The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier

The Red-Blooded Heroes of the
Frontier, by

Edgar Beecher Bronson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere
at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg
License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier
Author: Edgar Beecher Bronson
Release Date: August 17, 2007 [EBook #22350]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
RED-BLOODED HEROES ***

Produced by Al Haines

THE RED-BLOODED
HEROES OF THE FRONTIER
BY

EDGAR BEECHER BRONSON
Author of "Reminiscences of a Ranchman"

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON ---- NEW YORK ---- TORONTO

COPYRIGHT
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1910
Published September 10, 1910
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England
The author acknowledges his indebtedness to the editors of periodicals
in which some of this material has appeared, for permission to use the
same in this volume.

CONTENTS
* CHAPTER I LOVING'S BEND
* CHAPTER II A COW-HUNTERS' COURT
* CHAPTER III A SELF-CONSTITUTED EXECUTIONER
* CHAPTER IV TRIGGERFINGERITIS
* CHAPTER V A JUGGLER WITH DEATH
* CHAPTER VI AM AERIAL BIVOUAC

* CHAPTER VII THE EVOLUTION OF A TRAIN ROBBER
* CHAPTER VIII CIRCUS DAY AT MANCOS
* CHAPTER IX ACROSS THE BORDER
* CHAPTER X THE THREE-LEGGED DOE AND THE BLIND
BUCK
* CHAPTER XI THE LEMON COUNTY HUNT
* CHAPTER XII EL TIGRE
* CHAPTER XIII BUNKERED
* CHAPTER XIV THEY WHO MUST BE OBEYED
* CHAPTER XV DJAMA AOUT'S HEROISM
* CHAPTER XVI A MODERN COEUR-DE-LION
CHAPTER I
LOVING'S BEND
From San Antonio to Fort Griffin, Joe Loving's was a name to conjure
with in the middle sixties. His tragic story is still told and retold around
camp-fires on the Plains.
One of the thriftiest of the pioneer cow-hunters, he was the first to
realize that if he would profit by the fruits of his labor he must push out
to the north in search of a market for his cattle. The Indian agencies and
mining camps of northern New Mexico and Colorado, and the Mormon
settlements of Utah, were the first markets to attract attention. The
problem of reaching them seemed almost hopeless of solution.
Immediately to the north of them the country was trackless and
practically unknown. The only thing certain about it was that it
swarmed with hostile Indians. What were the conditions as to water and
grass, two prime essentials to moving herds, no one knew. To be sure,

the old overland mail road to El Paso, Chihuahua, and Los Angeles led
out west from the head of the Concho to the Pecos; and once on the
Pecos, which they knew had its source indefinitely in the north, a
practicable route to market should be possible.
But the trouble was to reach the Pecos across the ninety intervening
miles of waterless plateau called the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain.
This plain was christened by the early Spanish explorers who, looking
out across its vast stretches, could note no landmark, and left behind
them driven stakes to guide their return. An elevated tableland
averaging about one hundred miles wide and extending four hundred
miles north and south, it presents, approaching anywhere from the east
or the west, an endless line of sharply escarped bluffs from one hundred
to two hundred feet high that with their buttresses and re-entrant angles
look at a distance like the walls of an enormous fortified town. And
indeed it possesses riches well worth fortifying.
While without a single surface spring or stream from Devil's River in
the south to Yellow House Cañon in the north, this great mesa is
nevertheless the source of the entire stream system of central and south
Texas. Absorbing thirstily every drop of moisture that falls upon its
surface, from its deep bosom pours a vitalizing flood that makes fertile
and has enriched an empire,--a flood without which Texas, now
producing one-third of the cotton grown in the United States, would be
an arid waste. Bountiful to the south and east, it is niggardly elsewhere,
and only two small springs, Grierson and Mescalero, escape from its
western escarpment.
A driven herd normally travels only twelve to seventeen miles a day,
and even less than this in the early Spring when herds usually are
started. It therefore seemed a desperate undertaking to enter upon the
ninety-mile "dry drive," from the head of the Concho to the Horsehead
Crossing of the Pecos, wherein two-thirds of one's cattle were likely to
perish for want of water.
Joe Loving was the first man to venture it, and he succeeded. He
traversed the Plain, fought his way up the Pecos, reached a good market,
and returned home in the Autumn, bringing a