Centennial by James A. Michener

IF ANY SECTION OF THE UNITED STATES EVER ENJOYED A TRUE golden age, it must have been the cattle regions of the west in the early 1880s. There had been previous fine periods. The New England shipping industry in the 1840s had been magnificent, with whalers sailing distant seas and merchant vessels opening the Orient. The prosperity of cotton plantations in the early 1850s, when British markets were begging to buy, and slaves were docile and great ships from all parts of the world put in to rivers like the James and the Rappahannock to load bales, certainly deluded their owners into believing that cotton was king. And the hectic 1870s, when eastern manufacturers controlled the nation, sending their finished products out on the new railroads at huge profits, buying their raw materials cheaply from the south and west, working their labor fourteen hours a day and controlling the money market to suit their purposes, were a heyday long remembered.

But none of these earlier periods of exuberance surpassed the euphoria that settled over the west in the dazzling eighties. In those years winters were mild and cattle proliferated; investments in land produced enormous dividends; and citizens of all types saw before them a constantly expanding horizon. Like the men in earlier decades who had basked in the sun of fishing, or cotton, or manufacturing, the ranchers of the west truly believed that their golden age must continue forever, for if gold dazzles, it also blinds.

No group prospered more than those canny British who had long before spotted this part of the world as one ripe for development and hungry for investment. In later years it would be popular to lampoon these foreigners as "remittance men," as if incompetent third and fourth sons were exiled to the west on small monthly payments to keep them out of trouble and, more important, out of sight. Many American dramatic companies, flitting from town to town on night trains, kept in their repertoire plays which made fun of these remittance men, relying on strange accents and unfamiliar customs to draw derisive laughter, but the truth was otherwise.

The sturdy merchants of Bristol sent out only first-class men to check on their considerable investments at the Venneford Ranch. The tight-fisted marmalade millionaires of Dundee did their best to run their great Chugwater Ranch effectively, and they did not dispatch nincompoops to do the job. In Texas the Matador Ranch, largest of all, was run primarily by shrewd investors from London, while over at Horse Creek the merchants of Liverpool were putting together a fine ranch under the leadership of Claude Barker. The most beautiful ranch of all, Beau Brae on the west bank of the Laramie River, was owned and managed by ultra-cautious Scottish businessmen from Edinburgh, and they intended to make money.

The Englishmen who supervised the railroads, protecting British investments there, were excellent people, and those who operated the mines were even better, for a more courageous type of man was required. The irrigation men were prudent, while those dealing primarily in land were bold. They brought their women with them, or sent for them after a short stay in America, and during these years along the Colorado-Wyoming border, English and Scottish patterns of life predominated. The land between the two Plattes could not properly be called an English colony, for the local political leaders were apt to be Dutchmen or tough-minded Kentuckians, but socially the area was an outreach of London-Edinburgh-Dundee-Bristol-Liverpool, and the hard-working Britishers were determined to enjoy themselves.

In September of 1880 a group of young American ranchers, educated at Harvard and Yale, accompanied Claude Barker of Wolf Pass on a ride down from Cheyenne to visit with Oliver Seccombe on a matter of some importance. Venneford was now almost a village, with sturdy buildings erected by the ranch carpenters and stonemasons. There were barns and corrals, of course, and a long, low range of sheds in which boss hands like Skimmerhorn and Lloyd worked, but the center of activity was the three-story red-stone Gothic mansion erected by the Seccombes. It was an imposing residence, resembling a castle on the upper reaches of the Rhine, and it became famous throughout the west.

Three rounded towers soared above the corners of the large house, with a four-sided battlement rising at the fourth corner. The roof contained eleven chimneys and was broken repeatedly by dormers. The ground floor was surrounded by a pillared veranda, while all doors leading into the house were made of heavy oak studded with brass fittings. It was possible to sleep eighteen guests in comfort, with four Negro servants to attend their needs.

"What we have in mind," Claude Barker told the Seccombes, "is a club. a gentlemen's club. We've selected a suitable corner in Cheyenne, and we'll keep the membership exclusive. All of us here, plus a few others with the right kind of background."

"What are you calling it? " Charlotte Seccombe asked.

"The Cactus Club," Barker said.

"Oh, that's delicious! " Charlotte cried, but her husband was more interested in the list of proposed members. They were all substantial cattlemen, except for the manager of the Union Pacific Railroad; of the initial twenty members, fourteen would be Americans, six British. Socially they were impeccable; in ranching, the most powerful.

"Will only twenty families be able to support such a club? " Seccombe asked warily. He and Charlotte were sorely overextended by the building of their mansion; true, she had put up most of the money, but he had had to sell off more Crown Vee stock to scrape up his share, and he did not relish the idea of added expense right now.

"We have a subsidiary list," Bill Warsaw, one of the Americans, said, and he showed Seccombe forty additional names, some less glittering socially than the original but all capable of putting up large sums of money.