More Than One Way to Cross a River

The images of the historic cattle trail readily come to mind: cantankerous longhorns, cowboys in chaps, stampedes, campfires and strong coffee. One of the most is iconic and notorious among these was the Brazos River crossing at Waco.

My cattle trail romance, West of Heaven, is set in 1871, the year acknowledged as the heaviest for the movement of cattle north. With my primary research completed, I wrote various crossings into my story with the Brazos River and it's swift, unpredictable current and deep waters, planned as the most dramatic. The safest way to cross was by ferry.

As I always do, I continued researching while I wrote. This system helps me freshen my writing with new details and keeps me from getting bogged down collecting reams of unusable historic trivia. When it came time to write the Brazos scene, I plowed into research again. Imagine my surprise to discover that far from the arduous and time consuming task of loading the cattle group by group, my herd could pussy foot its way across the Brazos on a brand, spanking new suspension bridge.

Begun in October 1868 and ready to open January 1, 1870, the Waco Suspension Bridge was built by the same firm that constructed the Brooklyn Bridge. Supplies to erect it were brought by steamer, ferry, and oxen-pulled wagon from Galveston, 212 miles away. The three million bricks for the two double suspension towers were made locally in Waco. For a while this engineering marvel was the longest suspension bridge in the world at 475 feet.

The final cost of the bridge was estimated at $141,000 contributed by a group of Waco businessmen. Tolls of five cents a head soon paid off their investment. The resulting traffic achieved the goal to bring enough commerce to Waco to turn it from a small frontier town into a thriving commercial destination.

The bridge was wide enough for allow two stagecoaches to pass one another and to accommodate cattle two abreast on one side and pedestrians on the other. It must have been a scary thing walking across facing a herd of longhorns. With a major updating in 1913-1914, the bridge served for 100 years, first for cattle and later for vehicles. It was retired in 1971. Today it is on the National Register of Historic Places and can still be crossed on foot.

My Question: Before the suspension bridge, what was the safest way to cross the Brazoa at Waco?

Excerpt:

The trail between Austin and Waco brought enough rain to give Marcella terror-filled dreams about the upcoming Brazos River crossing. Her effort to keep her anxiety from infecting the crew meant haunting the coffee pot to keep her awake longer and longer hours.

Coming off watch on the third day past Austin, she stopped to fill her cup.

"Are you gettin' enough sleep?"

"Jean Luc!" She hadn't seen him until his voice startled her from across the ebbing campfire. He sat hunched in his poncho under the scant shelter of Hans's tarp. He patted the dry space beside him and beckoned her to join him. "So, you grace us with your presence after everyone has turned in for the night."

"It's dryer here than out there."

She sat down cross-legged next to him. "How is it on the Brazos?"

He put an arm around her shoulder and she snuggled into his warmth. "Are you worried about the crossing?"

"Aren't you?" The rain pattered steadily on the oilcloth tarp.

"Nope. I'm lookin' forward to it. It'll be my first time over the bridge. I heard it's a real marvel. Three million Texas-made bricks in the bridge towers."

*****

She sat up and narrowed her eyes at him over her cup. "Bridge? There's a bridge?"

"New suspension bridge opened last year. Cattle down one side. Pedestrians down the other. Wide enough for stagecoaches to pass each other. You won't have to stick one beautiful toe in that river."

"Why didn't anybody tell me about this sooner?" She wouldn't admit how much sleep she'd lost worrying.

He shrugged, "I didn't know you didn't know."

"Well, maybe if you didn't make yourself so scarce around here, you would have." She set down her cup and folded her arms across her chest, making no effort to hide her irritation.

"I just want to avoid -- uh -- trouble."

*****

The wagons had already rolled out to find the midday stopping place.

Jean Luc adjusted his hat. "An easy day today, drovers. The Brazos was a fearsome river to cross in its day, but man has overcome it with a modern bridge. We'll probably spend more time waiting to pay our toll than we will travelin', but we'll take it slow, keep those critters calm and be on the other side safe and dry. All for the bargain price of five cents a head. After that, fine weather, and an even grade. 

"I'll take point, along with Queenie and Jake. Marcella will be up front with us prepared to pay the toll."

He caught Marcella's eye and cast her a half-smile. "Nell and Paz, take right swing, Jasper and Glory, left swing. I want Lou on left flank, Carrie on right flank. June Bug, and Polly, sorry, your turn at drag. 

"Remember, keep those hats on and those bandanas, up around your noses. They don't do you any good hung any lower. Any questions?" He paused. "Good, let's go say hello to some critters." He slapped his dusty gloves against his thigh. "C'mon, Butch."

Jean Luc had crossed many a river in his day, seen his share of catastrophes and near-drownings, both man and critter, but he judged he'd never seen a spectacle as the one he watched that day on the Waco Suspension Bridge. Marcella presented their papers and paid their toll. Then, as placid as if they were filing into church on the Sabath, those longhorns walked two abreast along the planks of the bridge. 

The noise that resulted was difficult to describe except to say that any fish that chanced to swim below at the time must have been drummed deaf by the time he reached the other side. 

Sooner than would have been possible in the old days when the Brazos was king, they were on the other side and on their way. But not before Marcella rode up to him threw her arms around him and planted a huge kiss on his lips. "Now, that's my kind of river crossing," she said before trotting away.

"Well, giddy on up," Queenie shouted, slapping Jake on the back. 

A full two minutes later, Jean Luc felt settled enough to give Nickel his head.

West of Heaven by Barbara Scott is available for Kindle, Nook, on Sony, Kobo, and at Apple's iBookstore.

A Woman Goes Up the Trail

History books would have you believe that only cowboys went “up the trail” on the cattle drives of the late 1800’s. But women went too. Though few in comparison to men, there were more women who made the trip than you might think. And they went as drovers, owners, and just plain cowhands.  One reason I enjoy this period of American history is the many “unconventional-for-the-times” roles western women were allowed to play in the midst of the Victorian Gilded Age.

One of my favorite stories about a woman on the cattle trails is that of Estelle “Amanda” Nite Burks for the very reason she found herself on the dusty, hoof-hardened, dangerous path they called the Chisholm Trail—her husband couldn’t be without her. She relates her adventures in The Trail Drivers of Texas, compiled and edited by J. Marvin Hunter, first released in 1924.

Amanda’s husband, W. F. Burks, missed her from the moment he started on the trail and sent back for her when they were only a few miles out. Amanda went in style as befitting a cattle baron’s wife. She and one of her servants rode in a little buggy “drawn by two good brown ponies.”  Her servant cooked for her and put up her tent in the evenings but, otherwise, Amanda lived like the other cowboys.

Ready to handle anything, Amanda was tested a number of times but her biggest problem seemed to be playing with fire, literally. As she relates it:

“On one occasion a prairie fire ran us out of camp before breakfast. We escaped by fleeing to a part of the plain which had been burned before, called a “a burn’ by people of that section.

Two days later my ignorance was the cause of an immense prairie fire. I thought I would build a fire in a gulley while the cook had gone for water. Not later than I had struck the match than the grass all around was in a blaze which spread so quickly that the men could not stop it. They succeeded in beating out the flanks of the fires so that it did not spread out on the sides at the beginning. The fire blazed higher than a house and went straight ahead for fifty miles or more. Investigators came next day to find out who the culprit was, and when they learned that it was a woman, nothing was said, except for a remark one of the men made that he was glad that he didn’t strike that match.”

Far from being resented by the cowboys who made the trip, she was beloved. Branch Isbell fondly recalls, in the same book, going up the trail with Amanda in attendance. “Being a ‘tenderfoot,’ I was started in at the rear end of the herd and Mrs. Burks took me under her protecting wing. I verily believe that her business success since her widowhood began, has been given her as a reward for unfailing kindness to myself and others.”

She had many notable experiences from fire, to getting lost, to plunging into creeks and avoiding stampedes. But in the spirit of a true Texan, she summed up her adventures, thus:

“I arrived home in much better health than when I left it nine months before.

Please don’t think now that I’ve finished telling the few stories of my trip over the Old Kansas Trail, that the journey was one of trials and hardships. These incidents served to break the monotony of sameness of such a trip.”

She concluded: “For what woman, youthful and full of spirit and the love of living, needs sympathy because of availing herself of the opportunity of being with her husband while at his chosen work in the great out-of-door world?”

After her husband died, Amanda continued to run the cattle ranch, diversifying to sheep ranching and expanding her ranch and buying others until it was one of the largest in her county. She was known as a good rancher and an even better businesswoman. She was elected Queen of the Old Time Trail Driver’s Association in 1924 and was immortalized in Emerson Hough’s fictional book based on her life, North of 36, which became a film and was later remade as The Texans in 1938. Anyone remember that one?

 Some of the film was shot at her ranch, La Motta. She continued to mourn her husband, who she supposedly fell in love with at first sight, for the fifty-one years she outlived him, refusing to wear anything but black or white with only a bit of lavender now and again as an accessory.

Amanda was a woman of spirit and grit but she never forgot she was also a lady.

Anne Carrole writes about cowboys who have grit, integrity and little romance on their mind and the women who love them. You can check out her contemporary romance, Re-ride at the Rodeo, at www.annecarrole.com. She also is co-editor of the review website, www.lovewesternromances.com

The Way to a Cowboy's Heart

An army travels on its stomach. Whether or not Napoleon was the first to say this, it is a long accepted truth. A truth that could be justifiably applied to the cowboy on the cattle trail. The wise cattle owner recognized this and gave just as much consideration to the hiring of the cook as he did his trail boss. In fact, next to the owner and the trail boss, the cook usually got the highest salary often as a share of the herd's sale price.

For that pay, the cook generally came with his own chuck wagon. This vehicle, an invention attributed to Charles Goodnight, was specially built on a standard wagon base with room for supplies in the front and a trail kitchen in the back. Equipped with a fold down table, drawers and shelves for utensils, cook pots, plates and the all-important Dutch oven, the chuck wagon was the center of the cowboys' life while on the trail. Many cooks served as not only the creator of meals, but as first aid doc, postal clerk, and steward of the campgrounds.

The cook was responsible for acquiring supplies. He started with a list which included beans, flour, rice, salt pork, syrup, spices, prunes and dried apples, "skunk eggs" (onions), and coffee served hot, strong, and always. He kept a supply of dry wood and cow chips for fuel slung in a cowhide tarp (called a possum belly) under the wagon. Cowboys were told to be on the lookout for fire wood to add to the store. As the season wore on, the prairie was scoured of fuel sources, so cow chips became the fire maker of necessary choice.

With so much meat on the hoof, beef would be a staple of the trail diet. Or so you would think. However, many an owner and trail boss balked at depleting the moneymaker.  Consequently, the steers were relatively safe from slaughter on the trail unless one proved troublesome or a straggler. Then he was ripe for the picking.

Even then, the cook would waste no portion of the animal. A popular or infamous recipe of the trail was "sumbitch" stew with ingredients including heart,  liver,  kidneys,  brain,  sweetbreads  and everything                                                          except the moo. Seasoned with salt, pepper, and chili flakes and cooked as long as practical, the stew was better than it might seem from its contents.

The best cooks were known for their sourdough biscuits. Sourdough starter was carefuly restocked and guarded. On cold nights the prudent cook took his starter to bed with him to be sure it stayed warm enough to raise his biscuits. Biscuits. beans, and Arbuckle's coffee  made up the bulk of the cowboy's trail diet.

In my cattle trail historical, West of Heaven, Marcella McGovern unexpectedly inherits the cattle of her ranch owner father and the bawdy house of her mother. To get the cattle to market, she is forced to recruit the women who formerly worked at the bawdy house. With a crew like that, how could I resist creating a cook as unusual.

Hans Weiss wants to become cook for Marcella's crew to practice his recipes for the restaurant he plans to open in Kansas when he gets there. Beans, biscuits and the occasional stew are not enough for Hans. To facilitate his success he even devises traveling chicken coops so he has a fresh supply of eggs on the trail.

Here's an excerpt describing Hans's preferred bill of fare:

Last night after hearing Jean Luc's reasoning and instructions for slowing the herd, Marcella had recruited Nell and the two of them went out to collect cow chips. Hans stored them in the possum belly, a basket that hung under the wagon, to use for fuel on the treeless prairie. But this chore did not keep her away from camp long enough. She returned in time to hear the question that had already become a habit with Jean Luc,

"Hans, what's for supper? -- or dinner? -- or breakfast?" depending on the time of day.

To which Hans would reply Shinken mit rotkohl " -- or "Linsensuppe" -- or "Biernebrod."

And Jean Luc would throw his head back and walk off laughing.

Yet, when meal times rolled around, she noticed he ate the ham with red cabbage, the lentil soup, or the dried apple bread with gusto, all compliments to the chef, just like the rest of them...


Later after the successful slowing of the herd:

Too soon, it seemed, the signal was passed to break for the night. The herd was put to pasture and first watch began. The rest of the crew gathered to wash up and wait for supper.

When most were assembled, Jean Luc sauntered up. He rocked back on his heels and stroked his stubbly chin. Jake mirrored his actions in almost comical style, though no one dared laugh.

"Hans, what's for supper?"

"Geffulte." Hans replied.

Instead of his customary laugh, Jean Luc nodded his head. "Ahh, large noodles filled with meat, onions and parsley then boiled in beef broth. Very good." 

Then it was Jake's turn. "Herr Weiss, what's for dessert?"

"Pfefferkuchen mit honig."

"Ahh, gingerbread cake with honey. Very, very good." 

This time no one could suppress their good-natured laughter. Not even Marcella.

After a moment, Jean Luc gestured them to silence. "Hans has made us a gingerbread cake to celebrate. Congratulations, wranglers, you have successfully guided the herd past the first milestone. You are no longer tenderfoots. If I have earned the right to say it with my late start, I am proud of every one of you."

West of Heaven by Barbara Scott is available at Amazon for Kindle, Barnes & Noble for the Nook, Sony, Kobo and Apple's iBookstore 
or 

direct from DBP:  

 http://stores.desertbreezepublishing.com/-strse-150/Barbara-Scott-West-of/Detail.bok

For a review of West of Heaven at Love Western Romances: 

http://www.lovewesternromances.com/2011Reviews/westofheaven-review.html