Texas Tales: Christmas Whiskey
When Christmas came around, we needed more supplies, especially whisky. What would Christmas be on the ranch without whisky anyway?
Jim McIntire
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In 1901 Jim McIntire, one time Texas cowboy, Indian fighter, buffalo hunter, Texas Ranger, saloonkeeper, and lawman contracted “black” or “Mexican” smallpox—a virulent form of the virus. He believed he died and came back to life. According to what he wrote in Early Days in Texas: A Trip to Hell and Heaven, originally self-published in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1902, McIntire visited heaven and hell, carried on conversations with Satan and God, and was pleased to learn that there are no children in perdition and that God didn’t find gambling sinful. When McIntire inquired of the Lord about the questions that have perplexed humanity for millennia and the importance of the days of the week, McIntire said, in effect, God shrugged. That seemed disconcerting. But McIntire was hearted to hear that the Almighty doesn’t consider the selling or consumption of whiskey worthy of damnation.
The fact that the Lord turned a blind eye to the drinking of whiskey (spelled “whisky” in McIntire’s narrative) was fortunate for McIntire and the fellow cowboys on the Loving Ranch, owned and operated by James C. Loving, son of fabled Oliver Loving who, along with Charles Goodnight, blazed the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail, since this tale concerns McIntire’s adventure to secure whiskey for a Christmas celebration.
When Christmas came around, we needed more supplies, especially whisky. What would Christmas be on the ranch without whisky anyway? We did not propose to get along without it, and I was selected to go to Paliponte [the town of Palo Pinto] for the goods. It wasn’t half as hard a task to go to town for whisky and other supplies as it was to go for other supplies and no whisky. I hitched the team to a wagon we used to keep our horses’ corn in, and set off alone. The wagon had a heavy oak top to keep the horses from getting the corn, and had I known the trouble it was destined to cause me, I would have been better prepared. The day was very cold, and a north wind was howling dismally across the valley. It began snowing a little as I neared the Brazos River, which had to be forded. The river was swift and high, and it was a case of swim for the horses, and get wet for me. I stopped, and got out to see what I could do in the way of keeping my wagon-bed and wagon together. Finding a short hitchrope, the only one I had with me, I tied it across the bed and around the sand-bolsters [wooden beams that carry the weight of the wagon bed, which are bolted to the axles], and trusted to luck as to its being enough to hold things together. I wore a big overcoat, with cartridge-belt tied around me, and gloves.
It wasn’t a pleasant task to survey, but I started in determined to get across at any cost, for I was going for frontier whisky for Christmas. I got along nicely until I struck deep water. Almost as soon as the horses began swimming I felt the lines tightening. I could not understand it, but eased up on the lines until I cam to the end, when I knew there was something wrong. As the horses were swimming and the wagon floating, I could not see what the trouble was, so I turned the horses back to the side of the river where I started. When I struck shallow water, I discovered that the top of the wagon floated while the wheels kept to the bottom. The water had raised the bed and sand-bolsters high enough to become uncoupled and the bed and rear wheels stayed with me while the front wheels went with the horses. It was a nice condition to be in when the current was swift and no help nearer than the ranch. I got out into the water and made an attempt to get the bad back into place, but it was top-heavy and the swift water turned it over on me. I was handicapped with a heavy overcoat, which the current acted upon like a strong wind does on a sail; but the boys had to have refreshments for Christmas, and it was “up to me” to deliver the goods. I stood on one edge of the bed and took hold of the other with my hands, and, by throwing my weight back, attempted to turn it over. It was a hard struggle, and it seemed as if every time I would get it almost over a wave would wash it back. I kept this up for half an hour, all the time gradually floating down stream, until the wagon struck a sand-bar half a mile below. It stopped with a jerk, and, being numb with the cold, I lost my hold and went over backwards, taking one of the finest cold baths I ever had in my life. I went clear under, and, after floundering around in the water for some minutes weighted down by my heaven overcoat, I got straightened around and made for the shore. I then came back up the river, intending to go to a camp I had seen over on the hills while on my trip down. I found my horses and got out all right, but, like myself, were covered with ice and shivering with the cold. I tied up the harness, and, with my horses following, set out on a run for the camp, which was nearly a half-mile back and a short distance from the river; but instead of finding a nice warm fire awaiting me, I found the camp deserted and nothing but green wood to build a fire. It was a gloomy outlook, but I hunted mourned and found a rotten stump, from the inside of which I secured some dry, rotten wood. With this for kindling, I worked like a beaver, and finally got a fire started, but it was the slowest burning fire I ever saw in my life. After a whole lot is shivering and wishing I were in a warmer place, I got pretty well warmed up and started back to get the balance of the wagon out of the river. Of course, if I hadn’t been going for whisky, this trouble wouldn’t have happened; but if I hadn’t been going for whisky, I wouldn’t have cared whether I ever got the old wagon out or not. It is needless to add that I got the wagon out, resumed by journey to Palipone, purchased the necessary refreshments and eatables, and returned home safe and sound. When I told my troubles, the boys gave me a laugh right, and that night there was much good-natured repartee over the hot toddy.
During his cowboying, Rangering, and marshaling days McIntire encountered many famous and fascinating frontier characters, including Henry O. Flipper, the first black man to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, who served at Fort Davis, Pat Garrett, the killer of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Sam Bass, Dave Rudabaugh, William Boney, and Jim Courtright. Like many lawmen, McIntire had his own brush with the law on the other side of the badge. Charles A. Siringo, a fellow Texas cowboy who turned Pinkerton detective, wrote that “Jim McIntire was of a nervous disposition. When angry, his slender frame shook like a leaf and his black eyes sparkled with rage.” Siringo went on to say, McIntire was a “bad-man cowboy [who] had shot and killed several men before he came to the Texas Panhandle in the middle seventies.”
McIntire’s actual death, not the near death experience he recounts in his book, is a mystery. Siringo claims he “became a dope fiend in El Paso, Texas, where he died a human wreck.” Cowboy historian Ramon Adams said McIntire “was living in Kansas City when he died.” Others contend McIntire died in Canadian, Texas sometime between 1910 and 1911 or in the small Oklahoma town of Woodward sometime between 1912 and 1916. No one knows for sure.
Ramon F. Adams, Burs Under the Saddle: A Second Look at Books and Histories of the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 472.
Jim McIntire, Early Days in Texas: A Trip to Hell and Heven (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 32–34.
Charles A. Siringo, Riata and Spurs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927), 189.
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Really enjoyed this tale . Nice pace and info. Thanks