The Blue River Country
"The colorings are somber here, vivid there always dramatic."
have seen the country and leave them out. Their lodge, as the name indicates, is at the head of Beaver Creek and is known far and wide for its old-fashioned western hospitality. Jess is a hunting and fishing guide of high repute and his stories often appear in nationally circulated sports magazines. He has good lion and bear hounds, pack animals and a vast store of "know how" from many years of trailing. The lodge itself is of pine logs and houses many mounted specimens of local game and action photographs of their capture. In many respects this road down from Beaver Head to the Blue River Country is the most spectacular. It begins at an altitude a little over 8000 feet and drops to about 5600 feet in twelve miles. This road joins the road down through the Blue Canyon about two miles above the Blue Post Office. There are several points along the way where one may pull off the road and stop to view a vast panorama of fold after fold of pine-covered, red-soiled mountains, dropping, dropping to the Blue Valley then thrusting skyward again on the other side for many more miles. Always there is that strange blue, blue haze hanging-never the same shade, even different shades in different canyons or along different ridges. The colorings
"HERDING THROUGH THE BOX" BY ROY CAPLES-This picture was taken last October on a Blue River cattle drive. The narrows of the river called the "Box" by local citizens on Blue River, is about 12 miles below the Blue Post Office and every family living there will tell you they wish it were 12 times 12 below them, as many times each year the melting snow or heavy rains trap them at this point for days. Blue River Canyon, named from the river that formed it, is some 75 miles in length-beginning about 10 miles south of Alpine, Arizona and ending at the junction with the San Francisco River near Clifton, Ariz. The Canyon is about the same length as the Coronado Trail which it parallels on the east near the New Mexico state line. The Blue River and its canyon holds some of Arizona's most picturesque scenery. Exposure made with 4x5 Crown Graphic-kodachrome film -1/50 sec.f9, on mule back. Lens was f4.7 Raptar. Time-10:30 a.m.
are somber here, vivid there always dramatic. It is interesting to note how the vegetation changes with the loss of altitude. Beginning in a heavy Ponderosa pine forest containing many large specimens, the trees grow fewer in number and smaller in size as one descends. As altitude is further lost the cedars and junipers make their first appearance. Farther down the pines thin out considerably, growing only in the more favored spots while the cedars and junipers grow thicker and are joined by an occasional oak or native walnut. Somewhat lower, near the floor of the valley, once in a while a cactus will glint in the sun from a well protected spot with a full southern exposure. The cedars and junipers grow smaller in stature and the pines are found only thinly spotted on the northern slopes. On the valley floor, because of the extra amounts of surface water and deeper soil one finds the cottonwood, willows and alders and quite often the pines and cedars. The summer rains carpet the forests with quantities of many colored flowers the foot lights of a vast and vivid drama. It has always seemed to me more interesting to go down into the valley via this road than it is to come up out of the valley by it. Within this region are hunted, during the open seasons, the mountain lion, black bear, elk, mule and white tail deer and the wild turkey. There is both stream and lake fishing at hand. It is a fine place where one can just loaf or poke about. If you are interested in sketching or photography, the number of "models" will drive you crazy for the valley's scenery is its very own. There is only one Blue River Country. Life there is slower. You will feel it put the brakes on your own activities. It is a land of sun, soft breezes, shadow, color and secrets which bid you welcome. Memories of the Blue River Country will remain with you long after you have gone.
Lost Pony Tracks
It wasn't a pony that finally set my friend afoot after fifty years in the saddle. He was working as a stockman on the San Carlos Reservation when he began to have dizzy spells. While always generous with his family and friends, the old waddie's own troubles were something he kept to himself. It was when he woke one morning to find himself blind in one eye that he rode in to see the doctor. High blood pressure had caused it all. Since the other eye was affected, too, he was retired on a small pension. Fifty years in the saddle is a long time on a horse. Only one who has ridden the range knows what it means for an old cowboy to be set afoot.
The Bar F Bar and the Cross S outfits were shipping at Cutter. It was back in the early 'teens. The Bar F Bar outfit had brought down eight hundred head, mostly gentle stuff some of them too gentle, I thought, for I was driving drags. Coburn Brothers, who owned the Cross S at that time, were shipping twenty-nine hundred head, mostly old Mexicos, and they were as wild as black-tailed bucks. They spooked at every strange sound and smell, at times they ran for fun. While the two herds were held some distance apart, the Bar F Bar herd caught the spirit of the thing. Sorefooted drags that could hardly untrack themselves on the drive to the pens rolled their tails and went hog-wild.
There was the click of the hooves, the rattle of hocks, the rumble of the herd. You could feel the ground tremble when the cattle went into a run, and you could feel the pony's heart you rode pounding against your knee. It was after a run that a rider rode out of the dust and flashed a smile my way.
Strange, how some little things stay in the back of one's head after all the years. The horse he rode, a bay branded with a figure 2 on the jaw, was caked with dust and sweat. The rider was caked with it, too. When he pulled his hat I took him for an Apache, his hair was so black and coarse. But I knew I had him pegged wrong when I noticed his eyes, they didn't track with his hair. His eyes were blue and friendly, yet they made me think of the ice on a tank in winter. He swung down, loosened the cinch, straightened his saddle blankets. I've forgotten his passing remark. But I remember the smile he flashed before he rode back into the dust.
"Who's the little wart?" I asked a waddie who rode beside me.
"Shorty Caraway," he said. "One of Coburn's top hands."
Later I jingled horses for him when he was foreman on the Cross S. In bad weather we slept in the same tepee. Always tolerant of other men's weakness, Shorty asked no odds for himself. He could "smell" trouble coming, and he could usually head it off. For the cowboy, always an individualist, is often a prima donna, too. Things are always brought into sharp focus on the range; cowboys in camp together often get on each other's nerves.
Shorty knew all the symptoms when a waddie was about to "bow up an' quit." He would take the waddie aside. "Mind doin' a chore for me? Will you take a note for so-an'-so in town? Can't get away myself. An' say, when yo're in town have some fun for me! We're movin' to Alkalai, pick us up there in four days." I've never seen a cowboy fail to return. After he'd kicked the lid off in town he was glad to get back, too. There was never the big fight, the big quitting when Shorty ran the spread. He knew horses, wild cattle, and above all he knew men.
There were two punchers in the outfit who didn't speak. If by chance they met at the coffee pot you could fairly see their hackles raise. Shorty put them in line camp together. Since both waddies were gun-toters we looked for a killing. "There won't be ary trouble," Shorty said. "They're just like a couple of kids-one's afraid to pull his gun, an' the other knows he dassent."
As foreman Shorty never took the best of anything for himself. He took his turn at flanking calves, and in the corral the roping was always divided among the men. Nor did he take the best horses for his string as is a foreman's right. There were several old ponies in his mount long past their prime that Shorty had a sentimental attachment for, yet he caught more wild cattle riding on them than some cowboys riding tops. There was Wine Glass
Bucky, a pony Shorty had broken years before. Bucky often stumbled now in a race after a wild steer. Afraid some young puncher might abuse him, Shorty kept the pony in his string.
Shorty was camped alone when Wine Glass Bucky crossed over to the place where all good cow ponies go. "I should've knowed," said Shorty, "knowed there was somethin' wrong. Bucky was always gentle as a dog, but this night he woke me up a-pawin at my bed. I run him out of camp. He woke me up the second time a-pawin' at my bed. I run him off again." When Shorty told me there was a mist in his honest blue eyes. "Bucky didn't go to his own kind, or go off alone he come to me. An' I let the ol' boy down. When I turned out next mornin' with the mornin' star, ol' Bucky was a-layin dead just outside my camp."
Most cowboys are good story-tellers and they like their stories tall. We all sat back expectantly when he took over at night around the fire. He had a way of weaving fact into fiction, he made fiction sound like fact, and always there was humor that bubbled as from a spring. One night in camp the conversation turned to rattlesnakes and why it was so easy to shoot a snake's head off with a pistol. One faction claimed the snake struck at the bullet. We argued pro and con.
"Ever see one swim?" said Shorty. None of us had had that pleasure. "I seen one swim across the river, it was down at Horse Shoe Bend. He held his head an' tail out of the water, just seemed to slide right through it. I'd never seen one swim before so I follered him across. But when I tried to get him to take to the water again, ol' snake got on the prod. I finally got tired a-messin' 'round with him, I got a pole an' was about to knock him in the head. Reckon he figgered what was on my mind for he took to the river again, but he only swum halfway across an' then he coiled. Last I seen of him he was floatin' downstream, still coiled, a-spittin' at me over first one shoulder an' then the other."
There was always a twist to things, the way he told a story. Bob Robinson, one of the owner's sons, spent a summer with the outfit. Bob was twelve at the time, and with no one to insist he wash behind his ears Bob really took himself a three-months holiday as far as washing was concerned. The outfit was camped at the Spur camp the night his parents came to take him into school. "He was a good cowboy," said Shorty, speaking to young Bob's mother, "never bellyached any time when things got a little tough. An' among other things he's learned to make Dutch oven bread-an' ya know, Mrs. Robinson, he even got so he washed his hands sometimes before he made it, too."
Aside from his feeling for horses, Shorty had a weakness for stray boys for boys still ran away to become cowboys at this late date and time. Shorty could spot a runaway at a glance in town. If the boy wanted to tough it out and be a cowboy sure enough, Shorty would help him get a job. If the boy was homesick and wanted to go home -well, Shorty could fix that too. The fact he was often taken advantage of never bothered Shorty. He'd been a stray himself.
He was fourteen when he ran away from the little farm in East Texas. It wasn't that he wasn't treated well, but to be a cowboy was the only thing that was ever on his
mind. His father followed and brought him home. But a year later his father, thinking it only the passing fancy of a boy, bought him a pony and saddle, gave him forty dollars to go with the two Shorty held, gave his son his blessing, and the boy was on his own. When Shorty returned on his first visit it was quite a homecoming; not even his mother knew him since he'd been gone for twenty years.
It wasn't as simple as he thought the first morning he rode away. He was welcome at any ranch, yet he couldn't land a job. And the pony had all the best of it when Shorty missed a ranch he was headed for, while Shorty took up another notch in his belt the pony filled up on grass. Shorty had no bedding except his saddle blankets. Nights on the plains are cold, and he was usually up and walking long before the morning star appeared, walking to keep warm. Yet not once did it occur to him to go back home. In the great sweeps of country that stretch away as far as the eye can see he had found the thing he wanted.
He rode the chuck line for six months. He was wearing castoff clothes cowboys had given him, dressed like a little range bum considerably ganted too when he finally caught on as a chore boy with an outfit in New Mexico at fifteen dollars a month. It was a straight horse outfit where they broke horses the year 'round. Shorty stayed
Already a member? Login ».