Charlie Siringo's West by Lamar Howard R.;Etulain Richard W.;

Author:Lamar, Howard R.;Etulain, Richard W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Santa Fe and New Mexico made an unexpected deep and lasting effect on Charlie Siringo during those months in the territory: he fell in love with the landscape, the lifestyle, the Mexican-American people, and the dry clear climate. As he himself writes:

It was early fall when I took my departure for Denver. I hated to leave, as I had found the climate of Santa Fe the finest that I had ever been in. The summers can’t be beaten anywhere, and the winters are better than most places. In fact, I liked it so much that I made up my mind to build a permanent home there, and with that end in view I secured a tract of land a short distance form the outskirts of the city and christened it the Sunny Slope Ranch.41

Siringo recalled, too, that during his eight months in New Mexico, “I saw much of the Mexican people, especially of the lower classes. I like them as a whole, and would like them still more if the blood of their Spanish sires could be eradicated so as to do away with their cruelty to dumb animals.” Siringo’s great disappointment was that they “fill up on the rotten poison liquors which are manufactured in local cellars cheaply for this class of trade by Jews and so-called Americans of the money-grabbing races.”42

It is worth noting that while Siringo herded cattle ruthlessly and slaughtered them for their hides as a teenager, he was always an admirer of horses, and despite being a bronco-buster, he tried to get people to respect horses and dogs. In his second edition of A Texas Cowboy, he included an appendix urging humane treatment of horses. His entire life is highlighted by stories about the horses he owned and loved, especially “Whiskey Pete” (originally spelled Whiskey Peet). In later years his Sunny Slope Ranch was a refuge for older horses and dogs such as the wolfhound, “Eat ’Em Up Jake.” Indeed, he hired local men to look after his animals while he was away on a case.43

Siringo had reason to feel this way for in nearly all his narratives he was on horseback moving cattle great distances, or carefully stalking a suspect, or tending the LX horse herd at Caldwell. To him the great cattle drives could not have occurred without trained horses. In describing a drive he always gave his readers facts about the remuda, the horse wrangler, and the outfit’s equestrian experiences. As has been noted earlier, while living in Caldwell, Kansas, Siringo befriended Andy Adams, author of The Log of a Cowboy, thought to be the first fictional account of the long drives written. But many of Andy Adams’s drives were of horse herds, and his affection for and understanding of horses was at one with Siringo’s, all of which is to say that Charlie Siringo was indeed, a true cowboy.

When Siringo left the Pinkerton Agency he retired to Santa Fe and lived there until his age and poor health forced him to move to California to be near his son and daughter.

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