D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
July
2008
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Voice of a Ranch Woman Eighth in a Series |
If You're Moving, You're Okay
Why ranch women worry, and ranchers just get up and dust themselves off.
By Linda McDonald, as told to Victoria Tester
This first-person reminiscence is excerpted from recordings of Linda Nielson McDonald at her home on the McDonald Ranch. Established in 1903, the McDonald Ranch is among the five oldest continuously working ranches in Grant County. Linda McDonald, born in Moab, Utah, in 1942, is the wife of Jerry McDonald, the son of Jonnie McDonald and Evelyn McCauley. These recordings are a collaboration between McDonald and author Victoria Tester, whose book Miracles of Sainted Earth (University of New Mexico Press) won the nationally recognized Willa Cather Literary Award. Their efforts mark the beginning of a project by the two women to record and publish a book of oral histories of ranch women in southern New Mexico.
Yesterday they brought the cattle in and branded 'em. Jerry didn't feel like our grandson little Andy, who's nearly eight, was up to riding as fast as they were riding to gather these cattle. Andy didn't get to go. But he really wanted to go.
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Jonnie (left) and brother Taylor
McDonald in 1921. |
So we looked up, and they were taking the cattle back to the pasture and they had the horses driving the cattle here fairly close to the house. And there was Andy runnin' just as fast as he could run behind those men who were taking those cattle back, because he wanted to be with them so bad.
Children are expected to go out and help, but sometimes they can't. That's what happens when kids grow up on a ranch. They have to go through some hard things. They are not pampered.
When my husband Jerry was a little boy, seven or eight years old, his dad Jonnie McDonald took him out to help all day long, and kept him out all day without a drink of water. Jerry came in just dying of thirst. Granny Evelyn got so mad at her husband Jonnie she said, "If you kill my son, I will never forgive you."
Grandpa Jonnie said, "Well, I don't know how else to prepare him for life." I've heard this story all these years I've lived on this ranch.
Recently, someone told me about asking General Robert E. Lee what he thought was the most important thing to teach children as they were growing up. He said, "Teach them to deny themselves." That's such a profound statement in this day and time. We're raising children in an era where they think they deserve everything, because their parents are giving them everything. And it ruins them.
But back when Grandpa Jonnie McDonald was a little boy, his dad taught him the same principle: You get a big drink when you're going to leave because you don't know when you're going to get another. But Grandpa was out with his dad working cattle, and he did drink out of a stock tank, and he got typhoid fever. So that's why you just do without water.
Later when Grandpa was dying of stomach cancer, they told him they wanted him to drink more water, and he said, "I spent my whole life learning how to go without water, and now you're telling me to drink water!"
When one of our children was born, the nurse said, "Give that baby water. Because all animals need water to exist." An animal can't live without water, and we human beings need water, too. But we really depend on the rain for our way of life. We wouldn't be here if we didn't have the rain.
If you don't have rain, there's no water. If you don't have any water, there's no feed for the cattle. If you don't have any calves to sell, or they're light, you don't get any money. Then you don't have any money, you don't have any food. And pretty soon, you're not here anymore.
Jerry's grandmother, Mitchel Gordon McDonald, was scared of the cows, because she was milking range cows. So one time she was milking, and when she'd milk, because she was afraid of the cows, she'd put one hand up on the cow and milk with only one hand. Her other hand was up on the flank of that cow so in case it kicked, she could get away from it fast. Her husband, Grandpa Jerry McDonald, came up and said, "You don't have to be afraid of that cow. She's not going to hurt you. Here, let me show you." So he got the bucket and he stuck his head in the cow's flank, and he started milkin', and that range cow kicked that bucket sky high. Then she chased him up the windmill!
He was sittin' perched up on the windmill, and after things had kind of calmed down a little bit he was still up on the windmill. Mitchel came over and said, "Is my milking lesson over yet?"
There were times, a lot of times, when Grandma Mitchel McDonald would be left here on the ranch by herself to take care of the place and to take care of the animals. She had to milk the cows and chop the kindling, and her husband would be gone for months at a time, trying to make some extra money so they could expand the ranch. She'd stay home and take care of the chores and do the milking and sometimes she'd have to guard their waters, because they'd only have enough water for their own cattle to water. At that time the ranges weren't fenced, so she'd have to keep the other neighbors' cattle away from their waters. She'd be out there, I guess with a stick, to try to keep them away.
There were some ranchers' wives who went out and helped their husbands work cattle. Even in Jerry's own family, there were ranchers' wives who would take their very small children on the saddle with them and take them out riding like that. Others told about being out riding with their babies in the saddle, and sometimes they'd just put 'em under a tree or something. That was kind of scary, but the children were protected by the Lord, I guess, because the mothers had to go out and help their husbands.
You don't really get taught by cowboys; you just go through experiences with them, and then you learn, oh, you don't do that.
One time I was going out riding with Jerry. He'd asked me to go riding with him, but I looked up and he wasn't anywhere. I looked down at the corral and he wasn't down there. Well, I hadn't gotten ready quick enough! He went off and left me!
So I went down to the corral and he'd turned out my horse, Manoso, and Manoso was going out into the pasture right along the side of the barn there. The hill was real rocky and it came right into the corral there. So I got Manoso saddled up and got on him and then I went out to go find Jerry. Well, I went out there and I never did find him. Because, guess what, I was in the wrong pasture, number one, and number two, Jerry was hiding from me! He was bird-dogging me and watching me! I don't know what he went out to do and I don't know if he got what he wanted done out there or not, but I know he was just watching me and seeing what I was doing out there. I guess it was a test. I don't know if he thought I'd catch that horse. But he was just trying to teach me a lesson. He taught me lots of lessons!
When I got pregnant with our first child, our daughter, Jerry wanted me to go out riding with him. And I've heard of some women that have ridden all during their pregnancies. But when I went out there, my stomach just started hurting. I didn't really ride much after that, after we started having a family, until all our six children were gone, off married, going to college and on missions, and so forth. Then Jerry no longer had any help, so he'd roll his eyes and look at me and go, "What are you doing today?" And I'd go, "Do you need some help?"
Anyway, I became some of his help then and I started riding with him more. I remembered some of those skills he'd taught me early in our marriage. Of course, about that time he also started saddling my horse and all I had to do was unsaddle it, because I guess I was getting old and I wasn't strong enough to throw the saddle up on the horse anymore! And then he was always sayin', "Get him off in this ditch, and then you can get on easier!"
But one day we'd rounded up a pasture and brought the cattle in, and he was trying to sort 'em out and decide what he was going to do with them. I'd let one cow get over in a corral it wasn't supposed to be in, so I was really pushing on those cattle to get over there and correct my mistake. And this cow just reached up with her hind leg and kicked me right in the chest and knocked me on the ground. Jerry saw me fall and he came over there and kind of looked at me. Well, I got up and I guess he figured I felt fine, I don't know. Because we finished doing what we were doing, and then he came up here to the house and sat in this chair while I fixed him dinner. He didn't ask, "Are you feelin' okay?" or nothing. I guess he figured if I was up walking, I was okay. But that's the way these cowboys do. At least the way he's done, and I've kind of seen it with other cowboys, too. They don't pamper you much. They just figure if you're movin' you're okay.
Another time, down at the Johnny Bull, I was riding Whitey Man. We were penning the cattle down there, and one of them started to break away and I started to go after him and Whitey Man reared up and I fell off. That did bang me up a little bit. But it wasn't the fall that actually hurt me so much as the fact I got pleurisy after it. That did hurt, every time you breathed. But once again, no sympathy from him. Granny still had to be cleaned up and you were expected to go down and do that, but as long as you can move, I guess it's okay.
I wanted to talk, too, about ranch women being worried. Ranch women are worried about their husbands when they go out working with these cattle, because when you're dealing with cattle, you never know what they're going to do. Usually, the men are in a dangerous circumstance. Just the other day Jerry was getting up a young colt into the trailer, and the horse kicked the gate, and the gate hit Jerry in the mouth. He came in and had his glove up over his mouth. The horse had knocked a tooth out.
Ranch women worry about the men when they're out. Grandma Nancy McCauley, Fate McCauley's wife, used to go out and put her head to the ground so she could hear if the men were comin' in or not, off the Burro Mountains. She'd press her ear to the ground to see if she could hear them coming down on the ground. Because evidently the ground will carry that sound quicker than you can actually hear them coming. She'd go out there and she'd look and see if they were coming because she was so worried about them if it was getting dark, and they weren't in yet.
Jerry's Uncle Bartley — they were living down where we used to live on the Cienega — and he went out into a pasture where there was a stud horse and the stud horse came after the horse he was riding. The stud horse was in the pasture with the mares, that really wasn't a good thing to do, but that stud horse came after him and knocked him off his horse. Then of course that night he didn't come in. It was dark and they couldn't go look for him.
The next morning they found him. He evidently was alive when he hit the ground, because he was lying the way he always used to take a nap when they were working on the fence lines. He was lying with his legs crossed, and he had a rock under his head for a pillow. That was just something he did. But he was dead.
And the horse hadn't actually attacked him. Because the horse was after the other horse. When Jerry and Uncle Harry McCauley went down there to look at the tracks, to see what had happened, they could tell from the tracks that stud horse had attacked his horse. They found his horse way up on top of Soldier's Farewell where that horse had chased him.
Then Grandpa Jonnie McDonald's other brother, Taylor, was out in California and a horse bucked him off and he hit his head on the ground. He came home from that, but he died a few days later from a cerebral hemorrhage. So that's why ranch women worry about their husbands out like this, because they are out in dangerous situations. They can get hurt and they do get hurt. You don't know what these animals are going to do.
Jerry's got two grandsons out there now that he's working with, teaching them, who haven't been around cattle that much. When you hold a calf down, cock their head, lean back, don't let them get you down, or kick you, because they can and they do hurt you. Those two grandsons, Foster and Charlie, have been out working with him like men, and now they're feeling good about themselves. Grandpa Mac has taught 'em to do something they're afraid to do, but they're learning the skills and they're coming in like men. They're 12 and 15, almost 16. But he's making men out of them. When they came down here, Charlie had prayed for days that they wouldn't have to hold a calf down because he was scared. Well, Grandpa Mac helped him overcome his fears. That's what being brave is, going out anyway.
Uncle Jim McCauley, he's 94 years old, told me some funny stories he remembered about being out, and why women worry about their husbands and sons out rounding up cattle. He said they were rounding up these cattle and they'd just come off the Burro Mountains. There was this one steer that just wouldn't get with the bunch. So they were trying to figure out how to get him, and Grandpa Fate McCauley, here he was dressed in his chaps and his big ol' boots, he says, "I'll climb up in this walnut tree." Uncle Jim's horse could outrun that steer, and they knew it. "So Jim, you get that steer to chase you, and you run under this tree, and I'll get my rope, and when you run him under the tree I'll slip this loop over him and catch him!" So Grandpa McCauley climbed up in that tree and Uncle Jim did what he said, and Uncle Jim was saying, "Stick it on him, stick it on him!" And Grandpa said, "Stick it on him, hell! I'm about to kill myself, I'm about to fall outta this tree!"
Another time, they'd had a lot of trouble with some yearlings, getting them out of the mountains. They barely got the yearlings down — and the highway at that time between here and Lordsburg ran right through their ranch, so they had them on the road and it wasn't paved or anything then. It just was a dirt road. They'd finally got all these yearlings together and were getting them going down the road pretty good. And this guy comes up in his car and honks the horn! And those yearlings just scattered. Grandpa Fate McCauley was so mad he went over and he grabbed that driver by the nose with his fingers, pulled his head out the window and thumped his head, saying, "Don't you do that ever again!"
Uncle Jim told about when they used to run hogs up on the Burro Mountains. They had permits and could run so many hogs. They had these two hogs they needed to get, so they took a wagon and a team up there and they were going to tie 'em in this wagon and bring 'em down. Well, they didn't get the hogs as quick as they thought they were going to, and it started getting dark. There was no road up there for that wagon and they were having a time of it. It was dark, so Grandpa McCauley says to Uncle Jim, "Light a bear grass, so we can see where we're going!" And Uncle Jim says, "Well, I can't find a bear grass!" Grandpa McCauley got mad and goes, "Well, I'll find a bear grass!" So he got off walking around and it was dark of course and he got lost. And he says, "Where's the wagon?" And Uncle Jim says, "Light a bear grass!"
This is a story Jerry heard Curly Traynor tell. They were chasing a mountain lion up in the Mogollon Mountains, and the lion ran into a cave, so they flipped a coin to see who was going to go in and chase him out. Chase this lion out of the cave! Jim Henry got the draw, and he went in to get this lion and that lion was in there screaming and came after him. Which, what else would happen, the lion would come after you. So when he started running out he says, "Don't shoot the first eyes, that's me!"
These men are wild. These men who go after the lions are really wild.
Yesterday one of the young kids, Parker McCauley, who came to help us, had a horse that didn't like to be bridled, so they were trying to get the bridle on him. I don't know if that horse skinned up his rear end there, because when they were trying to put this bridle on he was setting back bad. Anyway, his rear end was skinned up. And Roland Rice from Mogollon was standing there and we go, "He's all cut up!" Roland says, "That's not a bad cut! It's a long ways from his heart."
So those guys who work up in those mountains, they are kind of wild. But I guess Jerry used to come off Soldier's Farewell pretty fast, too. I wasn't with him when that happened. Thank goodness.
When my daughter Michele was just a little girl, Jerry gave her a colt and she named him Flip. But they had to brand him and they would fore-foot and tie them down and brand them. Well, when they roped this horse he broke his neck. That was the end of him. She had that horse, I think, for two weeks. But you learn that these animals don't keep. Sometimes something will happen. It did make her sad, but that was the end of it.
Our kids spent a lot of time with the animals they raised, but then they go to the sale and they're gone. They were never sad about it — they were kind of glad to get it over with, so they didn't have to do that again for a while. But Michele had one calf that got water belly. We thought he was gonna be a good, nice, heavier calf and he got water belly and was all puffed up. The boys were down there jumping on him like a trampoline after he died.
Grandpa Jeremiah McDonald had a neighbor up here, close to here where Bill's windmill is, and that's called the Morril Place, because the people named Morril lived there. Mrs. Morril, Louetta Book Morril, had a baby, and she was sick after she had this baby, so Grandpa Jeremiah McDonald rode his horse to Tyrone. Back then they had a big hospital at Tyrone. And he rode his horse to Tyrone to get medicine for her several times. But the husband was kind of a quack doctor, and he didn't think she needed the medicine, so he'd throw the medicine behind the bed. They found it there, later.
He wouldn't give it to her. So the mother and the baby both died. And Grandpa's horse that he'd ridden to get this medicine had been ridden so hard that the horse went out in this pasture in this oak tree over here, and hung his head in the fork of a tree and died. Then Grandpa McDonald was helping this same man gather his cattle the following November, and it came a rain, and Grandpa got a chill and got pneumonia, and he died. So from one man not using good judgment, there were three people and a horse that died. That was the year of 1922, when his son Grandpa Jonnie McDonald was 10 years old.
In 1960 Jerry was riding in the 4th of July Rodeo, riding a bull. That bull was a Charlois bull. Jerry's head went down and that bull's head came up and he smacked him right in the mouth and knocked him off and knocked him and his teeth out.
His mom, Evelyn McCauley McDonald, was in the stands. They had a big tall fence there and she was over that fence, in her dress, and out in that arena! And that bull was out there, too. No, she wasn't scared of that bull. She had a son out there who was hurt. I guess they got the bull away from her, too.