Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Dreams of a Sheep Ranch Sheep Raising Herding Sheep Something About Texas Land Grants The "Texas Fever" Why I wanted to Go Hunting in Texas Father Spys the Land Our Plantation Father Comes Home The Bigness of Texas Where We were Going What I Hoped to Do Cattle Driving How We Set Out A Laborious Journey Comanche Indians Father to the Rescue Arrival at Fort Towson Preparing for a Storm A Dry "Norther" Two Kinds of Northers How Turkeys Kill Snakes Deer and Rattlesnakes A Corral of Wagons On the Trail Again Mesquite A Texas Sheep Ranch Profits from Sheep Father's Land Claim Spanish Measurements The Chaparral Cock Night on the Trinity Standing Guard A Turkey Buzzard Plans for Building a House The Cook Shanty A Storm of Rain A Day of Discomfort Thinking of the Old Home Waiting for the Sun Too Much Water The Stream Rising Trying to Save the Stock The Animals Stampeded Saving Our Own Lives A Raging Torrent A Time of Disaster The Flood Subsiding A Jack Rabbit Reparing Damages Rounding up the Stock FAfter the Flood Waiting for Father Recovering Our Goods Setting to Work Sawing Out Lumber In the Saw Pit Wild Cattle A Disagreeable Intruder Odd Hunting A Supply of Fresh Meat "Jerking" Beef Searching for the Cattle Our New Home Planting and Building Bar-O Ranch An Odd Cart The Visitors Zeba's Curiosity Possible Treachery Suspicious Behavior Gyp's Fight With a Cougar In a Dangerous Position Hunting Wild Hogs Treed by Peccaries Gyp's Obedience My Carelessness Vicious Little Animals Father Comes to the Rescue Increase in my Flock Unrest of the Indians Texas Joins the Union War with Mexico Selling Wool Peace on the Trinity My Dream Fulfilled

Philip of Texas - James Otis




The Profits from Sheep Raising

The cook had some marvelous stories to tell of the money that might be made in Texas by sheep raising, and among them was this:—

A man for whom he worked had a flock of fifteen hundred sheep, which he let out to a herder on shares. He gave the a herder one quarter of the wool, and one quarter of the increase in lambs; he also furnished the salt, the sheep dip, and, of course, the herder's food. Here are the figures which the cook showed me set down in a greasy pocket book of his, and which he declared were absolutely true. The owner received for the wool, after the herder had taken his share, eight hundred dollars; the increase in lambs was eight hundred, which at even a dollar and a half amounted to twelve hundred dollars. Of this last one fourth went to the herder, leaving nine hundred dollars for the increase. Thus the owner of the sheep received as a net profit from a flock of only fifteen hundred sheep seventeen hundred dollars, which is almost as well as he could have done in Mississippi.

Even though I had not been bent on sheep raising before we entered Texas, that story alone would have been sufficient to excite my desire to engage in it. It is true my twelve sheep would make a sorry showing by the side of fifteen hundred, but yet I was only twelve years old, and, as I had said to myself again and again, fortune must go against me exceedingly hard if by the time I had come to manhood I could not show more than fifteen hundred, even though the beginning had been so small.