Texas America

The Texas Quote of the Day find the legendary Charles Goodnight ruminating about the days of cattle drives from Texas to Kansas and points beyond:

“It was a rough, hard, adventurous life, but was not without its sunny side, and when everything moved smoothly the trip was an agreeable diversion from the monotony of the range. But things did not always move smoothly. For one thing, there was the dreaded stampede. It was much more liable to occur with the Texas longhorn than with the high-bred range cattle of today and was especially to be guarded against during the first ten days or so of the drive. The cattle were nervous and easily frightened, and the slightest noise might startle them to running. Some cattle were stampeders by nature. Hence everybody was on the alert, and if we succeeded in holding the herd together the first two weeks we seldom experienced trouble from stampedes further along on the trail.

The men slept on the ground with their horses staked nearby. Sometimes the demands were so urgent that a man’s boots would not be taken off his feet for an entire week. The nerves of the men usually became so tense that it was a standing rule that no man asleep was to be touched until after he had been spoken to. The man who suddenly aroused a sleeper was liable to be shot, as all were thoroughly armed and understood the instant use of the the revolver and the rifle.”

Charles Goodnight, quoted by James Evetts Haley, “Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman,”  1981