Recalling J. Frank Dobie’s “The ‘MURDER’ Bull” – Part 2

“He'll play hell, taking it unless he produces the cow," Gilleland retorted. Then, without another word, he separated the brindle and ran him back to the main herd.

Powe saw the bull coming, followed by Gilleland. He rode out and the two men passed some words not heard by others. Then Powe turned back into the roundup and started to cut the brindle out again. Gilleland made straight toward him. Halted in the middle of the herd, the two men had some more words. They were very brief. Powe was unarmed. He rode to the far side of the herd and borrowed a six-shooter out of a friend's saddle pocket.

Back into the herd, Powe now rode, found the brindle bull and started him for the HHP cut, following him out. Midway between the cut and the big herd, Fine Gilleland met them. He roped at the bull but missed. Powe pulled his six-shooter and shot at the bull but missed. By this time, Gilleland was off his horse shooting at Powe to kill. He killed.

Gilleland now remounted and left the roundup in a run. In all probability, he was honest in claiming the brindle maverick for his employers. Perhaps he hoped to make a reputation. There was a strong tendency on the range for little owners to "feed off" any big outfit in their country. The big spreads sometimes hired men to be hard.

The Powe boy rode immediately to Alpine to notify rangers of the killing. Meanwhile men remaining with the roundup branded-out the calves and yearlings, the HHP stock included.

When the brindle bull was dragged up to the branding fire, there was a brief discussion. He was thrown on his right side. Then a man with a running iron burned deep into the shaggy, winter hair on his left side the letters MURDER. The letters ran across the ribs from shoulder to flank.

"Turn him over," the man said. The bull was turned over. With a fresh iron the man branded on the right side, JAN 28 90. The bull was not castrated or earmarked.

A few days later, two rangers killed Gilleland in the mountains. What happened to the brindle maverick with that brand that no one would claim is not definitely settled. R. W. Powe, the son of the man who was killed, whose account' of the matter has been followed in this narrative, says the Murder Bull was eventually driven out of the country with a trail herd bound for Montana.

Whether he was or not, many stories still circulate over the wide spaces of the trans-Pecos country about "the maverick branded MURDER": How for years he wandered a lone outcast on the range, never seen with other cattle, and, for that matter, seldom seen at all. How he turned prematurely grey, the hair over the scabs of his bizarre brand showing a coarse red. How cowboys in the bunkhouse at the Dubois and Wentworth ranch one night saw the bull's head come through an open window; he was looking, they imagined, for the man responsible for that brand of horror traced on his own side. Some brands grow in size with the growth of animals; generally, they do not. According to the stories, the MURDER brand grew until the elongated letters stood out in enormous dimensions, making one familiar with literature think of the pitiless Scarlet Letter that blazoned on Hester Prynne's breast and in the soul of every being who looked upon it.

The Murder Maverick became a "ghost steer." A cowboy might see him, usually about dusk; and then he "just wasn't there." There were some who did not want to see him. Eugene Cunningham, Barry Scobee, and perhaps other writers have woven "the murder steer" into Wild West stories for pulp magazines.

The gray Confederate coat with slit sleeve worn by the murdered Powe of one arm is in the little college museum at Alpine, under the mountains where the roundup was held, JAN 28 90. That brindle bull hide with the outlandish brand on it really would be a museum piece.