16 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
LITTLE STORIES OF THE SOUTHWEST, 
COW LANDS OF TEXAS. 
An El Dorado and a Desert, both in Season---a Land of 
Droughts, Reptiles, Spiders and Bad Men. 
(By M. J. Brown, Editor /ittle Valley (N. Y.) Hub.) 3 
When nature finished up her job 
on this dump of a world, cooled 
things off and opened up for settle- 
ment, she had everything pretty 
well averaged up, with a drawback 
tacked onto every garden of Eden 
and a bargain day with every bit of 
desert. . 
To we who live back where winter 
is king for five months, we can hard- 
ly associate summer weather with 
the last days of January, yet out 
here in the southwest the summer 
is all that New York eyer had in its 
balmiest Junes. 
Day after day the soft winds 
blow up from Mexico, bringing 
spring with them and day after day 
the ineffable sunshine spreads over 
all, and this semi-desert country in 
midwinter is all that Los Angeles 
can ever be—in climate. 
Why isn’t it a garden of Eden? 
There are a hundred whys. Coming 
from the frozen north to these 
prairie dog plains, where the south 
breeze is as soft as a baby’s touch, 
one thinks of little but the ever-blue 
sky and the trill of the birds. 
Warmth and sunshine are here and 
all else is forgotten. 
If there were no drawbacks, 
would these plains of the Texas 
southwest remain a cow country? 
Would a country of ten months’ 
warmth and sunshine be given over 
to cattle and sheep raising unless 
there were the best of reasons why 
it could not be used for anything 
else? 
I have seen these plains when not 
a drop of moisture had fallen in 
over a year, and there have been 
seasons when twice as many. months 
have passed with the brown tracts 
drying up and eracking open for 
want of water, and when it would 
appear that everything living ex- 
cept spiders, snakes and lizards, had 
abandoned the thirsty land; when 
rabbits and prairie dogs migrate to 
water and when the coyoutes ran 
mad for thirst. 
Under such conditions how would 
a man from Maine enjoy life here? 
What would a New Yorker or an 
Ohioian think of the blue skies and 
the Mexican breezes? 
There are other drawbacks. 
Under the mesquite clumps live 
the big hairy tarantulas—the deadly 
webless spider of the southwest— 
which we Yankees don’t take to, 
but which take to us. Often the 
grocer catches one in a buneh of 
bananas and gives a free side show 
with his spidership, but I wish that 
you might see one of those giant 
spiders in action—one of these fel- 
lows you don’t. find on banana 
bunches. 
In the bottom of a draw yester- 
day I found one of the biggest of 
these brown tarantulas, and he was 
out in the open where I could tor- 
ment him, and where I proved the 
assertion that they can jump. With 
a long limb I prodded it, prevent- 
ing its escape to a hole, and as I 
waved the bush over its head the 
spider jumped for it, gained a hold 
and in an instant was running up 
the limb toward my hand. Like the 
boy with the hot nail, I didn’t wait 
to be told to drop it. But I camped 
on its trail, and later‘on when I had 
seen it crawl into a hole, I covered 
it with a tomato can, poured in a 
bucket of water and when he came 
out I had him. 
And another one to look out for, 
and one which northerners and east- 
erners don’t care to mix up with, 
is the diamond rattler, that most 
deadly of all snakes, and it is elaim- 
ed the only venomous snake in all 
the southwest. This reptile abounds 
here and can be found on every 
acre, and I can only account for the 
very few being bitten by the story 
that the snake only bites when dis- 
turbed and that he always warns 
before he strikes. Only during the 
dog days of summer, when the rep- 
tiles are shedding their skins and 
when they are said to be blind, is 
there very much precaution exer- 
cised. 
Many have an impression that 
these vast plains are low and level 
because they are ‘‘down in Texas,”’ 
but really they are from 1500 to 
~2000 feet above the gulf of Mexico. 
I went to the top of one of the high- 
est divides today to see the sur- 
rounding country. One doesn’t 
need a spy glass. The dry air is so 
clear that distance seems annihiliat- 
ed and the eye almost loses its reck- 
oning. And north, south, east and 
west, so far as the eye can reach is 
spread out that never-ending mon- 
otony of view—brown aeres, cacti, 
mesquite, chinnock and white stones. 
One may travel for 24 hours stead- 
ily without a sight of a human be- 
ing. Everlasting, never-changing 
monotony. Once in a while the 
black face of a Mexican will look 
down from a sand butte, and you 
will see his sheep scattered through 
the bushes; and again you will meet 
some lore cowboy riding the range, 
and when after hours of riding a 
windmill comes into view, it is in- 
deed a welcome sight for a ranch 
house will be close by, where one 
will be given a welcome so cordial 
and a hospitality so genuine that it 
will renew one’s faith in mankind. 
But it is the cow towns where one 
finds interest and real wild west hu- 
man nature—the towns where the 
ranchmen the cowboys and the Mex- 
icans constantly come and go. 
Nearly all writers of the cow 
country slop over considerably in 
praising the cowboys and _ ranch- 
men for their open and almost fore- 
ed hospitality. Stop to a ranch 
house and it is literally true that 
they cannot do too much for you. 
It is.a habit born of earlier days, 
and becomes a duty. But in the cow 
towns, where the visitor pays his 
way, and the people know he is 
looking at them and asking of 
them from  ecuriosity—well, it 
has been my _ experience that 
these people have as thick a crust 
around them as you will find any- 
where and that the prejudice 
against a Yankee sticks out plainer 
than in Mississippi. Their courtesy 
and accommodation is too often mis- 
taken for welcome. 
The cow country takes a man on 
trust and then waits for him to make 
good. It is not a locality for Chau- 
tauqua circles and ice cream socials. 
The man who can appreciate the 
patronage doesn’t go, and who can 
fall in and mix it with the fellows 
‘‘just natural like,’’ without play- 
ing ‘‘short’’ or slopping over—the 
man who has discernment enough 
to go far enough and not too far— 
such a fellow will make friends here 
of men who would die for him and 
who will never forget him. 
I never saw this more clearly il- 
lustrated than in Sonora the other 
day, when a man from Utica, N. Y., 
who claimed to be doing special 
magazine work, found that the cow- 
boys were not as warm as the Mexi- 
can breezes. Around the hotel he 
made himself obnoxious by ever- 
playing the tenderfoot. He was new 
to the country, and he thought the 
play was to proclaim it generally, 
take off his collar, go in his shirt- 
sleeves, ask questions and spend _ his 
money. Going into a saloon where ~ 
a bunch of cowboys were loafing and 
playing dominoes, he called every- 
body up to “‘have something’’ and 
not a man in the place responded. 
