Recalling J. Frank Dobie’s “The ‘MURDER’ Bull” – Part 1

Ozona—After cattle became valuable and a pushing population afforded contenders, mavericks overall meant more trouble than prosperity.

In the seventies, Jake and Joel English with a hired Mexican vaquero were mavericking in the Carrizo Springs country west of the Nueces River. The population was not pushing very strong in that neck of the brush country at the time.

"One day," Jake English remembered, "we rode down a white-brush draw hoping to scare out something, when all of a sudden my horse, which was in the lead, gave a snort and a lunge to one side. There, swelled up on the ground bigger'n a skinned mule, was a dead sorrel horse.

"He had a bullet hole in his forehead. A few steps off was a two-year-old brown maverick bull with a lobo stripe down his back shot through the head also. On the other side of the horse from the bull was a new saddle hanging from the limb of a mesquite tree. Near it, a new saddle blanket, grey with red stripes, was spread over two or three limbs to make a shade. Lying on his back under this blanket, was a man. A good hat covered his face. On his feet were a pair of fine shop-made boots, the Petmecky spurs still on the heels.

“He was dead with a bullet through his heart. He was a white man. We didn't know him. We didn't know who had killed him. The maverick bull explained in a general way. Whoever did the killing had made a neat job of arranging the corpse. Then he had ridden on. It wasn't any of our business. We rode on also, after mavericks."

John Champion, while mavericking on the Arroyo Tortuga in the same region, roped a dun maverick bull, only to discover that the thick brush he had been running through had grabbed his little branding iron. He tied the bull securely. The next day when he came back to brand it, the bull was gone. Nearby, Champion saw fresh horse tracks. After he had followed them a short distance, he heard brush popping and raking leather. He went to the sound.

A Mexican was leading the dun bull, though he had his own rawhide reata and not Champion's on it. The Mexican said he had found the bull running free on the range. Champion, with six-shooter drawn, called him a liar and several other things, told him he had stolen the bull from the tree, and made a dead shot. Then he put a bullet into the bull at the base of the ear. There was a kind of prejudice against a maverick that had brought on a killing. The most famous example in Texas and the whole West was the maverick branded MURDER.

In 1890 most of the trans-Pecos country was still unfenced, and in the timbered and brushed roughs, plenty of Longhorn blood still ran wild. On January 28 of that year, the small cattle owners operating around the Leoncita waterholes in northern Brewster County, which is as large as some states, taking in most of the proposed Big Bend National Park, held a roundup to brand what calves had escaped the fall work. Between two and three thousand cattle were thrown together in the herd.

The chief operators in this part of the country were Dubois and Wentworth. They did not approve of such early work and were taking no part in it, but one of their riders named Fine Gilleland was present to represent their interests.

Among the "little men" was Henry Harrison Powe. He was a Mississippian who had left college to fight in the Confederate Army and was one-armed as a result. He had come to Texas during the hard-handed Reconstruction days. Very few of the men from the roundup grounds knew he had buried the body of a murdered nephew with eleven bullet holes in it. He was considered an honest man, not at all contentious. His brand was HHP.

In the roundup, among other unbranded animals, was a brindle yearling bull. It was not following any cow, but the roundup boss and another range man informed Powe that the bull belonged to a certain HHP cow. They had seen him with the cow and knew both animals well by flesh marks.

"Are you positive?" Powe asked. They said they would swear to the brindle's identity. Then Powe rode into the herd and cut the brindle out, heading him into a small cut of cows and calves being held by his own son.

Very soon after this, Fine Gilleland galloped up to the cut.

"Does that brindle bull have a mother here?" he asked the boy sharply.

"No," the boy replied, "but the boss told Father it belongs to an HHP cow."