the Shadow Riders (1982) (21 page)

Q: The other black sheep of a family is Martin Connery, another fascinating character. Would it be fair to describe him as a pirate rancher?

A: Yes, he was. You know, the biggest ranch in Texas is the King Ranch, and what a lot of people don't know is that Richard King, who established that ranch, was a steamboat captain. He had come down there and worked on the Rio Grande River for a while, saw his opportunity, and took land there. And this was not at all an unusual thing: a lot of these ship captains and steamboat captains were the first ones on the site. Jean LaFitte was a famous pirate who operated out of New Orleans in that area. His actual base was near Galveston, and he had been along that coast quite a bit, so anybody who was associated with him would know a good deal of the Texas coast and what its opportunities were. A lot of these men saw the chance there, and also they saw these millions of cattle running free. There were no brands on them at all in those days; they bred like rabbits back there in that thicket, and they were all over the area.

Q: Was it a tough adjustment to go from the sea to being a rancher?

A: Not really in those days because there were no restrictions on a rancher. He could just take up land and then reach out and grab everything in sight. A lot of the early ranchers were "pirates" in actuality.

Q: In the book there is also the scene where some of the renegades come into the town and think they're going to terrorize the town. One of them brags that they have thirty men and is quickly told three hundred are there in town ready to stand them off. Was that a fairly common occurrence?

A: Yes, it was. You see, everybody in those days had guns, and everybody carried guns, and everybody was ready for trouble. They had law, but they would have to send for it sometimes. The Texas Rangers might have to ride a number of miles to get there to help, and by that time most of the damage would be over, so people had to learn how to defend themselves. That part of the coast had been raided by the Comanches time and again - and prisoners taken away and cattle and horses driven off - so they were ready, they were ready for trouble. Victoria, for example, which I mention in the story, had been raided and practically decimated by Comanches a couple of times, so every man there was armed and he knew where his weapon was, he was ready to defend himself. So these fellows had been very foolish to try to take a town like that.

Q: You mentioned that Kate Connery would help out at times during the Indian attacks. The women would have to pitch in right along with the men during such attacks?

A: Very definitely. I had an ancestor, a great-grandmother who nursed a child with a rifle across her knees. This was not an unexpected thing in those days. They had to take care of themselves. Sometimes the husband would be away - he'd be out herding cattle, or driving cattle off to a market, or gone into town for the supplies - and the attack would come when he was gone, so the woman would close and bar the door and load the muskets and defend the place.

Q: Do you see a connection between the Travens and the Sacketts? Do you think they would have gotten along?

A: I think the Sacketts and the Travens would have gotten along very well. They had a number of qualities in common. You see, a lot of the men did have qualities in common in those days because the country itself and the conditions under which they lived had a way of weeding out the weak ones, so the men who remained were usually pretty strong men, pretty capable men.

I don't necessarily mean strong physically - though they usually had stamina and were very rugged - but I mean strong in character. Character was the essence of the thing with both men and women. If they had the inner stamina to fight back, to resist, to take care of themselves, then that individuality made them stand on their own feet without leaning on anybody or anything, and these men had that. Some of the Sacketts, like William Tell Sackett for example, were veterans of the Civil War as the Travens were, and many of them had lived through it, and had lived through various Indian attacks.

Q: There's also a strong sense of family that seems common to the Travens and the Sacketts.

A: That was much more common in the old days than it is now, although I think we're coming back to it. A lot of people think the family's going downhill. I don't think so at all. I think, the very economic situation we're going into now, with electronics and everything of that kind, that people will be living more at home than they ever did. I venture to say that in ten years at least 40 percent of the working force will be working at home and never leaving the home to go to work, and I think this will bring it all back together again. But in those days the family was a unit, you see, and they worked together: they milked the cows, they made the hay, they did the hunting, they did the work hi the fields, and they each had their own role.

Q: The family ties also seem to have been strong when the families were separated. When the Sacketts would go off - when Dal and Mac go off to war, for example, and then later meet, they just take right up again. That seems to be something we've lost.

A: Yes, we have to a great extent, and it's too bad because it gave a whole lot of unity and a whole lot of strength to the country itself.

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