CRACKER COWBOYS OF FLORIDA
ONE can thresh the straw of history until he is well worn out, and alsois running some risk of wearing others out who may have to listen, so Iwill waive the telling of who the first cowboy was, even if I knew; butthe last one who has come under my observation lives down in Florida,and the way it happened was this: I was sitting in a "sto' do'," as the"Crackers" say, waiting for the clerk to load some "number eights," whenmy friend said, "Look at the cowboys!" This immediately caught myinterest. With me cowboys are what gems and porcelains are to someothers. Two very emaciated Texas ponies pattered down the street,bearing wild-looking individuals, whose hanging hair and drooping hatsand generally bedraggled appearance would remind you at once of theSpanish-moss which hangs so quietly and helplessly to the limbs of theoaks out in the swamps. There was none of the bilious fierceness andrearing plunge which I had associated with my friends out West, but as afox-terrier is to a yellow cur, so were these last. They had on aboutfour dollars' worth of clothes between them, and rode McClellan saddles,with saddle-bags, and guns tied on before. The only things they didwhich were conventional were to tie their ponies up by the head inbrutal disregard, and then get drunk in about fifteen minutes. I couldsee that in this case, while some of the tail feathers were the same,they would easily classify as new birds.
36 ABOUT FOUR DOLLARS WORTH OF CLOTHES BETWEEN THEM]
"And so you have cowboys down here?" I said to the man who ran themeat-market.
He picked a tiny piece of raw liver out of the meshes of his long blackbeard, tilted his big black hat, shoved his arms into his white apronfront, and said:
"Gawd! yes, stranger; I was one myself."
The plot thickened so fast that I was losing much, so I became moredeliberate. "Do the boys come into town often?" I inquired further.
"Oh yes, 'mos' every little spell," replied the butcher, as he reachedbehind his weighing-scales and picked up a double-barrelled shot-gun,sawed off. "We-uns are expectin' of they-uns to-day."
And he broke the barrels and took out the shells to examine them.
"Do they come shooting?" I interposed.
He shut the gun with a snap. "We split even, stranger."
Seeing that the butcher was a fragile piece of bric-a-brac, and that Imight need him for future study, I bethought me of the banker down thestreet. Bankers are bound to be broad-gauged, intelligent, andconservative, so I would go to him and get at the ancient history ofthis neck of woods. I introduced myself, and was invited behind thecounter. The look of things reminded me of one of those great greenterraces which conceal fortifications and ugly cannon. It was boards andwire screen in front, but behind it were shot-guns and six-shooters hungin the handiest way, on a sort of disappearing gun-carriage arrangement.Shortly one of the cowboys of the street scene floundered in. He wastwo-thirds drunk, with brutal, shifty eyes and a flabby lower lip.
"I want twenty dollars on the old man. Ken I have it?"
I rather expected that the bank would go into "action front," but theclerk said, "Certainly," and completed this rather odd financialtransaction, whereat the bull-hunter stumbled out.
37 A CRACKER COWBOY]
"Who is the old man in this case?" I ventured.
"Oh, it's his boss, old Colonel Zuigg, of Crow City. I gave some moneyto some of his boys some weeks ago, and when the colonel was down here Iasked him if he wanted the boys to draw against him in that way, and hesaid, 'Yes--for a small amount; they will steal a cow or two, and pay methat way.'"
Here was something tangible.
"What happens when a man steals another man's brand in this country?"
"He mustn't get caught; that's all. They all do it, but they never bringtheir troubles into court. They just shoot it out there in the bresh.The last time old Colonel Zuigg brought Zorn Zuidden in here and had himindicted for stealing cattle, said Zorn: 'Now see here, old man Zuigg,what do you want for to go and git me arrested fer? I have stolethousands of cattle and put your mark and brand on 'em, and jes becauseI have stole a couple of hundred from you, you go and have me indicted.You jes better go and get that whole deal nol pressed;' and it wasdone."
The argument was perfect.
"From that I should imagine that the cow-people have no more idea of lawthan the 'gray apes,'" I commented.
"Yes, that's about it. Old Colonel Zuigg was a judge fer a spell, tillsome feller filled him with buckshot, and he had to resign; and Iremember he decided a case aginst me once. I was hot about it, and theold colonel he saw I was. Says he, 'Now yer mad, ain't you?' And Iallowed I was. 'Well,' says he, 'you hain't got no call to get mad. Ihave decided the last eight cases in yer favor, and you kain't have itgo yer way all the time; it wouldn't look right;' and I had to besatisfied."
The courts in that locality were but the faint and sickly flame of ataper offered at the shrine of a justice which was traditional only, itseemed. Moral forces having ceased to operate, the large owners began tobrand everything in sight, never realizing that they were sowing thewind. This action naturally demoralized the cowboys, who shortly beganto brand a little on their own account--and then the deluge. The rightsof property having been destroyed, the large owners put strong outfitsin the field, composed of desperate men armed to the teeth, and whathappens in the lonely pine woods no one knows but the desperadoesthemselves, albeit some of them never come back to the little fringe ofsettlements. The winter visitor from the North kicks up the jack-snipealong the beach or tarponizes in the estuaries of the Gulf, and when hecomes to the hotel for dinner he eats Chicago dressed beef, but out inthe wilderness low-browed cow-folks shoot and stab each other for thepossession of scrawny creatures not fit for a pointer-dog to mess on.One cannot but feel the force of Buckle's law of "the physical aspectsof nature" in this sad country. Flat and sandy, with miles on miles ofstraight pine timber, each tree an exact duplicate of its neighbor tree,and underneath the scrub palmettoes, the twisted brakes andhammocks, and the gnarled water-oaks festooned with the sad graySpanish-moss--truly not a country for a high-spirited race or moralgiants.
38 FIGHTING OVER A STOLEN HERD]
The land gives only a tough wiregrass, and the poor little cattle, nobigger than a donkey, wander half starved and horribly emaciated insearch of it. There used to be a trade with Cuba, but now that has gone;and beyond the supplying of Key West and the small fringe of settlementsthey have no market. How well the cowboys serve their masters I can onlyguess, since the big owners do not dare go into the woods, or even totheir own doors at night, and they do not keep a light burning in thehouses. One, indeed, attempted to assert his rights, but some one pumpedsixteen buckshot into him as he bent over a spring to drink, and he leftthe country. They do tell of a late encounter between two rival foremen,who rode on to each other in the woods, and drawing, fired, and bothwere found stretched dying under the palmettoes, one calling deliriouslythe name of his boss. The unknown reaches of the Everglades lie justbelow, and with a half-hour's start a man who knew the country would besafe from pursuit, even if it were attempted; and, as one man cheerfullyconfided to me, "A boat don't leave no trail, stranger."
That might makes right, and that they steal by wholesale, anycattle-hunter will admit; and why they brand at all I cannot see, sinceone boy tried to make it plain to me, as he shifted his body in drunkenabandon and grabbed my pencil and a sheet of wrapping paper: "See yer;ye see that?" And he drew a circle O, and then another ring around it,thus: (O). "That brand ain't no good. Well, then--" And again hisknotted and dirty fingers essayed the brand I O. He laboriously drewupon it and made E-O which of course destroyed the former brand.
"Then here," he continued, as he drew 13, "all ye've got ter do isthis--313." I gasped in amazement, not at his cleverness as abrand-destroyer, but at his honest abandon. With a horrible operaticlaugh, such as is painted in "The Cossack's Answer," he againlaboriously drew (+) (the circle cross), and then added some marks whichmade it look like this: S(+)S. And again breaking into his devil's "ha,ha!" said, "Make
the damned thing whirl."
39 IN WAIT FOR AN ENEMY]
I did not protest. He would have shot me for that. But I did wish he wasliving in the northwest quarter of New Mexico, where Mr. Cooper and Dancould throw their eyes over the trail of his pony. Of course each manhas adjusted himself to this lawless rustling, and only calculates thathe can steal as much as his opponent. It is rarely that their affairsare brought to court, but when they are, the men come _en masse_ to theroom, armed with knives and rifles, so that any decision is bound to bea compromise, or it will bring on a general engagement.
There is also a noticeable absence of negroes among them, as they stillretain some _ante bellum_ theories, and it is only very lately that theyhave "reconstructed." Their general ignorance is "miraculous," and quitemystifying to an outside man. Some whom I met did not even know wherethe Texas was which furnishes them their ponies. The railroads ofFlorida have had their ups and downs with them in a petty way on accountof the running over of their cattle by the trains; and then somelong-haired old Cracker drops into the nearest station with his gun andpistol, and wants the telegraph operator to settle immediately on thebasis of the Cracker's claim for damages, which is always absurdly high.At first the railroads demurred, but the cowboys lined up in the "bresh"on some dark night and pumped Winchesters into the train in a highlypicturesque way. The trainmen at once recognized the force of theCracker's views on cattle-killing, but it took some considerable"potting" at the more conservative superintendents before the lattercould bestir themselves and invent a "cow-attorney," as the companyadjuster is called, who now settles with the bushmen as best he can.Certainly no worse people ever lived since the big killing upMuscleshell way, and the romance is taken out of it by the cowardlyassassination which is the practice. They are well paid for theirdesperate work, and always eat fresh beef or "razor-backs," and deerwhich they kill in the woods. The heat, the poor grass, their brutality,and the pest of the flies kill their ponies, and, as a rule, they lackdash and are indifferent riders, but they are picturesque in theirunkempt, almost unearthly wildness. A strange effect is added by theiruse of large, fierce cur-dogs, one of which accompanies eachcattle-hunter, and is taught to pursue cattle, and to even take them bythe nose, which is another instance of their brutality. Still, as theyonly have a couple of horses apiece, it saves them much extra running.These men do not use the rope, unless to noose a pony in a corral, butwork their cattle in strong log corrals, which are made at about a day'smarch apart all through the woods. Indeed, ropes are hardly necessary,since the cattle are so small and thin that two men can successfully"wrestle" a three-year-old. A man goes into the corral, grabs a cow byone horn, and throwing his other arm over her back, waits until someother man takes her hind leg, whereat ensues some very entertainingGraeco-Roman style.
40 A BIT OF COW COUNTRY]
When the cow is successful, she finds her audience of Cracker cowboyssitting on the fence awaiting another opening, and gasping for breath.The best bull will not go over three hundred pounds, while I have seen ayearling at a hundred and fifty--if you, O knights of the riata, canimagine it! Still, it is desperate work. Some of the men are so recklessand active that they do not hesitate to encounter a wild bull in theopen. The cattle are as wild as deer, they race off at scent; and when"rounded up" many will not drive, whereupon these are promptly shot. Itfrequently happens that when the herd is being driven quietly along abull will turn on the drivers, charging at once. Then there is a scamperand great shooting. The bulls often become so maddened in these foraysthat they drop and die in their tracks, for which strange fact no onecan account, but as a rule they are too scrawny and mean to make theirhandling difficult.
So this is the Cracker cowboy, whose chief interest would be found inthe tales of some bushwhacking enterprise, which I very much fear wouldbe a one-sided story, and not worth the telling. At best they must berevolting, having no note of the savage encounters which used tocharacterize the easy days in West Texas and New Mexico, when every mantossed his life away to the crackle of his own revolver. The moon showspale through the leafy canopy on their evening fires, and the mists, themiasma, and the mosquitoes settle over their dreary camp talk. In placeof the wild stampede, there is only the bellowing in the pens, andinstead of the plains shaking under the dusty air as the bedizenedvaqueros plough their fiery broncos through the milling herds, thecattle-hunter wends his lonely way through the ooze and rank grass,while the dreary pine trunks line up and shut the view.
41 COWBOYS WRESTLING A BULL]