CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THESE CHANGING TIMES

By 1897 the settlers were moving fast into our mountain country. We could see farmers taking up land on all sides and enclosing it with split-rail fences. Then we noticed the sheepmen form the north were gradually shifting southward so their sheep could have better grazing land.

You ask any cowman and he will tell you in a hurry that once a sheep has been on a pasture, it is spoiled forever for a cow. Our men made it sound logical enough, for anybody could see that sheep eat anything---weeds, grass, stubble, and when they leave it, the land is stripped of everything but the dirt. Nature doesn’t restore plant life for years and years.

Our men said most quarrels came between the sheep and the cattlemen because the herders did not respect the cattlemen’s range, even when wire fences were stretched. It is hard to keep sheep from going under a wire fence when there’s greener grass inside the pasture than on the outside.

Of course cattlemen accused the sheepmen of sneaking grass, but the sheep man had a perfect alibi. "My herders did that. I knew nothing about it. " But sometimes the rivals didn’t wait to exchange words; they just shot it out.

Joe and our boys were facing another problem entirely. By 1900 Joe and I found that the JAB and SP Bar cattle were decreasing at an alarming rate, for the very simple reason that the Indians were using Browning beef to eat. The reservation was not fenced, and if stray cattle came into the territory, there was no reason, so thought some Indians, why they shouldn’t kill and eat when they were hungry.

Joe had never had trouble with Mescalero Indians, but even if he were peacemaker at heart, he couldn’t depend on his men to keep from losing their heads at the wrong moment. Joe was already talking about moving out when the awful tragedy came to the Flying H Cattle Company.

Our Bert happened to be working for the flying H’s at this time. The manager, Roy McLane, had a younger brother Don, who came to visit him. Now Don was only a kid, and he was trying to turn cowboy in a hurry. Roy turned him loose and told Bert to help him along when he needed it.

The flying H’s had leased several sections of land on the reservation, and Bert and Don were ordered there to look after some steers that were to be fattened, butchered and carried to the agency for sale to Uncle Sam, who then would supply the Indians with beef.

Now, as I have said, some Indians had not learned to discriminate between their cattle and the next man’s. One day young Don rode up on a partially deaf, one-eyed Indian just as he was killing a Flying H beef.

Maybe the kid didn’t suspect what was happening, greenhorn that he was, or maybe he didn’t use proper precaution. Nobody knows, but the Indian killed Don, led his horse some distance away and tied him to a bush. The Indian then backtracked himself and didn’t take any of the beef into camp.

Some other Indians were working on a road close to the agency; so the killer took his place by their side and said nothing. Two days later Bert and some other Flying H men found Don’s body. As you might guess, the whole mountain country burst into violent flame.

Smoke from that flame reached the Indian camp, and Mr. One-eye grew panicky. He left camp in the middle of the night and took his squaw with him. When the Indian agent heard this, he knew the killer had given himself away, and ordered an Indian posse to bring One-eye, dead or alive.

Only Roy McLane and the deputy sheriff accompanied the posse. Both men told our Bert that they have never seen such hunters in their lives. The Indians were like blood hounds; they missed nothing on a trail. They dismounted to inspect broken twigs and turned stones.

As the day went by, the Indians begged Roy McLane to stay back of them because they knew the minute One-eye spied them, he would get his first shot at Roy. Two days and nights went by, but the mountain people waited patiently. It would only be a matter of time.

Roy saw their supplies were getting low; so he turned toward Alamogordo to bring back some provisions. While he was gone, the Indians found their man. He and his squaw were walking, and the squaw happened to spy the posse first. They waved her out of the way, then riddled her man with bullets.

Bert came home to tell us that the squaw told the white men that One-eye had killed their horse so they could have food and then used the hide to make ‘tomayos’ (sandals). The squaw said One-eye had told her he was going to kill her because she couldn’t walk fast enough.

Our Bert was so disgusted and tired of the whole affair. He had helped ship young Don’s body back to his people in the east, and he was ready to forget the whole nasty incident, but he was still in Alamogordo when somebody arrived with the Indian’s body. Bert said some idiot had slung the dead body across a horse’s back and carried him to the center of town for white people to have a look. Our Bert was ashamed when folks tore off pieces of the Indian’s clothing for souvenirs, and one woman soaked her handkerchief in his blood. Bert said he wanted to puke.

I tried to console him with, "People are such fools!"

But Joe just looked sad and said, "And we’re supposed to be so much better than the Indians! What right have we to call them savages?"

I knew it wouldn’t be long until Joe would be getting away from the reservation. I just wondered where he was going to jump. It wouldn’t be Texas this time, for our children were settling down in these parts, and Joe was the one wanting to have them within visiting distance.

Bob and his Phronie had moved to Penasco River and now owned the JMIL home ranch; Lily and Dick were heading to Colorado to join the gold hunt; Della and Jim were off to Wyoming, Jack and Hettie were talking about the country near Portales, New Mexico.

Gracious me! Our baby girl, Mettie [Jamettie], up and married Jim Lafferty [1902], and didn’t we get word from Tod in Arizona that he would be coming home soon, and he just might have a wife.

Sure enough, he appeared with Ida, the prettiest red-headed, blue-eyed girl, but I looked at her with misgivings. She looked too frail to do much work. Maybe she could get the housework done, anyway. I wanted to be free to work in my garden; it seemed to soothe me to work in the soil. So for months that little girl scrubbed, washed, ironed, cleaned and cooked for us and all the company that seemed to be coming by at this particular time. I knew what was bringing them; they wanted to see Tod’s new wife. She was somebody new to talk about, and there was always one old gossip who delighted in telling me what people were remarking.

"They say she’s pretty as a picture! Just sixteen years old! Can you beat that?"

"These Mormon girls sure do marry young."

"Mormon! Who said she was a Mormon?"

"Tod told me himself. Said her people were prosperous farmers. Tenney, I think he said the name was, out of Stafford, Arizona."

"You don’t say! Wonder what old lady Browning had to say to that?"

"Plenty, Mister, plenty! But what does she care? She’s got the kid slaving for her now. Mormon or no Mormon, she’s good help, and that old woman won’t work in the house no more!"

"Ain’t that mean? To do a girl that way.... and her own daughter-in-law, too!"

What they didn’t know was that I walked alone, and I was so desperately lonely, for there was no person who could enter my self-torturing Hades.

Jack and Hettie came to tell us goodbye on their way to Portales. They stayed a few days so Ida and Hettie could get better acquainted. Those two hit it off well from the start, and they took long walks together. Sometimes Tod even joined them, and that was something to puzzle over, for he was our one son who didn’t believe in wearing out shoe leather when there were horses to ride.

Jack and Hettie were hardly out of sight before Tod and Ida announced that they were going to move to a place of their own in Wildcat Canyon. I knew Hettie had talked to them and convinced them to move; I knew she had given them the courage to get out, but I had to keep on friendly terms with her; I might need her desperately at some future day.

Bert was the only child left at home, now, and you can bet I aimed to do everything to keep him there. He was the one who suggested that we go northeast to the Feliz River. He said it was a cattleman’s paradise--good water, fine grass and few settlers. How many times I had heard that! But if Bert wanted to go there, I was not holding back.

This time we had a large two story house, and we were so busy planting lovely flowers and luscious vegetables, but what good did it do? In no time at all Bert married his Carrie and didn’t even tell me beforehand.

Joe and I were alone after all these years, and I must tell you, I was terrified; then terror turned to burning anger. Two people living in the same house, with only my bitter thoughts for companionship. Joe fretted the days out by riding far and working hard. I might lash out at him with my acid tongue or confuse him with my sullen silences, but Joe would not be moved to strike back.

I knew that he was perfectly aware of the curse that was on me, and I also knew he was pitying me, and that infuriated me. How I enjoyed hunting some way to humiliate this most patient man on earth! How I enjoyed living in a self-centered world, now dominated by scorn and hate. I hated ignorance; I hated silly superstitions; I hated change of any kind; and most of all; I like the idea of hating all men.

In this fast darkening world of mine, I was anxious to let my daughters and daughter-in-laws bear many children so they would find their children would devour or desert them. I had no interest in grandchildren now. Once in a great while I imagined that young Jerome stood near me. I showered him with attention, enjoyed his companionship, but when I turned to look down at him, he was gone. I was dreaming; he had never been there at all.

At this time Joe received thirteen thousand dollars from the government. Uncle Sam was trying to make belated amends to the early settlers for the damage done by Indians. This payment was called the "Indian Depredation Award." I wasn’t particularly interested in it until I found the boys were coming back into our country. I had to have one last dig, through. "Flies will buzz around honey, you know!" Joe just looked at me sadly and walked out of the room.

I did not know that many years that Joe had written his sons to come to him and they would raise cattle on the shares. Jack, Tod, and Bert came, and they bought the fine herd which bore the Bar HL brand. Joe was happy again, and I had to admit I was feeling better myself. I wish I had been absolutely normal so I could have appreciated the stirring changes going on around us. I do remember them very well.

It seems strange that by 1900 our cowboys were taking part in rodeos. Some said they were just trying to imitate the Wild West shoes put on by the famous William Cody, who started his shows as far back as 1883.

The mountain people saw their first rodeo at Roswell when Allison Carroll was campion roper of the world. Our cowboys gathered from all parts of New Mexico to rope goats (steer-roping was unlawful) and ride bad horses. Joe and I and our sons and their wives took in this rodeo, but we all had to admit we had seen better roping and riding out on the range. For some reason, showing off before a crowd seemed to make the cowboys too nervous to do their level best.

It wasn’t too many years after that until these Browning boys were attending cattlemen’s conventions at Fort Worth and Amarillo, Texas, and having conventions of their own at Roswell. Just think, in another ten years the 101 Ranch Show was to appear in Roswell, where we took our grandchildren to see their first buffalo. They couldn’t understand why we weren’t very impressed by the big hump on the buffalo’s shoulder.

By 1900 women rode astride, wearing divided skirts. What a scandal that was! Some eastern people stopped at Elk, and the women went riding all over the mountain country in those new-fangled skirts. One good mountain women remarked to me, "It just ain’t decent at all! You can see right between their legs as they walk!"

We heard our first graphophone at Mayhill, a small settlement to our west, and there was a telephone line installed from Elk to Feliz. By 1905 some of us had been to Roswell to see our first automobile. It was a queer looking vehicle driven by Dr. Skipworth. I took one look as it moved down the street, and I thought of a quotation from the Bible, "The Chariots shall be with flaming torches. The chariots shall race in the streets. They shall jolt against one another in the broad ways. They will gleam like torches; they shall run like lightening." People wouldn’t believe us when we got home again. Who ever heard of a buggy without horses!

Our grandchildren were now attending school at Feliz. The one room building was of lumber with a single roof and a good floor and sufficient windows for proper lighting. Blackboard appeared on the walls, and long desk and benches which seated four pupils at a time came in. Many new textbooks were appearing, and adults were peeking into them when they had a chance. Children were from five to eighteen years old, and they walked or rode horseback from one to three miles distance. The teacher, who welcomed them each morning, was usually a woman who taught all grades from the first to the seventh. She taught a whole six months and received a salary of thirty-five or forty dollars.