D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August
2008
Voice of a Ranchwoman
Page: 2He hired on with a man who ran the Crowfoot Cattle Co., who asked him if he'd gather up all the cattle that were running, and so Grandpa McDonald hired a crew of men and they gathered the cattle from the Burro Mountains. This sounds preposterous, but between August and October of that year, somewhere around 1900, Jeremiah's crew gathered 14,000 head of cattle for this man. They would get them in groups of 300, and take them to Separ and ship them out on the train. Or maybe they'd hold them down there, I don't know, but they eventually shipped them out on the train.
Those 14,000 head of cattle were just runnin' all over. But they had brands on them. Grandpa Jeremiah McDonald was very good at spotting an animal that had an earmark, not a brand. People would get those and put their own brand on it.
When Jeremiah had been with the LCs, a man came in with a cow that was branded "LC," but with three calves following her with different brands on them! Jeremiah said this man was a kind of rough character, but he knew he had to confront this man. Grandpa Jeremiah had his pistol, and he was afraid of what might happen. But he went up to him and he said, "I see there's three of those cattle following an LC cow, with your brand on 'em. I think there's been some mistake." And that man said, "Ah, there's been a big mistake — letting those calves get back to the cow!" That was the wild west. So Grandpa kept the calves, branded the wrong brand.
About 1903, Mitchel and Jeremiah decided they wanted to get a place of their own, and they found this ranch, the McDonald Ranch. They could buy it for delinquent taxes. In one spot it says they paid $17 and something, but in another it says they paid $30. Anyway, they got 160 acres for hardly any money at all. They moved out here and they started to ranch here.
They had all these settlers here, so they had country schools, which was typical of that time period. Grandpa went to the McDonald School, which is about 150 yards across the creek over here, and a lot of times the schoolteachers would live with the McDonalds. Because other parents wanted their children to go to school and be educated, some of the relatives and friends would come and live in tents here all during the seven months when the kids went to school.
Grandpa went his first seven years of school here, and then the McDonald School was closed and he had to go to school up in White Signal. He was in the eighth grade, and Granny Evelyn McCauley was in the first grade, and she fell in love with him in the Cherry Creek School. I'm sure she knew him before then because their parents were friends. But she jumped up on the desk and looked at him and said, "Your ears are dirty!" She pulled out her little hankie, spit on it and cleaned his ears out.
He said he had to wait for her to grow up to marry her. He worked for her dad and she was around him all the time and then pretty soon I guess she did grow up. They got married in 1936. They moved in at the Cienega and raised their family there. When Uncle Taylor died, Granny and Grandpa moved from the Cienega up to the Ranch Headquarters. That's where they were living when Jerry and I got married in 1964 and moved into the Cienega.
When we moved into the Cienega was when my own relationship with Grandpa Jonnie started. Jerry took care of the bottom part of the ranch and Grandpa took care of the upper ranch, but he would come down there everyday, to the Cienega. He'd stay for about 30 minutes or an hour, and he'd start telling me these old-time stories. I'd go, "Oh, my goodness! I need a tape recorder!" I think Grandpa's sister, Aunt Jane, got us our first tape recorder, and I started taping Grandpa's stories.
I think he was trying to make me feel welcome. He used to sit right there by the window in our living room, and I remember him saying, in 1970, "Well, Linda, you've lived through the first drought." Maybe he was proud of me. For not leaving, or complaining, I guess. He began to teach me how to recognize when a cow is doing well in a drought. He said, "You know a cow is doing good if she's licking herself. You also know when they've had enough to eat — they lay down." But when cattle are in a drought, they're always up, trying to find something to eat.
Grandpa told me of experiences they'd had on the ranch. You know, I talk about Granny teaching me what kind of wife I'm supposed to be, but in the process of him telling me these things, I also learned from Grandpa what kind of wife I was supposed to be. He would talk about what a great ranch wife Nancy McCauley was and he even did a special tape for me on her. And one thing he didn't like was to see women chopping wood — which was so funny, because I know his mother and Granny's mother had to. He didn't like to see "those skirts a-flyin'!" Women wore skirts and dresses all the time when they were out there choppin' that kindlin'.
Before I ever showed up on the scene, Grandpa lost his right eye. He was helping a neighbor work cattle, and he went to whip his horse with the quirt, and a piece of the quirt came off and stuck in his eye. He had to ride clear from there over to his house. After that, he trained himself to be able to see with that one remaining eye very well. He could see things that most people weren't paying attention to. Then he'd have a game with Jerry or his sister Annalee or whoever might be around, and he'd say, "I saw that, and I've only got one eye. What's wrong with you, that you couldn't see it with two eyes?" He could see a gum wrapper that was on the road, or a bottle cap that was behind a bush, or that was a long ways off. His children called him the One-Eyed Gent.
When he was about 80 years old he lost the sight of his other eye. He had to quit driving. That's when Jerry had to take over the operations of the whole ranch. But at that time they'd already divided the ranch, so there wasn't as much to take care of.
Grandpa was the Democratic County Chairman in Grant County for 20 years. He was good at working with people. And the irony was that when Jerry and I got married, my own dad was the Republican County Chairman up in Colorado! But I knew when I moved down here that I was expected to register a Democrat so that I could vote in the primary. Then when the Republicans ran against a Democrat, I got to vote for whoever I wanted to, and I have never voted for a Democrat. Anyway, we'll not get into politics here.
Grandpa never learned to dance. And Granny was a dancing demon! She loved to dance. Granny claimed that the reason he didn't learn to dance was because he sat there and made fun of everybody else that danced. He was good with her dancing with everybody. But when they were courting, of course he was jealous of whoever she was dancing with. Granny wasn't fat but she was pleasingly plump, and he was jealous, so he'd sit on the sidelines and say, "Walk, chicken, walk, you're too fat too fly!"
Then he used to stick his fingers in his ears and he'd give this holler, that was just really loud, at those dances. He was known for that holler. That was to pep the crowd up, you know. Jerry'll do that, too. If it's a song he really likes, he'll just holler. It's wild. Very Irish. Because they love to dance! Uncle Bartley, Uncle Taylor, they and their wives were just wonderful dancers. But Grandpa never learned to dance and that was one sad thing about their marriage. But Granny still went and had a great time.