Boggy Depot

It was somewhere near the Boggy Depot where 15 year old Moody McCuan and his 17 year old buddy hid out in the woods. They were gathering wood to use in cooking the meal for the cowboys on the cattle drive. Earlier in the day they had come upon a small fire, with a bird on a stick cooking over it. Even though nobody was at the fire, they knew that one or more pair of eyes was probably watching them from the grove of the trees. With this still fresh in their minds, they ran and hid when they heard gunfire.

What had happened was an old rouge longhorn steer had tried to break away from the herd. An overzealous cowboy started shooting at the steer's horn in an attempt to hit the horn and turn the animal back to the herd. His aim wasn't any better than his judgment, and everyone had steak for supper that evening. Those steaks, being on the tough side, were not broiled over open flames. They were pounded with a mallet on the cook's table, then floured and cooked in a big frying pan with a lid on it.

When the boys didn't show up with the wood, the cook started yelling for them. This frightened the boys even more and they ran farther away and found a good hideout. The herd caught up with the chuck wagon and some of the cowboys were sent to look for the boys, but didn't find them until late that evening.

The Hereford was the main reason for the dramatic decline in the number of Longhorns. At four years of age, a Longhorn steer would average 800 pounds. Unlike the Herefords, they did not reach maximum weight until they were eight or teen years of age. When cattlemen started raising the faster maturing beef breeds, the Longhorns were all but forgotten. In the early 1920's Congress appropriated money to preserve the breed. However, it wasn't until 1927 that W.C. Barnes and J.W. Hatton actually found 27 of the best specimens of the breed and shipped them to the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. Most of the Longhorns in our nation today trace to that remnant of 27.

The 59,020 acre refuge is home to a large herd of Longhorns today and they all trace back to that original 27.

I'll have more to say about Moody McCuan in some of the following chapters. Everywhere I go someone tells me something about him. So many people picked up pecans for him in the Washita River bottom, just north of Alberta Creek. Times were hard and he afforded work for many local citizens who desperately needed a job. He even provided room and board for as many as was feasible.

The cattle drive mentioned here was no doubt headed for Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, but my memory doesn't let me tell more about it. Fort Gibson was as far upstream as the riverboats could go, because of the shallow ford where the cattle trail crossed.