King Fisher

Acknowledgements

THIS IS A NARRATIVE based on the life of a Texas gunslinger. The characters in this book are fictional and should not be confused with the historical characters. Those interested in the historical characters should see King Fisher: His Life and Times by O.C. Fisher with J.C. Dykes, Taming the Nueces Strip by George Durham as told to Clyde Wantland, and A Texas Ranger by N.A. Jennings.

Galveston, Texas has many resources for those interested in Texas history. Two were invaluable in producing this book: The Rosenberg Library and The Bryan Museum.

Prologue: Progression

DEC. 1, 1870, HUNTSVILLE, Texas

Two men, a minister and a botanist, were on a train from Huntsville to Houston. The shy man was the minister. Because T.B. Larimore was introverted and because he felt a duty, hard as a bayonet to the back, to preach, he constantly had to force himself to overcome his shyness. As a matter of practice, he forced himself to speak to strangers. He quietly and deferentially introduced himself to his fellow traveler, Joachim Seinsheimer, a boisterous lecturer in botany who spoke with a thick German accent. Seinsheimer was from Hamburg. He’d studied in Europe and won an academic post. But he wanted to see the plants of the New World and, inspired by the writings of Ferdinand Lindheimer, a German who had settled in Texas, he especially wanted to see the flora of the Edwards Plateau.

Larimore instinctively sought common ground in conversation. He said he taught at a small school for boys in Mars Hill, Alabama. It was an academic environment, though far from the kind available to a scholar such as Seinsheimer. Larimore had an unusual trait in a minister of the gospel: he was  far better at listening than at speaking. He hoped his remark would prompt the scientist to talk about his own studies.

Texas is infested with botanists, Seinsheimer said. Like fleas on a dog, as the Texans say. Half of them, like me, are German. Seinsheimer had realized his ambition of visiting Lindheimer in New Braunfels, a community of Germans who’d come after the upheavals in Europe in 1848. Seinsheimer planned to take another look at the plants of the Edwards Plateau. He was interested in the new ideas about how plants tended to grow in communities or associations. But first he had wanted to see the place called The Big Thicket, a vast region of river bottoms in East Texas. He had just come from the thicket — three weeks in the deep woods, he said.

There are insectivorous plants in The Big Thicket, Reverend, Seinsheimer said. Three species I found, and there are perhaps more. Who knows?

Larimore held up his hand, trying to interrupt politely. I’m interested, professor, but please, don’t call me ‘reverend.’ I’m like any other man. I hold no title, no credentials, from any denomination. I’m opposed to denominations.

Seinsheimer smiled a great smile, as if he had recognized another characteristic species of an exotic region. The Great Awakening! Of course, you are a product of that movement. I should have guessed. And they call you Cambellites, unless I am badly mistaken, although you perhaps consider that demeaning. That was the case when some Christians first began calling others ‘Lutherans.’

Seinsheimer was interested in what he had heard: that the Campbellites believed that Christians would be cast into the fires of hell if they were not baptized as adults and that they sang their hymns unaccompanied by musical instruments because they thought that’s the way the original Christians had done it. Remarkable, these Americans! Such a pioneering spirit — but each new trail seemed to lead to a conservative ideal, to the political freedoms of ancient Greece, to the spiritual purity of the ancient Christians. Innovations to dead ends, rather than evolution, the professor thought.

But Seinsheimer noticed that the minister was curiously slow to tell his own story. He asked the minister if he had heard of Darwin. Larimore had and found the great scientist’s theory interesting.

Seinsheimer was surprised. But surely, you see that this is the end of religion? he suggested.

Not at all, professor. Might this idea of evolution be an evolution of our understanding of God’s creation? Might this not be a better understanding of how God created, and is still creating, the world?

You surprise me, Mr. Larimore.

Surprised but not convinced?

Not convinced, no. I see no reason for a god, yours or anyone else’s, to be involved in this process.

Well, tell me about the process.

Seinsheimer gave an elementary lecture on the idea of plant progressions. He started with a beach — sand, rock, ocean and wind — and told how the simplest plants took hold in sheltered areas where they would not be washed away, fertilized by chance by the arrival of dead fish or a rotting log upon the shore. These plants died and decayed, and in dying released nutrients for more complicated plants, whose roots held the soil in blowing dunes. As generations of plants died and decayed, building up the soil, more complicated plants took over. And so, as a scientist moved inland from the coast, he could see a progression of plants, from the primitive to complex, from salt-tolerant grasses to trees, and the delicate, highly specialized plants that ate insects in The Big Thicket.

The botanist paused. He wondered whether the scientific idea had made any impression on this curious preacher.

The minister said, And what happens to that specialized plant if the environment changes?

What do you mean?

What happens to your insect-eating plant if the woods of The Big Thicket are cut for the timber?

That plant will die, the botanist said, studying the face of his fellow passenger. Seinsheimer had seen the sawmills on the edge of the thicket. He had seen the cities of the East Coast and wondered how much timber would be cut and shipped to build them. The species itself will perhaps become extinct. The organism goes when it loses its environment.

Larimore thought for a moment and said: I think, professor, that you will see the same thing among people as you travel the frontier. You will find, at the very edge of civilization, hard men, simple men. And, as the environment becomes tamer, more developed, richer in nutrients, you will see men more refined, men such as yourself.

The botanist was surprised at the idea and more surprised that it had come from a simple clergyman. He did not interrupt the preacher, who seemed lost in his thoughts.

I have just been behind the walls of the state penitentiary back there in Huntsville, Larimore said. I met many hard men, shaped by a hard country. I’m afraid they are beyond hope, at least to my way of thinking, of any kind of good life. But while I was there, I met a 16-year-old boy. He is to be released soon, and I wonder what kind of life he will lead in this country, what kind of forces will shape him.

The conversation stayed in Seinsheimer’s mind for days. When he dined with Lindheimer and other men of science in New Braunfels later that week, he told about this traveling preacher. At the university in Frankfurt he’d talked with theologians and doctors of theology who still believed that the essence of man was in some kind of immaterial soul. Here, on the frontier, was a simple man who seemed to think that man was just part of the natural world.

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1: The Price of Cattle

SPRING 1875, PENDENCIA Creek, Texas

Juan Lopez watched four men drive a small bunch of scrawny, stolen cattle toward the corral. It was hot for March, even by the standards of South Texas. The white dust the cows kicked up hung in the air. It was 90 degrees, although the men wouldn’t have known it; the nearest weather thermometer was in San Antonio. But the men — a mix of Anglos, Mexicans and Africans — sweated through their big blousy shirts.

They wore oiled trousers to turn away rain and thorns. In the thick dust the Mexicans were discernible by the shape of their clothes — they preferred broader brims on their hats, but narrower, closer cuts on their trousers. A few hands sat on the top rails of the corral, built of cedar and live-oak posts, perhaps the sturdiest structure on the place. The corral was next to a barn, made of milled lumber. The ranch house and bunkhouse were 70 yards away, just far enough away from the corral to be out of the way of the worst. The cowboys driving the cattle covered their mouths and noses with bandanas. Lopez, who was foreman of King Fisher’s ranch, went to see what the four strangers wanted.

We got cattle to sell, the lead hand, a tall man with a thin beard, shouted. Around him, cows were bawling and calves were crying, fearful of getting separated from their mothers. The hands working the cattle whistled and cursed.

Name’s Bart Miller, the tall man shouted over the din. I hear King Fisher is buying cattle. Lopez nodded and started to speak, but Bart didn’t stop talking. They say King Fisher is a hard man, but you can do business with him. Well, I got some business to do with him.

Lopez wondered why a stranger would think he needed to inform him about his boss, a man he knew. While Bart continued to talk, Lopez looked at the cattle and the cowhands. He could see that the rider at the back of the bunch was the only man who knew what he was doing. The men on the wings were beginners who could barely stay on their horses. Nothing personal, Bart said. I like doing business directly with the boss. I aim to deal with King Fisher, not you.

As you wish, Lopez said, nodding toward King Fisher. Bart seemed surprised when Lopez pointed to a fellow branding strays in the corral. King Fisher was 5-foot-9 and perhaps 150 pounds. He was almost 21 and had thick black hair and a full, flaring moustache. He was dressed like a vaquero. His pants fit snugly, while his shirt was blousy and open in front. He wore a sombrero, rather than a Stetson. Lopez compared the two men, sensing this business might end badly. Bart was a head taller and 40 pounds heavier. King Fisher wasn’t a big man, but people around him could feel his determination as they could feel heat from a fire.

Bart took a deep breath. Yes, he said. I reckon I’ll just talk to the boss myself. Lopez followed. As Bart climbed the fence and dropped into the corral, Lopez perched on the top rail.

Lopez watched as Bart hailed King Fisher, shouting to be heard. The big man never stopped talking. Lopez watched his boss as he listened and then, as Lopez predicted, cut the story short. I’ll pay $4 a head, King Fisher said.

Bart was crestfallen. Me and my friends will just have to take these cows elsewhere, Bart said. Everybody knows that cows in the Nueces Strip bring $8 a head, maybe $10.

Fine, King Fisher said. Get them off my property. King Fisher turned and walked back toward two men who were struggling to hold down a wiry yearling. The branding iron hissed. The animal bawled. The conversation was over, and Bart, when he finally realized that, looked at Lopez, who looked back without expression. Bart looked at his three friends.

Wait, wait just a minute, Mr. Fisher, Bart said. We can do business here. King stopped and turned around. We’ll take $6, the tall cowboy said.

King Fisher said: You’ll take $4. Or you’ll get those sorry, scrawny cows off my place. And if you want to sell them, you are going to help me brand them — before any money changes hands.

The four strangers were soon in the corral, branding cows they’d rounded up out of The Strip. Lopez knew it didn’t bother King Fisher that the cows were sorry and scrawny. There really weren’t any other kinds of cattle in South Texas. It also didn’t bother King Fisher that the cows were stolen. Most of the cows in The Nueces Strip that were in the herds of Texas ranchers had been stolen from Mexican ranchers. Most of the cows south of the Rio Grande had been stolen from Texas ranchers. The Nueces Strip — the great, empty land between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River — had long been claimed by both Texas and Mexico. But neither country seemed to want it badly. The only law was the custom of cattlemen. Disputes over ownership of cattle in The Strip were settled by gunfire, rather than by courts. King Fisher’s ability to resolve those disputes was making him wealthy.

People talked about the number of men King Fisher had killed, and Juan Lopez could tell this fellow Bart knew what people were saying. Still, Lopez could see that this big fellow Bart was irritated. He was the kind of man, Lopez told himself, who made a plan and who got mad when the plan didn’t work. Lopez also could see that Bart didn’t like the sweaty work of the corral. He was useless as a cowhand. One cow almost pulled his arm out of socket when he wasn’t paying attention to the slack in his lariat. Another cow stepped on his foot. The more Bart sweated, the more he complained about the price King Fisher was willing to pay. As the men roped the last cow, Bart told his friends they were being cheated. It ain’t fair, he said, too loudly. Everybody knows them cows is worth $8 a head.

Lopez watched his boss, who was not the kind of man to let a problem simmer. We’ve already agreed on a price, King Fisher said. His voice was even — almost, but not quite, soft.

Lopez watched Bart’s three partners. They were nervous. Lopez guessed they knew Bart had a temper. They knew, too, the stories about King Fisher.

King Fisher picked up a branding iron and was walking toward the last cow when Bart stepped in front of him. This ain’t right! the big man shouted. You are cheating us!

King Fisher looked up at Bart but didn’t move.

I ain’t going to be cheated! Bart said, and made a quick move with his right hand. Lopez tried, in that instant, to see whether Bart was going for his gun or was just trying to grab King Fisher’s arm. But he could not, in that instant or in all the instants afterward, find clarity on that question, and in the next instant King Fisher split Bart Miller’s skull with the branding iron.

King Fisher, still holding the branding iron in his right hand, drew a pistol with his left. Lopez noticed that King Fisher shot Bart’s most able partner — the expert cowhand — first, using his left hand. Then he shifted the gun to his right hand and killed the two greenhorns. The powder from the three shots burned Lopez’s throat. Lopez looked at the four bodies in the corral. He watched for movement. Seeing none, Lopez looked at King Fisher, who caught his glance, held it for an instant and then turned and walked quickly to the last unbranded cow, jammed the branding iron into the fire and went to work. The cow bawled, and Lopez, recalled