Mr. Fishback's Half-Frozen Horse

Edwin Sanders riding fence on his own ranch in the Panhandle of Texas following a bitterly cold storm called a “Blue Norther” in that section of Texas. ED Ranch, near Crowell. Edwin E. Smith, 1906. Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.

The meteorological pride of Texas . . . is the norther—the Texas norther.

F. Frank Dobie

James Frank Dobie, whose nickname was Pancho, was the quintessential raconteur of Texas folklore and tradition for generations of Texans in the first half of the twentieth century. By the time Larry McMurtry was starting to make a name for himself as a novelists and essayists Dobie, in the words of McMurtry, had “gone, no more to ride the river nor follow the Longhorn cow.” Four years after Dobie’s death, McMurtry wrote, “[J. Frank Dobie] had the largest audience of any Texas writer, but at that it is an audience composed primarily of middle-aged nostalgics. And it will probably not outlive him much more than a generation.” McMurtry was right. Dobie is rarely read these days by Texans, to say nothing of those outside Texas. And that’s a shame—not because Dobie was a great writer, but because he was a great collector of stories (despite McMurtry’s arguments to the contrary). The following yarn is about the peculiar nature of Texas weather. The most peculiar of which is the Texas or Blue Norther.

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The meteorological pride of all Texas, east, north, south, and west, is the norther—the Texas norther. The Texas norther, which, as the ballad has it, “comes sudden and soon. In the dead of night or the blaze of noon.”

It comes so sudden and soon that old Judge Clark used to always go provided with both a fan and an overcoat. One time one of these “blue northers” froze a thousand ducks, before they could fly away, in a lake among the rice fields of South Texas. Another time “Mr. Fishback of the Sulphur” was riding a race mare about ten miles north of his home when he saw one of the northers coming. Now, they can certainly be seen.

It was a hot January day, and Mr. Fishback was not prepared for a freeze. He turned towards home and struck a gallop. Looking back he saw that the norther was going to overtake him unless he rode faster. He spurred up. He looked back again after a little while and saw that the norther had almost overtaken him. He could hear the rush of wind. He shook out his quirt and just as he did he felt the norther twist his coat tails. Mr. Fishback’s mare knew what was coming too, and now she spurted ahead like a cry of joy. For six or seven miles, Mr. Fishback used to swear, they kept exactly with the howling norther; that is, the norther had the mare’s hindquarters and his coat tails in its grasp, but the mare’s foreparts and his own face were ahead of it. The stable door was open, and as he rushed into it and dismounted he found the mare’s forequarters foamy with sweat but her hindquarters virtually frozen. She died of pneumonia right there and then.

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Source & Notes:

J. Frank Dobie, The Flavor of Texas (Dallas: Dealey & Lowe, 1936), 19–20.

Larry McMurtry, “Southwestern Literature?” in In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2018), 74, 81.

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