Life on the Trail, as told by J. Frank Dobie

James Frank Dobie, known as the "Storyteller of the Southwest," was born in 1888 on his family's cattle ranch in Live Oak County. Living both a rugged ranch life and within Texas's centers of education, he taught at the University of Texas, where he developed a course on Southwest literature. Dobie's mission became recording and sharing the disappearing folklore of Texas and the Southwest. He served as secretary of the Texas Folklore Society for 21 years. Dobie was a progressive activist, advocating for African-American student admission to UT in the 1940s. Despite leaving the University in 1947 due to his vocal politics, he continued writing until his death in 1964, leaving behind a legacy that valued liberated minds as the supreme good in life.

In his book, UP THE TRAIL FROM TEXAS, J. Frank Dobie writes that, although there were exceptions, most of the Native Americans that cowboys met on the trail were friendly. By 1976, many Indians were on reservations and often hungry, so their payment for crossing reservation land was always beef. Dobie writes, “They usually got strays, sore-footed animals, or something else that the cowmen were not reluctant to spare” (142).
“Doan’s Store, just north of the Red River, was where cowboys in love asked for mail and posted letters” (86).
“At the time of the Civil War, there was not a chuck wagon in Texas. For years after the war ended, men out of cow hunts carried their grub in a wallet tied behind their saddles” (97).

“Out in the dry Pecos country, a wagon boss once said to his cook, ‘Scour your pots with sand and wipe ‘em with a rag.’ The cook responded, “Rags all used up, but grass’ll do” ((99).
African American Alec Gross was old enough to have white hair. Dobie writes, “Everybody called him Uncle Alec. After he had been out a week with a remuda, he would have the horses following him, instead of him driving them” (113-4). He always carried a whip, but he rarely used it.
Dobie writes that many cowboys carried six-shooters, but they seldom used them. He tells the story of his Uncle Frank Byler, who, in the 1880s, finally pulled his pistol out of its holster when he spotted a water moccasin in the water and tried to shoot it. Dobie says, ”The trigger or hammer had become so clotted with dirt and rust that he could not cock the gun....he threw it in disgust at the snake and left it in the mud. He realized, he said, that unless a man could use a six-shooter, he would be better off without it.”
Dobie, J. Frank. UP THE TRAIL FROM TEXAS. New York: Random Press, 1955.