AUTUMN 2019 EQUUS 498 87
Poco Bueno (1944, 15:0 hands)
was by King P-234 out of Miss
Taylor, she by Old Poco Bueno
by Little Joe. Miss Taylor’s dam
was a mare by Hickory Bill by
Peter McCue. Poco Bueno was
good-minded with a tremendous
amount of “try” and grit, and he
had amazing talent as a cutting
horse. He is the sire of numerous
champions in this discipline and
was the first horse to be insured
for $100,000.ranch in the broad-bottomed,
scenic canyon, one of the few
places in Texas where
forests of cedars could
provide fenceposts.
When the cold
broke the next
spring, he went north to
Denver and there met John G.
Adair, an English aristocrat who
became Goodnight’s fi nancial angel.
Adair partnered with Goodnight in
purchasing 100 Durham bulls. Their
plan was to build up a herd of 1,500
on 2,500 acres in the canyon, but
the energetic Goodnight was soon
droving 12,000 head from Texas
northward to Dodge City. In 1882 he
put up the fi rst barbed-wire fence
in the Texas panhandle in order to
separate his purebred cattle from
range-bred longhorns.
By 1883 the partners owned
1,350,000 acres of land with more
than 100,000 head of cattle. Part of
their success was due to the “rules
of the JA,” established because
Goodnight was a man of religious
convictions who allowed no gambling,
whiskey or fi ghting and would
hire only men of good character.
Historian J. Frank Dobie, who knew
Goodnight, said “I have met a lot of
good men, several fi ne gentlemen,
hordes of cunning climbers, plenty
of loud-braying asses and plenty of
dumb oxen, but I haven’t lived long
enough or traveled far enough to meet
more than two or three men I’d call
great. That is a word I will not bandy
around. To me, Charles Goodnight
was great-natured.... He approached
greatness more nearly than any other
cowman of history.”
Goodnight learned from Quanah
Parker the signifi cance of the buffalo
to Plains tribesmen and the reverencePOCO BUENO
1,600 longhorns from Pueblo, Colorado,
into Palo Duro canyon in Texas in
hopes that its steep-walled mesas and
abundant surface water would protect
his cattle and his men and allow
them to survive the winter. This gave
Goodnight the idea of establishing a
WANT
MORE?
Sign up for the
weekly EQUUS email
newsletter! Horse-care
information, veterinary
research highlights and
training tips will be
delivered straight to
your inbox! Go to
https://equusmagazine.
com/page/newsletter
to sign up today.