiration and respect from the ranchers in the valley.
In the meantime, his trail boss, Matt Rash, had stayed on at Middlesex after delivering the Texas cattle. Soon Matt transferred to Tom Kinney’s Circle K ranch just west of the Middlesex ranches and worked for Tom as a foreman. But Middlesex, which had been thwarted by the Brown’s Park ranchers’ concerted opposition when it tried to expand to the east, turned
