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 Cook Shanty

This done, we set about making a shanty by digging to the depth of two or three feet a space about three yards wide and four yards long, around the sides of which we set branches of pecan trees. We planted poles at the four corners so that we could use the wagon covers for walls and roof.

When this rudest kind of rude building was so far finished that it would screen us from the wind, we set up the cook-stove, and mother began what in Bolivar County she would have called her regular Saturday's baking. After this we put on a roof of canvas, pinning the whole down as best we might with mesquite bushes, until we had a shed which would serve, but which was most crude looking.

Although there was nothing on which we could pride ourselves in this first building, it had occupied us nearly the entire day, and I had no more than an hour in which to rest my weary limbs before it was necessary to stand guard over the sheep, lest the wolves carry off the beginnings of my flock.

[Illustration] from Philip of Texas by James Otis

It was during this night, when it cost not only great effort, but real pain, to keep continually on the move lest I fall asleep, that I decided that at the very first opportunity I would build a corral. While our flock was so small, it would not be a very great task to build a pen sufficiently large to hold the animals together, and at the same time shut out the wolves. There were enough mesquite bushes, or trees, to provide me with the necessary material, and I decided upon the place where I would build a pen, figuring in my mind how the work could be best done.

Therefore, when father relieved me at midnight, I had in my mind's eye the first sheep pen put up on the West Fork of the Trinity, and already in imagination was on the high road to prosperity.