BY JESSE MULLINS • PHOTOS BY SKEETER HAGLER
THE
Cowboy Way RANCH-HAND ACES KEEP THE FIRE BURNING FOR ONE OF TEXAS' MOST STORIED BRANDS: SPADE
TOP: A stone arch spans the entrance to Renderbrook Spade Ranch,
the oldest, largest and most celebrated of the Spade Ranches’ spreads. BOTTOM: When it comes to toughness, Marty Daniel is a cut above:
It takes more than a broken neck and a broken femur—injuries from which he’s fully recovered—to keep this cowboy out of the saddle.
8 TEXAS CO-OP POWER May 2011
With the dawn but an hour away, the night is damp and bracing. Overhead, the Milky Way—yes, it’s visible here!— spreads its filmy, barely-there swath. In the taillights of his four-horse trailer, John Welch, CEO and president of Spade Ranches, tugs at the cinch on his horse. Another mount, saddled, also awaits loading. Sounds carry on the night air: the ticking rumble of the idling diesel pickup; the thudding stamp of a hoof; the ching-ching of spurs; the nicker of a don’t-let-me-be-lonely gelding, left penned for action another day. This is cattle country. This ground south of Colorado City has known the tread of Texas cow horses and Texas cowboys for 122 years. It’s the dirt of Renderbrook Spade Ranch, the oldest, largest and most celebrated spread in the Spade Ranches operation. And its influence runs deep across the history of West Texas ranching. As described in Steve Kelton’s book Renderbrook: A Century Under the Spade Brand (Texas Christian University Press, 1989), Renderbrook traces the evolution of ranching from an open-range, longhorn-dominated industry to state-of-theart operations that specialize in genetics, nutrition, marketing and range science. Barbed-wire fences, of course, have been built on plenty of other ranches, but this place is, literally, the ranch that barbed wire built. Founding owner Isaac Ellwood of Illinois, one of the nation’s first barbed-wire patent holders, dipped into his burgeoning fencing fortune to fund the purchase of the ranch in 1889 when it was hardly more than a frontier cow camp. These days, it’s a sophisticated, spread-out operation. Welch, 60, normally works out of the company’s Lubbock headquarters more than 100 miles to the northwest. But on a brisk October morning, he’s made a special trip to Renderbrook. With passengers—equine and otherwise— loaded, he slides behind the pickup’s steering wheel and eases the rig out, bound for the far side of the ranch, a long haul away. Like, 15 miles away. A 45-minute drive on caliche ranch roads.