Lonesome Road

 

Bummppp. bummpp. Barbed wire fences guard Loftin Rd, which lies 10 miles from Windthorst, TX near US 281, a place Larry McMurtry wondered where travelers were herding to. Birds chirp in the distance as the sun beams against the blue Chevy pick up.

The winds howl with more ferocity as tires continue to crunch the gravel until it reaches a cross road. On the right in the distance are a slew of caterpillar trucks and pump jacks. On the left at the corner of Loftin and McMurtry streets is an iron pipe fence with a stone marker in front that reads "A [few missing letters] tax and stone house SPG, 1849 Marcy Trail 700 FT Southwest."

The body gets a jolt of energy as the smell of gun smoke infiltrate the air, followed by arrows from the Kichai, which drown out the sharp sounds of bowstrings. Like the ill-fated Rangers in the vicinity of the stone houses, Gus is armed with a .50 caliber Henry lever-action rifle.

"The less talk the Captain had to listen to, the better humor he was in, whereas Gus was just the opposite. He’d rattle off five or six different questions and opinions, running them all together like so many unbranded cattle—it made it hard to pick out one and think about it carefully and slowly, the only ways Pea Eye liked to think. At such times his only recourse was to pretend the questions had hit him in his deaf ear, the left one, which hadn’t really worked well since the day of their big fight with the Keechis—what they called the Stone House fight. It had been pure confusion, since the Indians had been smart enough to fire the prairie grass, smoking things up so badly that no one could see six feet ahead. They kept bumping into Indians in the smoke and having to shoot pointblank; a Ranger right next to Pea had spotted one and fired too close to Pea’s ear.

“That was the day the Indians got away with their horses, which made Captain Call about as mad as Pea had ever seen him. It meant that they had to walk down the Brazos for nearly two hundred miles, worrying about what would happen if the Comanches discovered they were afoot. Pea Eye hadn’t noticed he was half dead until they walked most of the way out." - Lonesome Dove p. 11.

This was the site of the Battle of Stone Houses between the Kichai and Texas Rangers.

 

Larry McMurtry's grandfather, William Jefferson, and his wife Louisa Francis, left war stricken Missouri for a desolate Texas prairie that offered a world of promise. "What my grandparents had to contend with was the sky and  he sun, forces sufficient to drive many a pioneer family back to gentler climes" (McMurtry, Walter, p. 24). According to Larry, his grandfather was "American Scot [was decorated with] a fine mustache and an inquisitive mind." His dad, also William Jefferson, learned the cowboy way of life from his father.

A few yards behind the marker is a white shotgun house with a tin roof and red brick columns supported by concrete. Inside it featured three bedrooms, a bath on the south side, a hallway, dining room and living room on the north side. According to Larry, the house was put together by his father and grandpa and the supplies were purchased from Montgomery Ward, also known as " Monkey Ward."

Larry and his brother Charlie worked the land their family helped create, but eventually they went on their own paths. Larry went on to become a book herdsman and an author, while Charlie became an oil field welder, a professor at Angelo State University (ASU) and back to being a welder again in Archer City.

"Dad taught us two things," Charlie says. The first was to work hard and that there were no days off without real excuses or working less than 100%. In addition and just as important, "a man's word is all you had and if you ever break it you won't get it back." Today, all there remains of the family ranch house are grass, a myriad of grass hoppers, an outhouse and a shed.

Across the house is a tin sign clinging on to a piece of barbed wire that says, "Army California Trail 1848." Pieces of American history unfold before the eyes.

 

"Drop below us one mile and you’re into timbered country," Larry McMurtry once described the land south of the house.

Tires make a sharp dissent. Beautiful beige rock formations decorate the driver's side. Echoes of "Head west young man" guide the spirit into the vast unknown.