UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME — assumed by his grandfather — Bill Arrington, right, and son Buck maintain a Panhandle ranching heritage that goes back more than a century. The elder Arrington says not many people his age can claim a grandfather who fought in the Civil War, even if it was under a different name than the one he passed down to his descendants.

Cap Arrington Spied For South
Under John Mosby’s Tutelage

By Colleen Schreiber

PAMPA — William L. "Bill" Arrington’s roots trace back to Civil War veteran and early-day Texas Ranger John Cromwell Orrick Jr., better known as Captain George W. Arrington.

Orrick came from Greensboro, Ala. At the age of 16 he joined the Civil War on the Confederate side. Orrick’s father, a doctor in Illinois, fought for the North. Needless to say, the war tore the family apart.

Orrick served in the 5th Alabama Infantry. He was captured in July 1863 and put on a federal prison train to Baltimore. Enroute, he jumped from the slow-moving train and managed to escape his bluecoat captors. When he was younger, he had visited his grandparents, who lived on a farm just outside of Baltimore. He reasoned that if he could escape, he would find refuge in their home.

When he arrived there, his grandfather threatened to turn him back over to the Union, so he stole away in the night and made it back to Confederate lines without being captured.

At that point he joined up with John Mosby, the "Gray Ghost," who later became known as the father of guerrilla warfare. Orrick remained a scout under Mosby until the end of the war.

At that time he returned home to Alabama to reclaim his land. Orrick ran into a little trouble on the streets at Greensboro and ended up killing a black man. Rather than face the consequences under Reconstruction-era Yankee rule, he changed his name, taking his mother’s maiden name of Arrington, and fled the country.

He ended up in Texas and took a job working as a dock hand in Galveston. He later joined the Texas Rangers as a private and worked his way through the ranks to captain.

"Cap" Arrington, as he became known, was with the Texas Rangers when they were really a Texas Army, Arrington says of his grandfather.

He made a name for himself as one of the great Rangers. Western author Louis L’Amour often used Cap Arrington as one of the fictional characters in his novels.

Arrington’s company was sent to the Panhandle for permanent occupancy in 1882. He resigned shortly thereafter and took over management of the Rocking Chair Ranch. When the family decided to sell out to the Matadors and the new owners didn’t want the brand, Arrington bought 1200 of their cows and drove them to the headwaters of the Washita in Hemphill County. And as far as the cattle would graze on either side of the Washita, he claimed the land.

After establishing his ranch holdings, he was elected sheriff of Wheeler County, the county seat being Mobeetie. It was the only organized county in the area at the time. To be an organized county there had to be 250 voters.

Arrington didn’t marry until he was 46, but he had eight children after that. Every time one of his children went to college he would sell off some land to pay their way. He died in 1923, 10 years before grandson Bill was born.

"There’s not very many people who are 65 years old and have a grandfather who fought in all four years of the Civil War," Arrington says.

When Arrington’s father, French, was just a little boy he was struck with infantile paralysis. Rather than let the paralysis limit him, Arrington’s father learned to ride a horse on his stomach. He taught his horses to get on their knees, and in that way he mounted his ride.

There wasn’t much on the ranch that Arrington couldn’t do, and he expected everyone to work as hard as he did.

Arrington says he spent a lot of time in the hay fields when he was growing up. His father ran a herd of Hereford cows, but he also ran steers which he generally bought in the San Angelo area. They were sent by train to the railhead at Mendota.

The Arrington children lived the typical rural childhood with plenty of things to do to keep them entertained. Lots of times on Sunday afternoons he and his twin brother would ride their horses the eight miles over to the railroad tracks and watch the train pass by.

"Sometimes when they would slow down at the crossing, we would lope alongside the train, waving our hats to the passengers, who waved and saluted us back," Arrington recalls.

Arrington has always moonlighted in the ranching business. At one time he was running 1200 mama cows. He’s since dropped that back to about 400 cows and 800 calves to yearlings. Today he’s in partnership with his son, Buck. Most recently he’s been crossing his black Angus cows on Charolais bulls, but Arrington says he changes bull breeds about every 10 years. He’s used Brangus and Simmental, and even some Salers.

The feedlots, he says, seem to like his calves, and they grade. Arrington doesn’t feed himself. He tried it once or twice but never made any money at it, so he passes the risk on to someone else.

"One time we took a gate cut on a string of cattle and put them in about five different yards," Arrington recalls. "Only one set fed worth a darn."

Like his father, Arrington is also in the steer business. Generally he runs Mexican steers. Arrington fears this year will be his worst year ever.

"We’re going to take a bloodbath in the calves we bought last fall," he remarks.

Hemphill County, Arrington says, is good cattle country.

"It’s good shortgrass country. Our buffalo grass, when it cures out this time of the year, is nearly like alfalfa," he insists.

The breaks offer the livestock some protection from the Panhandle wind, but he knows firsthand what an impact a cold blue norther can have.

"Those fast-moving Canadian fronts can come whistling down the face of the Rockies, and there’s not anything between us and Canada except a barbed wire fence," Arrington says. "It was that way during the blizzard of 1957 when we had drifts 20 feet high. After it crusted over you could walk on the roofs of houses. We had cattle that drifted 30 miles south. They nearly got to Palo Duro Canyon. You can just nearly count on them about every 10 years."

This summer has been extremely dry, the worst he remembers since the 1950s, when his dad had to feed year-round the year of 1951.

"Right now would be a good time to buy some cows with this depressed market," Arrington says, "but I’m a little concerned if this drouth holds on that I won’t have anything for them to eat."

Most everything Arrington is involved in today, agriculture and the oil business alike, are depressed.

"We have one irrigated circle of corn. Last year we made 143 bushels to the acre, which is a real good crop. Historically, you don’t want to sell grain right at harvest because prices are generally always depressed, but if I had sold it, it would have been worth $58,000 to 60,000. Now its worth about $40,000," he says.

"Same way with wheat. After World War II, Papa was selling wheat for $5 a bushel. A new Ford cost $1500 or $1600. Yesterday wheat was $2.62 and a new car costs $28,000 or $30,000. Cattle are way down, as well."

Some caught on to irrigating corn in his country and initially made good money, as much as $200 an acre.

"They tried to keep it quiet, but word slowly got out and everyone decided to try their hand at it. Now prices are down and it’s not working for many."

Oil and gas, Arrington admits, are what really got him positioned in the ranch business, but he calls his ranching operation his "golf" — his life.

Like all his other enterprises, Arrington has certainly seen better days in the oil and gas industry.

"There’s very few who borrow money to buy a ranch and stock it without having money from somewhere else," he insists. You don’t see any oil people buying ranches today. They simply don’t have the money.

"I never thought the economy of the 1980s and 1990s would be as bad as it is," he continues. In 1979 and 1980 we were selling oil for $37 a barrel and some gas for $9," he recalls. "Now oil is around $11 a barrel and our lifting costs are $10 a barrel, so we’re not making any money there. If we could shut them in, I would. Oil is a depletable resource. If you’re not replacing your reserves, if every time you produce a barrel you’re not finding another barrel to replace it with, you’re bleeding to death."

Pampa, like the other oil boom towns, Arrington says, has changed tremendously.

"In the late 1970s and the early 1980s there wasn’t any building available to rent to anyone. Everyone was working, all the roustabouts, everyone. The oil business was booming, and it hasn’t been worth anything since."

He attributes the poor market primarily to a glut of worldwide oil from the OPEC nations.

"They support their government by exporting oil. They don’t realize that they’re giving their oil away," Arrington says.

He adds that the major oil companies don’t care about the price of domestic oil because they make most of their money refining foreign oil.