Mesquite

MESQUITE BY J. FRANK DOBIE

A TRIBUTE TO A BUSH AND TREE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE WHOLE SOUTHWEST BY THE DISTINGUISHED AUTHOR OF "CORONADO'S CHILDREN," "THE LONGHORNS," "VAQUERO IN THE BRUSH COUNTRY," AND "APACHE GOLD AND YAQUI SILVER."

I GET HOMESICK SOMETIMES for the smell of burning mesquite wood. Many a time in the brush country I have smelled out a Mexican jacal (cabin), hidden by darkness or the lay of the land, by the aroma of mesquite smoke going up its chimney. A friend of mine who often camps in the mesquite country always holds his hands in the smoke every little while during the breakfast period so that they will smell of burning mesquite all the rest of the morning. "For hours afterwards," he says, "I can enjoy the odor on my hands." What an aroma the smoke gives to steak cooked over an open fire! If the mesquite has burned down to coals, it will be well to add enough fuel to make smoke. Mesquite wood "... the mesquite will always be characteristic of the Southwest ... as a tree it seems to me to be as graceful and lovely as any tree in the world... (Study of a mesquite tree, loaded with beans, by Max Kegley. The mesquite in Arizona is faint green, the bean pods are yellow..)

DRAWINGS FOR ARIZONA HIGHWAYS BY ROSS SANTEE

Mesquite wood burning in a fireplace in winter time, in addition to supplying warmth and the light and cheerfulness emanating from all open fires offers a bouquet just detectable enough in a well-drawing chimney to gratify alert noses. The Comanches are said to have favored mesquite wood for fuel because, while making a hot fire, it gives off comparativly little smoke always a tell-tale sign of campers and that light in color. Some mineral in the wood, however, is hard on the iron in stoves and boilers.

Liveoak coals will last longer than those of mesquite, but they are no better to cook with and they are not nearly so aromatic. When old Bigfoot Wallace wanted to describe eyes as being especially bright, he said they "glowed like mesquite coals."

A good many years ago Roy Miller came down from Toronto to visit his kinswoman, Mrs. John Maltsberger and family in the midst of millions of acres of Texas mesquite. The Maltsbergers lived in town, but Miller went out to the ranch and stayed until the time for his return to Canada was about due and he felt compelled to do some visiting. The first morning after coming into town from the ranch, he spoke of how tasteless the coffee seemed in comparison with that of the camp. Its superiority, he decided, came from being boiled over an open fire of mesquite. Therefore, as long as he stayed in Texas, he would get up early, build a mesquite fire outside, and boil his coffee. When he got back to Toronto he wrote that the coffee was impossibly tasteless. He simply had to have some mesquite wood. A whole carload was shipped to him. Smelling mesquite fire on a cool morning and drinking coffee boiled over it can never be forgotten by anybody with strong senses.

Talking about flavors, although honey from alfalfa has a very high reputation, to me it is not nearly so good as honey from the mesquite. The layman usually divides mesquite into two classes: (1) trees, and (2) the switch or scrub mesquite, which does most of its growing underground, giving certain portions of the West the reputation of being "a hell of a place where you have to dig for wood and climb for water." Of the tree mesquite, there is one kind of yellowish wood and another of a deep reddish hue as beautiful when polished as the richest mahogany. This redwood mesquite is, I believe, harder and more brittle than any other variety. I wish I knew which variety was utilized in the timbering of the Alamo at San Antonio. The woodwork of various old Catholic churches and ranch houses of the Southwest is of mesquite wood. The interesting headquarters house of the great King ranch very appropriately has furniture made of the mesquite.

A few cabinet makers are educating the public to appreciate the beauty of finished mesquite wood. Its grain is not surpassed by that of either walnut or mahogany. The heart of the timber "checks," or cracks, so badly however, that workable wood is scarce and probably never will be plentiful, even in a region covered with mesquite trees. Therefore, the price of mesquite furniture must remain high. The shaking of a sound tree by the wind causes the inside wood to crack.

Before barbed wire and pavements were thought of, mesquite pickets were used for making pens and cabins throughout the mesquite country. The posts of the first barbed wire fences of the land were mesquite, and "... Men and other animals were making use of it generations before Columbus sailed; they are still making use of it..."

(In this photograph taken by Mr. Dobie near Mazapil, Zacatecas, Mexico, natives are gathering mesquites, or the mesquite beans.) some of them have not rotted away yet, though cedar posts are now generally considered more durable. I doubt if they are, however, provided the mesquite is cut from mature trees and allowed to season before being placed in the ground. Ranch people, especially Mexicans, say that if mesquite posts are cut when the sap is down, the wood will be more durable. The Mexicans add that if the posts are cut when the moon is full, worms will not attack the wood especially if the bark is peeled off. The trunks and limbs of mesquite trees are neither long nor straight enough to furnish building lumber. An old-timer named Stephens out in the Llano River country of Texas -used to tell this tale. One day, he said, he saw something working around and writhing out on a prairie a half mile or so from his house. It looked like a monster snake, but he could not imagine any snake being so big. He got on his horse and rode out to investigate. It was just a mesquite log "so all-fired crooked it could not lie down." In Tennessee, where there are no mesquites, such a log used to be called a "Davy Crockett log." No matter what the shape of limbs and trunk or what the texture of the wood, a man who enjoys cutting with an axe as I do will get a joy of cutting mesquite that no other wood can give. It splits well and breaks well; its hard grain offers just the right resistance and makes animated chips. Then there are always the smell and the color sheens. The largest mesquite in circumference I have ever noted measures ten feet and eight inches around the trunk five feet above the ground. It is growing or was growing a few “... No matter what the shape of the limbs and trunks or what texture of the wood, a man who enjoys cutting with an axe-as 1 dowill get a joy of cutting mesquite that no other wood can give...” (Photograph by Ralph Shuffler of Odessa, Texas, of mesquite in the Sand Hills, Crane County, Texas.)years ago-in the pens at the George West ranch in Live Oak County, Texas. This tree is stunted in height, however. In the lower Rio Grande Valley may be found mesquite rising 50 feet and having a circumference of eight feet or more. Some of these trees may exceed the age that Irish settlers down the Nueces River allotted the mesquite-200 years. Among Austin's first Texan colonists there grew up a saying, “Pick the land where the wild peach grows,” because this wild peach chooses fertile land. Although its hardiness has made the mesquite grow-though not to thrive in some places where the soil is shalyears ago-in the pens at the George West ranch in Live Oak County, Texas. This tree is stunted in height, however. In the lower Rio Grande Valley may be found mesquite rising 50 feet and having a circumference of eight feet or more. Some of these trees may exceed the age that Irish settlers down the Nueces River allotted the mesquite-200 years. Among Austin's first Texan colonists there grew up a saying, “Pick the land where the wild peach grows,” because this wild peach chooses fertile land. Although its hardiness has made the mesquite grow-though not to thrive in some places where the soil is shalNow, it also chooses good, rich land. The oldtime “mesquite flats” were the pick of the land. Big trees always indicate both fertility and a certain amount of sub-soil irrigation. Old-time belief had it that the roots of big mesquite trees go to water and that the place to dig a well is beside a mesquite tree. The roots are unbelievably long. Along washes I have seen them exposed for forty feet, and I have read of longer roots. Ranch children use these roots for whips and quirts. Also, the roots make as good tooth-brushes as twigs of hackberry and “knockaway” (anacahua). Not many thorns are harder than the mesquite'sas many an automobile driver has found out when, cutting across country, his tires were punctured by them. In 1909 Carl Lumboltz bought a spur from a native of Sonora made from the cleft of a mesquite bush. The spur had, he said, “a very sharp point, which was most efficient, though cruel.” Mesquite thorns have served frontier people as pins. They have stove-up many a good cow horse, too. They will not decay in the flesh or gristle as will prickly pear thorns. but will last longer than any flesh in which they become imbedded.