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Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.
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Publishers Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
SIX THOUSAND MILES OF FENCE:
LIFE ON THE XIT RANCH OF TEXAS
by
CORDIA SLOAN DUKE
and
JOE B. FRANTZ
PREFACE
In 1907 Cordelia Jane Sloan married Robert L. Duke, a ranch hand who had risen to division manager for the 3,000,000-acre XIT Ranch of Texas, the worlds largest. An eager observer, she early began the habit of keeping a diary. As time passed, she had the foresight to realize that the sweaty, tired, hungry cowhands with whom she visited were part of a unique phase of American life. What she particularly perceived was that these men would be glamorized and the memory of their work distorted by writers who could sense a pay vein when they saw one.
Besides keeping her own diary, she encouraged these cowhandssome barely literate, some with a fine sense of communication, but nearly all of them men who could go months or even years without taking pencil in handto jot down descriptions of what they did as cowboys. This way, she felt, some later generation could know what it was like to have been a hand on a vanished ranch in a vanished era. Through her own drive and enthusiasm she persuaded these non-writing men to write at length, straightforwardly, without apology. Sometimes their reminiscences were little more than a recalling of names and faces, but many others contained detailed job descriptions by the men who actually did the chores, and who were able to describe their jobs in a manner and with a completeness that may well be unique. {1} Eventually almost eighty cowhandsor, in some instances, their wives or sistersresponded.
As the decades rolled by, Mrs. Duke added to the roster of reminiscences. Occasionally she did a short piece from these resources for The Cattleman or for some newspaper. But by and large she merely waited until about a year ago, when she suggested to the University of Texas Press and me the idea of making the sketches into a book. We were both enthusiastic. Even if we had been uninterested, she probably would have charmed us into wanting to work with her. But we had already made up our minds before we fell under her spell.
What follows is in no sense a sociological tract or a simple job description. Nor does its purport to be a history of the XITJ. Evetts Haley and Lewis Nordyke have presented that story far too well to leave need for additional versions. Instead, Mrs. Duke and I wish to let the XIT cowboy tell the story of his workaday world as he saw it, stripped of the false heroics imposed by countless Hollywood and TV scenarios and many more thousands of Western storytellers, who may operate out of Liverpool, Los Angeles, or any other Western point in between.
The authors of these sketches shared one common experiencesomewhere in their careers they had been associated with the XIT. Before or after they worked for the XIT, they worked for other outfitsor, in some instances, for themselves. We have made no attempt to confine their story to the one big ranch, but to draw from their experience wherever it was enjoyed, or endured.
In the main our function has been to moderate, to announce the next speaker, and then to get out of the way. At times we have debated whether the editing should be tighter, but when a cowpuncher was wound up and making good sound, we were disposed to let him go on cooling his coffee,to use a favorite cowboy expressioneven though what he was saying might stray a bit off the narrative range.
Along the trail we had some assistance. From what I can gather, everyone in the Panhandle would have liked to help Mrs. Duke, but those to whom she, and I too, owe an especial debt are those XIT men and their feminine partners, some a long way over the Divide, who took the time to remember.
And from my end of the corral I should like to thank particularly Mrs. Dukes daughter, Mrs. A. B. Warrenburg of Houston; Dr. Llerena B. Friend, Texas History Center Librarian, the University of Texas; Mrs. Tita Garner of El Paso; and Miss Suzanne Kain and Mrs. Gretchen Blackmon of Austin, all of whom assisted in some necessary way. I am grateful also to the Research Institute of the University of Texas Graduate School for its material aid. All photographs which do not carry credit lines are from Mrs. Dukes personal collection. Paul T. Armitstead of Austin drew the maps. And finally I want to thank Miss Colleen T. Kain, who acted as a sort of subeditor, not only wielding an intelligent pair of scissors but assisting also in selection and organization of material, so that the cowboys did not trip all over their spurs as they sauntered through my mind and vision.
J . B. F.
CORDIA SLOAN DUKE
Late in the afternoon I dismounted from my bus in the high-plains town of Dalhart, Texas, and crossed over to the appropriately named XIT Motel. As I signed the register under Firm Name my host, reading upside down, said, University of Texaswhat department?
History, I said.
Then you will want to see Mrs. Duke while youre here.
Later that night while I was strolling around town, tasting the wind as it kicked up little eddies, a former student hailed me. After the first amenities had been exchanged, he said, You know, you should see Mrs. Duke while youre here.
Before I went to Dalhart I had corresponded with Mrs. Duke and had talked with her on the telephone. Somehow I had pictured a gaunt, raw-boned cowmans wife, face leathery and seamed by the sun, voice rough and language rougher. What I found the next morning was a genteel little woman, the perfect portrait of a sentimental grandmother, dressed in taste, with a wide-ranging interest and a feeling for the cultural side of life that contrasted strikingly with her story of having homesteaded as a barely grown girl, of having threatened an intruder with a gun, or of having fought dust and blizzard a hundred miles from anything that in the usual sense could be called civilization. I found too a woman of eighty who was attending writers conferences, submitting her own efforts to professionals for criticism, and in general seeking to learn to write, all with as much hope and indefatigability as if she had been a lass of twenty with a half-century ahead of her.
