86 EQUUS 498 AUTUMN 2019THE KING P-234 GROUP
whose livelihood depended upon
access to open range retaliated by
forming armed posses to cut fences.
Fence cutters also resented the
fact that their stock---both cattle
and horses---could get tangled
in the wire, with injurious or
fatal consequences. Cattle would
freeze to death when blocked by
a fence during a blizzard.
CHARLES
GOODNIGHT AND
THE JA RANCH
Arguably the most famous of all
cattlemen, Charles Goodnight arrived
in the panhandle of Texas with his
mother and stepfather in 1846. There
they established a ranch of 500
acres. By the age of 20 “Charlie” was
an accomplished cowhand ready to
begin his own enterprise, but in 1861
when Texas seceded from the Union
he volunteered for the Confederate
Army. After the war, he became a
Texas Ranger, and it was Goodnight
who organized the well-publicized
expedition which located Cynthia
Ann Parker, a woman who had been
abducted as a child from a white
settlement before the war by Comanche
raiders. Later, after the Comanches
had surrendered and settled on the
“Big Pasture” reservation in southwest
Oklahoma, Goodnight forged a
friendship with her son, the famous war
leader Quanah Parker.
In 1866 with his friend Oliver
Loving, Goodnight drove a large herd
of cattle northward along what would
become known as the Goodnight-
Loving Trail that went from Fort
Belknap, Texas, to Fort Sumner, New
Mexico. Upon arriving there, they
partnered with cattleman John Chisum,
Royal King (1943, 14:2 hands) was by
King P-238 out of Rocket Laning by Dolph,
whose sire line is unknown. Dolph’s dam
was Queen by Yellow Jacket. Rocket
Laning’s dam was a mare by a stallion
called Coldy, whose breeding is also
unknown. I use here a “family snapshot”
rather than the three-quarters rear view
so commonly taken of these horses. The
side-on snapshot allows the viewer to get
a true idea of the horse’s conformation. Plus this photo with the little kids aboard
demonstrates this horse’s kindness and tractability. Royal King was a beautifully
made animal, less “extreme” in type than his sire, and himself an AQHA Hall of
Fame inductee. He is the sire of multiple champions especially in cutting but also
racing and halter competition. In Royal King’s first crop, 12 of 13 foals went on to
earn AQHA Register of Merit awards.King P-234 (1932, 14:3
hands) was by Zantanon
out of Jabalina, a
granddaughter of Yellow
Jacket. Jabalina’s dam
was a mare by Traveler.
King’s registration
number is always
listed with his name
to distinguish him
from many other
“Kings.” King P-234 is
the most famous Quarter
Horse ever bred, a winning
racehorse and sire of race,
roping, cutting, halter and versatility
champions, and of course he’s an AQHA Hall of
Fame inductee. A compact horse with a huge hindquarter, sloping shoulder,
deep chest, big jowl and wedge-shaped head, King P-234 exemplifies the
“type” that visually defines the breed. He stands on correctly articulated legs
that have just enough “bone” to support his massively muscular body.KING
ROYAL
KINGsigning contracts to supply the U.S.
Army with cattle. After Loving’s death,
Goodnight and Chisum extended the
trail from New Mexico to Colorado
and eventually Wyoming. Goodnight
invented the chuck wagon to feed his
men on these early drives.Goodnight knew only too well what
winter on the Great Plains means:
temperatures plummeting far below
zero and blinding, wind-whipped
blizzards. Cattle could not survive
these conditions without protection. In
the autumn of 1876 he drove a herd of