TX BIOS:  Jacob Bennett
   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
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   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
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   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   00011
   
   [?] [?]
   
   Phipps, Woody[.?] Rangelore Tarrant Co., Dist., 7
   
   Page [#1]
   
   F[E?]C
   
   Jacob Bennett, 79, was born on his father's plantation, near
   [Bremond?], Tex., Nov. 4, 1858. Following the Civil War, his father
   converted the plantation into a stock farm. John Bennett, an ex-slave
   who bore the name of Jacob's father, his former master, taught Jacob
   to ride at an early age. He was employed as a cowboy by Carrol Powell
   when he was 14. He quit the Powell Ranch when he was 16 and was
   employed on the Curry Ranch 'til he was 21, when he returned to his
   home and took the management of his father's stock farm, where he
   still resides. His story:
   
   Why, I still live right on the place where I first learned to ride
   hosses and punch cows. You bet! Right on the very place I was born.
   You see, the place was my dad's. He had the place in an old time
   plantation when I has born on Nov. 4. 1858, but made a stock farm out
   of it right after the war was over and his niggers freed. I don't
   recollect just how many miles 'twas out from Bremond, but very few of
   our niggers quit when they were freed and went into Bremond. Very few.
   
   "In fact, there was one of them, John Bennett, who was named for my
   father, stayed right with us 'til he died a little over three years
   ago, and he was some over 90 years old when he died. John was a right
   able cow puncher, and could ride hosses, wild ones, to a fare ye well.
   Many's the time I've seen him ride them 400 and 500 yards 'till they
   pitched plum down, like an old clock. They pitched and pitched 'til
   they didn't have any pitch left in them.
   
   'John was the one that taught me to ride hosses, and ag'in my dad's
   orders, too. Dad was afraid I'd get killed trying to ride them ornery
   critters we used to have to ride. You've probably heard somebody say
   how mean they were and all.
   
     NOTE: C [-?] 12 [?] [?] [Texas?]
     
   00022They were nothing cut old Mustangs with a little Spanish blood in
   them, and they'd pitch every time they'd have as much as six hours
   rest. Well, John'd get out there and manage to leave the hoss corral
   after dad left. He'd then get me and teach me how to ride. You know, I
   never did tell that, and dad never knowed just how 'twas I learned to
   ride. He thought I just naturally picked it up by getting on one and
   riding it off.
   
   "While the plantation wasn't changed 'til after the war, dad still had
   a lot of hosses on the place to do the plantation work, and a few cows
   for milkers and so on. We raised enough that we could also kill one
   now and then for beef when we needed beef. Now these hosses we had on
   the place were the ones John learnt me to ride, and the first hoss
   ever I rode, without any help from anybody, was an old carriage hoss,
   when I was about seven I reckon.
   
   Anyway, I was interested in riding them along about when I was in to
   deviling dad to let me learn to ride along about when I was eight. He
   never give in 'til one day when I come out to where he was watching a
   bunch of field hands clean out a patch, and when he looked up I was
   right at him and had rode the hoss all the way from home, about a mile
   I reckon, he said, 'How's it come you're riding one of my hosses?' I
   made some kind of an answer, and he told me to get for home and he'd
   'tend to me proper when he got home.
   
   "Instead, when he got home, he didn't 'tend to me as he said, but told
   me to have John teach me to ride hosses. I said I would, and he left
   me alone. When I got to John and told him we sure had a good laugh
   together about it all, because he's already taught me to ride. Well, I
   rode hosses around there and worked cattle, 'til 00033my mother died
   when I was 10. Dad then decided that I ought to go some place and get
   an education, [so?] he [buys?] me a hoss if I'll promise to study hard
   and make good grades. I promised, and he bought me a yaller hoss that
   was a dandy. I called him 'Puny'. because he was so yaller. After dad
   had one of his niggers put his 'B9' brand on the hoss, off we went to
   [Hillsboro?], where I was to live with an uncle.
   
   "Well, sir, do you know that we weren't in Hillsboro but two weeks
   'til that ornery rascal run off? That's what he done, and I happened
   to be lucky enough that dad came into town a couple of days later,
   so's I could tell him. You see, dad was quite a character. He could
   trail anything to beat the [band?], and was what they call a
   'frontiersman', in [that?] he went several places before anybody else.
   He went to fight in the Texas war for Independence from Mexico, and
   was on the San Jacinto battlegrounds a few minutes after [the?] fight
   was all over. Him and 20 others from/ around Bremond were there at the
   same time, and they were sure disappointed that the fun was all over
   before they could get there. That's all I know about it, and most of
   that I learnt from people that were dad'd friends. My dad didn't tail
   anything that he could possibly get out of.
   
   "Dad trailed Puny down into [Limestone?] county, and to a man's ranch
   by the name of Bateman. Bateman run the same iron that dad did, the
   'B9'. He told [DEL: [?] :DEL] dad that he'd caught this hoss up and
   used him because he wore the same iron that he used on his ranch
   there, and sent him North with a trail drive that went to Kansas City.
   00044"Now Puny'd been a funny sort of a hoss. Nigger John'd busted him
   for me, but had never used anything but a kid's hull on him because
   the hoss was meant for me, and me alone. That away, John figured he
   was doing best by me, and he was for sure, because what I'm going to
   tell now will prove it. Dad says, 'I know the hoss belongs to my son,
   and I'll tell you how we will be able to identify it'. You see,
   Bateman didn't want to give the hoss up because he was a good one for
   sure. 'Now, this hoss is gentle, But every time a man mounts him, he
   pitches to beat the band'.
   
   "Bateman says, 'He's your hoss because that's him, only you'll have to
   wait about three months for him because he went on that trail drive.
   Such's my trail boss brings him in, I'll send him up to you.
   
   "Just about time for school to start again in the Fall, why here come
   on of Bateman's hands with Puny, and I sure was glad to see him again.
   The hand's been up the trail and told me that nobody ever rode Puny,
   and the trail boss'd sold him in Kansas city if he'd have thought
   Bateman wouldn't have minded.
   
   "[?] the finish [of?] the school term the next year, dad let me go
   back to the stock farm and I worked like any other hand 'til I was 14.
   My insisting that dad let me handle the stock and do all the hoss
   riding that was necessary around the place, I got to where I was a
   pretty fair cowpuncher, and had picked up a smattering of cow sense
   along with it. By cow sense, I mean that I learnt to handle cows and
   [?] them when anything went wrong with them. You see, in that day and
   time, only the farms were fenced. The range was as free of fence as a
   stampeding herd is of sense. 00055"Where you have barb wire fences,
   your critters'll run up against the wire where you have the tall grass
   we used to have/ all over the range, and cut places on their legs and
   sides. At times, they'd cut a muscle and there wasn't but one thing
   you could do when they did, and that was to kill the critter. Just to
   show you how really tall the grass used to grow in olden times, Puny
   was about 14 hands, and when I rode him, the grass'd turn the rowels
   on my boots. When a critter laid down in them days, it was lost from
   sight and you'd have a hard time finding it 'til you run across the
   very spot it was laying.
   
   "When I got to be 14, I was in town and was aiming to leave for home
   when I heard some cowpunchers saying that Carrol Powell was in town
   looking for cowpunchers. I got to thinking, then, that I'd like to
   work on a real ranch. You see, Powell run from 4,000 to 5,000 head of
   stockers in his 'CP' iron, and run a lot of extra hosses, too. He had
   a pretty big home ranch along in connection with his cattle, I rode on
   home and asked dad about it and, instead of the argument I expected,
   he said 'It's about time you got a little experience in working for
   the other man because this might not last forever, and then you'd be
   worse off than if you never had a bit of training because you'd have
   nothing to fall back on'.
   
   "That fixed me up fine and I didn't even go back to town, but cut out
   across the country to the 'CP' spread. I got there about the time
   Powell did, and he hadn't been [able?] to get a hand in town, so he
   took me right on, providing I was able to deliver the goods. I
   delivered them, and got me a steady job at $14.00 a month and chuck.
   Before I was 15, he'd raised me to $20.00 00066a month and chuck. And
   I was about as able a man he had on the spread, I reckon. As able
   anyway at anything except busting the wild hosses the had on his hoss
   ranch, and regular cowpunchers wasn't supposed to be able to do that.
   Now I don't mean that we could get away with sloppy work. Far from
   that. In fact, Carrol Powell didn't hire a man that wasn't a top hand,
   because he was awful particular about his cow critters. What I mean
   is, I wasn't able to train hosses [to?] cut and peg. We were furnished
   hosses that, in lots of cases, knowed more about cow work that some of
   the fellows in the saddle. That sounds sort of stretched, but all we
   had to do was to show a cutting hoss a certain critter we wanted cut
   out of the herd, and that hoss would get after that critter like it
   was some sort of a game and stay with the critter till the hoss run it
   plum out of the herd. The way we showed the hoss what we wanted was by
   hitting it with a rope, our lasso.
   
   "Not only cut the critter out of the herd, but when you make your cast
   with your lasso, that hoss knowed just the right second when to sit
   down to keep the critter from dragging the hoss, and, if the hoss sat
   down too soon, there'd be so much slack in the rope the critter'd have
   leverage to pull with. Then, if the hoss sat down a little late, it'd
   be just in the [set?] of going down and'd have the least resistance
   it'd have at any time. You see, that's the reason the cowpunchers
   loved their hosses so much when the had one that was a good one. When
   he had a good hoss, his work was so much easier that it just made all
   the difference in the world.
   
   "I never used Puny to work with, but just rode him when I went to
   town, home, or galling it around. You know, they done that 00077in the
   olden days, too, even if there wasn't half enough women to go around.
   
   "I saw my first real stampede on the CP spread. We'd rounded up a herd
   of three-year-olds, and intended driving them into headquarters for
   culling for feed lots when a rain com up. I reckon 'twas along about
   dark when this happened. Anyway, there came up one of these real black
   clouds Texas is capable of, and rain come down in sheets, a regular
   cloudburst. The herd got awful skittish and was moving around, when
   all of a sudden here come a clap of thunder that tried our ear drums.
   Following the clap come a number of thunder claps, sort of like
   rolling a bass drum. You know, like a snare drummer can roll his drum.
   Well, that herd hit out for the tail and [uncut?] like a bullet from a
   gun. They ran like the very devil hisself was prodding them along.
   
   "Instead of trying to work the herd, we fellows were really trying to
   keep ourselves dry when that happened and we should have been on our
   toes. Of course, it goes without saying that Carrol Powell never
   learnt what we'd done. We just told him the herd stampeded, which it
   probably would have done anyway, because there's no stopping a herd
   when it makes up its mind to run.
   
   "The night was so dark that one of us had to walk to trail the herd.
   We took turn about trailing 'til morning and we were dog-tired then,
   but had to do it to find out where the cattle'd gone. By the time we
   got to where the herd stopped running, they'd all scattered all over
   creation, and we spent three days rounding it up again. We worked 'til
   high noon before men from headquarters reached us with food. The only
   thing we'd had was coffee, which any 00088zany carries in his
   saddlepockets. Coffee and jerk, that's standard for anybody that ever
   rode the range, if there's any range experience to them. Jerk is dried
   beef, venison, or any kind of meat that's been dried good and hard.
   You can take it and boil it with a little seasoning and make a pretty
   good soup, but the waddies in our part of the country just chewed it
   when they got hungry. It gave a fair flavor that away, too.
   
   "Now there's not much else I recall about the CP spread, except my
   buddy, 'Pal' Rogers. We all called him Pal, but his last name was
   Rogers. The main reason I buddied up with him, I reckon, was because
   he was such a good range hand. He could sure ride, rope, and shoot
   with the best I ever saw. He could sure do it all. If it hadn't have
   been for his drinking, I'm sure he could have made a name for hisself,
   but he just drank so much nobody'd ever give him a chance.
   
   "I once saw Pal riding herd to [turn?] a steer, and a snake rose up in
   his path. Well, his hoss went to pitching, and Pal stayed right with
   it, drawed his iron and shot that snake's head right off without
   [sothering?] the rest of his body. I've told this before and people'd
   say that it was an accident, but I believe he shot that snake right
   were he wanted to shoot. I believe it because he was capable of
   shooting wherever he made up his mind to shoot. I've seen him shout
   many a target while riding by on his hoss. And, I've seen him ride
   many a wild hoss, but Powell wouldn't let him [DEL: [?] :DEL] work
   with his wild hoss stock because he was always afraid he'd show up
   drunk one time and get killed by one of them ornery rascals. That's
   just about what'd happened, too. 00099"After I was 16 years old, along
   about in the dead of winter after most of the range work had been laid
   by and all we had to do was hunt [motherless?] calves and the rest of
   the little work, I quit the CP and went over to the 'TC' spread, owned
   and ran by Tom Curry. Curry's outfit was just about the same size as
   Powell's, running about the same number of hosses and cows. He also
   run his spread in the same manner, hiring nothing but top hands. If it
   hadn't have been that the men were all different from the ones on the
   CP, I couldn't have been on the same spread.
   
   "About a month after I was hired an the TC, they started the Spring
   roundup. About a month later, all the ranchers'd rounded up all the
   cattle on that range and had them on the holding grounds, when the
   freakiest accident ever I saw happened. During any roundup, all the
   men work at top speed to get the cattle all cut out and the work over
   before something happens to stampede the herd, and separate it all out
   again. You see, all the ranchers round up every head on the range;
   then, when they get all the cattle together, they cut out what belongs
   to each other, then they can do what they please with their own
   cattle.
   
   "Well, during the cutting out, a big old steer quit the herd and went
   to running off. Two cowpunchers who happened to be off a ways from the
   steer, and in different directions, rode in as fast as they could
   ride, trying to cut the steer off and drive it back to the herd. Well,
   not paying no attention to each other but keeping their minds on the
   steer, they ran together and both fell off. One of them broke his neck
   in the fall, and the other fell 001010under the other man's hoss,
   which stepped in his face and kicked his head half loose. That was the
   gruesomest sight ever I expect to see, the faces they had. Even when I
   stop to think about it, it gives me that cold shudders and I have to
   think of something else.
   
   "Now, during the Fall roundup that same year, a cowpuncher working for
   the TC spread fell from his hoss and his foot caught in the saddle.
   He'd have been kicked to death if it hadn't have been for a many from
   the UT Connected, who caught his hoss and held its head up close to
   keep it in a strain and from kicking.
   
   "There was another stampede I saw while on the TC, and it was sort of
   a freaky one. After a hard rain, the cattle'd all been standing up and
   it looked like we were going to ride it out without them critters
   stomping, but a fellow rode up on his hoss and got down to talk to
   another of the boys that had built a small fire to make a little
   coffee. Well, he had one of them fancy saddles with conchas all around
   it, and his saddle rattled. An old steer snorted right loud; another
   took it up, and in less time than it takes to tell it, the whole herd
   was on the stomp, running just as hard as it could go with a deep draw
   right in front of them about two miles away.
   
   "Well, you know a herd can run for 20 miles. Not likely to, but
   they've been known to run that far, and lots farther. We knowed if the
   herd ever reached this draw, they'd plunge on over and most of the
   herd would be crushed to death, or kicked to death by those who fell
   in on top. There was only one thing to do, and that was to out run the
   herd and mill it. 001111"I was one of those closest to the side of the
   herd that took the lead in the stomp, and so I was able to get in on
   the play before they got so awful far. They'd run about three-quarters
   of a mile, I reckon, when me and another follow cut in to reach the
   leaders. There were two of them, but one was gradually drawing back
   and another taking the lead when I reached him. This other fellow's
   hoss stumbled, and they fell right in the path of the side steers, but
   the front ones side-stepped him. That I saw, but no more. Well, there
   wasn't anything for me to do but keep on trying to mill the herd, so I
   kept on. We hadn't gone much more than a mile and a half from the
   bedding ground when I got the lead steer into a turn, and pretty soon
   got the whole herd to milling. They run and they run 'til finally one
   of them bawled, another bawled, and they soon stopped running and went
   to grazing. I rode back as soon's I saw I was going to get help, to
   see what'd [happened?] to the zany that'd fell.
   
   "He himself told me that his hoss broke his neck in the fall, and that
   he'd jumped up by the hoss's back. The lead steer had jumped the hoss
   and him too, and the rest of them all the way back to the rear had
   followed the jump, and he was there to tell the tale. He lived to here
   about seven years ago, when he died right there in Bremond.
   
   "Oh, that range life's mighty exciting at times. Especially in the
   olden days when we had Mustangs to ride, and longhorns to brand. I'd a
   heap druther live that life than the one I'm living right now. The
   'Old Rocking Chair's'got me now. Got me, for sure. All I'm doing now
   is managing the same old place where I was born. It belongs to me and
   my sister's heirs, but I run it myself.

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