D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August
2008
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Voice of a Ranch Woman Ninth in a Series |
Living Through the Droughts
Lessons from a one-eyed cowboy.
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. August's story is a tribute to Jonnie McDonald (1912-1997), in his birthday month.
Grandpa Jonnie McDonald was born in the house he died in, on the McDonald Ranch. He was born prematurely, and his mother of course did not know he was going to come, and there was only a young girl there by the name of Lilly Trotter. Lilly was only eighteen years old, but Grandma Mitchel McDonald had already had three children. She'd had Uncle Bartley, Uncle Taylor and Aunt Jane, so I guess she knew about having babies, and I do think all of those were born at home. So Grandma McDonald helped this young girl get everything ready because she knew she was going to have this baby. And because he was born prematurely, he was so small he fit in a shoebox.
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Newlyweds Jonnie and Evelyn Mc_Donald
in 1936. |
Aunt Jane said her mother had already prepared a special dinner that day — it was Sunday — an elaborate dinner. It was chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes, and hot biscuits, and because it was in August there were lots of vegetables. The dessert was probably a cobbler. Jeremiah, Grandpa McDonald, didn't really work on Sundays, but for some reason he and the two boys weren't there.
But Lilly Trotter was there; her mother was Grandma McDonald's sister, Aunt Sally, who had passed away in February. Grandma Mitchel and Lilly were sitting on the porch visiting, and Mitchel said, "Do you think you could act as a granny for me?" Maybe they called a "granny" somebody that delivered the babies. Lilly said, "Oh, if I had to." She assured Lilly it was no laughing matter — the baby was on the way. So she stirred up the fire in the woodstove and put a big tea kettle on, plenty of hot water, and told her how to fix the bed for the home delivery. Grandpa's mother was always a real organized person, and she knew what was coming, so she had the baby clothing, the blankets, the shirts and so forth, all ready.
She hadn't been in that bed more than five minutes when Grandpa was born! Lilly put him in a blanket and put him beside his mother, and then they had to cut the umbilical cord. Up until that point Lilly had been very cool and collected, but it unnerved her for the rest of the day to have to cut the cord. She was a very young and timid person, but she was the only one there so she had to do it.
Pretty soon Uncle Bartley and Uncle Taylor came in. They were just boys, and they viewed the situation and went right to their mom, Grandma Mitchel, and both of them began to cry. Aunt Jane said her mother was a little impatient with that, because they grew up in an era where the arrival of babies was not discussed openly among family members. The boys probably didn't even know she was going to have a baby! Or maybe they were aware of the approaching birth, but they'd had a bad experience because Aunt Sally had died with complications of a birth. I'm sure they thought their mother was going to die, too. A birth has a lot of blood connected to it.
When Grandpa Jeremiah McDonald came in, he said, "Do you need a doctor?" And Mitchel said, "No need of a doctor now!" So he rode to the neighbors and told them all the good news.
Jonnie McDonald was sickly for the first year of his life, and they didn't know if he was really going to live. Aunt Jane said he was a quiet child, but he did become waspy about things from time to time. So he was the little brother. He was several years younger than his older siblings, so they were all protective of him. But they wanted to teach him to be a cowboy, so they'd take him out riding, and they wanted him to do all the things they hadn't gotten to do.
Aunt Jane talked about how Grandpa Jonnie would just sit by his father Jeremiah's side in the evening, and listen to his stories, all the old stories about when Jeremiah was growing up and he was on all the cattle drives. The wonderful talent Grandpa Jonnie had was that he remembered all of this. And he became the storyteller, because he remembered it all perfectly, the way his father had told him.
One of the stories was about when Jeremiah was 13 years old, and his mother had passed away and a housekeeper come in to take care of the housekeeping duties and take care of the children, and the housekeeper disciplined his little brother Bat, and spanked him. Jeremiah took great offense at this and he slapped her. But he knew when his dad Bartholomew came home, he would beat him for hitting that housekeeper.
So Jeremiah left home when he was 13 years of age. He happened to get in with cowboys, and he started just being a wrangler. He'd go out and wrangle up the herd. They found he had a real knack with cattle, so he worked his way up and he'd always become a foreman in these groups of cowboys, and he got a reputation for that. He was a trail herd cutter, which is the same as a brand inspector.
Another story Jonnie McDonald was told was about when Jeremiah came to New Mexico. They were down around Cloverdale, and he was working for a cow outfit — he didn't know who was he working for — but he saw a big herd of cattle come in, and then there became a big gunfight going on, and he and the cook and another guy by the name of Joe Taylor got on top of this Spanish-style roof and they had that protection, the way those Spanish-style houses were built. Men were shooting their guns and everything and the cook turned to Jeremiah and he says, "Do you know who you're working for?" And Jeremiah says, "No, I don't." And the cook says, "You're working for Black Jack Ketchum! If you'd just take my advice, you'd get out of here!" So he did. He slid down off that roof and he got him a horse — I don't know where he got a horse — and he got away. That was around the 1880s, when he first came into this country.
So Grandpa's father came into New Mexico — he actually came in here with an immigrant train — with this Joe Taylor, and then he got up to the Silver City area and he worked for the LC Cattle Co., Lyons and Campbell Cattle Co., and he was a wagon boss for 'em. He worked for them for 13 years. Then he met Grandpa's mother, Mitchel Ann Gordon, over near Duncan, Ariz. These cowboys were there going to dances, and these girls lived around there. Jeremiah asked her one night, "Can I carry you home?" She says, "No, I can carry myself!" But anyway, they got married, and she was a lot younger than he was. She also knew, because she had been living in that area, that the LC was a rough bunch. They had their cattle in there, and they had all these settlers in there, and the settlers would steal their cattle, because they were looking for something to feed their families.
There was a story Grandpa's dad told. There was a lady, and her husband had abandoned her and she had this baby, and so Aunt Ellen, which would be another aunt of Grandpa Jonnie, went around taking collections for this woman who'd lost her husband and just had this baby. Jeremiah gave her $10. He'd caught her husband stealing one of the LC cattle, and he'd said, "You'd better get out of here or I'm going to kill you." Then he realized that this was the wife of the man! That was why he gave her such a nice big donation, because he'd told her husband to get out.
Back then a lot of people were taking up homesteads around here. The area wasn't fenced, so everybody's cattle just all ran together. But before Mitchel said she'd marry Jeremiah McDonald, she said, "Okay, but you've got to quit the LCs." So then he worked for several ranches around this area. They lived over at Oak Grove.
He 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.
When we knew Grandpa was dying, all the kids wrote letters to him. And this was from one that my son J.L. wrote: "One day when I was 12 or 13, we were driving a bunch of yearlings from the house to the Johnny Bull, and as we came off White Rock Hill and down to the canyon you were in the lead of them, and I topped over the hill and could see you at the corner of the McMillans' fence, on Old Drifter. With your hat off. Talking. And I knew you were praying. I never knew about what, but it didn't matter. Because I was always impressed with that and I'll always remember it."
When Grandpa was sick and the doctors told him he needed to walk, he and I went on the same road. We'd both go up to the cattle guard, though we wouldn't go together. But one morning I'd gone out for my jog, and when I came back, I came around the corner, crossing the creek, and Grandpa was standing up on that berm. With his hat off. Praying. So I just stood there and waited until he turned around and went home.
Jerry was off taking care of the ranch. He couldn't be there all the time. So I stayed there with Grandpa until he died. About two days before he died, he said to me, "Don't ask me any more questions." Now that was a compliment. Because Grandpa and I had spent so much time together, recording all this cherished history, and he realized he wasn't going to be able to talk and tell me anything else. I said, "Okay, Grandpa." Then he said, "Will you keep the weeds off my grave?"
To read all the previous "Voice of a Ranchwoman" stories,
see www.desertexposure.com/ranchwoman