The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945 Page: 113
617 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Texas Collection 113
I will not try to detail all the perversities of the season to date. I
have done that for others until it is more than a twice-told tale. We
have had one snow on top of another until, by my conservative figures,
we have had at least three feet in all. We have had some nice rains
mixed in that would drive any cowman crazy in December and January.
We have had the damnedest blizzard since the Amarillo weather station
was established, fifty years and more ago, with the exception of one
in 1899 which froze everything, "even the mortgages," one old-timer
said. That is the report of the weather bureau, but any old-timer will
tell you that is all "stuff." To say the least I have never found life
more interesting in quite a spell, and while the snow is gone, winter
is not, and March and early April have finished many a cowman after
a hard winter. But we are lucky; we have had about three weeks of
lovely weather, which drove off the snow after everybody had resigned
himself to wade through it until March, and gave us a little time in
which to shape up our herds, get in more feed, and get ready for the
long and hard pull to warm weather and the coming of grass.
When I am snowed in, like I was on January 7, and couldn't get
outside except for a few minutes at a time without getting frozen
to a crisp, I storm around the house and kick everything out but the
window lights. After it is over and I can set down in the middle of a
good horse and get to work, I still may not be a paragon of agreeableness,
but somehow my family finds me "tollable." Jimmie has helped keep
the picture a little brighter when the sun could not make it through.
Soon after the first foot of snow fell December 9, followed by a nice sleet
of two or three inches, we had ridden over to our nearest neighbor -
a cowcamp about four miles southeast - to see if the roads had been
broken from there to the Plains, above (and "above" not only means
up, but north, in Texas, as you know). On the way back the crust was
breaking through with our horses at almost every step, jerking them
to pieces and not helping my stove-up back much. Jimmie, feeling sorry
for his pet horse, Jerry, said: "When I get to be an inventor, the first
thing I am going to invent is snowshoes for horses," and I agreed that
would be fine.
But after that storm in January hit, I saddled a short-coupled, rock-
bottomed horse that could plow snow like a caterpillar, and headed
for the Rocking Ds, the ranch we have some twelve to fourteen miles
west. I crossed Lake Creek, upon which we are located, on the ice, and
picked the ridges and the high country, through the sandhills to the
west, trying to keep out of the deep drifts. When I reached Carson Creek,
named for old Kit, the snow was banked across it in gentle riffles. I
got to the west side, where the sandhills rise high, windblown, and
steep from the bed of the creek, and tried to make it out. Buster was
a-sweating, and his square-built quarters were churning his tight little
frame through the belly-deep snow with a powerful stride. The sandhills
were almost in reach when he stopped; my tapaderos were setting
deep in the snow; Buster had no traction - he had high-centered. We
backed out, took a circle, hit the bank at another spot, and soon Buster
and I were snaking up the bare, brown ridges that mark the shifty
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945, periodical, 1945; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146055/m1/117/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.