Hi kitch2500, hope you are still around as I just stumbled on to this topic and I see you posted some time ago. In any case I am a grandson of the late HH Schweitzer and his wife Willie Schweitzer. I have one saddle very much like the one you have in the first picture (has the same tooling), and I suspect from what I can see, it is a closed fork design which many cowboys preferred in brushy country. That was good for keeping debris out but not the handiest for toting the saddle around. HH (Henry Houston) Schweitzer was a very highly regarded saddle maker and his saddles were very prized by those cowboys fortunate enough to own them. Being a former cowboy on the Matador Ranch (originally Scottish owned and at one time the largest ranch in the world) whose headquarters is just outside of Matador, Texas; Granddad had a very strong understanding of what was needed in the way of making a saddle that fit the needs as well as the comfort of a working cowboy. The tree being the soul of the saddle was of the highest importance to him and he was extremely picky in what he would accept as a tree to build his saddles around. The tooling, if the buyer opted for it, was a mastery of the leather artistry and creative skill displayed by Schweitzer and along with the fit for the working cowboy aspect made him one of the most sought after saddlemakers to ever to ply the trade.
There is a book about my granddad tiled 'Schweitzer' by Bruce Ginnis that has a really good history of him with lots of photo's.
Let me know if I can be of more help; there is so much to tell of this exceptional person.
Randy Moss