The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is a doozy!
There was once a man named Kerr who lived with his wife, Maria, on a small ranch out in the brush country south of San Antonio. One day, Kerr found a cow dead in a bog, her weak and barely breathing calf lying beside her. Kerr roped the calf, slung it over his saddle, and brought it home. Maria cleaned the little thing up and bottle-fed him until Kerr found a foster cow to take him in. They named the calf Sancho. Over time, Maria grew quite attached to him.
Maria began slipping him bits of tamales—shuck and all. The peppers in the tamales gave Sancho a taste for spice, and soon he was hunting out wild chiltipiquin peppers growing in the shade around the ranch. He loved them.
Eventually, Sancho was branded and made a steer—though he was as strong as any bull. He remained Maria’s pet, wandering the range by day but always returning at night to sleep beneath his favorite mesquite tree just outside the gate.
When Sancho turned three, the Shiner brothers prepared to drive three herds of longhorns to Wyoming. Kerr sold Sancho to them, and they branded him 7Z for the journey. But the night before the drive began, Sancho refused to bed down with the others and made his way back to the mesquite tree near the house.
The next morning, the cowboys rounded him up again. But Sancho kept lagging behind the herd, always drifting southward, sniffing the wind as if hoping to catch a whiff of the Mexican Gulf. At night, they’d rope him to a bush or tree to keep him from slipping away.
During the day, while the rest of the herd grazed north, Sancho grazed south. On the tenth day, he vanished. The cowboys searched but couldn’t find him—until the second Shiner herd, trailing behind, stumbled across him. He was rounded up again and, as usual, took his place at the back, always facing south.
At one river crossing, the herd balked. “Rope Sancho and lead him in,” the boss ordered. The steer stepped in, steady and sure, and the others followed without trouble. But once across, Sancho returned to his usual spot at the rear, keeping watch for any chance to turn home.
The drive went on—across the Canadian, the Cimarron, through Kansas near Dodge City, across Nebraska, under the Black Hills, and past the Big Horn Mountains. Two thousand miles. All the way to Wyoming. But Sancho never gave up sniffing the wind for a trace of Texas. He didn’t like this new place—too cold, no peppers, no tamales.
In Wyoming, he was rebranded with a CR and left behind as the Shiner brothers turned back for Texas.
The next spring, down on Esperanza Creek, a man named John Rigby spotted something out on the pear flat that made him rub his eyes. He asked his friend Joe Shiner, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Shiner rode closer to check the brands. Sure enough, it was Sancho—now four years old, carrying both the 7Z and CR brands, clear as day.
They went to see Kerr, who said, “Sancho came back six weeks ago. His hooves were worn to the hair. But Maria—we thought she’d go out of her mind, she was so happy. She cried and hugged him and fed him tamales. He’s been sleeping under the mesquite tree again, same as always.”
Maria worried Mr. Shiner might come back for him, but Joe said, “Any steer who loves Texas enough to walk home from Wyoming has earned the right to stay.”
And Sancho did. He lived out his days fat and happy, dining on mesquite grass, peppers, and Maria’s tamales, until he passed away of natural causes—right there, under his mesquite tree.
That was J. Frank Dobie's story and he's stickin' to it. 😉