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1 6 8 t he decades following the Lincoln County War proved Susan’s most productive and rewarding. She attained financial success and the social acceptance she so desperately desired. She juggled hard manual labor with conventional notions of Victorian womanhood. She cast aside links to John Tunstall’s perilous schemes and freed herself from Alex’s mistakes . After 1880 Susan rolled up her sleeves and buried herself in hard work. Although she put the Lincoln County War behind her, the conflict had taught her some valuable lessons. First, she learned the value of land. Paper wealth, she now realized, could vanish without warning. As in the film Gone with the Wind, when Scarlet O’Hara raises a radish skyward, vows never to go hungry again, and resolves to restore her plantation no matter what the cost, Susan, too, determined that land was the most precious commodity she could possess. And she intended to possess a lot of land in the future. Second, Susan had over the course of five years gained confidence in her own intelligence. Nevertheless, convention dictated that she must cultivate smart, level-headed men as her allies. She turned to new husband George Barber and to her always reliable friend John Chisum. Ever since McSween’s death, John had remained Susan’s bulwark. He lent his support throughout her post–Lincoln County War struggles. Even after she married Barber, Chisum continued the friendship. For one thing, he hired Barber to survey his South Spring ranch property. Until Barber could pass the New Mexico bar exam, he supported Susan and himself using his surveying C ha p t e r n i n e new mexico’s Cattle Queen New Mexico’s Cattle Queen S 1 6 9 skills. Chisum had admittedly long neglected the task of surveying his land. With Billy the Kid and his gang on the run in 1880 and the violence in Lincoln County waning, he saw a new era dawning and newcomers arriving . He realized that he could no longer avoid the survey.1 Much to Chisum’s surprise, however, Barber’s survey revealed an unforeseen discrepancy between land the rancher claimed versus what he actually owned. Barber’s work disclosed that the source of the Spring River, from which Chisum got most of his water, did not, in fact, lie on Chisum property, as John and his brothers had assumed. Fortunately, Barber came up with an easy solution to Chisum’s problem. George suggested that John simply write to the U.S. Land Office in Washington and request permission to exchange one piece of his land with the existing “school section,” on which the river source was located. Federal authorities readily accepted the switch, and the rancher was pleased with George’s resolution. By most accounts it was soon after the survey that John gave Susan the starter cattle to begin her own herd. If this sequence of events is accurate, it challenges Sallie Chisum’s romantic version of how her uncle proposed as he handed over the cattle because she was by this time already remarried.2 It was George who also helped Susan complete her work on the tangled Tunstall and McSween estates. He stood beside her following the unsuccessful court of inquiry and humiliating trial in Mesilla. As previously mentioned , Susan brought to her marriage a single 160-acre homestead located just outside Lincoln. By June 1880 she was already planting corn on her homestead and had stocked the land with an assortment of farm animals, probably chickens and a few milk cows. Thanks to New Mexico statutes, which were rooted in Spanish rather than English law, a woman was permitted to retain personal property in her own name even after she married. So, too, could the married Susan Barber legally purchase land without getting her husband’s permission. To sell the property, however, required the man’s signature.3 Immediately after their marriage, the Barbers embarked upon a substantial land-buying frenzy, which continued for nearly two decades. George speculated in real estate for many years. Susan regularly purchased ranch land and well into the twentieth century bought up plots in the town of White Oaks, hoping for an oil strike. Lincoln County deed and patent ledgers reveal the couples’ myriad purchases scattered across southeastern New Mexico. They frequently filed for free land under the Homestead and Desert Lands Acts. Together and separately, they bought, sold, and traded unimproved and improved parcels with friends or acquaintances. Such...

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