Centennial by James A. Michener

IT BECAME A LEGEND OF THE WEST, AND TO THIS DAY MEN SWEAR that it happened just so. An old-time cowboy will belly up to the bar and assert:

"After General Lee surrendered at Appomattox one of his colonels, an ol' boy named R. J. Poteet, returned to his family home in southern Virginia to find it burned out. Plumb loco, he headed southwest, windin' up in Palo Pinto County, Texas, in the fall of 18 and 65.

"That winter he checked out the situation, which was damn near hopeless, and found that the only hand worth a nickel bet was those goddamn Texas longhorns, which had been runnin' wild and unbranded durin' the War. They were common as jackrabbits and could be bought for two bits a head, if you bothered to pay anybody for 'em. More'n likely, you just went out and slapped an iron on whatever you found. But those same critters, if you could deliver 'em to the army way north at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, would bring you four silver dollars each. All you had to do was gather 'em, head 'em out, and collect your fortune at the end of the trail.

"So the colonel, he did just that. In the spring of 18 and 66 Poteet throwed a mixed bunch of three thousand head onto the trail and went through livin' hell gettin' them acrost the rivers, through Comanche country and past the Kansas Confederate outlaws who'd kill you quicker'n look at you just to steal your stock.

"In the fall of 18 and 66-and that was one hell of a dry year, partner-Poteet got his three thousand cattle as far as Zendt's Farm in Colorado, and there ol' man winter took over. It stormed so bad, with so much snow, he couldn't do nothin' with his cattle. Caught short only two hundred lousy miles shy of Fort Laramie and not a goddamn thing he could do. drifts higher'n a tall squaw's ass and the mercury lower'n a skunk in a hole.

"So with tears streamin' down his cheeks, Poteet pushed his shiverin' longhorns to them slopes north of Rattlesnake Buttes, and there left 'em to hustle for theirselves, God help 'em.

"Sayin' a sad goodbye to his poor critters, he beat his way back to Zendt's Farm and spent that cold winter working for Levi at the new store Levi built after the stockade was burned to the ground durin' the Indian troubles, and when spring come the colonel, just to satisfy hisself, left the store and rode out to look for the remains of his poor dead cattle. Still sore as hell at his loss, he rode over a ridge at the Buttes, and what did he see? Down in the draws he saw hunerds and hunerds of his dead longhorns-only they wasn't dead at all, just feedin' and peaceful-like on the new spring grass, the cows droppin' perky new calves and the whole bunch in better shape than when he'd left 'em.

"True as I'm standin', friend, that's how stockmen discovered that the useless, brown, scrawny buffalo grass and the blue grama was solid feed, mebbe the best there is, because when winter threatens, this grass sucks back into its stem all the minerals and such that cattle need, and if they can only find enough open country where the snows have blowed off, they'll winter okay. So help me, the whole Colorado cattle industry was started by Colonel Poteet when he turned them Texas cattle out to die that day at Rattlesnake Buttes."

Unfortunately, almost every statement in this version of the legend was false. The story of abandoned cattle that survived a blizzard winter first surfaced around 1822 and involved trappers at the rendezvous. It was repeated as gospel in 1844, but this time dealt with cattle left to die along the Oregon Trail. In 1846 it was Mormons who deserted them, and in 1849 the California gold-seekers. Almost every ranch in Colorado, Wyoming or Montana claimed that this climactic event occurred within its boundaries, and one popular version says it happened as late as 1879.

In the version just cited, the cowboy got the year wrong, the price of the cattle wrong and the homesite of his hero wrong. The only thing he had right was Poteet's name and the fact that he was an extraordinary man. What really happened was this:

In the late autumn of 1867 Levi Zendt was working at the new store with his wife. After the Indian raids, they had moved their location from the old site at the confluence of Beaver Creek and the Platte to higher ground some distance to the north, selling off at a good profit much of the land now occupied by the growing town of Zendt's Farm.

As Levi worked he saw a stranger approaching, and from the man's manner of walking he felt that he had known him somewhere before. It was Lucinda who recognized their visitor, for she remembered him as her dancing partner at Fort John in the summer of 1844.

"It's Oliver Seccombe! After all these years! " she cried, and she wanted to run from the store to greet him, but she was restrained by her recollection of what Levi had once told her: "When the Conestoga broke in half, and we were alone on the prairie, he went off whistlin' without a care in the world, and his man stole my Michael Fordney rifle. " So she held back.

It was indeed Oliver Seccombe, come back from Oregon, where he had spent the last twenty-three years, barring two trips to England. It was during the latter of these trips that he had entertained the brainstorm that was to make him rich.

"Levi," he said with excitement as soon as he was seated in the kitchen, "in England there are men with so much money. they make it in India, Australia. barrels of it. and they're looking for somewhere to invest it. When I was in Bristol, I kept remembering those empty lands you and I crossed together."

Sipping a cup of the lapsang souchong old Alexander McKeag had loved, he recalled the vast plains he and Levi had known in the old days. "I saw them as an ocean of grass, dark and brown, supporting those herds of buffalo. Remember?"