Through the ages, among all those peoples who have made the herdsmen's trade their livelihood, there have been few places and times when a particular branch of that family has achieved anything describable as fame purely from their proficiency and prowess at what they were doing. But the thing has occurred among a few. Among those, one must number the American cowboy, the Australian stockman, the Argentine gaucho, the Mongol horseman, and the Arab horseman-each in his own way having earned a place among the best known husbandmen of the world.

These herdsmen survived because they could adapt to setbacks of drought, disease, bad weather, and a changing market for land and livestock. Their talent for providing everything their animals need has been a mainstay, as has their knack for being thrifty and resourceful in demanding environments.

It's aworld with every kind of occupational hazard. Risks run high when one must sustain the welfare of animals against natural and man-made setbacks. Stockmen who can't improve their odds by changing their ways get wiped out and sent away with broken hearts to find other ways to make a living.

WHERE WOULD A COWMAN BE IF he lost his cattle and horses? Could he call himself a cowman if he didn't have cattle anymore? Would he ever want to call himself anything else? Would he like to go around calling himself a rancher who doesn't have a ranch?

The Arabs who lived, loved, and waged war horseback for centuries believed that the cattleman was an abomination. If cattle could have saved them from ruin, would they-even in that circumstance- ever have turned cattle out with their horses? We know their prejudice persisted and they never learned to run cattle with their goats. They might still run goats, but they were not known for cattle and are hardly so well known for good horses anymore. Their kings keep some for show, but everybody else is afoot.

Cattlemen who were too set in their ways to get over their prejudices against sheep and goats found it hard to get along, too. For centuries the whole world has been prejudiced against the poor old goat. There are peoples whose tradition and literature still insist upon the goat as bearing the mark of evil.

However, a good many Texans were smart and tough enough to look past those prejudices and run sheep and goats with their cattle. That didn't hurt their cowboy image, either. They're still good ropers, fighters, and wild horse riders, and pretty good windmill men as well. They sure didn't turn goats out on their outfits because they were easy to keep.

For cattle ranchers, the advantage of diversification into sheep and goats is simple. Each animal yields three cash crops: lambs or kids, wool or mohair, and meat. Texans have run sheep and goats with their cattle for several generations now. Robert Arthur "Art" Looney of Del Rio is the third generation of his family to do it. Born in Crane, Texas, Sept. 23, 1948, he was the son of K.O. Looney, a cattle and sheep rancher. His mother Anna Looney, formerly Anna Bivins, came from a family of cattle ranchers in Lefors, Texas. Anna's brother Jack, a New Mexico cattleman, sold actor James Arness the buckskin horse he rode so many years as Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke.

The Looneys originally hung their hats in Colorado City, Texas. Art's grandfather, K.P. Looney, was son to a soldier in the Confederate army-the same army that enlisted the services of all three of K.P.'s brothers. All were killed in the Battle of Vicksburg. K.P., who in his own time served in the Cavalry, served a tour of duty in France during World War I. Upon his return and discharge he moved his family to West Texas and started a well-drilling business. He bought his cow ranch at Crane from millionaire P.J. Lea in 1939. Art Looney, speaking of this era in an interview at his home in Del Rio, remarked, "When K.P was asked why he raised sheep, he always said it was 'Because them snotty-nosed, money-making SOBs paid for [his] ranch and cattle.'"

The Looneys diversified, and survived.

K.O. Looney, Art's father, attended Texas A&M in the 1940s and served in the European Theater with the U.S. Army in World War II. He returned to the ranch in the Delaware Mountains after the war. He died in 1990. Two of his sons-Art and his brother Kirk-took over the ranch in partnership with K.O.'s sister Gloria. The brothers eventually bought their sister out. The ranch now runs only cows. Art and Kirk were raised as cowboys who also had to make good 48 Jan-Feb 2007 Americancowboy.com Americancowboy.com 2007 Jan-Feb 49 hands with sheep. They dipped their livestock in Lindane vats that- purely through skin absorption-made sheep, cattle, and cowboys drunk. They sheared 10,000 sheep every year, then branded, vaccinated, and dehorned their cattle. "My first mount was a dadgum paint donkey, but he was plenty good enough to keep up with the drags behind any kind of herd," Looney said.

Art attended grade school and high school in Crane and was graduated from Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas, in 1970 with a degree in Animal Science. On a visit to Del Rio with friends from Sul Ross he met Jamie Taylor. Within six months they were engaged. They married during his senior year. The couple set up housekeeping after his graduation, and Art went to work for Jamie's father, Noble James Taylor. Taylor raised cattle and Angora goats north of Del Rio on a ranch founded in 1885 by Jamie's maternal grandfather, Walter Whitehead.

"Jamie's father was my mentor and a big influence in my life," Looney said. "Everyone in this part of the world had a lot of respect for him. He was an Old School gentleman. He had served in the U.S. Cavalry and he taught me how to shoe a horse right. He said that if he left even a rasp mark on the outside of a hoof his sergeant chewed him out."

The Taylors also raised good horses. In the 1950s they bought Last Bar, a son of Three Bars, from Walter Merrick of Sayre, Okla. Last Bar's daughters became the Taylors' foundation mares. Noble Taylor did duty as a steward at Del Rio Racetrack. It was Taylor who judged the race there when Miss Princess outran the legendary Shoo Fly at a time when Shoo Fly held the world record in the quarter mile and had never been beaten.

The Taylor horses were leggy with a lot of Thoroughbred blood. Every year General Jaime Quinones, commander of the Olympic equestrian team of the Mexican National Military Academy, came to look at their new crop of colts. More often than not he returned to Mexico with two or three.

Between the years of 1927 and 1939 the U.S. Cavalry from Ft. Bliss, mounted on 7,000 horses, made an annual trek through the Taylor Ranch and bivouacked there.

That outfit, having been handed down, is now called the Looney Ranch. Today it is known for its production of tiger-stripe cattle for beef, Angora goats for hair, and Boer goats for meat. If it's true that Looney's early influences fitted him perfectly for his current role, it is equally true that later contacts reinforced those insights and habits. Two of the best were the late Jim Bob Altizer and Bud Smith, two men who would be called top hands as cowboys in any country.

"We could call right now a good time."

Altizer had been a much-respected and admired world champion in rodeo timed events. Smith, who neighbored the Looneys at their ranches near Del Rio, was another cattleman who raised Angora and Boer goats. In his days in the U.S. Cavalry, Smith had been a mule shoer. His son Olie, himself a former champion in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, is Looney's best friend today. There had been other influences too. Back at the family ranch in the Delawares-the ranch operated by Art and Kirk and their aunt- two good friends of Looney's had been Cal and Frank Jones, a pair of old bachelor brothers who neighbored to the south. The two were born on their ranch and died there. Cal went to the Bloys Camp Meeting (in the Davis Mountains) to worship every year from the day he was born until the year of his death at age 97.

"Originally, there were four Jones brothers, all good cowboys," Looney said. "Somebody once asked their father to characterize them. He said, 'Cal likes to ride broncs. Frank likes to work cattle. George will rope anything and once put on a show for the Queen of England. Laddie's just crazy.'

"The Jones' were old-time cowmen and set in their ways," Looney added. "When they shook hands on a deal, they needed no written contract. Once Mr. Jones and his boys gathered 700 steers off their outfit for a Ft. Worth contractor and delivered them to the Kent stockyards for an agreed-upon price of seven cents a pound. When the buyer came around he told them that the market had 'gone wrong' and he could only pay four cents. Without one more word to the buyer, Mr. Jones looked up at his son Cal and said, 'Turn 'em out, we'll take 'em home.' The deal could not have ended any other way, since it had been made with a handshake and the Joneses had long since stopped dickering.

"However, when times and the economics of ranches changed, they adapted. When my granddad first told them he'd decided to introduce sheep to this country, they told him that the predators would never let them stay. K.P. hunted and trapped the predators and buried his fences 14 inches in the ground, then turned out his sheep. Two years later, those neighbors-the Jones brothers-ran more sheep than anybody."

As for goats, however, Looney says they have seen better days than these. The government used to treat goat ranchers better than they're treated today.

"It used to be that the import tariff that was paid to our government ment by our foreign competitors paid us an incentive for raising hair goats," he said. "Then President Carter signed a bill that cancelled our incentive. Peanut farmers kept theirs, but we lost ours. That incentive money that was paid to goat raisers had never come from the American taxpayer, but the general public was led to believe that it was."

Looney and his crew handle goats much as they do cattle and sheep. "We gather them horseback and work them with dogs. We shear the hair goats twice a year and each animal yields 3.5 to 4 pounds per shearing. Most of the meat goes to the east and west coasts, where ethnic groups prefer it because of their heritage. We sell at auctions, or buyers come out to the ranches. The goats leave the ranch fat and are shipped live to the markets where they are slaughtered only a day before they are cooked and eaten.

"In the 1950s and early '60s coyotes became a problem. Neighbors got together on a different ranch every month and 30 or 40 cowboys made a drive to bunch the predators and thin them out. Our mothers and wives cooked for 30 or 40 cowboys at a time. My dad was a gunner who flew over in a Super Cub and did the shooting. We can't do that anymore, so the predators are coming back. The eagles are protected so they have their way with us during calving, lambing, and kidding season. Trappers who work for the state, county, and federal government have taken over the job now. A lot of people are leaving the sheep business. Rich people buy the ranches and turn them into game preserves, so predators find new country to breed and thrive."

Longhorns aren't what Looney is known for, but as at so many Texas ranches, they are part of the mix, being sentimental favorites if not commercial viabilities, which often they are.

Ranchers of Del Rio's Val Verde County have the same trouble with illegal Mexican traffic as they do in other states along the border, Looney said.

Illegals come across the Rio Grande in boats and inner tubes, then use the ranches' horseshoe trails. However, now the narcotics smugglers wear military fatigues, carry automatic rifles, and resemble combat patrols. When Looney's neighbors meet them on the trails, they're ordered to get out of the way, not come back, and not tell anyone what they saw.

The Looneys and their neighbors along the Loma Alta Road outside Del Rio have two Clipper Club dinner and dance parties every summer. The club bears similarities to the Cowbelles of Arizona, a group of neighbor ladies who meet periodically to "decide the fates of their ranchers," as one wag put it.

Every family brings a dish and 25 to 30 lambs are cooked. Some are cooked on an open grill, and others are barbecued in a pit. In the time-honored tradition, the pit is dug and lined with rocks and the meat is wrapped in a wet tow sack and laid on the bottom. A thin layer of rocks is laid over the meat, then a layer of dirt. A big fire is built on top and kept going for six to eight hours. When the bones are picked up out of the sacks, the meat falls off.

Jamie Looney has been to plenty of those outings. "When everybody lived on the ranches, our Clipper Club meetings used to happen every summer month," she said. "It's all changed now. The ranch people have moved to new homes in town, where kids are more involved with the town's social activities. However, I believe that our daughter Ashley is more at home out on the ranch. She loves it when she can get out there with her horse. I don't worry that she will ever turn away from ranching. It's not a prosperous life, but probably the best anyone can have."

Art and Jamie Looney are life members of the American Quarter Horse Association and the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. Ashley, a graduate of Sul Ross University, was a champion barrelracer and is now a teacher at an elementary school in Del Rio.

When asked about the good times and the bad times of ranching, Looney said, "Not many good'uns, but I guess we could call right now a good time because this fall we've had five to six inches of rain. Everybody's ranch is pretty. Under the supervision of Texas A&M, a lot of our country has undergone prescribed burning lately and grasses that haven't been seen in 50 to 75 years have sprouted again."