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Every Texan knows the tales of Pecos Bill, the mythical great-granddad of all cowboys. Pecos Bill was born in Texas (naturally, say Texans) and raised by coyotes. Rattlesnakes hid when they heard him coming, because Pecos Bill's bite might poison them. He used mountain lions for saddle horses, invented centipedes and tarantulas for pets.
Once, on a bet, Pecos Bill mounted an Oklahoma cyclone and rode it across three states, flattening out mountains and uprooting forests, thus making the flat Texas Panhandle. Aside from such playful interludes, Pecos Bill spent most of his time on "Widow Maker," a horse only Pecos Bill could ride (it threw his bride, Slue-Foot Sue, as high as the moon), tending his fabled range.
This week Cattleman Robert Justus Kleberg Jr. (pronounced Clayberg) was riding a range as fabled as Pecos Bill's. The liege lord of all the King ranches and all the King ranchers was winding up the great fall roundup on his many pastures. With his hard-riding vaqueros, amid the dust and acrid smell of burning flesh, Bob Kleberg threaded his horse in & out of the milling hundreds of cherry-red cows and their calves. Lean-faced, gimlet-eyed, with the brim of his Stetson hat upswept in King Ranch fashion, Bob Kleberg told his vaqueros with swift gestures and quick Spanish phrases which cattle to "cut out" for branding. As a calf high-tailed it for the mesquite brush, the nimble cow ponies always outran it; a vaquero's lasso snaked out and around its neck, brought it thudding to the ground. While the calf still kicked in a cloud of dust, the vaqueros knelt down, swiftly branded it with the King Ranch's "running W," inoculated it against disease (blackleg), castrated it. Even as the calf scrambled to its feet, bawling with fear and pain, the lariat of Bob Kleberg or a vaquero had already tripped another calf to be branded.
In a busy week of hard, sweaty riding and roping, Bob Kleberg and his men round up as many as 1,400 calves, and mark another 3,500 steers, calves and cows for the dinner tables of the U.S. Already this year the King Ranch has sent 19,110 cattle to market, enough to supply half the people of the U.S. with a hamburger. This feat, worthy of Pecos Bill, is old stuff to Bob Kleberg.
Fabled Wonders. To King ranchers, big Texas talk is no bigger than the facts of their cattle kingdom: the biggest beef-producing ranch in the world. Some King-size statistics:
¶ The 976,000 acres in the ranch's four divisions make it bigger than Rhode Island. Between the northern and southern points of the ranch there is a month's difference in the seasons.
¶ The ranch cars, some specially built for cross-country driving (they have 100 trucks and autos), have to carry compasses to keep from getting lost on the vast range lands.
¶ The ranch has 1,500 miles of fence; in a straight line, the fence would reach from New York to Fargo, N.Dak.
¶ The 390 producing oil wells, which are operated by Humble Oil & Refining Co., have so far paid royalties of $3,250,000. They are but the first dribbles out of what may prove to be a new major Texas pool.
¶ The 75 artesian wells and 225 windmills supply enough water daily for a city of 23,000.