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Updated: June 12, 2025
He traversed the Plain, fought his way up the Pecos, reached a good market, and returned home in the Autumn, bringing a load of gold and stories of hungry markets in the north that meant fortunes for Texas ranchmen. This was in 1866. It was the beginning of the great "Texas trail drive," which during the next twenty years poured six million cattle into the plains and mountains of the Northwest.
Sometimes, however, men were killed in the last desperate conviction that no man on earth was as quick as they. What came near being an incident of that kind was related by a noted Western sheriff. "Down on the edge of the Pecos valley," said he, "a dozen miles below old Fort Sumner, there used to be a little saloon, and I once captured a man there.
"Look ahere, Red," he began, "there ain't no rustlers with their headquarters on this God-forsaken sand heap, an' there never was. They have to have water an' lots of it, too, an' th' nearest of any account is th' Pecos, or some of them streams over in th' Panhandle. Th' Panhandle is th' best place. There are lots of streams an' lakes over there an' they're right in a good grass country.
Now the Pecos washes the whole western base of the Llano Estacado; and it is this very plain, elevated as it is, that turns the Pecos into its southerly course, instead of leaving it to flow eastward, like all the other prairie-streams that head in the Rocky Mountains.
Consider yourself under arrest." I replied, "General, I am not aware of having violated any of the regulations of the Army." "No, sir, but you are violating the rules of hospitality. You shall stay here three days. Send your train on to the Pecos, and I will send an escort with you to overtake it."
If Caleb Barnwell committed an absurdity in attempting to plant a settlement in the valley of the Rio Pecos, when the entire surrounding country was hostile, he showed some wisdom in the manner in which he conducted matters after the attempt was made. The town was in an irregular circle, with a grassy court in the centre, in which were pitched their horses.
"Do you like Pecos?" he asked Sally. "Out here? Oh, yes, indeed!" she replied. "Like ridin'?" "I love horses." Like almost every man who made Sally's acquaintance, he hit upon the subject best calculated to make her interesting to free-riding, outdoor Western men. That he loved a thoroughbred horse himself was plain.
All the others had fallen, among them Caleb Barnwell, the leader of the Quixotic scheme, and the founder of the town which died with him. The valley of the Rio Pecos was not prepared for any settlement unless one organized upon a scale calculated to overawe all combinations of the Apaches, Commanches, and Kiowas.
There was a time when Senor Ortiz thought the Pecos country admirably adapted to the raising of hogs, but that was before he tried to raise hogs there and before he had learned to appreciate the mental capacities of bears. Senor Ortiz went down to Pecos town and bought some hogs, drove them up the river, and turned them into his alfalfa field to fatten.
On for many leagues they went until the Pecos River was crossed and the great northern plains were reached, they being now in a flat and treeless country, covered with high grasses and peopled by herds of the great maned animals which El Turco had described.
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