Through Time and the Valley

15. The Tandy Ranch

15 The Tandy Ranch When we got to the ranch house, we unburdened the animals and Mr. Streeter put them into stalls and fed them some sweet feed. Dollarbill didn't deserve such good treatment after bucking me offand rolling on my spurs. Outside the lot, I walked over to Mr. Streeter, who was unhitching the trailer, and decided to get his opinion on what I should do about Dollarbill. I showed him the bent spur and told him what had happened. Then I asked, "Mr. Streeter, what do you do about a horse that rolls with the saddle on?" He thought a moment, then replied, "Take it off." I nodded. When he had finished unhitching the trailer, he said, "Let me 141 142 - Through Time and the Valley see that spur." He looked it over, went up to his shop, and after two minutes' work on the anvil, he had hammered it back into perfect shape. Then he said, "Let's go up to the house and put the supper on." The house was a big square two-story building that sat in a grove oflarge thrifty trees on a little rise overlooking the river. About a quarter of a mile to the southwest stood Mt. Rochester, the highest of several hills in that vicinity, and about half a mile east of the house was the wide dry bed of Point Creek. The house was built around 1910 by A. H. Tandy, who constructed it of solid concrete blocks that were made on the spot. Old Tandy was quite a man. In the 1880s he sent cattle up the trail from Haskell, Texas, to the railheads in Kansas. Later, he made and lost several fortunes speculating on land in the Pecos River country of Texas. Around the turn of the century, he moved to Woodward, Indian Territory, built a palatial home, and began buying land in the Texas Panhandle. At that time every other section belonged to the railroad and the rest was state land. Tandy bought only railroad sections, which put his holdings in a checkerboard pattern. Legally, he didn't own any of the land that adjoined him, as those sections belonged to the state and could be sold to anyone who wanted to buy them. But he grazed his land and the state's land too, and if someone was foolish enough to file on the state land, he simply ran them out of the country. One time a man filed on several sections north of the river, right in the middle ofTandy's holdings. Tandy tried repeatedly to buy him out, but he wouldn't sell. So Tandy waited and watched for the proper moment. When the settler made the mistake of butchering a Tandy beef, the old man sent his cowboys out one night to do some persuading. They dragged him out of his cabin in Bourbonese Canyon, tied a rope around his neck, and threw the other end over a tree limb. Then they took out the slack and handed him a paper to sign. When he had signed his holdings over to Tandy, the boys gave him a horse The Tandy Ranch - 143 and fifty dollars and told him to leave the country. He left the country . Another story of Tandy's forceful personality comes out of the Oklahoma Panhandle, where he grazed cattle on land that was unfenced and unsettled. When the country was opened up and settlers began moving in, Tandy did his best to run them out. His cattleknocked down their fences and invaded their fields, and when they retaliated, he filed suit against them and tried to break them in long court battles, which he could afford and they could not. Finally the settlers brought in big dogs trained to chase cattle. This stratagem worked very well for a while, but Mr. Tandy did not take it lying down. His response was a classic. Though an aggressive man, he gave the appearance of being just the opposite. Soft-spoken and rather frail of body, he struck people who didn't know him as a kind gentleman who might have been a clerk or a bookkeeper. Around sundown he would ride up to a farmer's house and ask for a drink of water. The farmer, who knew Tandy by name only, would go down to the well to fetch him a dipper of water, never suspecting...