Читать книгу The Bassett Women - Grace McClure - Страница 14

THE BASSETT GANG

In the pioneer west, where survival was serious business, no decent rancher would turn away a hungry man. A traveler in strange country felt no hesitancy about stopping at any ranch house along his way if he had a tired horse and an empty stomach.

The Bassett ranch was the first one in clear view on the trail leading into Brown’s Park, and because of its location it became the nearest thing to a country inn. There was usually at least one guest at the dinner table. He might be a neighbor returning from town, a cowboy searching for work, or a suspicious-looking character of dubious reputation. It made no difference. All were welcomed and treated as honored guests, in accordance with the universal custom of the west and Elizabeth’s own Southern open-handedness. Cash might be scarce in a bad year, but food was always there for the asking.

An unemployed cowboy rode into the Bassett ranchyard in about 1883 looking for a meal and a bunkhouse with an empty bed. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, dark-skinned black man named Isom Dart. When Elizabeth asked him to stay on, she could not have realized that this new cowhand was to become a mainstay in her life and in the lives of her children and grandchildren.

Isom had come up from Texas on a trail drive of around six thousand head of cattle destined for the Middlesex ranch. His trail boss was his boyhood friend, Madison M. “Matt” Rash, who had been born near Acton in Hood County, Texas, on January 4, 1865. Matt was about eighteen years old at the time he left Texas, more than old enough to be a trail boss in those times when the Texas cattlemen depended consistently on teenagers to drive their cattle north. Crawford MacKnight describes Isom and Matt as “boyhood friends”; since Isom was ten years older than Matt (he was born in 1855) possibly Isom worked near Matt’s boyhood home or even for his family.

Isom’s powerful physique and superior coordination made him an all-around cowhand of exceptional competence. It was his personal qualities, however, that endeared him to three generations of Bassetts. He had natural dignity and integrity, and although the Bassetts would not completely erase the line between the races, they accorded him concern, respect, and a friendship that was close to love. Crawford remembered him as almost a member of the family, someone who shared their life more intimately than an ordinary cowhand would have done, and who “put a good meal on the table when it was his turn,” although he was not hired as a cook and was too valuable on the range to be kept in the kitchen.

Isom was a loner who went infrequently into Rock Springs and mingled very little there, even with members of his own race. He seemed to prefer life back at Brown’s Park, where he could play with the children and entertain them with his fiddle or the mouthharp on which he was a master. He loved to work with rawhide—Crawford called him a “rawhide artist”—and fashioned quirts and lariats of carefully cut strips of cowhide which he blended into articles of heirloom quality.

His real love was horseflesh, dating perhaps from the time in his early youth when he was stableboy for a governor of Texas. All the time he was with the Bassetts he had his own herd of cattle, which he augmented by catching the wild broncs so plentiful in those days, breaking them to saddle and then trading them to the surrounding ranchers for cows. A measure of the man can be taken by the fact that when he was breaking a bronc he took off his spurs and hung them on the corral fence. To Isom, it was cruel to use spurs on a wild creature, and he had the strength and stamina to break a bronc without them.

Isom lived on with the Bassetts, semiautonomous, with his own herd and his own ways of bringing in money. He ate his meals in the main house along with the other cowboys, played with the children, and pursued his own interests in his quiet, dignified, independent way, gaining admiration and respect from the ranchers in the valley.

In the meantime, his trail boss, Matt Rash, had stayed on at Middlesex after delivering the Texas cattle. Soon Matt transferred to Tom Kinney’s Circle K ranch just west of the Middlesex ranches and worked for Tom as a foreman. But Middlesex, which had been thwarted by the Brown’s Park ranchers’ concerted opposition when it tried to expand to the east, turned to the west, where Tom Kinney ranged his cows. Here the expansion was more successful. Tom was forced to sell out his cattle and turn to sheep-raising. Matt, a self-respecting cattleman, parted company with Tom at that point, but Tom did not hold this against Matt, and even helped him financially until he could get his own credit at the bank. Matt came on over to the Park driving a herd of his own, mostly young heifers he had got from Tom Kinney in their final settling up.

Although Matt stayed in the Bassett bunkhouse when he first entered the Park, he soon built himself a cabin a couple of miles west of the Bassett home and became independent. Friendship grew between the Bassetts and him, and the relationship deepened into another “family” association as time went on. Matt was from a good Texas family—his mother was a sister of Davy Crockett, it is said—and he spoke the same language as the Bassetts. Although Elizabeth was cordial to her neighbors, she had little in common with many of them and had developed no intimate friends. It was a pleasure to both Herb and her to have the company of this bright, aggressive young man.

Not too long after the arrival of Matt and Isom, a teenager joined them at the Bassett ranch: Jim McKnight, a rangy, six-foot Scotsman with chiseled features and blue eyes that turned green when he was angry. Jim was the namesake of a father whose own family had disowned him when he left the Catholic faith to become a Mormon. Eventually the elder McKnight became involved in so severe a doctrinal argument with the church elders that he was forced to leave Utah. He went on to the state of Washington, where he edited a newspaper, and never returned to Utah. His devoutly Mormon wife Mary stayed on at the family farm in the Salt Lake area, continuing to raise her children in the ways of righteousness.

Young Jim became disillusioned with Mormonism as his father had, and in 1881, when he was only twelve years old, he ran away to Rock Springs. Luckily for Jim, he captured the interest of a wealthy rancher, an immigrant from Pennsylvania named Butterworth. Jim worked on Butterworth’s ranch during his early teens, and his employer saw to it that he got an education and stayed out of trouble. When Jim felt himself grown he headed for Brown’s Park to begin ranching for himself, and ended up at the Bassett ranch as another cowboy ambitious to start his own personal herd of cattle.

Jim joined Matt Rash, Isom Dart and Elizabeth in an informal but closely cooperative working relationship in which they handled their various herds almost as one. When J. S. Hoy spoke of “the Bassett gang,” he was referring to these three men, and he regarded Matt Rash as the senior member. It is interesting to note, however, that for all of Hoy’s disapproval of Rash, and for all his eagerness to file complaints against his neighbors, no charge was ever brought against Rash, nor against Elizabeth or Jim McKnight for that matter. Isom was not as lucky, and was accused at least twice.

John Rolfe Burroughs tells of a time when Deputy Sheriff Philbrick came out from Rock Springs to arrest Isom on J. S. Hoy’s complaint of “larceny of livestock.” On the way back to Rock Springs there was an accident; the horses, the buckboard, the deputy and his prisoner all tumbled into a deep draw, leaving Philbrick with smashed ribs and several bad cuts. Isom, unhurt, got the team back on the road, took Philbrick to the hospital at Rock Springs, delivered the horses to the livery stable, then walked over to the jail and turned himself in. The grateful Philbrick testified at Isom’s trial, pointing out that such merciful treatment and willingness to accept arrest were not the actions of a guilty man. The jury found Isom innocent of the charges.

Burroughs tells of a more serious incident in 1890, when three of the Bassett cowhands—Angus McDougal, Jack Fitch and Isom Dart—were accused of burning down Harry Hoy’s barn. Angus and Isom were further accused of altering the brands on three horses belonging to another brother, A. A. Hoy. Angus McDougal was sentenced to five years in the Colorado state penitentiary, although Tom Davenport, Elizabeth and young Sam Bassett were subpoenaed to testify for the defense. Charges against Fitch were dropped. Burroughs states that Isom jumped jail (perhaps with the approval of his jailers?) and was never brought to trial. If so, it is possible that the authorities had no more of a case against him than they had against Fitch, since they did not bother making another trip to the Park to bring him in. Considering his reputation and his behavior with Deputy Sheriff Philbrick, it seems that they could have dropped him a postcard and he would have come to trial of his own accord.

If Elizabeth’s helpers can be considered a “gang,” then there was one other member, an important one. Even before Elizabeth acquired her first cowhand, little Josie had been a working member of the family. As each baby arrived and as the workload on Elizabeth grew heavier, Josie took over an increasing share of the care of the smaller children and the household tasks. She graduated from the work/play of “helping” Elizabeth pat out the biscuit dough with fingers still chubby with baby fat to making those biscuits herself. The first child, Josie accepted her responsibilities as a matter of course, and her lifelong generosity and solicitude for others (along with her habit of command) became as natural as breathing.

Josie has been called “another Elizabeth.” She must have been a charming little girl. Her curly hair was the color of a copper penny; her fair skin was liberally sprinkled with freckles. She learned from her mother the art of tactful persuasion and acquired her mother’s well-mannered poise and serenity. She had Elizabeth’s quickness and drive, her ability and need to control, her indomitability, her strong will, and her well-controlled but volcanic temper. But where Elizabeth was admired and respected, Josie was to be loved, for her strengths were tempered by the warmth and affability she gained from her father.

Young Sam was more like Herb, an easy child to care for when Josie became his surrogate mother. Since Sam was over four years old when the Bassetts returned to Brown’s Park, he too would have soon become a working member of the family. Like all the Bassett children, he learned to ride as soon as he could straddle a horse, but even before he was trusted on horseback he must have gathered eggs, hauled water from the spring and brought wood for the cookstove.

Ann was altogether different. If Josie was the picture of her mother, Ann was Elizabeth’s caricature. Like Josie, she had fair, freckled skin, and although her hair lacked the brightness of Josie’s, it still had auburn highlights. Ann could be as winsome as her mother and behave as sweetly and politely as her older sister Josie when she wanted to, but she lacked the self-control and self-assurance that her mother and Josie both possessed. Whereas Josie’s temper was slow to rouse and responded only to strong provocation, Ann’s temper was her primary weapon in her determination to have her own way. She had been a demanding child from the first time she found no milk in her mother’s breasts, and as she grew older her temper tantrums became part of her standard repertoire.

In those beginning years a relationship between Josie and Ann was formed that was to continue throughout their lives. It was a close and loving one, for family ties were important in the Bassett family, but it was never peaceful. Josie chided and scolded her younger sister when she was naughty, and exercised her delegated authority with complete assurance. Josie had an honest conviction that what she was saying should be listened to by any well-brought-up girl, especially a Bassett girl. She infuriated Ann, who usually refused to obey. Ann was impudent, and she soon learned to bait Josie into losing her temper. Elizabeth and Herb would, of course, scold Ann for being naughty, but the brunt of their displeasure must have fallen on Josie, who, after all, was older and supposed to know better. Ann, looking angelic with tears in innocent eyes, would thoroughly enjoy the uproar she had caused.

Their next brother, Eb, was another Ann, although he lacked Ann’s steel-willed violence. When George came along in 1884 he was “Herbert’s child,” and this must have been a decided relief to Josie. As the years passed, each boy in turn was introduced to the outside work and was gradually absorbed into tasks in the fields and on the range. Ann, however, was expected to follow in her sister’s footsteps, become a little lady, and turn into what the neighbors were later to call Josie—a “homebody.”

Ann had other ideas. She looked at Josie, who actually liked to work around the house, and at her mother, who spent much time in the saddle, and decided that her mother and her brothers were having all the fun. From the time she could climb on a horse she was out following her brother Sam. If Sam sent her home, she went outside with Eb, playing rough and getting grimy—something allowed little boys but not nice little girls. Although her parents attempted to keep her in the house with Josie, Ann either ran away or did her housework so ineptly that Josie would do the work herself.

In The Colorado Magazine Ann tells of her pride in an Indian costume she was given and of bursting into a roomful of visitors from the east “all done up in war paint and eagle feathers.” She contrasted this to her sister Josie, “all perked up in starched gingham and ruffles to announce dinner.” It was tiresome to Ann to be constantly compared to Josie, but it would have been more tiresome to have copied her. She continued to be a wild, unbroken colt of a girl, slipping away to the bunkhouse to listen to the cowboys’ talk and picking up incidentally a vocabulary that she sometimes used even when she had turned into an elegant young woman. When she was just a little thing, it is said, she would use those words as she threw stones when one of the unpopular Hoy brothers happened to ride past the schoolhouse yard.

There was a cruel streak in Ann. She herself told how she could not keep from laughing when a “slow” little boy named Felix Myer would try to recite. Although the teacher remonstrated and her mother whipped her, Ann still laughed. The teacher could only send her out to sit on the steps whenever poor Felix had to recite.

Dick Dunham tells a story in Flaming Gorge Country involving a bride of one of the Rife brothers, who bragged excessively at a community supper about a cut-glass bowl she had brought from the east. At this time Ann was old enough to be helping the women wash the dishes. No one could ever be sure that it was intentional, but Ann picked up the bowl to polish it, juggled it for a moment, then watched it go crashing to the floor.

Yet there was kindness and loyalty and a demand for justice in her that balanced the cruelties of her nature. She was never hesitant to speak up in defense of the weak or the oppressed. In her childhood the Utes were still slipping back into Brown’s Park to hunt and to dry their jerky. They camped at the mouth of Vermillion Creek, not too far from the Bassett ranch, and Ann would go down to play with the Indian children, just as Sam and Josie had. Because the Indians were her friends, she was always to defend them and espouse their cause, even in the face of the distrust and contempt that many whites felt for an “Indian-lover.” Actually, throwing stones and cursing the Hoys was a child’s way of thirsting for justice.

The children had a wonderful life. They worked hard, but they accepted this as natural. They also fell naturally into the fellowship of adults which their work earned them. Children were not segregated and given children’s activities in Brown’s Park. Instead, they were incorporated into the full life of the community and were genuine participants at the house parties, on the roundups, and at the horse races down on the old Indian track below Harry Hoy’s place.

The Bassett children had a particular possession of their own, a private retreat up in the great outcroppings of polished maroon rock behind their home. They could climb up the rocks to what they called “the cave,” although it was actually a geologic oddity more delightful than a cave. In past eons an ancient spring had poured its water on one of those huge slabs of rock until a perfect circle, almost six feet across, had been melted out of it. The water had hollowed out a large room beneath the opening and had carved a huge opening on one side. Sunlight streamed down through the roof and made patterns in the loose sand in which the children buried their treasures, and from their “picture window” they could see their whole world laid out below them. They played their games in a setting that seemed created just for the delight of children.

Even though strangers rode through the Park, and though peculiar characters sometimes camped in a secluded wash, there was no thought that the children should be sheltered from every possible harm. Once their chores were done, they could ride the hills as free as the jackrabbits that bounded away at their approach. The one incident that has come down to us in which this freedom might have been dangerous is found in Glade Ross’s files:

Sam and Josie went up Bull Canyon to get horses, Sam on a scrawny iron grey and Josie on a sorrel mare which looked good but was not as good a horse as she looked. As they were coming back down, a tall man—ugly, dirty, red stubble about an inch long, riding an old grey horse just about played out [stopped them]. He had corduoroy [sic] pants on, stuffed in his boot tops, no sign of a gun and no pack or supplies. The horse was shod. Said, “Sis, let’s trade horses.” Josie refused but he insisted, took her off her horse and changed saddles. Sam said, “Better let him do it, Jose,” but Josie was mad and really cussed him out. He said, “O.K. kids, I’ll see you around,” and left on her horse. No one knew who he was, and Mr. Bassett tried to find out but never did. Knew the country or he couldn’t have gone through the country so light and avoided everyone. The grey horse was much better than the sorrel and Josie had him several years until he died. Everyone kidded Josie about being quite a horse trader, but she didn’t like it.

The children’s most meaningful education was carried on informally in their own cabin as they listened to their father read aloud. There were readings from the Bible, of course, but also from Shakespeare, Emerson, Sir Walter Scott and all the other writers whose books filled Herb’s shelves. However, formal schooling was also provided for Brown’s Park children from the first possible moment after Herb’s arrival. He organized a public school in 1881, just after the first survey party came into the Park to establish the Colorado-Utah line. Herb had eked out the number of pupils required under Colorado law by enrolling his own Josie, even though she was still a bit under age, and rounding up Jimmie Reed’s half-Indian children.

The first school building was concocted from an abandoned barn belonging to the deceased Dr. Parsons, the doctor who had attended Ann’s birth. Herb partitioned off a section with a tarpaulin, covered the windows with oiled paper, and built a fireplace. A dugout down by the river was used during another school term. Eventually a real school building was erected, and the people had a community meeting place at last.

Elizabeth celebrated Christmas as lavishly as possible, baking pies and cookies, making candy and popcorn, and stringing berries from the wildrose bushes for the Christmas tree. Christmas once past, the children started their stint of formal education, which ended before the time for spring chores. The ranchers in the far reaches of the valley eventually built tiny cabins around the school where their children could stay for the three-month term under the care of a grandmother or an older sister. Josie recalled that during her first school year in the Park she was sent to stay nearer the school in the teacher’s crowded dugout, going home only for Saturday and Sunday.

As the family grew and the ranch prospered, the Bassetts’ original two-room cabin was expanded to a cross-shaped building of five spacious, many-windowed rooms, each with its own fireplace. It acquired a finished look, surrounded by hay meadows, vegetable gardens and well-constructed outbuildings. The apple orchard matured so that Elizabeth no longer had to ration out the store bought apples at one per child per day.

The cabin itself was charming. Herb had replaced the original hard dirt floor with puncheons, splitting green cottonwood logs and smoothing the thick slabs on each side with his broad-ax, then fitting them close together throughout the house. With the picturesque bear and buffalo skins scattered on the good puncheon floors, the beautiful old furniture from their Arkansas home, the truly impressive collection of books, and the marvelous organ that added so much to the lives of their neighbors, it became something of a local showplace. In addition to what the Bassetts had brought with them, Herb added to its beauty, as Ann relates:

Birch grew in profusion along all the streams. Rawhide was plentiful. He [Herb] solved our problems by making small tables and chairs of all sizes, using birch for the frames and rawhide strips for seats and backs. There were high chairs and easy ones, of the various types devised by his ingenuity. Cushions were of buckskin stuffed with milkweed floss. . . . The curtain problem was mother’s to solve, which she did with most satisfactory results. She traded Indian Mary ten pounds of sugar for a bale of fringed buckskins, smoked to a soft tan. Father fashioned rods of birch and sawed rings from the leg bones of deer carcasses. When hung, these draperies were the cause of much complimentary comment.

The pleasant cabin saw many parties. It was the custom in the Park for the word to be sent out to everyone that so-and-so was entertaining, and people came from all over the valley for a dance that would go on until dawn. As the evening progressed, the children would be laid crosswise on the beds like so many sardines in a can as they fell asleep, one by one, listening to John Jarvie play his concertina or Herb Bassett his organ. Herb also loved to play the violin; when he later lost two fingers to blood poisoning he would have his grandsons tape the bow to his mutilated hand and then play until the tight bindings stopped his circulation. Guns were checked at the door at Brown’s Park parties, and any drinking was done in the barn. If a man took a few nips too many and became objectionable, he was relegated to the barn for the rest of the evening. There was no saloon atmosphere at these community parties, especially at the Bassetts’.

When it was another neighbor’s turn to have a party, the Bassetts piled their organ into their wagon and took it along. It is said that the organ traveled the rutted roads of the Park so often that it finally succumbed from overexertion. Its passing was mourned by everyone, for its music had given beauty to people who would travel thirty miles by wagon for one of these lively parties.