Centennial (88 page)

Skimmerhorn wanted Line Camp Four convenient to the new Union Pacific Railroad, and this required that they expand into Wyoming Territory. At first the new land was much like the old, completely empty, but toward dusk one day they saw to the east that low piñon trees had somehow established themselves in spite of wind and drought; they dotted the land with attractive specks of dark green. Their shapes were twisted and they did not grow high, nor were there enough of them to form a forest, but they did create a scene of great natural beauty.

“This’ll be a fine spot,” Jim said approvingly, but Skimmerhorn delayed decision, for as the sun set he caught a glimpse of something farther east that attracted him. Before dawn he was in the saddle, and as the sun came up he and Jim entered one of the notable areas on the ranch—a hillside covered with piñon trees and marked by wind-eroded pinnacles that looked like gnomes marching from the pages of a German fairy tale. On a southern exposure, protected from the wind and overlooking an infinite expanse of prairie, Skimmerhorn located his camp.

“All the cowboys’ll be wanting duty up here,” he predicted. “But not because it’s beautiful.” As he spoke, the whistle from a train on the Union Pacific sounded to the north, and he laughed. “When we build this camp, Jim, we’ll have hell keeping the men out of Cheyenne,” and that night when they spread their sleeping bags Jim could see in the west the lights of that hell-raising railhead city.

They left the piñons and rode toward Rattlesnake Buttes, west of which they located Line Camp Three. It would be a favorite of those cowboys, for here they could scale the red buttes and generally enjoy themselves in one of the rugged areas of the west.

But it was on the eastern reaches, when they were searching for sites from which immense prairies could be controlled, that Jim caught once more that feeling of Colorado’s dormant grandeur. He had first experienced this sensation on the morning after the fight with the Kansas outlaws, when the immensity of the prairie exploded before him. Then the emptiness was a new sensation; now it was home. And as soon as he rode east and reached those limitless horizons, with not a tree or a trail in sight, he sensed that he had found his universe, and said, “Mr. Skimmerhorn, when you give the men their jobs, I’d like to work out here.” Skimmerhorn laughed. “You like this?”

“This is good country,” Jim said.

They located Line Camp Two about halfway to the Nebraska line, and Line Camp One at the mouth of a canyon in an area so bleak and forbidding that only someone like Jim could appreciate it. “We’ll put our strongest cattle out here and let them fend for themselves,” he suggested, but Skimmerhorn, kneeling to inspect the sturdy grass that covered the area, said, “No, this grass is so rich it’ll do wonders for our weakest cattle. As soon as we get back to headquarters, Jim, I want you to ride into Denver and file for a homestead on this site. Mark off your boundaries now.”

And Jim did, using piles of stones to approximate the corners of the hundred-and-sixty-acre plot to which he could gain title if he successfully lied about his age. A considerable joy welled up as he placed the final corner. “This is to be my land!” he cried, and Mr. Skimmerhorn said, “Not exactly. You homestead it, but when the patent comes through, you sell to the ranch.”

“I don’t want the money!” Jim protested. “I want this canyon.

“The rule is,” Skimmerhorn explained, with some coughing, “that our cowboys file on the critical homesteads, then deed them back to the company.

“I’ve always wanted my own land,” Jim said stubbornly.

“So have I,” Skimmerhorn confessed. “In the years when my father drifted from one place to another ...”

“You have yours.”

“Half an acre,” Skimmerhorn said contemptuously. “I wanted land like this.” And he swept his right arm through a far reach, then dropped it. “Fellows like you and me, Jim, we’ll get our land by managing it for others.”

They rode home by following the Platte, and for the first time Jim came to appreciate this extraordinary river. In some places it reminded him of the Pecos, and he told Skimmerhorn, “Old Rags could jump this,” but at other times he saw its power and its tattered magnificence. “Just as you think you see it,” he said, “it changes completely. It must be the only river in the world that’s more islands than water.”

On one of the islands Jim found the bird which, even more than the soaring hawk, would epitomize for him this strange new land. It was a frail thing, walking delicately through marshes on slim yellow legs. It was attractively colored, with touches of yellow and brown and flecked gray, but what distinguished it was its remarkable bill, a long thing which turned up sharply at the end. Jim had never seen a bird like this and he laughed with pleasure as it tiptoed along the shore of the river, dipping its curved beak into wormholes.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Avocet.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It patrols the river,” Skimmerhorn said, and they watched the antics of the bird until night fell.

One morning Jim rose early and looked west to the mountains, and the day was so unsullied that they could see the Rockies from a distance which Skimmerhorn calculated to be a hundred and fifty miles. “That’s what’s good about this territory,” Skimmerhorn said. “You don’t find air like this in St. Louis.”

So Jim Lloyd returned to Zendt’s Farm and homesteaded his quarter section at the mouth of the canyon where Line Camp One was to be, but when he reached the land office he found three other Venneford cowboys going through the paper work to acquire other choice sites, and he asked them, “You takin’ out the land for the ranch?” and the men whispered, “Ssssh! Don’t let anyone hear you say that. It’s illegal.” Jim knew the whole arrangement was illegal, but like the others, he needed the job.

From the moment of his arrival in Colorado, Oliver Seccombe had worked fifteen and eighteen hours a day, piecing together a ranch whose Crown Vee brand would be respected throughout the west. During the six months that Skimmerhorn had been absent, Seccombe had assembled the crucial holdings, and now, with a relatively small outlay of British capital, he had his empire consolidated.
(
See Map 09 – Acquisition of the Land 1870
)

It had required a good many more than the seventeen sites he had confidently assumed would do the trick, and it had taken more money than he had anticipated to buy up abandoned holdings, but his cowboys had homesteaded some of the choicest sites for him, and there was that stroke of luck in Elmwood, Illinois.

In 1871 he had gone back to Illinois to buy some good British bulls, Shorthorns and Angus, and had persuaded two of the farmers to come west with their animals, bringing them by railroad as far as Cheyenne. While they were in the area, he conceived the idea of asking them to homestead two quarter sections for him. They saw no harm in this and agreed to sell him the homesteads once they were proved up. When they had signed the papers—they never saw the land they were acquiring—he had the further idea of proposing that as a gesture of good will to their friends and relatives in Elmwood, they get sixty or seventy of them to take the train trip west, at Seccombe’s expense, with each taking up a homestead for the benefit of the Venneford Ranch. The good people of Elmwood, eager to see the west, flocked out for a few days and then flocked right back home, but not before filing claims in Denver. In this unorthodox way Seccombe picked up an additional sixty-nine strategic holdings.

By 1872 the Venneford empire was fairly well completed—there were a few farms along the Platte it still needed—and it stretched a hundred and fifty miles from east to west, fifty miles from north to south, for a total of 5,760,000 acres. But it should never be said that the Venneford Ranch owned so much land; its actual holdings were rather modest:

17 parcels purchased outright
3,100 acres

37 cowboy home
steads,

beneficially controlled
5,920 acres

69 Elmwood, Illinois homesteads,

beneficially controlled
11,040 acres

Total ownership, real and benefi
c
ial
20,060 acres

This meant that of the open range referred to by the Venneford cowboys as “our land,” Seccombe and his absentee masters actually owned, by one device or another, less than one half of one percent. Nor was there any permanence to their control. Each railroad that entered the territory would gobble up its share of the range; any town established in the area would eat up more; homesteaders would nibble away at the edges. Each year the total would diminish, until by the end of the century the ranch would be whittled down to reasonable size, say three-quarters of a million acres. Seccombe was right when he said, “We’re borrowing the land.”

Who owned this borrowed land? It belonged to the United States government, and until it was claimed by some adventurous homesteader, it was free for anyone to use. Even in this year of 1873 when the Venneford Ranch was operating at maximum efficiency, if you came out from Iowa and announced that you intended to run two thousand head of longhorns on their open range, you were absolutely free to do so, with two
if
’s.

If
you could get your cattle to water along one of the creeks, which would prove impossible, since all the good watering spots were preempted by the Venneford people. And
if
you could escape being shot. No one ever knew who did the shooting; certainly it was not Mr. Seccombe, and for sure, not Mr. Skimmerhorn, who raised hell with Seccombe about the things that were going on.

What happened was that when you brought your cattle onto the grazing lands, a Venneford cowboy would ride up and warn you not to trespass on his watering rights, and if you persisted in claiming your rights to the open land, one day you became shot. That was the phrase they used: “Poor Waddington. Running his cattle north toward Skunk Hollow. He became shot.” In eleven such incidents no one ever saw who did the shooting, nor were there even suspicions. But eleven would-be intruders became shot.

Take the case of the two ranches along the Platte east of Zendt’s Farm. Close in was the farm belonging to Potato Brumbaugh, his wife, their daughter and two sons. Farther east, and therefore less protected, lay the ranch of Otto Kraenzel. Each commanded an influential stretch of riverbank, and if either fell into the hands of uncongenial cattlemen, the whole open range might become vulnerable. It was therefore essential that the Venneford people obtain these two ranches.

Realizing that Hans Brumbaugh, with his successful irrigation project, would be the more difficult to persuade, Oliver Seccombe first approached the Kraenzels. They didn’t want to sell. They liked the Platte valley and foresaw a bright future. Seccombe pointed out that if they sold to him at a good price, they could take the money and homestead elsewhere in Colorado; he would help them locate a favorable site.

They refused to discuss the matter, told Seccombe it was no use arguing any further, regardless of price. So he bade them an amiable farewell and caught the train at Cheyenne for business in Chicago.

In his absence a Mr. Farwell arrived in Cheyenne. First he rode down to visit the Kraenzels, offering them a very good deal indeed, and then he rode up to the Brumbaugh ranch, where Hans and his wife assured him that under no conditions would they be interested in selling.

Mr. Farwell came back with two assistants, whom he called Gus and Harry, and the trio did their best to convince both Kraenzel and Brumbaugh to sell, but neither was interested. During the last discussion Mr. Farwell, a dark man in his forties who spoke with a gentle voice, said, “I’m sorry that negotiations have broken down.”

“There never were any,” Brumbaugh said.

Mr. Farwell ignored this and said, “I’ll wait for two days at Zendt’s place. If you change your mind, come in and we’ll settle this easily.”

“There’s nothing to settle,” Brumbaugh said, and Kraenzel said the same.

“Then I suppose that’s all there is to it,” Mr. Farwell said quietly. He indicated that Gus and Harry were to depart and he shook hands with the stubborn ranchers. For two days he waited at Zendt’s, and when nothing happened he rode off toward Cheyenne, with Gus and Harry trailing behind.

Two nights later Otto Kraenzel was gunned down and his ranch house set on fire. Mrs. Kraenzel and the two children escaped. They were so terrified, so eager to be rid of this dreadful place, that when they got to Denver they authorized a lawyer to sell the establishment, cattle and all, if a buyer could be found, and they were seen no more in the west. Oliver Seccombe, not being in the area, sent a telegram to Denver commissioning a lawyer he knew to acquire the vacated Kraenzel ranch, which solidified the Venneford holdings along the river.

When news of Kraenzel’s murder sped through the community, the killers must have expected Potato Brumbaugh to hightail it off the Platte; if so, they underestimated the stoop-shouldered Russian, for having once fought off the Volga Cossacks, he now had no intention of surrendering either to fear or to Mr. Farwell, wherever he was. Instead, he sent his daughter to town with a message for Levi Zendt: “If they kill me, you’ll be next,” and Levi suspected that this might be correct, but the request placed him in an awkward position. Brumbaugh was accusing the Venneford people of trying to assassinate him and his family, and Levi was a partner in the Venneford operation. It was he, Levi, who was being accused of murder.

He sent the Brumbaugh girl back to the farm and sought out Skimmerhorn. “John, did you hire outsiders to come in here and kill Kraenzel and Brumbaugh?”