In southern Illinois, then the western edge of American expansion, Charles Goodnight was born on the eve of the fall of the Alamo and three days after a group of upstart Texans declared their independence. When the young nation became a state, nine-year-old Charlie rode his pony bare-back to Texas as his family settled on the nation's newest frontier. For all purposes, Charlie Goodnight remained on one frontier or another all of his life.

He hunted with the Caddo Indians as a boy, roamed the borderlands as a teenager, began a cattle business at twenty. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Charlie Goodnight became a Ranger scout, guiding them in skirmishes with the Comanche and exploring the vast and forbidding Llano Estacado. When the war ended, the young man partnered up with Oliver Loving, twenty years his senior, and together they blazed the difficult, dangerous trail that bore their names.

 At thirty-four, Goodnight married, started a ranch on the Arkansas River in Colorado, and helped build Pueblo's first bank and opera house. His fortunes suffered mightily in the Panic of 1873, when the price of cattle plummeted and banks around the nation failed. At forty, he started over, finding the next frontier on the enormous Great Plains, where he established the JA Ranch in the mightiest of her canyons, the Palo Duro.

During his reign there, he owned, leased, or controlled well over a million acres of rangeland. He pioneered modern ranching methods and bred what was perhaps the best herd of cattle in the west, producing staggering returns on his partner's capital. He was instrumental in bringing order to the Plains, with force when force was required, and insisted on education for its citizens, men and women alike, even using his own money when necessary. His was the first buffalo herd, and he experimented with buffalo and cattle cross-breeds he dubbed cattalo.

 Over his long life, he turned a brilliant talent for profanity and fierce countenance into a gruff exterior shell that hid a diligent and expansive mind and kind heart. He made strong and lasting relationships, and cared not what others thought of them. Former slaves and Native Americans counted as high among his friendships as his beloved trail hands, and all of those figured greater to Charlie Goodnight than the attentions of governors and cattle baron. One of the treasure of his life was his marriage to Mary Ann Dyer, which lasted fifty-five years ending only with her death. But, at ninety-one, he fearlessly embarked on a second marriage, wedding twenty-six-year-old Corrine goodnight whom he'd met after corresponding with her about the possibility that they were kin. They were not. She took care of his health, and helped him set down his recollections.

Still sharp of mind, he died December 12, 1929, in Tucson, after a meal of fresh buffalo steak and hot, black coffee. He was ninety-three.