Sag-Ashus – Am I A Pioneer? – Final Chapter
Last week we left Aunt Lucy describing how they handled funerals, making coffins out of what lumber was available and burying the deceased loved ones just under the mesa about a mile from orange. The last chapter of her story follows.
“My family lived at Orange about two years. Then, father leased some land from the State of Texas in what was El Paso County at the time. I taught school in Van Horn before the county was divided, while Dr. W. J. McConnell, who is now president of North Texas State Teachers College at Denton, was principal at Van Horn. The county was not divided for several years.
This land which father leased and upon which he established a stock ranch was about 6 miles south of the state line and on the eastern edge of the White Sands of Texas, between the White Sands and the Guadalupe Mountains. These Sands are very similar to the Alamogordo White Sands, but are not as extensive. A full page of pictures of the Texas White Sands was printed in the Resource and Development edition of the El Paso Times of November 6, 1938 on page 19. In the caption under the pictures it states that ‘There has been no road built to the place’. Perhaps they meant to say that there is no Highway for automobiles. It is known by many that there has been a road by the white Sands from time the Butterfield Stage route came through Guadalupe Canyon, passed the white Sands to Crow Springs, and on to California. Our mail route from Van Horn to Orange came by the White Sands after the Ables family made a post office and we began to get the mail twice a week. We lived at the White Sands and we know by personal experience that there was a road both up and down the flat. Two rooms of our ranch house at the White Sands were dug out of the side of a hill with a scraper and team. The fireplace was dug out of the wall and a hole made into it with the posthole diggers from the outside. The third room was of lumber and all three had dirt floors. My sister, Mary, my brother, Frank, and I lived there and cooked with a skillet and lid until the place at Orange could be disposed of and the stove moved down.
One time, when Frank was away on a cattle drive, Mary and I stayed there alone. We heard a commotion among the little calves in the milk pen and hurried out to find the trouble. Everything quieted down when we stepped outside, but we set a trap to catch the intruder. Next morning we had a coyote on our hands. Neither of us wanted to kill him, but we had to get him out of the trap. I shot him and then we skinned him and saved the pelt to show the boys what we had done while they were away.
Rattlesnake experiences on the ranch were rather common, but I had one that I shall not forget. I found the snake about 200 yards from the house, and had nothing with which to kill him except a dagger stalk. They are not worth much in a case of that kind, though I thought I might pin his head down and twist it into the ground. I tried it, but caught his tail instead of his head. There was nothing to do but to hold on until someone came to help me. One Rattlesnake coming at me at that close range was enough. I never tried to kill another with such a weapon.
Mr. Afton Wynn in “Pioneer Folk Ways,” tells of a number of things concerning pioneers that we lived up to on the White Sands ranch. We repaired our shoes, sat on rawhide chair bottoms, pieced quilts from scraps, carded the bats to fill them with, laced them into the frames, and quilted them. We washed clothes outdoors, boiling them in an iron pot. The water on the ranch was as “hard as nails” and had to be broken with Sal Soda. We hauled water to drink and to cook with from Crow Springs, 8 miles away. We made soap, not only from the discards of hot fat but from beef tallow too. However, we did not make our lye. We bought it. We used flour starch and flat irons. We made vinegar pies and salt rising bread. But the bull fights, as pictured by Mr. Wynn in his book, seemed to be exaggerations to me. Bulls fight and hook each other but when one is whipped he leaves at once, not having time to see what is in front of him. But as for the necessity of locking the doors to keep the bulls out, there was never such a necessity in our experience.
In another book the author, Mr. Smithwick speaks of following a cow to find the calf. I have done just that many a time. One wild cow kept me searching for part of three days. When I found him, the little calf was hidden as well as a baby deer or an antelope might have been.
In another book the author, Mr. Raht, gives an account of the salt deposits North of J. M. Daugherty’s Figure 2 Ranch headquarters. From what I can learn Indians, Mexicans from Old Mexico and ranchers from all over the country have hauled salt from these lakes for many years. The salt was free to whoever cared to haul it away, until after we began ranching. Fifty cents for all you could pile on a wagon was as high a charge as was ever made while we were there. I remember that a six horse team and driver were struck by lightning and killed not many miles from the Salt Lakes. He had a load on his wagon and was on his way back to the Davis Mountains.
Our closest friends were the R.P. Altman family and the Rush family. The Altmans lived only eight miles away and the Rush family, 12. We didn’t get together often, but we certainly enjoyed our visits and visitors when they came; and we still have a feeling for each other that time can’t erase. Mr. Paul Rush,(my husband) was the most frequent visitor coming the 12 miles, sometimes on horseback and sometimes in the buggy. I was always happy to see him there when we were pioneering. I am so thankful that I can still feel that happiness when he gets home every afternoon.
Yes, pioneers may be a thing of the past. Possibly today, we have no frontier where one can prepare the way for another. But, I believe no one can question that the life I lived marked a primitive development in West Texas and New Mexico. It was a link between the old pioneering and the modern life of today.”
We once again mind our readers who may have missed the last couple of editions that this story was originally written by our great aunt Lucy in 1939.
Here’s a quote from Pres. Dwight Eisenhower that Ole Sag has found to be very useful.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
SAG