A Grand Canyon
Leaving the endless miles of plains to explore Palo Duro by mule, I wondered, “What is this doing here?”
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Palo Duro acreage with a remote-control gate may be the rustic choice of Amarillo’s affluent, but they need good weather, a four-wheel-drive Jeep, and a brave heart to make use of the canyon floor. There is little danger of cul-de-sacs and ranchette subdivisions finding their way here. Still, leaving the canyon in the hands of private ranchers exacts a price beyond the stubborn overgrazing. Despite its recreational potential, only the ranchers’ hunting clients and lucky acquaintances really get to enjoy it in the wild. Acquired in 1933, the state park is large, handsome, and tastefully designed. But the Panhandle’s shortage of public nature retreats is so extreme that in the summer, Palo Duro State Park resembles Coney Island. Also, the park’s designers may have erred on the side of restraint. After a drive through the park, I came away a bit empty and disgruntled. It needs to be more than a place to throw a Frisbee under the cottonwood trees.
So what am I suggesting? Explanatory billboards? The park offers two state historical markers, a replica of Goodnight’s dugout, a tour-guide train, and the amphitheater musical Texas, which dramatizes much of the narrative related here. I just wish that the state had posted beneath the best example of the lower half of the Spanish Skirts—called, for quite literal reasons, the Devil’s Slide—something other than a marker directing attention to the nearest latrine. Besides, the state park is confined to the mouth of the canyon. The creeks have converged, and the Prairie Dog Town Fork is actually the headquarters of the Red River. Though the cliffs are impressive, within the park Palo Duro is more broad river valley than broken desert canyon. History makes the best distinction. Goodnight used what was probably the Panhandle’s first barbed wire to separate the present parkland from the rest of the canyon. He reserved the lush grass along the river for John Adair’s herd of purebred English cattle. Beyond the wire, Goodnight turned his Longhorns loose.
Back to the Flatland
From the hunting shack’s cottonwood grove we had climbed several hundred feet of jumbled plateaus. Selden pointed out a V-shaped line etched on the rock wall’s shadowed face. That, he said, was our destination—the scenic route. Dorothy slid me one of her patented frank looks. We dismounted and rested on the last grassy level. Putting up pencils, tightening saddle straps, swigging water from our plastic canteens, we chatted with a calm I could not have imagined 24 hours earlier. The black mule lowered his head meanwhile and, with shy insistence, began to nudge my leather chink with his snout.
“Awww,” said our guide, grinning sentimentally. “Stagger Lee’s in love.” Considering the fright we’d given each other the previous day, I could have thrown my arms around the big thing’s neck.
As we started up, Dorothy peeked at the distant treetops below and grimly shook her head. The path was wide, scraped, and regular enough to qualify as more than a livestock trail, but in comparison, yesterday’s bulldozed switchbacks were a country club boulevard. I rocked forward in the saddle and placed as much weight as possible directly above Stagger Lee’s shoulders. Wedged below in recesses of eastward cliffs, high shaded dells glistened with dew. It would take an agile and determined cow to overgraze that grass, I have never felt more suspended between the easy, mundane present and a far more difficult but colorful past. As often as it seemed safe, I craned my neck and stared. Motionless on one of the low mesas, a big dark-brown steer watched us climb.
A friend who is a historian tells me, without meaning to offend, that Texas is almost ahistoric. He implies that our habitation of this terrain has been too sporadic and too recent to make much difference in the world scheme of things. Driving through our ugly shopping centers and more-desolate small towns, I find it hard to argue with him, but for me Palo Duro belies that allegation of impoverished human experience. I know. Our insignificant little adventure had lasted not quite one day—it was silly and presumptuous of me to insert that passage in a drama that’s gone on for thousands of years. I suspect that participants in an archeological dig feel just as dwarfed and stirred. It’s not just what you find. It’s what the resonance of that hole in the ground makes you think.
Selden pulled up and tightened his grip on the pack mule’s halter rope. Before us the red clay turned into a stratum of dusty white caliche, roughly three hundred yards across, that looked very loose in composition and angled up the cliff at a grade of about 45 degrees. The ledge on the right pitched straight down, out of sight. “One at a time,” Selden told us. “When I reach the end of that dirt, then you start.” Letting Pumpkin trail behind, he spurred Reddy’s flank and rode ahead.
“I’m next,” my wife announced, without a hint of compromise. I knew her game. If she came off backward, I was to play shortstop to her rolling ball. She hung on fine, but Fat Mule paid for his gluttony and girth. Twice during that climb, the mule had to stop and rest. Dorothy endured those delays with a petrified stoicism, though in acknowledgement of the rightward chasm she directed her gaze slightly to the left. I wouldn’t have been much help if needed. I was yanking reins, jerking Stagger Lee’s head, yelling, “Whoa!” Mules desire nothing as much as the company of other mules. Witnessing the departure of his mates, Stagger Lee was snorting and stomping and dying to go.
At last I called of the fight and let him have his head. Raising my knees and clamping them tight, I hunkered over his neck and found that sure spot of rhythmic balance. Though I may have resembled a hybrid of Willie Shoemaker and Ichabod Crane, I didn’t have to grab the saddle horn once. In retrospect, that may have been a show of dumb bravado, but my confidence in that beast of burden was absolute. The slobber of Stagger Lee’s exertion foamed over the bridle bit and hung in a light green string from his chin. With his head down, he thrust with his hindquarters, drove with his shoulders, and sent waves of brute strength right through me. We cleared the dangerous caliche and reached a gate, the end of our climb. With exhilarated hoots we burst over the canyon rim, fresh upon the placid scene of Old Cowboy Morning. What status! Tom Christian’s cowhands raised jovial halloos at the sight of Selden, their favorite criminal lawyer. The guests, members of a Young Leadership group in Amarillo, gaped at us from the picnic tables, some with aluminum forks poised. Sex, maybe…I’m sure that’s better.
Walking somewhat bowlegged in our thorn-scraped chinks, we carried our blue metal coffee cups and plates to an unoccupied table. Dorothy and I laid our gimme caps aside and made a mild show of ordering our dirty, matted hair. Such are the powers of human recovery; it’s downright amazing how one night’s saddle-sore dudes can turn into the new day’s grizzled hands. Baked over mesquite coals in large Dutch ovens, in the manner of Mackenzie’s troopers, those biscuits may have been the best that ever soaked in gravy. A bank president and regent at West Texas State, Tom Christian wore a hat that looked like a cross between a Stetson and a bowler. Telling stories about his grandfather’s employment by Old Man Goodnight, he tried to make sure everybody was entertained and had plenty to eat. Sartorially, Amarillo’s young leaders ran to starched jeans, shined boots, silk scarves tied like bandannas. Pleasant folks.
With peals of glee, a couple of women were throwing cow chips. After each Frisbeelike toss, they brushed and clapped their hands fastidiously. A larger group of women hung on the words of the volunteer cowhands, particularly Roger Johnson, the one with the clipped moustache, nice shoulders, and gleaming white shirt. With just the right amount of courtly restraint, he sidled against the posterior of an attractive woman and showed her how to twirl his lariat. Excusing himself with a forefinger touched to his hat, Roger walked over to our table and took a seat on the bench. “Who are these people?” asked Selden, shoving his plate away. “They’re from Amarillo? I don’t know a one.”
Roger grinned and flicked Marlboro ash into Selden’s gravy. “Hell, no,” he quipped, reminding our guide of his law practice back in town. “There ain’t no murderers.”
Everyone seemed to recall the work day at once. Tom’s cook soaped dishes and used suds to douse the fire. Our mules appeared to know that within the hour they’d be back in their paddock, rolling in the delicious dirt. They picked their way through the flatland’s mesquites in a fast walk. Sighting Selden’s pickup and gooseneck trailer, they broke into that god-awful jouncing trot and finally achieved an ungainly canter.
To our right, the teamed of blindered horses hitched to the tourist wagon overtook us on the road. The young leaders stared at us through a great billow of dust. Choosing not to eat that dirt, Roger spurred ahead on a well-bred chestnut quarter horse. It stretched out easily with arched neck and tail, a flash of white stockings. No doubt about it—the horse is the lovelier beast. Roger cupped his hand beside his mouth and shouted, “What are you going to plant with those things? Go get yourself a plow!”
Historic snobberies. Selden grinned and turned up his nose, having none of it. We knew what our animals were good for. With pressing appointments in the civilized present—airplanes taking off, clients in jail—we galloped our mules in the fair morning sun.
My Library
