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Last of the Old-Time Outlaws
The George West Musgrave Story
By Karen Holliday Tanner, John D. Tanner Jr. UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2002 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4724-6
CHAPTER 1
LA BRASADA
The early residents of McMullen County were, as a class, moral, law-abiding citizens. Of course most of them carried guns, many of them drank whiskey, and not a few gambled. Six–shooters, whiskey, and poker, however, were within the code: these things had no connection with morals; indulgence in them was neither moral nor immoral, but natural to the times. Some of the most upright, honest, and generous hearted men that ever lived carried—and on occasion used with deadly effect—six shooters, drank whiskey straight, and staked high sums on spotted cards.
J. FRANK DOBIE
At fifty-eight, Joe Walker, owner of the La Parita Ranch, adjoining the Musgraves' St. Rocky Ranch, stood tall and blue-eyed, though his striking blond hair showed tinges of white. In common with his Scotch-Irish forebears, Walker never went out of his way to avoid trouble; such resoluteness was another familial trait that would become apparent in the character of George West Musgrave.
A participant in east Texas's Shelby County War, Walker, a member of the Moderator faction, killed one man in a duel on the main street of Center. Injured, he rode home, dressed his wound, then took a fresh horse and fled. Later that night, he killed another man waiting in ambush.
Walker's flight from Shelby County began a eighteen-year Odyssey. Joined by his wife and his growing family, he migrated through nine Texas counties before he became, in 1858, an original settler of Yarbrough Bend in McMullen County. Here he joined with other frontier families who started herds from the maverick longhorn cattle and the mustang horses that grazed on the open range between the Frio River and the Rio Grande.
When the Civil War came to Texas, Walker enlisted in the McMullen County Confederate Militia. He saw no military action; during and after the war, he and his two sons defended their home and their livestock against Comanche and Kickapoo Indians, outlaws, and Yankee carpetbaggers.
Indian depredations in the Brush Country effectively ended in 1872. Violence found a new outlet—the Sutton-Taylor feud. Victor Rose, author of The Texas Vendetta: The Sutton-Taylor Feud and an acquaintance of many of the participants, explained, "The population of Texas was divided into three classes: The Yankees, exconfederate, and Taylors." A popular ditty of the day read:
It was an ancient farmer man
And he stoppeth one of three:
"By the Colt's improved and Henry gun
I pray thee tell to me
If you belong to the Sutton gang
Or the Taylor companie?"
Even as the feud raged most fiercely, Walker's oldest son, James "Bud" Walker, courted and married Sophronia Taylor, widow of feud victim Martin Luther Taylor. The Walkers stood firmly aligned with the "Taylor companie." Bud, and his younger brother Tom, a top hand, gambler, and gunman with frequent brushes with the law, were inevitably drawn into the feud. A decade of outrages and dozens of deaths concluded with the December 27, 1875, killing of Jim Taylor, an act that left the Taylor faction leaderless.
Though he was a hardened Texan, there was a whimsical side to Joe Walker's personality, accompanied, perhaps, by an inclination toward larceny, traits later revealed in the character of his grandson. Once, during a drought and with the range overgrazed, Walker moved his herd over to the coast near Corpus Christi. There he met a sea captain who had docked to take on supplies. Walker traded the sea captain a horse for a barrel of whiskey. He returned home with the whiskey to learn what he had doubtless foreseen even as he made the trade—the horse had cast off its hobbles and had beaten Walker home.
On November 19, 1863, Joe Walker's daughter, Sarah Prudence "Prudie" Walker, married Bennett Musgrave in Live Oak County, Texas, uniting two of the Brush Country's pioneer families. Back in February 1838, when Bennett was six months old, Calvin Musgrave, patriarch of the family, had settled in Gonzales (later Caldwell) County, Texas. In 1855, Calvin and his family moved to the southern portion of Bexar County, where he acquired land in the settlement of Pleasanton. The Musgraves joined the Walkers, Tumlinsons, Doaks, Slaughters, Yarbroughs, Odens, and other pioneer families intent upon taming the Brasada. In August 1855, Musgrave enlisted in Captain Levi English's Company of Mounted Men, organized for the protection of the frontier within the western portion of Bexar County.
On September 28, 1859, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, an influential figure in Cameron County, proclaimed his intent to protect the rights and properties of Mexicans in Texas. To combat this threat, Peter Tumlinson organized another volunteer Ranger force in Atascosa County on November 12, and enlisted Calvin Musgrave as well as Calvin's sons, Bennett and Daniel. In Austin, Major John Salmon "Rip" Ford took command of all Texas Rangers. Ford and the Rangers proceeded south toward Brownsville.
On February 4, 1860, as they moved toward La Bolsa on the Rio Grande, Ford's guard encountered an armed group of Cortina's followers crossing the river and opened fire. A running fight ensued with a detachment of Rangers commanded by Bennett Musgrave in the midst of the melee. A charge by Ford's Rangers forced Cortina and his insurgents into the Burgos Mountains. Colonel Robert E. Lee reached San Antonio on February 19, assumed command of the Eighth Military Department, and advanced with his force into the lower Rio Grande Valley. Peace returned to south Texas.
Cortina's defeat did not end Texas's troubles; now civil war threatened. Ignoring the pleadings of Governor Sam Houston, the Texas Secession Convention on February 1, 1861, voted for the withdrawal of Texas from the Union. Calvin Musgrave shared Houston's pro-Union sentiments. Bennett opposed his father's stance. On January 1, 1863, he rode to Rio Grande Station (previously Fort Duncan, about a mile north of Eagle Pass), and enlisted as a private in Company D of Duff's Partisan Rangers (Fourteenth Texas Cavalry Battalion).
Although Bennett returned from duty unscathed sometime after July 3, tragedy nonetheless struck the Musgrave household. Bennett's mother, Mariah, died unexpectedly on November 18, just short of her fifty-second birthday. Calvin had recently sold his home in Pleasanton and, according to family tradition, moved to Mexico for the remainder of the conflict.
Calvin returned from Mexico at the war's end and resumed raising stock. In March 1867, the Union rewarded his loyalty with an appointment as postmaster for Pleasanton. Atascosa County citizens also elected Calvin's son Daniel sheriff that year and another son, Thomas, county judge the following year.
Reconstruction, Indian raids, feuds, and the Civil War provided the backdrop against which Bennett and Prudie Musgrave began their family. On September 18, 1864, Prudie gave birth to the Musgraves' first child, Samuel Houston Musgrave, who died two years later. In the meantime, Calvin Van Musgrave, called Van, had been born on February 7, 1866. Next came the twins, Adanna "Addie" and Burrell in 1868.
The late 1860s in south Texas were trying years, with or without children. Most families ran cattle, which also proved to be difficult. Ranchers returning from distant battlefields found that in many instances their herds had substantially increased, yet the stock, worked so little, had turned wild and proved difficult to handle. Musgrave's neighbor, Peter Tumlinson Bell, recalled, "They were wilder than deer and antelope ever hoped to be."
Selling the cattle proved equally difficult, but the arrival of the Kansas Pacific Railroad at Abilene in 1867 opened up the marketplace. Bennett Musgrave's herds had joined those of his neighbors driven north up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, but later they were transported to Ellsworth on the Kansas Pacific road, and still later to Wichita on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.
In early 1869, Calvin Musgrave deeded 160 acres of land on Metate Creek to Bennett and Prudie, which the young couple used as the foundation of a successful real estate and livestock career. By 1870, they possessed land and livestock valued at six thousand dollars. The new year also brought the birth of a fourth son, LeRoy Polk Musgrave.
Daughter Julia Elizabeth was born in 1872 at the ranch, while Bennett and neighbor George Washington West trailed a herd north. Following a common practice of the day, Musgrave trained several animals as lead steers, which encouraged the wilder cattle to follow. He and other Texas stockmen trailed approximately 350,000 head of cattle north that year. Down from the record high of 600,000 in 1871, the number remained profitable for the cattlemen, as higher prices, plentiful grass, and favorable weather offset the lower numbers.
The success of his 1872 drive encouraged Musgrave to return north in 1873, checking a mixed herd of 2,132 head through Pleasanton. Sporting the ranch's VE, LPO, PW, and SAM brands, the cattle left late in the season, departing Atascosa County in mid-August. On September 18, while the herd was on the trail, the financial empire of Jay Cooke and Company of New York collapsed, triggering the disastrous Panic of 1873.
The Panic of 1873 marked the commencement of a business downturn lasting several years; many eastern entrepreneurs declared bankruptcy. In the West, panic selling of cattle, coupled with a corn shortage that raised the price of feed, depressed cattle prices. Drivers held their herds outside of Ellsworth and Wichita, fed their stock with expensive corn, and hoped for market improvement. As market prices continued to drop, panic shipping increased. Large herds sold at considerable loss. The 1873 drive proved costly to Musgrave. He, like many others, was forced to borrow money to stay solvent. Musgrave returned to Texas. There is no evidence that he ever drove north on the trail again.
Despite financial setbacks, the Bennett Musgrave family lived comfortably on their St. Rocky Ranch during the later 1870s. Under the watchful eye of Watson Stanfield, Musgrave's foreman, Bennett's stock grazed on some thirty-five hundred acres of land; the family ranked among Atascosa County's more prosperous and respected citizens. George West Musgrave joined the family on May 27, 1877. It was a propitious time to be born.
CHAPTER 2
AN OUTLAW'S EDUCATION
More weird and lonesome than the journey of an Amazonian explorer is the ride of one through a Texas near flat With dismal monotony and startling variety the uncanny and multiform shapes of the cacti lift their twisted trunks, and fat, bristly hands to encumber the way. To be lost in the pear is to die almost the death of the thief on the cross, pierced by nails and with grotesque shapes of all the fiends hovering about.
O. HENRY
A week before George Musgrave's seventh birthday, his older brother, Van, married neighbor George West's daughter, Ella. Three days after the nuptials, deputies arrested the new bridegroom for betting at Spanish monte. Van pleaded guilty and paid a ten-dollar fine. His marriage rapidly deteriorated. After Christmas 1884, Ella, six months pregnant, packed her belongings and returned to her father's home.
In the spring of 1885, still separated from his wife, but with the birth of their child imminent, Van graduated to horse rustling. Frio County authorities caught Van, John May, and William Pelham in possession of three stolen horses and one stolen mare. The three took up residence in the county jail at Pearsall.
There may have been several reasons for Van's inclination to lawlessness. Jack Culley, veteran range manager of the vast Bell Ranch in San Miguel County, New Mexico, believed that those cowmen who turned to outlawry were men of action, frequently athletic, self-reliant, possessed of endurance, and, without exception, outstanding rangemen. Van displayed all of these characteristics. On the other hand, faced with growing family responsibilities, perhaps he took to outlawry as a source of escape and excitement. Then again, possibly Van also considered rustling a cowboy's rite of passage. One old rangeman argued "that any cowman of open range days who claimed never to have put his brand on somebody else's animal was either a liar or a poor roper."
Nearly a century later, Bennett's nephew had a simpler explanation: "Bennett was the biggest horse thief in south Texas." Bennett had been charged with cattle theft in 1882, though an Atascosa County jury found him not guilty. Van may have followed his father's lead, or possibly may have acted on his father's behalf. Whatever Van's motivation, he became a rustler.
Frio County's grand jury indicted him on three separate charges of horse theft only eighteen days after the birth of his son, Frank Howard Musgrave. The judge continued the cases during the October 1885 court term. Called before the court on April 23, 1886, Van failed to appear and forfeited bond. Once more, the judge continued the cases. Van did appear for the spring court term in April 1887, at which time the judge again continued the cases, as he did in October and during the spring and fall terms of 1888.
The court finally heard the first of Van's three cases on April 24, 1889; he pleaded not guilty. Following the jury's guilty verdict and the judge's five-year sentence, Van appealed the conviction and remained free on bail. The court continued the other two cases.
Van's ongoing legal problems failed to bring about his reform. With two cases outstanding, and while under sentence for the third, he stole a steer on June 10 from Will Cowley in Atascosa County. Sheriff George Duck arrested Van; Bennett posted another five hundred dollars for bail. A Pleasanton jury convicted Van on March 1, 1890. Sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary, he appealed the verdict and still remained free on bail.
Coincident with their son's legal difficulties, Bennett and Prudie Musgrave began a series of real estate sales that suggest they anticipated Van's flight from Texas. Several factors influenced their decision to follow.
Drought, the scourge of the cattle industry, struck south Texas in 1887–88. The Frio and Nueces Rivers quit running, leaving only small amounts of water standing in holes. The prickly pear wilted until it was no longer a source either of food or moisture for the stock. Doubtless this further encouraged the Musgraves to look for rangeland less subject to the vagaries of the Brasada. Moreover, Bennett's father, Calvin, and Prudie's father, Joe, died in 1888. The loss of these patriarchs removed strong ties to Texas. Finally, Bennett and Prudie's siblings also began to leave the Brush Country to seek their fortunes in other areas of Texas and the Southwest.
On March 8, 1889, six weeks prior to Van's conviction on the first of the rustling charges, Bennett and Prudie sold twenty-one pieces of property, which encompassed 8,487 acres, to San Antonio bankers Daniel and Anton Oppenheimer. By the end of 1889, with Van twice convicted and facing two more trials, his parents had sold all of their remaining holdings in Atascosa County and possessed $9,600 and a note for an additional $1,000. The Musgrave family no longer had any land ties to Texas. Questionable wisdom allowed Van to remain free on bail.
Remarkably, Van returned to Pearsall on April 23, 1890, to stand trial on the second charge. The jury returned a guilty verdict; the judge sentenced him to five additional years in the state penitentiary. Again, Van appealed and—amazingly—remained free on bail. The court continued the final case.
By May 1890, Van had been convicted of two counts in Frio County and one count in Atascosa County. He faced two five-year sentences and one two-year sentence at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. Moreover, one additional case against him remained pending in Frio County. In the summer of 1890, while still on bail, twenty-four-year-old Van Musgrave fled Texas and twenty-four-year-old Bob Lewis arrived in New Mexico Territory. Posing as Lewis, Van hired on as foreman of James Upton's O Bar O outfit, north of Deming.
The Bennett Musgrave family soon followed, driving their remaining stock along the old Texas Pecos Trail through Del Rio to Sanderson and on to Alpine, near old Fort Davis, in Brewster County. Burrell Quimby Musgrave, Bennett's cousin, lived in Alpine. This fact provides the only explanation for their departure from the main trail. In 1920, George told an associate that he had left Atascosa County in 1888 to become a cowboy in New Mexico. His statement, which suggests that at age eleven he left Atascosa County before his family, is contradicted by other evidence.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Last of the Old-Time Outlaws by Karen Holliday Tanner, John D. Tanner Jr.. Copyright © 2002 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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