Living a Legacy

CARLINK RANCH

TEXT BY LEO W. BANKS PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON B. STEVENSON Five generations of cowboys carry on with a corral full of common sense and love for their land THE TAIL END OF ROUNDUP morning gets loud at Carlink Ranch. Horses neigh and dance. Cowboys wave their hats and whistle and hoot. Cattle fuss their way into the corral, then crash against the rails before stomping up the ramp into the back of the Kenworth.

The noise is gosh-awful. A "slick" like me covers his ears and wishes it'd go away. But the same racket gives Andy Smallhouse a kind of pleasure most working men will never know.

Sweet, true and so deep-down he hopes to hear it to his dying day. "I wouldn't do anything else in the world," says the young rancher. "Every time I go to this pump, or that fence, I think of my dad, how he and a lot of other people before him worked their heads off every day out here. I'm lucky to have this land, and it's up to me to keep it going. This is more than a job."

Under ordinary circumstances, determination doesn't show in Smallhouse's face. He's blue-eyed, reserved with newcomers and looks more like a skinny teenager under an oversized cowboy hat. But when the subject is the Carlink, his words are emphatic.

It's not hard to understand why. Born on the ranch, he represents the fifth generation of his family to work it. Two years ago, his dad, Jack Smallhouse, died unexpectedly at age 63. With no brothers and a sister in retailing in Scottsdale, the day-today operation of the ranch fell to Andy, now 28.

On Smallhouse's shoulders, and those of his energetic wife, Stefanie, 26, weighs a spread that encompasses 94 sections, including 1,000 acres of farmland, and touches four counties. But the responsibility looms larger because of the Carlink's long history.

Smallhouse's kin have run cows for 117 years out here, along southern Arizona's San Pedro Valley near San Manuel, where the tradition runs as rich as the soil.

A good morning's work ends as the latewinter sun shines brightly. With 50,000 pounds of cattle loaded and ready for shipment to Colorado, it's time for lunch.

The main ranch house sits on a rise across the wash from the corral. Along the way I'm greeted by one of the ranch dogs, a timber wolf-Akita mix named Bear. He has a hitching walk that reminds me of Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo, the 1959 John Wayne Western.

Matter of fact, he sounds a little like him, too. When Smallhouse "barks" at Bear, the dog cocks his head and howls, and the throaty wheeze sounds exactly like he's saying, "I love you." Which is a good thing, because I weigh 135 pounds. If he didn't love me, Bear might easily turn me into a snack.

Bear is one of nine ranch dogs, most of whom snooze under the giant saguaros outside the 1930s house. A long porch lines the front of the home; five chimneys jut from the roof. Inside, seven rooms sport beamed ceilings and tile floors. A shelf contains the cattle branding irons of homesteaders and others.

"There're 27 brands, going all the way back to the 1880s," Smallhouse says.

Like always, the ranch is a busy place this day. But it's also a sad place now. A few days before, 80-year-old Alicia Valdez Ronquillo, considered the Carlink matriarch, died. Planning is under way for a burial at a nearby hilltop cemetery.

At the moment, Stefanie fixes lunch in the kitchen. But friends keep stopping by, each one stomping the dirt from his boots at the door, cowboy hat in hand-the way it's done.

"We have more visitors here than anyplace I've ever lived," says Stefanie. She's a Colorado native who met Andy when both were students at New Mexico State University. "Andy's family has been here so long that everybody knows we're here."

When the tamales and pinto beans arrive at the table, the conversation is already rolling, and the subjects change quickly: an expected gasoline delivery; the[PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 6 AND 7] Adjusting her spurs, Stefanie Smallhouse readies for work at Carlink Ranch, a southern Arizona spread held by Smallhouse kin for five generations. plumber who was out the other day and got his payment through the barter system-he was given a good pig. And it seems mountain lions have been coming to the river recently, making their presence known at odd hours.

[FAR LEFT] Sunrise outside the tackroom finds longtime ranch hand Francisco Rodriguez Sr. preparing horses for a cattle roundup.

[THIS PAGE] Even cowboys aren't allowed to track mud on the carpet. Well-loved boots remain outside the ranch house door at the end of the day.

[INSET TOP] Andrew Smallhouse and Superior Livestock Auction representative Butch Mayfield discuss the latest Smallhouse cattle shipment to a New Mexico auction facility.

[INSET ABOVE] Stefanie Smallhouse has worked the ranch side by side with husband Andrew since they met at New Mexico State University.

A week before, a nighttime commotion awakened Smallhouse's mom, who lives behind the main house. She ran into her back yard and saw that a lion had captured her pet pig, Killer. When the lion saw her, it stood, squeezed the 80-pound pig in its teeth and jumped in a perfect arc over a 4foot fence, disappearing into the darkness.

Between frequent jangles of the telephone, the table chatter switches to ranch founder William Bayless. Lured by the silver boom, he, his brother and 15-year-old son, Charles, came by wagon from Highland, Kansas, to Tombstone in 1879. The new town was little more than a scatter of shacks when the Baylesses opened a general store. Charles, a store clerk, undoubtedly met many of the characters who later became part of Tombstone legend.

Dogged by asthma, William bounced between Kansas and Arizona until 1884, when he started a ranch near Willcox. But its proximity to Cochise Stronghold meant Apache renegades would influence the duration of his stay.

Not long, as it turned out. After a few months, William moved to the San Pedro Valley to start the Sacaton Ranch, forerunner to the Carlink-a railroad term the Baylesses brought from Kansas.

If William Bayless was a reluctant Arizonan, Charles was even more so. His dream was to become a teacher, and he obtained a job as a professor of Latin and Greek at Highland College in Kansas. During the fall of 1891, he enrolled at Johns Hopkins University to pursue a doctorate.

But when his father fell ill, Charles came west to take over his holdings, and the loyal son stayed. As Dawn Moore Santiago wrote in Journal of Arizona History, he "transformed himself from a Midwestern university professor into one of most successful cattlemen and entrepreneurs in southern Arizona."

Three years before his death in 1938, Charles invited his niece and her husband, Margaret and Kingston Smallhouse, to come from California and help run the property. While Margaret grew up on the ranch, Kingston knew nothing about cattle and the outdoors, but he learned.

"They called my grandfather King, and that's what he was," says Smallhouse. "When he came into a room, people stood up. He walked real tall, straight as an arrow, until he died at 92."

Kingston Smallhouse probably figured out in a hurry that the livestock trade presents as much a gamble as anything that happens on a felt table in Las Vegas.

This morning's shipment, for example, involved the sale of 71 yearlings. It began when a fellow who works for a livestock videotaping company filmed some animals belonging to Smallhouse. He raises English cross, Angus, Hereford and Limousin cattle.

The tape was taken to company offices in Fort Worth and looped onto a master tape for broadcast on cable, where buyers place bids in an auction format.

A rancher like Smallhouse needs to know the complexities of the beef market to set a good asking price. Then he needs to be enough of a soothsayer to gauge the weight of his animals on shipping daytwo months after videotaping.

Cold weather, it turned out, dampened the animals' appetites, so they averaged 20 pounds less than predicted. Not bad.

"It's nerve-wracking, but I'm happy. I've got money in the bank again," Smallhouse says. "A lot of this is common sense, and that's one of the things I got from my dad."

Jack Smallhouse was a respected figure in the San Pedro Valley, winner of several conservation awards for his management of the Carlink.

Something else Andy's dad told him: If you stay with ranching, you'd better get [FAR LEFT] Except for construction in the 1930s, very little about the Carlink Ranch homestead has changed since the turn of the 20th century.

[THIS PAGE] Beauty appears in the most unusual places. Rusted, well-worn horseshoes await a farrier's attention.

[INSET, TOP] Charles Bayless exceeded even his own expectations to become a successful cattleman and entrepreneur. ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON [INSET, RIGHT] Once-reluctant ranch founder William Bayless gazes across the San Pedro Valley. ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON [INSET, ABOVE] Cayetano Ronquillo, 84, born on the Smallhouse ranch, has worked for the family for 45 years.

[RIGHT] The massive Rincon Mountains sandwich the San Pedro Valley with the Galiuros, as Francisco “Paco” Rodriguez Sr. and son Francisco “Pacquito” Jr. bring in cattle for shipping to New Mexico.

involved in politics. With increasing pressure from environmental groups and newfederal regulations coming on a regularbasis, Smallhouse estimates he spends halfhis time either on the phone or in meetings.He and Stefanie-with degrees in rangemanagement/animal science and wildlifebiology, respectively-are active in tryingto promote the ranchers' viewpoint onland-use issues and endangered speciesprotection.

"The pressure on ranchers has forced alot of them to sell out, and that's why somuch land is being subdivided," saysSmallhouse. "We're not out here beatingup cattle and raping the land. I believe wehave the best-managed land in the state ofArizona, and my goal is to keep it frombeing subdivided. It'd make more sense ifenvironmentalists and the governmentworked with ranchers rather than tryingto run us off."

He returns to eating his tamales, lost inthought. "But these other ranchers," he saysfinally, "they don't have the heart I have."

With lunch over, Smallhouse and I hop into his truck to check on the ongoing work at the ranch cemetery. The temper-ature has risen since late morning. But the air still holds a snap as we rumble past the metal-roofed adobe house, built during the late 1870s, where Cayetano and Alicia Ronquillo raised five children. Alicia's relatives, like those of her hus-band, were among this land's original homesteaders. Many of them stayed to work after they were bought out by the Baylesses and wound up spending a lifetimea kind of loyalty few ranches can claim.

At 84, Ronquillo still lives at the Car-link, where he was born, got married and worked for 45 years, many as the ranch's foreman. Two weeks earlier, I had visited with him and heard some of the good old ranch stories.

He told of a shoot-out at the ranch in the 1920s in which a former soldier died in a dispute over a woman. The killer, Jess Moore, had a pet lynx caged underneath the windmill outside ranch headquarters. A few months after Moore was sent to prison, he mailed a letter back to his fellow cowboys: "I know what prison is like now. Turn that lynx loose."

Ronquillo also told of courting 15-year-old Alicia Valdez, who, in the mid-1930s, lived across Redfield Canyon. At the time, a creek ran down the canyon, and the only way to cross it was to shimmy hand-over-hand along a shaking cable strung up for that purpose.

To a 19-year-old trying to reach the girl he loved, the tricky crossing made perfect sense. "I made it across every time," Ronquillo recalled, his eyes twinkling at the memory. Their 65-year marriage began on Valentine's Day, 1936.

A few days after we talked, Alicia died. Her family and members of the Ronquillofamily, with help from Carlink cowboys Paco Rodriguez and his son, Pacquito, have now gathered at the ranch cemeteryto clear weeds and brush-another tradition that goes back to the 1880s.

A fire burns when Smallhouse and I arrive. Kindling snaps and pops, filling theafternoon air with a sweet scent, as threegenerations of several families make the oldcemetery pretty again for one of their own. Smallhouse and I watch for a moment,but it feels as if we're intruding on something sacred. So we climb into the truckand drive back down the hill. He fixes hiseyes on the great valley spread out beforeus and the imposing Galiuro Mountainsbehind it.

After a long silence, Smallhouse says, "If for some reason I couldn't stay here, I'dprobably start a ranch somewhere else. Butit wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't havethe history we have. I love this land andmy goal is to start a sixth generation, righthere." AH AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you visit the ranch area,please remember to respect private land. Do not pass through closed gates. Heed all "no trespassing" signs. For informationabout the ranch's recently opened guest accommodations, call (520) 212-2639,(800) 378-3490; www.carlinkranch.com.

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