Men Who Matched the Mountains: The Forest Service in the Southwest

Oscar McClure, a Ranger on the Coconino and Prescott for more than 30 years, was telling of some of his experiences and he mentioned that "we fellows were always playing tricks on each other."

"There was a kind of funny one that has to do with Bob Monroe," he said. "One time we were down on Secret Mountain—went down to survey a fire and make an inspection. Coming back, our trail went down into Secret Canyon. There are water brakes every so far apart on the horseback trail. On one of these there was a small oak log that had about a two-inch hollow in the middle of it. The yellow jackets had built a nest in there.

"Well, now, if two fellows rode along there and they stayed right close together, they could get by all right. But if they were a little ways apart, the yellow jackets would be disturbed, and the fellow behind usually got nipped.

"There was another fellow with me and Bob that day and this other fellow was in a little bad humor with Bob, so he cut around and went someplace else before we got to this log. I trotted up—and Bob hit 'em just right!

"He was riding a big horse that weighed 1300, 1400 pounds, and he had one of those little old McClellan saddles. That horse squealed and took off. And Bob did too. He managed to stay with him until he got him under control.

"I never did tell him who did that. Bob would have killed him."

Perl Charles thinks that the funniest things that ever happened to him were back in the mid-20's when he was in the Jemez country.

"There was a fellow named Bert Pfingsten, who had the Ranger District next to mine when I was at Espanola. Pfingsten had the Bland District. This Bert Pfingsten was a very interesting man. Bert and I were always figuring projects where we could get together. One time we had to post the game refuge line around the Bandelier National Monument. We had to put a strip of black paint, then a strip of yellow paint. I took a packhorse and Bert took two pack mules and we were to bring supplies and stay there a week. Bert had the paint on his white mule—and the mule got scared and bucked the pack off and spilled black paint on one end and yellow paint on the other. He scattered groceries all over the hillside. When we went back to pick up the potatoes, we found everything but the baking powder. We had enough bread for two or three days and when we ran out, we had to make biscuits without baking powder—flapjacks—and they weren't very good.

"Another time we caught a little cub bear—Bert and I. There was a permittee named Pedro Garcia with us. We were trying to teach him to salt out where the feed was. We were working on this permittee when we found the bear.

"We were riding along, and we saw this little bear climbing a tree. Bert said, 'Let's stop and get him.' I told him I hadn't lost any bear. Well, Bert wanted him.

"Bert says, 'I'll go up and get him; you stay down here and keep the old bear away.' In those days everybody carried a gun, I don't know why, but we did. Bert got about half-way up the tree. I had a little .32 automatic and fired it a couple of times. Bert yelled, 'What's the matter?' I said, 'I think the old bear's coming.' He said, 'Don't let her come up here!' I waited a minute or two and I fired this gun a couple of times again and said, 'I don't think I can stop her.' He said, 'Well, I think I can jump out into this little white fir tree over here.' Then I burst out laughing, and he knew I was kidding. So he went to the top of the tree, and this little bear went just as far as he could. Bert had a little pigging line and he tried to slip it over the bear's head, and the bear would knock it off.

"So Bert climbed up just a little bit higher and grabbed the bear by the hind leg and called 'I got him!' I was standing out where I could see him, and about the time he yelled, 'I've got him!' the bear got him. He just reached down and caught Bert on the wrist. Bert yanked—gave quite a pull when the bear bit him, and pulled the bear out of the tree. Here he came, right down through the branches on this white fir. He hit the ground, and the first time it looked like he bounced about six feet high and the second time about half as high, and away he went. But he was a little groggy. I had a little rope, so I flipped it over his head and pulled him up.

"The bear turned around and looked at me. He was just about so high and he said, 'GRRRR' and here he came! I thought I could sidestep him, you know, and yank him around again. I started to sidestep him and I don't know what happened. I had my boots, spurs, chaps, everything on. I probably tripped over a spur or something. I fell down and as I started to fall I thought, 'Well, I may as well get this over with,' and I just made a header for that bear. I'm telling you, I wrestled that darned bear all over that little flat there. Talk about the cat and the bird. We really tore that place up! This Bert Pfingsten was up in the tree watching, he was having the time of his life. I'll never forget when I finally got that little bear choked down. I took a deep breath and up and here was this fellow, Pedro Garcia, and he was laughing. He had his shirt collar open, and tears were running down his face and were runnin' down his neck. He said, 'You're crazy.' Bert came on down and we put the bear in a sack and he said, 'Who's gonna carry him?' I said, 'I just don't need that bear, that's all there is to it.' He said, 'Maybe I can carry him on Old Buck.' He couldn't get Old Buck near him. I was holdin' the bear.

"Finally Bert got back about 30 yards and yelled, 'I'll run by you and when I do, throw me the bear.' He got up all the speed he could on that old horse and when he came by I heaved him the bear, and he caught him. That horse got his head down and really took off. Bert rode him—all the way—and took that little bear home.

"He had it down at the Bland Ranger Station, chained to a tree. They fed him in a little bowl, and that little bear, after a week or ten days, you'd go out there in the morning and he'd bring his bowl to you and wanted you to put some food in. They finally gave him to Albuquerque zoo."

The old-time Rangers all have horse stories to tell. Ranger Bob Ground liked to tell one about G. L. (Lee) Wang, who served for 15 years as a Ranger and additional years as a Supervisor. Back in 1928 when Harry Naylor was Ranger on the Tres Piedras District he arranged for a round-up of wild horses on the District.

"Naylor had bought a horse and it had a bad leg," Bob Ground reminisced. "The horse had gotten away, and in the round-up we rounded up this horse of Naylor's. Harry said, 'Put it up for sale just like the rest of 'em.'

"They put this horse up for sale, and Lee Wang was up there and he began to bid on it. Harry told him, 'Lee, you don't want that horse. It's only got three legs.' 'I want a tradin' horse,' Lee told him—so he bid it on up. I don't remember what he paid but it was something around $20. Anyway, he got the horse.

"He took it home, and he tried to trade it off down around Vallecitos, to some of those natives around there, but he didn't have any luck. They seemed to know more about the horse than Lee did!

"Then they had another round-up over on Canjilon District. Jim Newton was Ranger over there. Lee went around tryin' to trade this horse, and he couldn't find anybody to trade with except some people named Trujillo. They had a bunch of horses, so he finally talked up a trade, and got in trade a cayuse, a wild little bronco. Lee traded his three-legged horse for this little wild cayuse. When they got ready to leave, why they packed this little horse up. Jim Newton put the pack on, and he put it on to stay. Lee Wang started out ridin' his old, long-legged Sam horse, goin' off across the flats. I think Jim Newton was out there kinda shooin' the horse behind, 'cause the horse wouldn't lead. Finally, Lee got out of sight and Jim Newton came back. Some of the fellows sittin' on the corral fence there tellin' stories looked up and saw this little horse goin' across the flats with the pack on him—old Lee Wang behind it on his old Sam horse, just givin' it heck, tryin' to catch him! Of course, he didn't get him. After while he came back to the corral there. Of course the fellows couldn't keep from laughin' 'cause they saw the whole show. Lee told 'em what happened, said he'd give $5 reward for the horse, or the outfit. Things drifted along for a day or two, so he raised the ante, said he'd give $10. Still nothin' happened. Finally, he raised the ante again and told 'em they could have the horse, just bring his bed back. About that time, Manual Trujillo went out and shot the horse and got the bed and brought the bed in to Lee and collected his reward. The rumor was—I don't know whether there was any truth in it or not—they said he shot a hole through his bed. That was the end of Lee Wang's horse-tradin'!"

As far back as 1908, the Forest Service had sought to discourage the use of intoxicating liquors. One of the earliest orders issued by Chief Forester Pinchot was Service Order No. 12, noting that "the excessive use of intoxicants by members of the Forest Service is a bar to their efficiency and will be dealt with as such."

The order even discouraged "moderate drinking" at official gatherings, although it noted that "it is not competent for the Forest Service to require total abstinence."

A. O. Waha noted that Service Order No. 12 probably caused more discussion among field men than other more important orders, but said the order was "pretty generally followed."

Jim Monighan remembered one time when it was not "generally followed."

Monighan was scaling logs on the Sitgreaves National Forest, and working out of the old Los Burros Station.

"After a hard day's scaling in the mud and rain, we came into the old Los Burros Station," Monighan said. "Everett Hamilton was chief cook at that time, and he was making a cake. He had it in the oven. Duncan Lang and I came in together. It had been raining off and on all day and we were cold and wet—and hungry. We sat around for a little while and finally the weather got the best of us. I guess we had cabin fever, because we were chewing each other out and hard to get along with. For some reason, it just happened that I had a little bit of apricot brandy in my suitcase. Not knowing whether Dunc or Everett ever took a drink, I went in and got the bottle and set it up on the table and said, 'I don't care who knows that I take a drink. I'm gonna have a little drink.' So I took a little swig and Hamilton got up and said, 'I don't care who knows I take a drink,' so he took a little swig, and then Dunc Lang got up and said, 'I don't give a damn who knows I take a drink,'—so he had one, too. And after a while, you know, that cabin warmed up, and I don't know to this day whether we had a good supper or not!"

The oldtimers remember a lookout who had been hired for the Baker Butte lookout in the Long Valley District during World War II when men were hard to get. This one hadn't read—or certainly had not paid any attention to Service Order No. 12.

One time the lookout went into Payson, drunk, and was going to shoot up the town. After his arrest, it was discovered that his distillery was in the attic of the lookout tower!

Among oldtimers, Ralph Hussey, an early-day Ranger on the Gila and later Supervisor on the Coconino, was both a teller and subject of stories. Ray Kallus was telling about Hussey's entrance into the Forest Service.

Fred Winn, the Supervisor, told Hussey: "Ralph, there's a fire out there. Go, put it out."

Huss told Kallus, "Ray, I got ready and dashed 65 miles to the fire on a mule."

Later in his career, Hussey was on the Lincoln Forest making a land classification study with Sim Strickland, and they were just about to finish the assignment when a big snow came on and they were snowed in. Their food was about to run out, so as Kallus recalls the story, Huss said, "We'll just take our guns and go out and get a deer." They went out to get a deer. Huss went over one hill and Sim went the other direction. Sim saw a rabbit and he thought, "Well, maybe I won't see a deer," so he shot the rabbit. And he never saw a deer. Huss heard the shot and thought, "Well, maybe he didn't hit that deer." He saw a rabbit about that time, so he shot a rabbit. Sim heard the shot. Each of them thought, "Well, we're gonna have venison tonight, and until we get out of this snow."

They got back to the cabin about the same time, Kallus related, and each one was carrying a rabbit.

"Fred Arthur, Supervisor of this Forest, had a kind heart," Kallus said, "he wasn't gonna leave these land classifiers out in this snow-covered mountain where you couldn't get through. He would get through to them. He sent a fellow out—it could've been Reuben Boone—sent him out on a horse with a bag of flour, a little bacon and some other stuff, such as could be carried on the saddle of his horse, to give to these fellows to help them out. That grub was needed. They made whoever it was sit down and eat rabbit with them that night."

Kallus said that "Bill Brown was another character. Bill didn't believe in cooking anything but meat. He was the Ranger on the Long Valley District, and an oldtime Ranger. I don't know how long he was at Long Valley—for many years before I came to the Coconino, though, and that was in 1938. I remember that Hussey and he were always arguing. Bill Brown was telling about an incident that happened when he and Hussey were out on a trip. Hussey says, 'I just can't figure where it was that you are trying to tell me.' And Bill Brown says, 'Why you remember; I was eating an apple and I had the core, and I threw it at a squirrel.' Hussey says, 'Damn you, Bill Brown, you can confuse me more than any other man alive!'

"Old Bill Brown had a really hazardous fire district. You couldn't ever get him to lay off a lookout. The excuse always was, 'It rained where you say, but it hasn't rained at Bly.' That got to be a byword, 'Call Old Bill and find out if it rained down at Bly.'

"We had a fire meeting one time, and Bill finally told how bad it did rain. Huss was cussing him out because it never rained at Bly. Bill says, 'It does rain down there. Right now it is raining so hard the trees are sinking into the ground.' Well, there was a humorist who did a lot of writing who lives down in that part of the country, and he got hold of this story, that Bill Brown had said the trees were sinking out of sight. So he wrote it up, but he said that the fence posts were sinking out of sight. That story got all over Arizona.

"One time during the hunting season, Bill Brown didn't want a bunch of hunters in a certain area. There was one place along the entrance road where, if a certain tree fell down it would keep hunters from driving into that area. They couldn't get through without getting out and moving that tree. In some way or another, that tree did fall down!

"There was some evidence that it had been blasted by dynamite, but of course, we would never have thought that Bill Brown could have done it!"

Some of the incidents that Rangers remember as humorous now were not so humorous when they happened—at least not to some of the victims of practical jokes or unusual accidents.

Gordon Bade recalled an unusual incident when he was scaling logs on the Coconino. "I watched a couple of log cutters cut down this fair-sized yellow pine, and when it hit the ground it burst open," Bade said. "It was hollow, and alive with bats! Bats fluttered on the ground and crawled around. One of the log cutters went to another tree and started cutting, and all of a sudden I noticed him peeling off his overalls. . . . shook them out. One of the bats had crawled up his pants leg. We yelled—wow! We thought that was great. About that time one of them got up my pants leg—and I had to shake my own. They've got sharp claws. There were scores of them. The daylight blinded them, and they were stunned, I suppose, from the fall, and they were trying to get back where it was dark—and pants legs were the nearest spot."

Perl Charles was telling about a trip he made in the field with Ranger Ed Tucker of the Mt. Taylor District of the Cibola Forest and remembered they got caught on top of Mt. Taylor as it was getting dark and starting to snow.

"I didn't think we had a chance in the world of getting back to our camp before dark, and neither did he," Charles said. "And we knew if we wandered around in that country after dark, we'd have trouble. He said, 'Well, can you do without your coffee tonight?' And I said, 'Sure, why?' He said, 'Well, we can go up and stay all night at La Mosca cabin on top of the lookout.' We went on up and the wind was blowing forty miles an hour, stacking a little snow up on the side of the trees. We found some boxes and got a little wood and built a fire. We had some emergency rations from World War I, and we dragged them out. I had eaten them before, so that didn't worry me too much. Finally, I said, 'Where's the water. I need a drink of water,' 'Water?' he asked. 'Didn't I tell you that you couldn't have any coffee?' 'Yes,' I said, 'you told me I couldn't have any coffee, but you didn't say I couldn't have a drink of water.'

"Oh, that fellow was having fun. He sure enjoyed it more than I did."

Perl Charles had a similar experience earlier with his Supervisor, Frank Andrews, when he was a Ranger on the Espanola District. But that time it was Frank Andrews who went without his coffee.

"I never knew a man in the Forest Service—or anyplace else—that I had a higher regard for than I had for Frank Andrews," Charles said. "That was one of the best men I ever knew in my life—and one of the crankiest. He came over there one time to the south side of the Baca Location and wanted to put an emergency lookout on Rabbit Mountain. We had a bunch of World War I telephone wire, but I didn't have a packhorse. He said, 'Well, get a packhorse and pack it up there.' I met him, but I'd had trouble with the packhorse and was a little late. So he wasn't in a very good humor. He said, 'Aw, I'll go on. I'll meet you on top of the mountain.' He started off, and then he came back and said, 'Can you put this on the pack, too?' I said, 'Certainly, what is it?' He said, 'That's my lunch.'

"I thought he was making a mistake, but he was the boss. Who was I to question him? That was my first year on the District. Instead of getting up there at noon as he thought I would, I got there about dark. He said, 'I don't feel very good, I've got a headache. Do you have enough outfit with you that I can stay all night?' I said I thought so. So we hobbled our horses, and I built a fire and was stirring around to fix us a bite. Finally, he said, 'Where's your coffee?' I said, 'Mr. Andrews, I don't drink it and when I'm by myself I don't carry it.' He said, 'Well, I'll be God damned!'

"He never said another word. He turned around and went out and got that old bay horse, saddled him up and went down the canyon in the dark. Didn't say good-bye or anything.

"I thought my Forest Service career was ended right there. In later years I could kid him about it. He said, 'Oh, it wasn't the coffee altogether. That was pretty much of a hen-skin outfit you had there anyway. I didn't like the looks of it.'"

Fred Miller was a Ranger on the Zuni District soon after World War I and one time was riding from McGaffey to El Morro. "I remember I came down a very steep slope that was covered with woodland type, and here was a Navajo girl—or woman—riding a burro," Miller related. "She was wearing a voluminous skirt, and she was wearing a beautiful concho belt. She had on an old brown jacket and a voluminous skirt with this beautiful belt. I wanted to buy the belt.

"There I was, sitting on my horse, a great big horse—trying to make her understand. I couldn't speak Mexican or Navajo, and she couldn't speak English. Using a kind of sign language, I started pointing to the belt. Finally she started to laugh, and after a while she got down from her donkey, sat down under a tree and started to pull her dress off. I was still on my horse. I started shaking my head and yelling, 'No, no, no!'

"Then she got real mad and started picking up rocks and throwing them at me. You can bet that I decided about then it was time to hightail it out of there!"

Back in 1911, Assistant District Forester J. K. Campbell was the victim of one of the practical jokes that Rangers sometimes staged—but it had no serious consequences. The story is told in an old report of the Datil National Forest.

Campbell had gone to Magdalena to make a grazing inspection on the western part of the District. He and Supervisor Goddard drove the District Office's well known team of horses—Blueberry and Strawberry—to the Tularosa Ranger Station. As has been noted before, Blueberry was a gentle horse under saddle, but Strawberry was a powerful bucker when the mood was on him.

When Campbell and Goddard got to the Tularosa station, they saddled up the team for their inspection ride. The Ranger at Tularosa station was Bill Bunton. He had known Campbell well in Albuquerque, so he took him aside and warned him that Supervisor Goddard was quite a practical joker.

"If Bert tries to get you to ride a certain horse, you insist you want to ride the other one," Ranger Bunton warned.

When Goddard suggested to Campbell that he ride "Blue" because it was a gentle horse, Campbell said no, he'd ride the other one.

Goddard reluctantly consented but warned that Strawberry was a rough actor.

Campbell, probably smiling to himself that he had outmaneuvered the Supervisor, mounted the powerful Strawberry. Thinking all was well, he sank his spurs into the horse—and away they went. Strawberry put his head down and began to buck. He did his best to throw his rider. Campbell, taken by surprise, was almost thrown—but his skill as a horseman saved him, and he was not unseated.

He later learned the real joker was Bunton—not Supervisor Goddard.

When Model T Fords began to get popular before World War I, some of the Rangers decided to try them out—and probably decided they would never replace the horse.

Back in 1916, Don S. Sullivan, a Ranger on the Coronado Forest bought a Model T, and he recounted his early adventures with it in a report to Supervisor Don P. Johnston:*

"I have purchased a Ford this week, and the designs I left on the road, while not copyrighted, have drawn considerable attention. When I first started it up, it was a success—until I tried to stop it, and as I did not know the combination, I failed on this point.

"After circling the yard twice, I concluded I needed about four more gates and as the only gate was closed, I compromised between the gateposts and took the gate on the northwest corner of the radiator.

"The conquest seemed to stimulate Lizzie and I was carried on an independent excursion over the mesquite thickets. I soon caught sight of an authority on Fords and tried to draw his attention by following his lead. By a flank movement he boarded and shut off the gas.

"By a liberal supply of paint and by moving the accordion bellows design out of the starboard fender, Lizzie and I have been able to recognize each other and expect to become fast friends."

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*The story of Ranger Sullivan's trials and tribulations was told in the Arizona Star, December 3, 1916.

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