it didn’t win against Papa and Uncle Jeff. They proved up their land and got the title.
Trouble was, their claims were on pasture that old Port Hubbard had ranched for a long time, leasing from the state. It didn’t set well with him at all, because he was used to having people ask him things, not tell him. And there was a reckless streak in Uncle Jeff that caused him to glory in telling people how the two of them had thumbed their noses at Port Hubbard and gotten away with it.
It’d be better if I told you a little about Uncle Jeff, so you’ll know how it was with him. I’ve still got an old picture—yellowed now—that he and Papa had taken the day they got title to their four sections apiece. It shows Papa dressed in a plain suit that looks like he had slept in it, and he wears an ordinary sort of wide-brimmed hat set square on his head. But Uncle Jeff has on a pair of those striped California pants they used to wear, and sleeve garters and a candy-striped shirt. He’s wearing one of those huge cowboy hats that went out years ago, the ones you could really call “ten-gallon” without exaggerating much. The hat is cocked over to one side of his head. A six-shooter sits high on his right hip. The clothes made him look like he’s on his way to a dance, but the challenge in his eyes makes him look like he’s waiting for a fight. With Uncle Jeff, it could have been either one or both.
A lot of ranchers like Port Hubbard made good use of the Texas homestead law. They got their cowboys to file on land that lay inside their ranches. The cowboys would prove up the land, then sell it to the man they worked for. Plenty of cowboys in those days weren’t interested in being landowners anyhow, and in a lot of West Texas four sections wasn’t enough for a man to make a living on. It wouldn’t carry enough cattle. And farming that dry country was a chancy business, sure enough.
It bothered Hubbard when Papa and Uncle Jeff took eight sections out of his Rocking H ranch. But he held off, figuring they would starve out and turn it back. Meanwhile, they would be improving it for him. When that didn’t work the way he expected, he tried to buy it from them. They wouldn’t sell.
Hubbard still might have swallowed the loss and gone about his business if Uncle Jeff hadn’t been inclined to brag so much.
“He’s buffaloed people in this part of the country for twenty years,” Uncle Jeff would say, and he didn’t care who heard or repeated it. “But we stopped him. He’s scared to lay a finger on us.”
Papa always felt Port Hubbard wouldn’t have done anything if Uncle Jeff hadn’t kept jabbing the knifepoint at him, so to speak. But Hubbard was a proud man, and proud men don’t sit around and listen to that kind of talk forever, especially old-time cowmen like Port Hubbard. So by and by Tobe Farrington showed up.
Nobody ever did prove that Port Hubbard sent for him, but nobody ever doubted it. Farrington put in for four sections of land that lay right next to Papa’s and Uncle Jeff’s. It was on Rocking H country that had been taken up once by a Hubbard cowboy who later got too much whiskey over in Pecos and took a fatal dose of indigestion on three .45 slugs.
Everybody in West Texas knew of Tobe Farrington those days. He wasn’t famous in the way of John Wesley Hardin or Bill Longley, but in the country from San Saba to the Pecos River he had a hard name. Folks tried to give him plenty of air. It was known that several men had gone to glory with his bullets in them.
A lot of folks expected to see Farrington just ride and shoot Papa and Uncle Jeff down. But he didn’t work that way. He must have figured on letting his reputation do the job without him having to waste any powder. Papa said it seemed like just about every time he Uncle Jeff looked up, they would see Tobe Farrington sitting there on his horse, just watching them. He seldom ever spoke, he just looked at them. Papa didn’t mind admitting that those hard gray eyes always put a chunk of ice in the pit of his stomach. But Uncle Jeff wasn’t bothered. He seemed to thrive on that kind of pressure.
I didn’t tell you that Uncle Jeff had been a deputy once. The Pecos County sheriff had hired him late one spring, mostly to run errands for him. In those days the sheriff was usually a tax assessor, too. The job didn’t last long. That summer the sheriff got beat in the primary election. The next one had needy kinfolks and didn’t keep Uncle Jeff on.
But by that time Uncle Jeff had gotten the feel of the six-shooter on his hip, and he liked it. What’s more, he got to be a good shot. He liked to ride along and pot jackrabbits with his pistol. Two or three times this trick got him thrown off a boogered horse, but Uncle Jeff would still do it when he took the notion. That was his way. Nothing ever scared him much, and nothing ever kept him from doing as he damn well pleased. Nothing but Papa.
If Tobe Farrington figured his being there was going to scare the Barclay brothers out of the country, he was disappointed. So he began to change his tactics. Farrington had a little bunch of Rocking H cattle with a vented brand, which he claimed he had bought from Hubbard but which everybody said Hubbard had just loaned him to make the homestead look legal. He started pushing his cattle over onto the Barclay land. He didn’t do it sneaky. He would open the wire gates, bold as brass, push the cattle through, then ride on in and watch them eat Barclay grass. It wasn’t the rainiest country in the world. There was just enough grass for the Barclay cattle, and sometimes not even that much.
Uncle Jeff was all for a fight. He wanted to shoot Farrington’s cattle. Papa, on the other hand, believed in being firm but not suicidal. He left his gun at home, took his horse and pushed the cattle back through the gate while Farrington sat and watched.
“He couldn’t shoot me,” Papa said, “because I didn’t have a gun. He couldn’t afford a plain case of murder. When Farrington killed somebody, he made it a point to be within the law.”
Farrington gave up that stunt after two or three times because Papa always handled it the same way.
After that it was little things. Steer roping was a popular sport in those days. Farrington always rode across Papa’s land to go to Fort Stockton, and while passing through he would practice on Barclay cattle. It was a rough sport. Throwing down those grown cattle was an easy way to break horns, and often it broke legs as well. Farrington made it a point to break legs.
Uncle Jeff wanted to take a gun and call for a showdown. Papa wouldn’t let him. Instead, Papa wrote up a bill for the broken-legged cattle they had had to kill and got the sheriff to go with him to collect. The sheriff was as nervous as a sheep-herder at a cowboy convention, but Papa collected.
“Guns are his business,” Papa tried to tell Uncle Jeff. “The average man can’t stand up against a fella like Tobe Farrington any more than a big-city bookkeeper could ride one of Port Hubbard’s broncs. You leave your gun at home, or one of these days Farrington’ll sucker you into using it. Second prize in his kind of shootin’ match is a wooden box.”
I reckon before I go any further I ought to tell you about Delia Larrabee. Papa might have been a little prejudiced, but he always said she was the prettiest girl in the country in those days. Uncle Jeff must have agreed with him. Papa met her first and was using all the old-fashioned cowboy salesmanship he had. But Uncle Jeff was a better salesman. It hurt, but when Papa saw how things were, he backed off and gave up the field to Uncle Jeff. Looking at that old picture again, it’s not hard to see why Delia Larrabee or any other girl might have been drawn to my uncle. He was quite the young blade, as they used to put it.
Tobe Farrington had drawn a joker every time he tried to provoke a fight with Papa or Uncle Jeff. Stealing grass or injuring cattle hadn’t done it. But when he found out about Delia Larrabee and Uncle Jeff, he realized he had found the way. The big dance in Fort Stockton gave him his chance.
Papa didn’t go that night, or he might have found a way to stop the thing before it went as far as it did. But it still hurt too much
