Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado  

The cold fronts of winter reminds Llaneros of  a story of loyalty
December 16, 2009

At 2 a.m. a dead man rode up to the livery stable down the street from the Llano Hotel. Nobody was awake, so the horse nudged the gate until it swung free. The horse headed for the haystack in the middle of the wagonyard, pawed at it with its foot until the eight inches of snow on it cascaded to the ground. The horse ate its fill, and then pawed the stack some more until it could stand almost haunch deep, where it gained some heat from the decomposing hay.

When the hostler wakened in the predawn hours and started his coffee and bacon, he looked outside and saw the figure of the man hunched over the saddle. “Hey! Buddy! Got coffee on!” When there was no reaction, the hostler grabbed his coat to investigate. “I recognize you, horse, I healed that bad lion wound on your shoulder last year, but who took his last ride on you?” The hostler tugged at the corpse, but it was frozen to the saddle. Big flakes of snow drifted down on the scene.

“I am glad the whiteout has ended. Poor guy, you must have been caught in the storm, and froze to death. The horse came to a place that it remembered as a safe place.” The hostler returned to his rooms, took his breakfast off of the stove and heated up water and came back out, to pour the warm water so he could pry the dead man from his horse. After putting the body in an unused stall, he led the horse into the barn, too, and brushed it down, and put a saddle blanket over it when he was done.

The hostler returned to his breakfast. After quickly eating, he walked out to the street. The sheriff was riding up to his office, so the hostler hollered him in to show the body. The sheriff went through the man’s pockets and found a tally book full of numbers of cattle and brands from several of the free range ranchers out on the far western “Yarner” (Llano Estacado). In the man’s billfold he found five dollars, but nothing else.

The sheriff arranged for the burial of the man by putting a couple of prisoners to work digging the grave, and getting the undertaker to make a rough coffin. While the work was being done, the sheriff ate breakfast at the café in the hotel. One of the town’s preachers was there, and when he heard the story he volunteered to conduct a service. Some out of work cowboys drifted down from their rooms for breakfast and volunteered to be the pallbearers. The cook at the café said he would play taps on the trumpet he had been given when he retired from being a buffalo soldier.

When all were gathered at the livery stable, one of the cowboys recognized the man. “This is Joe, one of the line riders for the Hat, way over in Los Medanos and the San Simon Swale in New Mexico Territory. He must have stayed with a bunch of steers turning tail to the wind, trying to keep them drifting too far out of  the range.”

This story comes from the earliest days of Midland, mentioned briefly in a book of reminiscences by an old cowboy.  Two parts of the story resonates with me. The loyalty of the cowboy, doing his best to serve his ranch, but paying the ultimate price, is heart wrenching. The story of a horse that would return to a place  he had not seen for a year, but remembered as a place he received care, shows the power of the gentle hand.