BYGONE DAYS are the currency of reunions, and the annual Matadors Reunion is no exception. This year’s attendees included 1940s alumnus Bill Hemphill, who began cowboying for the Matadors when he was 15 years old.

Annual Matadors Reunion Sparks
Memories Of And By Old Cowboys

ROARING SPRINGS, Texas — A canard of clouds floats overhead, promising rain but not delivering, but a breeze from the south cools the gathering on the hill overlooking what used to be the lower Matadors ranch.

Sitting beneath an awning here at the annual Matadors Reunion, Bill Hemphill remembers those days of working on the wagon, living out of doors for the better part of a decade.

"I was born over at Crow Flats," Hemphill says. "When I was growing up, there were a lot of people out there, back in the 1930s."

But like much of the country in the 1930s, the land there was plagued by drouth. His family, like a great many others, were drouthed out.

"I worked around on those farms down there," Hemphill says. "My Dad lost that farm. I went to work at Red Lake Camp as a line rider. I stayed down there a couple of years, then went to the wagon."

He was on the wagon here at the Matadors for almost 10 years.

"I went to work in 1942," Hemphill says. "I left here in 1953 and went to the Army."

He says he has a lot memories of working on the wagon.

"We made a drive or two every day at branding," he recalls. "In the fall of the year, we worked the same field except we gathered yearlings."

The Matadors was a riding cowboy ranch in those days.

"If you couldn't ride a horse, you didn't do us much good out there," Hemphill says.

Horses were a way of life on the wagon.

"We always had 12 or 14 apiece," he says. "We staked them at night."

The horse wranglers took care of them during the day.

"We come back in from a drive," Hemphill says, "we'd change horses. If we had to, if we were going to make another drive, we'd work that bunch and change horses, make the drive and change again and never come in."

The pastures were pretty good-sized, Hemphill remembers.

"The Turtle Hole had 200 sections," he says. "Of course, it's cut all to pieces now, but it used to be just fenced in."

The Matadors was stocked with Herefords in those days.

"They were all Herefords," Hemphill says, "and they would step a little. You had to stay on your toes to gather them."

Born July 5, 1926, Hemphill celebrated his 76th birthday this summer. He claims to be retired, but he's still working cattle horseback.

As the summer draws to an official close with Labor Day, Hemphill is in the saddle shipping calves for Harold Campbell just outside town here.

"Harold Campbell owns that outfit," Hemphill says. "They've been here for years. They've been here for always."

Campbell's family homesteaded here, he says.

"They just kept adding to it until they had all they wanted," Hemphill says.

Hemphill will be working with his oldest son, Billy "Boo" Hemphill, whose 300-pound, six-foot frame dwarfs his father.

"He's real petite," Hemphill grins.

Boo may be a size larger than his wiry father, but he has his Dad's same easy laugh and good-natured grin. He also had a good up-bringing, as did a number of other young cowboys who learned from Bill Hemphill cowboys, like Joe Ed Eckert, who's here at the Matadors Reunion to see his old mentor.

Eckert has been at the Pitchfork Ranch's West Camp for the past six years. He was 15 years old when he started working for Hemphill, the same age Hemphill was when he started at the Matadors.

"I didn't know that," Eckert admits. "I just learned that today."

Hemphill was at the L7 Ranch near Crosbyton then. That was 1970.

"I came to work for the L7s when I was 15," Eckert says. "I'd lost my dad when I was 13. I was just kind of knocking around, looking for a spot."

Hemphill put Eckert to work at $150 a month and found.

"I thought I was a cowboy," Eckert says. "I'd been horseback all my life, but I never had punched any cows. I thought I was pretty smart. You know how teenagers are. Come to find out, I didn't know too much."

Hemphill put him to work cleaning cattleguards and fixing windmills.

"It took two weeks before I ever even got to get on a horse," Eckert recalls. "I found out that there's more to cowboying than just being horseback."

"He made a good hand up there, and by gosh, it turned out he sure enough made a good hand now," Hemphill says.

"I finally got to get on a horse, and the first one Bill led out there to me bucked me off about three times in 30 minutes," Eckert says.

Most of the 30 minutes, he grins, was spent trying to catch the horse so he could get back on.

"A lot of that I learned the hard way," Eckert says. "That's the way it sinks in sometimes. You just have to pound your head once in a while."

When Hemphill got out of the Army, he went back to work at the Matadors, but he didn't stay long.

"I went to the 6666s up at Borger," he says. "They've got a ranch right there south of Borger. Oh, gosh, it could get cold up there. I went up and worked there two years, then went down to Guthrie and went to running the wagon down there."

He was wagon boss at the 6666s before leaving and going to the L7s.

That's where he met Joe Ed.

"He was just an old kid," Hemphill says. "He's wanting a job so I gave him a job. He was just a pup. I put him breaking horses."

That experience gave Eckert plenty of practice for his rodeo exploits.

Born in 1955 and raised at Southland, Texas, between Post and Slaton, Eckert says he learned a lot from Hemphill.

"Never fool with another man's equipment, never fool with another man's horse, don't be talking too much, listen and you might learn something," Eckert says. "You don't want to ride too close to somebody. Don't ride in front of people. It's just common courtesy."

He also learned respect for animals and how to take care of them.

"Bill never cussed around us," Eckert says. "He didn't yell at us."

Hemphill had three of his own children, including Boo, who were about Eckert's age.

"Bill wouldn't yell, but sometimes he'd look at you and make you want to go hunt a hole," Eckert remembers. "You knew you'd messed up."

Under Hemphill's tutelage, Eckert learned how to move cattle and hold a herd.

"You learn what to expect when it comes toward you," Eckert says. "It depends on how much horse you're riding as to where you may need to be, a little closer or a little farther back."

With a grin, Eckert says he also learned that he had to get up in the morning, no matter how late he stayed out the night before.

"I doesn't make any difference," Eckert says. "If you're going to stay up all night drinking beer or whatever you want to do, the next day you'd better be ready to go to work. Those are the things I learned from him."

Mostly, he learned respect.

"That's the main thing," Eckert says. "You've got to have respect for people, have respect for yourself. If you don't have any respect for yourself, you can't expect anybody else to. Nobody is going to respect you if you don't respect yourself."

Perhaps the most important lesson he learned, Eckert says, was honesty — honesty with yourself and with others.

"You've got to tell the truth," he says. "Your word is all you've got. If you're a cowpuncher, you don't have any money."

After Eckert left the L7 Ranch, it would be another 25 years before he saw Hemphill again, but Eckert never forgot Hemphill or the lessons Hemphill taught him.

"When I moved back over here, I went to work for the Pitchforks in 1995. I knocked around here for a couple of years before I hunted him up," Eckert says of Hemphill. "Finally, I went over to see him, and I knocked on the door and said, 'I'm looking for Bill Hemphill.' He said, 'You're looking at him.'"

Despite the years, Eckert says not much had changed between them.

"All those years when I didn't see him," Eckert says, "it didn't separate us much."

Eckert also worked for C.R. Boucher, a pickup man for Beutler Brothers rodeo contractors for 25 or 30 years.

"I was fortunate to work for him," Eckert says. "Boucher and I became great friends. I worked with him, right alongside of him, learning how to pickup broncs."

Eckert rode bareback broncs as a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association for a dozen years.

"Total aggression," he says, shaking his head. "It went right along with bulldogging. I picked up broncs for years."

Eckert says he learned some hard lessons down the road. He says he's still learning, but he's trying to pay more attention now.

"The great thing about my life now is that I can take all that aggression that I used all those years riding bareback horses, fighting at the beer joints, bulldogging, since Jesus Christ saved my life, I can turn all that aggression into something good. I wasted a lot of time, but He didn't give up on me. When I was younger, I tried to go to church a little bit, but I couldn't take the word of somebody I didn't think had already been there. But you run across an old boy who's already been there, and he tells you his story, I can accept the word a little better from him. It was easier for me."

That's what made men like Hemphill and Boucher so important to Eckert.

Hemphill and Boucher grew up amid depression, drouth and war.

"They grew up the hard way," Eckert says. "These are the kind of men I grew up around, and I admire them. Times have changed. There won't be times like that anymore, not like when they grew up."

Looking at an old photograph of Delbert Bird and Stogie Bumpus with Hemphill holding a cup of coffee in his hand while he was on the wagon in 1951, Hemphill says he has some pleasant memories of bygone days.

"They were all good," he grins. "Some of them were maybe longer than others."