Books: Boatman on Horseback

THE KING RANCH (838 pp.)—Tom Lea —Little, Brown ($17.50).

People who come to Texas these days are preachers or fugitives from justice or sons of bitches. Which one of those fits you?

That is how a young Rio Grande riverboat captain named Richard King braced a stranger in Brownsville, Texas in 1850. “Back in Owensboro, Kentucky, sir,” replied the stranger, “I was treasurer of the Methodist Church. I raised the money to build a new church house. Well—that church was never built—and here I am in Texas. Now, Captain King, which category do you come under?”

Caught by his own question, Captain King did not reply. Neither does his biographer. In two hefty, handsomely illustrated volumes devoted to the history of the King Ranch, Artist-Novelist Tom (The Brave Bulls) Lea at first seems determined to show that Richard King’s catalogue of mid-19th century Texans does not include Richard King.

King was no preacher, nor did he pretend to any particular piety—at least not until he fell in love with Henrietta Chamberlain, the Presbyterian minister’s daughter he finally married. He was not exactly a fugitive from justice, but at eleven he had run away from New York City where his Irish immigrant parents had apprenticed him to a jeweler. He was not an s.o.b.—at least in his biographer’s view—but he could cajole the widow and children of a Mexican landowner out of 15,500 acres of grasslands for $300, resell a half interest for $2,000 and call the transaction honest business.

At the Backdoor. Richard King became a boatman by chance: he made his exitfrom New York by stowing away on a Gulf-bound sailing ship, and the captain taught the youngster his trade. During the rugged days on the Southwest border, after Old Fuss-and-Feathers Scott and Old Rough-and-Ready Taylor shoved Mexico back across the Rio Grande, Captain King and his partner, Mifflin Kenedy, made themselves a big stake by transporting cargo upriver by boat as far as skilled captains and sound bottoms could navigate. In 1852 King made an overland trip from Brownsville to Corpus Christi, was fascinated by the lush grass where the Wild Horse Desert grew green along the brush-lined bends of Santa Gertrudis Creek. Soon afterwards, he deserted the river for ranching. By the time the Civil War broke out, Rancher King was spreading his holdings steadily, a business tactic that had been taught him by a lieutenant colonel of cavalry named Robert E. Lee, who put in a couple of tours of duty in Texas before he resigned from the U.S. Army to fight for the Confederacy. “Buy land and never sell,” Lee told his friend.

King took the advice. He bought more land and protected it with a private army of pistol-slinging cowboys. At the back door of the Confederacy, he also spent much of his time buying cotton and running it past Union lines to be sold to Confederate quartermasters. King, his ranch, and his growing fortune safely weathered the war.

An Honorable Man. As patriarch of the hacienda, Richard King sported a black beard that reached to the second button of his shirt. “He wore a wide-brimmed black hat strongly reminiscent of rebel cavalry, a black string tie with the knot hidden under the beard and the ends of the rusty silk usually askew. He went shod in the scuffed boots of a cowman no stranger to a corral. It was well known that when the captain appeared with one pants leg in and one pants leg out of his boot tops, the barometer was falling, the storm was on its way and everybody better watch out. He had little talent for staying unmussed.”

King’s herds grew until his Running W brand was known on every cattle trail in the West. More important, perhaps, the land he gobbled up was always legally acquired. He had a talent for picking lawyers. The best of that fine crew was one Robert Justus Kleberg, a young attorney who beat the captain in a lawsuit, was promptly hired by King, and later married the boss’ daughter.

When he died of cancer of the stomach in 1885, the old roarer left his ranch in good hands. Today, another generation of Klebergs run the Texas kingdom that has spread far beyond the adventurous boatman’s dreams. The 890,000 Texas acres are supplemented by pastures in Kentucky and Pennsylvania; Santa Gertrudis cattle are raised in Cuba, Australia and Brazil. Rare new grasses are cultivated on White Horse Desert, and King Ranch thoroughbreds race on the world’s finest tracks.

The long chronicle of success seems nourished still by the selfish vitality of the black-bearded boatman. In the end even the friendly painter of this purple-tinted prose portrait almost admits that Richard King was, after all, a magnificent old s.o.b. “The ranch on the Santa Gertrudis could not have been wrested from the Wild Horse Desert by a courtly display of pleasant intention,” says Author Tom Lea. “It was rough. It was no less honorable. It demanded a rough and honorable man.”