Lockhart horse tale brings old trail driver back to life
LOCKHART — Retired state archivist Donaly Brice, whose business card describes him as “historical sleuth, raconteur and mild-mannered curmudgeon,” grew up in this pleasant town 35 miles southeast of Austin. Except for the first four months of his life in Austin and a stint with naval intelligence in Washington, D.C., he’s lived here his whole life. He knows the Caldwell County seat, past and present.
“I love it here,” he told me over lunch earlier this week at Chisholm Trail BBQ. One of the four best barbecue joints in the self-described “barbecue capital of Texas” — Black’s Barbecue, Smitty’s Market and Kreuz Market are the other three — Chisholm Trail BBQ is “where the locals eat,” the website boasts. I had the brisket, while Brice had catfish, not because he’s a “mild-mannered curmudgeon,” but because he’d had barbecue the day before.
That happens when you live in Lockhart.
I had met Brice last Saturday when he gave a talk at Lockhart’s historic public library about cattle on the hoof in Caldwell County — pre-barbecue beef, in other words — back when area ranchers drove thousands of cattle up the Chisholm Trail. He introduced us to men like John J. Meyers, who drove cattle to Salt Lake City and sold them to the Mormons; Stephen “Rowe” McClain, a black cowboy from nearby Prairie Lea, who roped bison and elk for Wild West shows and who once bulldogged a full-grown moose; and Marcus A. Withers, a Caldwell County trail driver who made his first drive at age 13. He made 27 in all, between 1867 and 1887.
In the summer of 1868, Withers was one of four Texans and three California vaqueros whom railroad promoter Joseph McCoy chose to rope bison and load them on a train to be paraded back east to advertise cattle sales in Kansas. After getting the bison loaded — with difficulty — on cattle cars that sometimes required double-slatted oak boards to keep the beasts from kicking the cars to splinters, Withers went along on the trip to St. Louis and Chicago, where he was one of two men who roped bison in the country’s first Wild West show. Another fellow was supposed to rope, as well, but as Withers recalled in a 1932 reminiscence, “Jake Carroll was dancin’ in the caboose as the train run along and then he tried to kick the roof and fell and hurt his hip and couldn’t rope any.”
Before his death in 1937 at age 91, Withers recounted a number of his adventures, including the following to Joe Bunch, a 94year-old Lockhart resident who told the story to Brice.
One day in the 1870s, Withers rode over to nearby Bastrop to buy some stock and happened to see a horse of which he liked the looks. He bought the animal, which became his favorite mount on the next trail drive north to Kansas.
The man who sold him the horse had warned him about an equine quirk the horse had: He could not and would not tolerate being hitched. Tie him to a hitching rail, and he would figure out some way to get unhitched, even if it meant ripping the posts from the ground. Withers discovered, though, that he could simply drop the reins to the ground wherever he was, and when he came back, there would be his horse, standing still as a statue.
He was a fine cow pony, too, and on that first drive with him, Withers made good money at the railhead in Kansas. He was a happy man heading home to Lockhart, his saddle bags bulging with a combination of gold and cash worth several thousand dollars.
He and his fellow drovers were in Indian Territory, not quite halfway home, when misfortune struck. At dinner time one evening, he ambled over to the chuck wagon for some grub, and for whatever reason — maybe it was the aroma of “sizzling hot spareribs dripping with brown gravy” — he forgot to leave his horse untied. The next thing he knew, the animal had ripped loose and was heading to parts unknown, saddle and treasure-laden saddlebags bouncing with each bounding gallop over the prairie. Tossing aside his tin plate, a suddenly not-hungry Withers raced after the wayward pony, to no avail.
For two weeks, the Lockhart bunch hunted the horse in the thick brush along both sides of the Red River. Withers must surely have been brooding about the hot, dusty days herding hundreds of balky cows, the nights trying to find a comfortbeen able place to stretch out on hard ground, the treacherous storms and potential stampedes. All for nothing. When they finally gave up, Withers saddled a more reliable horse — he always brought three on the drives, he recalled — and headed home to Lockhart, no doubt rehearsing along the way how he was going to explain to his wife that their year’s income had galloped away on the rump of a skittish horse. And what was he going to tell the Lockhart banker who had loaned him money to buy the cattle?
Back home, he must have moped around the ranch for several weeks — until a penny postcard showed up in the mail from the horse’s original owner, informing Withers that his horse had come back to Bastrop, still saddled.
The former owner told Withers later he had no idea what had happened. A riderless horse showing up usually meant bad news. Had the unfortunate rider killed by Indians? Had he drowned in the Red? Did lightning strike him down out on the prairie? Until he knew for sure, the Bastrop man had hung the saddle in the barn and put the horse out to pasture.
Driving the 35 miles to Bastrop as fast as his buggy could carry him, Withers must have marveled at the fact that his quirky horse, somehow, had meandered southward more than 300 miles from where he’d last seen him. He shook hands with the man, thanked him for getting in touch and strolled with him to the barn to retrieve the saddle — and the bags, which the Bastrop man hadn’t opened.
Withers — his hands trembling, perhaps? — untied the straps and reached inside. It was all there — gold and greenbacks and, out in the pasture, a wayward pony that had brought it home to Texas.