A bad drought in 1871 and 1872 was followed by a cold winter. Where there was water, there was no grass; where there was grass, there was no water. Cattle were too weak to travel between the two and they died by the thousands. Cowboys called it a die-up.
Spring brought the skinning season.
Every man with a horse and knife went looking for dead cattle. Anyone could take the hide of a dead animal, no matter the brand, and the hide was ready money. When it was sold, the owner was due the value of the skin less the amount owed the skinner for his work. Ranchers hired their own skinners or used ranch hands for the grisly task.
Hide thieves also worked the ranges. Bandits from below the border had been stealing cattle for years, especially after the end of the Civil War. Then the value of beef dropped so low the hide was worth more than the cow. Instead of rounding up herds and driving them across the border, hide thieves killed cattle and skinned them where they fell.
They didn't wait for them to die, but helped them along. Some hide thieves used a long knife fixed to a pole to cut the tendons to immobilize the cattle. They were shot or stabbed to death. Hamstrung cattle sometimes were skinned while still alive, poor creatures.
The hide thieves hauled the hides to disreputable buyers or took them back to Mexico for sale. Two notorious hide thieves were Pat Quinn and Alberto Garza, known as Segundo Garza or Caballo Blanco.
The ranchers believed — and we suppose they would have known — that Gen. Juan Cortina, the Mexican folk hero and their longtime border antagonist, was more than a little implicated in the stealing of hides and the rustling of cattle. Garza was his second in command, which gave him the nickname of Segundo.
The hide thieves rode in heavily armed gangs — from 10 to 100 men — and could take on any force they ran up against; if truly threatened they could escape to Mexico.
The conflict between ranchers and hide-peelers was called the Skinning War. In the 1870s, J. Frank Dobie wrote in "The Longhorns," the waste of longhorns for hides in South Texas was equaled only by the slaughter of buffalo on the Great Plains.
The Nueces Valley in 1872 reported, "We learn of the wholesale slaughtering of cattle by Alberto Garza and party. At one place there were 275 carcasses, at another 300, and at another 66. These robbers seem to be well-supplied with arms and ammunition, rodeo the cattle and shoot them down in their tracks until a sufficient number is killed for the day."
The newspaper urged vigilantes to get busy. "Let the mesquite branches show the fruits of their labor."
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