The Mystery of the Missing Cattle

Author’s Notes:
Life On The Circle C
A Young Boy’s Adventures in the Old West

My father, Riley Chambers, was raised on a ranch in Oklahoma in the early part of the 20th century. The ranch was awarded to my grandmother, Bertha Ann Riley Chambers as her portion of land when the Cherokee Nation was divided as part of the Dawe’s Act of 1887. Thus, my acceptance as a member of the Cherokee Tribe.
The Rowdy books are based on the stories my father told me about growing up on a ranch a mile from Bushyhead, Oklahoma. They are written for young adult readers and I have used both colloquial expressions and vernacular speech in much of the dialog. These speech patterns were definitely a part of the West in 1900. My grandmother, however, insisted on correct English as she was the educated daughter of a Baptist minister and a well-educated Cherokee mother. But my father said he often thought in the language his mother abhorred, i. e., words like “ain’t” and phrases such as “him and me” as the subject of a sentence.
I want my family, my brother and sisters, my grandchildren, and anyone interested in the history of the West to know and remember the joy and the sorrow of living on a ranch in 1900. I have set the stories at the turn of the century while Oklahoma was still considered Indian Territory. I chose to do this because it offered me more opportunity to impart the history of that period in western America. The cattle drives from Texas through Oklahoma to Kansas and Nebraska ended in the late 1800’s but were still talked about, the railroad was being expanded into Indian Territory, towns were incorporated, and WWI had not yet begun.
At least one incident in each of the books is true. In this first book "The Mystery of the Missing Cattle," for instance, the ranch existed, the Missouri mules, Jack and Jude, were used by my grandfather for much of the ranch work, my father had a dog named Gyp and a horse named Skeeter and he began to help herd the registered Shorthorns at the age of eight. He also learned to shoot a Winchester rifle at that age and often brought home game for the dinner table. There was indeed a problem with cattle rustlers and my grandmother, like many of the ranch women of that era, carried a rifle and rode horseback. The ranch looked much like my description, house, barn, chicken house, washhouse, bunkhouse, springhouse, smokehouse, etc. The ranch abutted the Roger’s ranch and Will Rogers visited with my father’s family when he came home. He was a contemporary of my grandfather and when he came back to the Roger’s ranch to visit his father, Clyde, it was a cause for celebration. In fact, he taught my father to twirl a rope and how to spit between his teeth. I never saw my father spit between his teeth but often saw him twirl a rope and even jump through the large hoop he created. He taught me to twirl a small lasso and swing a large loop but jumping through it was beyond my skills. I preferred to read or write!

This book begins in Indian Territory, May 1900. Books two, three, four, and five await in the wings. S. Jones