To Tame A Texan (35 page)

To My Readers:

The fight to give women the right to vote began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, and finally ended seventy-two years later on that hot August day in Tennessee, when thirty-six states had ratified the amendment to make it law.

Four Western states—Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—had given their women the vote before the turn of the century. Wyoming, of course, holds the place of honor for being the very first to do so. It is part of their legend that when the U.S. Congress tried to get the Wyoming legislature to repeal that law, Wyoming fired back a telegram, which read,
We may stay out of the Union a hundred years, but we will come in with our women!
Reluctantly, Congress accepted Wyoming as a state with voting women.

I am happy to report that young Harry T. Burn, the first-time legislator from Niota, McMinn County, Tennessee, was not destroyed by his yes vote. He became a successful banker and gentleman farmer.

 

 

Despite the hundreds of movies and novels about the twelve-hundred mile Chisholm Trail, its time was brief, about twenty years, from the end of the Civil War to the mid-1880s. Kansas farmers complaining about fever the Texas cattle carried, barbed wire fencing off the Trail, and railroads coming into Texas, which could carry cattle to market more easily and cheaply, ended the necessity to drive cattle hundreds of miles to sell. When the Oklahoma land runs began in 1889, civilization ended those great cattle drives.

Today, the Chisholm Trail roughly follows U.S. Highway 81 through Oklahoma to the west of Oklahoma City. In fact, some of the asphalt was laid directly on the worn ruts. A man from the city of Enid has carefully marked the Trail.

Some Texans argue that the Trail in Texas should not be properly called the Chisholm Trail, since Jesse Chisholm, for whom the Trail is named, never pushed into Texas. Jesse, a part-Cherokee trader, never drove a single cow up the Trail. He died in 1868 and is buried in Oklahoma at Left Hand Spring Camp, a few miles north of the town of Geary.

If you are ever in my home state of Oklahoma, I invite you to visit the big Chisholm Trail Heritage Center, in the town of Duncan, on U.S. Highway 81, about eighty-seven miles southwest of Oklahoma City. Besides having a huge bronze statue depicting the Trail, the museum has a reality movie that will give you the sensation of participating in a real cattle drive.

The old longhorn cattle almost became extinct at the turn of the century, but a dedicated group recognized that these tough old beasts should be remembered, and gathered up a few of the handful that were left and put them at the Wichita Wildlife Preserve in southwestern Oklahoma, where their descendants still live today. Old Twister is modeled after a famous lead steer, Old Blue, owned by Texas rancher, Charlie Goodnight. Blue led many trail drives for some eight years before retiring. He lived to the ripe old age of twenty, and today, his gigantic horns may be seen at the Panhandle-Plains Museum in the town of Canyon, Texas.

I thought you might like to know about what was probably the deadliest stampede in Western history. It happened one stormy night in the year 1876, near the town of Towash, Texas. Some 2,700 of the Wilson brothers' cattle died in that wild race over a cliff into what became known as Stampede Gully.

As always, I'm including a list of some of the many research books I used in writing this novel. You may find some of them at your public library if you want to read more about the women's suffrage crusade, cattle drives, and the Chisholm Trail. I also highly recommend a documentary movie Ken Burns made for Public Television about the fight for women's suffrage called
Not for Ourselves Alone
. Many Public Libraries have videos of this film.

 

 

 

Abbott, E.C. (Teddy Blue).
We Pointed Them North.
U. of Okla. Press, 1954

Adams, Andy.
The
Log
of a Cowboy.
Bison Books, 1964

Dobie, J. Frank.
The Longhorns.
U. of Texas Press, 1985

Flexner, Eleanor.
Century of Struggle.
Belknap Press of Harvard U. Press, 1959

Gard, Wayne.
The Chisholm Trail.
U. of Okla. Press, 1954

Gattey, Charles Neilson.
The Bloomer Girls.
Coward-McCann, Inc., 1967

Vestal, Stanley.
Queen of Cowtowns Dodge
City
.
U. of Neb. Press, 1972.

Some of you may recognize some of the characters in this story from earlier books.
To Tame a Texan
is a sequel to both
Comanche Cowboy
and
Cheyenne
Princess
. For those of you who have written and asked: all my Zebra books connect in some manner, as I am writing a long, long continuing saga that covers about fifty years of the history of the Old West.

So what story will I tell next? The Civil War hit the Indian Territory hard, pitting friend against friend and brother against brother as the “Five Civilized Tribes” chose up sides. Many of the braves who became soldiers were members of the Lighthorse, the groups that provided law and order in the Indian Territory.

Now, I'm going to tell you two Civil War stories in one book—one about the Creeks, fighting on the side of the Union, and one about the famed Cherokee Mounted Rifles, fighting for the Confederates. Two of the Lighthorse, one from each side and once good friends, will meet each other on the field of battle. These two are both friends of Talako, the Choctaw lighthorseman from my earlier book,
Warrior's Honor
. The Creek loves a white nurse; the Cherokee loves a mixed-blood girl who just might be a spy; all are caught up in the bloodshed and turmoil of the Civil War. This new story will be published by Zebra in March 2004.

For those who would like an autographed bookmark explaining how all my Zebra books fit together in this continuing saga, please send a #10 self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Georgina Gentry, P.O. Box 162, Edmond, OK 73083-0162, or check out my Web site at:
www.nettrends.com/georginagentry
.

 

'Long As I Got a Biscuit . . . ,
Georgina Gentry

ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

 

 

Kensington Publishing Corp.
850 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022

 

Copyright © 2003 by Lynne Murphy

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

 

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

 

Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

ISBN: 978-0-8217-7402-1