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Unhorsed, Injured, and Alone

Herschel Downs, a rancher in the isolated Blue River country of eastern Arizona for nearly 50 years, lay flat on his back, badlyly injured, in an untamed land where bears and mountain lions far outnumbered the human inhabitants. Though 78 years old at the time, he remained stubborn from a lifetime of physical labor on a ranch that covers 80 square miles. And that may partially explain why he's still alive.

"I don't know exactly what happened," Downs said, "but when that horse blew, he bucked up and throwed me. I was leading another horse, and I don't know if my horse got its tail over the rope or what happened.

"I crawled a little ways and tried to gather er up something to burn. It wasn't cold, but it was the end of deer season so it was getting cold. Only thing I could find that was dry enough to burn were some cow chips. I didn't feel much pain unless I tried to move. My hip was broken."

Both horses had disappeared. Downs was alone with his daughter's dog, Spicey, who had followed him that morning when he left his cabin at the bottom of KP Canyon. He knew, better than most, that black bears and mountain lions prowled the area where he lay disabled. Somehow, he had to get help.

His dog held the best hope for cowboy Herschel Downs, stranded by a broken hip in wild country miles from home

He was alone with his daughter's dog, Spicey, who had followed him that morning when he left his cabin at the bottom of KP Canyon. He knew, better than most, that black bears and mountain lions prowled the area where he lay disabled. Somehow, he had to get help.

Downs' next problem was getting the dog to go home with the note.

"I scolded her; I cussed her; I threw some rocks at her. Finally she went off into the canyon, and I thought she was gone."

After the dog had been out of sight awhile,he decided to shout on the chance deer hunters might be close enough to hear.

"I started hollering, and all I got out of that was my dog came back out of the canyon." As he spoke, Downs leaned forward and flicked the ash off his cigarette. His eyes, which always have a mischievous sparkle to them, seemed amused by the memory. However, at the time there was nothing funny about his predicament. He was an old man on a brushy mountain, stranded with a broken hip and an affectionate dog. Darkness loomed. "I cussed her again, and this time she took off and come all the way home. Ramona [his wife] and my son-in-law were here at the house. She saw the note fastened to the dog. She called Billy Marks to ask for help. He come racing down here, Must have flown, pulling a trailer and horse."

Billy Marks, who was 38 at the time, is the cowboy-rancher-road-grader-handyman anyone on the Blue River will turn to in a pinch. Marks now owns the WY Bar Ranch, where he grew up and which his greatgrandparents homesteaded. If any horseman could handle the rough terrain where Downs lay grounded, it was Billy Marks.

Marks recalled: "He'd made a small fire using cow chips. It wasn't much of a blaze, but the smoke helped us find him."

"Well," Downs continued, "Billy rode out to Bear Pen and brought a horse to bring me back on, but when he got there he said I was in no condition to ride. My son-inlaw, Billy Bunnell, was with him. He rode back down in the dark to call the sheriff, and Billy Marks stayed there overnight. He had brought a bedroll for me. It didn't seem like I was in much pain, but as soon as I moved it hurt. We didn't have any kind of painkiller, but Billy had brought some aspirin." At daybreak a helicopter swirled over Bear Pen Point. Billy Bunnell rode with the pilot to help locate his father-in-law. Marks cleared some brush and after a couple of turns, the chopper was able to settle nearby.

"I got on that helicopter," Downs said, "and they took me to Springerville. At the hospital they put in a whole new hip joint. The doctor suggested I not ride anymore, but I said, 'Well, if I feel like riding, I will.'"

He waited a year to heal and then climbed back on a horse. "I guess I rode another three or four years," Downs said, "but then I just got old."

The day we talked he was 85, and I hadn't seen him in at least 10 years. He moved with the help of a walker, but he still puffed on the smokes everybody said would do him in. Still, he looked well for his age, and his sense of humor remained sharp as ever.

"Cigarettes are bad for you," he said. "They told old Walter McCool that cigarettes and whiskey would kill him, and they probably did - when he was 93."

For 40 years, McCool, a trapper and carpenter, had been a well-known character along the Blue. He had helped build the log cabin that Downs and Ramona lived in for 38 years before they moved to a newer place across KP Creek.

Several years ago, at a Father's Day barbecue at Downs' ranch, I had a conversation with the late Katharine Lee, whose ranching operation was upriver from the Downses' place. Katharine wanted to explain the ties that bound people together in a place as far removed from civilization as the Blue River, and she used Walter McCool, the quintessential loner, to make the point: Downs was born on a farm in Kansas in 1912 and came to Arizona in 1936 as a bullrider on the rodeo circuit. For the next 10 years, he stayed alive riding bulls and working on ranches. By 1946 he'd put aside enough to buy the MM Ranch on the Blue, but hardly anyone thought he'd last.

"Some of these people predicted I wouldn't be here long," he recalled. "They gave me two or three years. Maybe I didn't look rough enough to stay here. I was marriedried at the time, but we divorced in '52 or '53. My wife liked it up here, but she just got to where she didn't like me."

In 1954, when he was 34, he married Ramona, who was 18.

At the time of our talk, Downs had probably been living on the Blue longer than anyone else still there. The MM Ranch, about 35 miles south of Alpine on a dirt road that crisscrosses a finicky river, is now run by his son-in-law, Billy Bunnell, withDowns and Ramona involved in the decision-making. However, the place probably will not be a cattle ranch much longer.

Downs has a permit that allows his 225 cows to graze on 80 square miles of national forest. When the permit came up for renewal recently, the Forest Service said he must reduce his herd to 46 cows and calves by the year 2000.

"Forty percent of our calf crop is already going to lions and bears," said Ramona Downs. "That's 40 to 45 calves. Since the Lee brothers left here [the late Dale and Clell Lee], we haven't had the kind of lion hunters we need. We haven't made a profit here in years, but this will put us out of business completely."

Remote, obscure, and relatively unpopulated, the Blue extends from the vicinity of "Walter lived up and down the Blue from the 1930s till he died in 1973. He didn't have a car, and he was always off trapping," she said. "Well, when he had a bunch of pelts to ship, he'd put them in a gunnysack and tie a $20 bill to it and leave it along the road someplace. He knew that somebody would come along and take it up to the post office for him, and if he had change coming, it would get to him sooner or later, and that if he was a little short on the postage, it would get straightened out."

The unspoken message in this story is that people along the Blue watch out for each other, knowing that floods, drought, Along the BLUE Luna Lake, near Alpine, to a point about 15 miles northeast of Clifton. There it joins the San Francisco River and empties into the Gila River southwest of Clifton. Phoenix and Tucson are roughly 250 miles away to the west, respectively, and Albuquerque is equally distant to the east, making the Blue one of the most isolated regions in the Southwest.

Luna Lake, near Alpine, to a point about 15 miles northeast of Clifton. There it joins the San Francisco River and empties into the Gila River southwest of Clifton. Phoenix and Tucson are roughly 250 miles away to the west, respectively, and Albuquerque is equally distant to the east, making the Blue one of the most isolated regions in the Southwest.

For many years, little interrupted the seasonal flow of life along the river, but today changes are in the wind that ranchers never anticipated. Land management practices have shifted over the years to comply with the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, among other federal regulations. As a result, cattlemen will not only see their herds reduced by Forest Service requirements, they're also anticipating losses to wolves, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released in the Blue Range Primitive Area this year.

Downs and other ranchers in the vicinity think Forest Service officials with whom most of them have an uneasy peace will phase out livestock grazing and buy up all the ranches and let the Blue River country revert to a pristine wildlife habitat. Whether this will happen is anybody's guess, but there is no guesswork in the numbers that Downs sees: His ranch is essentially out of business by the year 2000.

Downs' daughter, Mona, and her husband Billy Bunnell, recently fixed up a cabin on the ranch and are renting it as a weekend getaway or hunting lodge, the first step in the transition that will be necessary in a couple years.

"There is no way that any ranch can survive a cut of 84 percent," Mona said. "If you try to keep your 46 cows, you will always be in the red. There's just no way, so we're looking at this dude ranch business as a way to survive. Father doesn't have any real objections. I mean, it's not what he wants to see this place become, but he knows it would at least keep us alive."

"I guess raising these old cows was never easy work," Herschel Downs added a bit wistfully, "but if you like something, then that's the easier way. It was hard work to some, but it was my recreation. IfI had it to do over again, I'd follow the same trail."

Author's Note: For information about the Downses' lodge accommodations, call (520) 339-4952. For more information on the Blue Range Primitive Area, contact the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest headquarters in Springerville, (520) 333-4301.

Predators, and, occasionally, being thrown from a horse, can visit any of them. Blue River people are bound by a trust that someone will help when help is needed. By extension this means newcomers and Downs once was one of them who are not instantly regarded as trustworthy.