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

The well-equipped Ranger of the 1900-1910 period would hardly consider riding out over his District without his rifle and six-shooter. The guns were as necessary a part of his equipment as his tools for firefighting.

When the technically trained foresters began to come into the Service from the East, they were usually less inclined to carry guns—and, in fact, some had never before handled weapons.

As Bob Ground, longtime cowboy Ranger on the Santa Fe and Carson National Forests, put it, "People around here, everybody carried a gun, and everybody that rode much always carried guns on their saddles. I did just like they did, I got guns and carried a gun, too."

Ground said he never did use the gun on anybody, but once "scared a man down there pretty bad. There was this fellow that was supposed to be a bad man, a horsethief—run him out of the country once. I just scared the life out of him. I rode down around his place on a barefoot horse after a rain. He saw my tracks."

An undated paper in the files of the Magdalena District of the Datil National Forest discussing the history of the District for the 1910-13 period reported that "frontier conditions obtained throughout the Forest in 1910, and the residents of one of the principal creeks were said by one of the Washington inspectors to be as hard a lot as existed on any Forest in the Nation."

The report went on to note that "while conditions in Magdalena at this time were not quite as lively as they were in the old days when the cowboys were said to have run their horses up and down the board sidewalks of the main street and jumped them off the high end near the Santa Fe branch railway station, occasionally shooting into the air, or perhaps putting bullets through the walls of the few houses that bordered the street . . . still, in the fall when some 100,000 head of cattle and sheep were handled through the corrals, things were decidedly brisk, and the saloons and brothels did a heavy business."

Two Rangers in the Magdalena district unfortunately were involved in a killing that resulted when they were deputized by the Sheriff to assist in trailing a rustler.

Assistant Rangers J. D. Jones and Clinton Hodges and a rancher, J. W. Medley, owner of one of the big ranch outfits, came upon the suspected rustler in the act of burning the offal from a carcass of a cow belonging to Medley. The Rangers, both armed with 30-30's approached the man and were within a few feet of him when he reached for his six-shooter. The gun was out of the holster when both Rangers fired. The rustler's gun fell from his hand as he dropped to the ground without firing, dying instantly. The Rangers were exonerated after a hearing.

When Stanley Wilson was Deputy Supervisor on the Datil National Forest a few years later the Rangers were having trespass troubles because certain ranchers were running unpermitted cattle on the Forest. It was decided to have a roundup.

"These are dangerous people," Supervisor Douglas told his Rangers. "You'd better all wear guns."

To Stan Wilson it seemed ridiculous because as he put it, "I would have been of no use in a gunfight because I wouldn't have known when to start. I mean somebody could have killed me three times before I ever pulled my gun."

Wilson said that he figured the only fellow who showed real sense in the situation was Garvin Smith, a Ranger from Chloride.*

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*Father of Zane Smith, a second generation Ranger, who began his career in the Forest Service in 1937.

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"I'm not wearing a gun," Smith told Wilson. "It's not my game and I'm not wearing a gun for anybody."

Wilson said the group had started for the roundup without telling any of the ranchers about it, and when they got to the roundup area, Supervisor Douglas sent Wilson and Garvin Smith to the headquarters of the ranch that was in the trespass.

"I had an army gun on my hip," Wilson said. "I tried to hide it under my sweater, but it didn't work very well. We got down to B's place. He took one look at us and went in and came out with a rifle. I told him we were rounding up his stock. We had a little conversation about it.

"Then we started picking up his stock right there at his ranch and driving them. Boy, I didn't feel happy about that because we were turning our backs on people and we didn't know what they would do.

"The interesting thing was, it was a foggy morning and they thought they could get in there and run their cattle off the Forest. Instead of bothering with us, as soon as we were out of sight, he and his two sons saddled up and went up into the Forest. Well, as it happened, we had quite a few people. When the ranchers went along the ridge, they met two of our men. When they went somewhere else, they met two more. So they decided it wasn't lucky. They threw in with us, but tried to beat us as much as they could. It was a very unhappy time. I remember I was riding a little gray horse. I was punching some cattle on top of a canyon, and there was kind of a steep edge. I heard B. say, 'Well, I don't wish that gray horse any ill luck, but I wish he'd go over the cliff. There'd be one less so-and-so.'"

Fred Croxen was the Ranger on the Bly District of the Coconino National Forest in 1921 and had the misfortune to have on his District an ex-convict, who was on parole from the State prison at Florence, and who had the reputation of being a boastful bad man.

This fellow—we'll call him Bird, though it wasn't his name—had made trouble for Ranger Croxen and had made threats against him to people down in the desert country. They had passed along the word to Croxen as a friendly warning. Croxen had passed the information along to the Supervisor, Ed Miller, and also to Sheriff Bill Campbell, who had been a former Ranger on the Coconino. So they were pretty familiar with the situation. But when Miller was away, Bob Rinehart was acting as Supervisor, and he knew nothing about the trouble between Bird and Croxen. Rhinehart sent a letter to Croxen telling him that Bird wanted to trim some limbs of pinyon pine trees in his forest pasture so the grass would grow better and that the matter needed to be checked.

Croxen's first thought was that it was a put-up job by Bird to get him down there.

"I studied over it for two or three days and didn't sleep much those two or three nights," Croxen recounted. "Finally I decided, 'I will be considered a coward if I don't go down. I might just as well quit if I'm a coward.'

"So I went down but couldn't do any business with him. He wanted to do business directly with the Forest Office. I went over about a quarter of a mile to a brother of his. They hadn't been on speaking terms for about a couple of years until just before that. So I went down to his place, and he said he was gonna do all his business with the Forest Office, too. I said, 'That's all right.'

"I had to come back by this Charlie's place. I heard a rifle shot over by the house. I looked over, and he had tried out his rifle out on a bucket hanging on a post about 75 yards from the house. He shoved the rifle in the scabbard of his saddle; he had saddled this mare of his and he'd shoved the rifle in there.

"Farmer-like, instead of getting on his horse and riding around, he led her by the bit, and she hung back—fortunately for me. I had to go through his gate because I wasn't gonna go turn back to old Arthur's place, because he'd probably have his .30-gun out there laying for me, too. (I found out later that he didn't carry fire-arms at all.) Well, Charlie had gone around to his barn and had mounted his mare. In the meantime I had opened this gate, and he came out and spotted me. He rode over and said, 'You've trespassed me three times and I'm gonna make you stop it, understand?' He dropped his hand down to his right trouser pocket. I knew he had a .380 Savage automatic, and that was where he always carried it. I had my pistol stuck in my belt—and I out with it, and I never saw a man move so quick in my life. I shot right where his heart ought to have been and he went off the right-hand side of his horse. That darned bullet just creased him right across the top of the head. My horse jumped, I'd never shot off this horse before, it was little horse of my wife's. Charlie jumped up just right, and I shot him again. It went clear through him, and he just reached up and took about a foot and a half shorter grasp on the bridle reins. Then I shot him in the head. The bullet broke his neck, right at the base of the brain. He went down.

"I rode to the Ranger Station and called Ed Miller and told him, then I said, 'You get C. B. Wilson.' C. B. Wilson was our family attorney as well as the owner of the building that the Forest Office was in at the time. I asked Miller to notify Sheriff Campbell, too. C. B. Wilson was in Phoenix, and Sheriff Campbell was at Grand Canyon. They both got there as quick as they could. Well, Campbell impaneled a coroner's jury. They came out from Winslow and met me on the way in to Winslow. I had a Model T. Ford, and the front wheels were shimmying, so I went on into town along with the Sheriff. I turned over my six-shooter to Sheriff Campbell and kept my .30 gun. When we got into Winslow we walked up the street, with me still wearing my .30 gun, to the Palace Hotel and secured a room. When we got into that room he handed me his six-shooter and says, 'Here, you take this. If any of those fellows try to break in here, let 'em have it.' Well, I took it, and thought, 'Well, this won't do,' so I gave it back to him, and thanked him.

"The next day we went out to where this shooting happened. I showed them about it, and then we went into Winslow, and then from Winslow to Flagstaff. Next day I told my story before the coroner's jury there. The coroner's jury brought in a verdict of justifiable homicide. Along sometime in February we had a preliminary hearing and the Judge said, 'After listening to all this testimony, and in view of the verdict of the coroner's jury, I can't find any grounds for further court action.' And the case was dismissed right there. While we were there, Mrs. Bird was there, and she came over to my wife and put her arm around her and she said, "I'm glad he got it instead of your . . . husband."

One of the fabulous cowmen of an earlier generation in New Mexico was Cole Railston. He earned a niche in history as one of the great pioneers of the range. Eugene Manlove Rhodes used him to portray some of his fictional characters in his Saturday Evening Post stories of the 1920's, and he is among these that Agnes Morley Cleaveland portrayed in No Life for a Lady.

Samuel R. Servis who was a Ranger in the Magdalena District in the thirties became well acquainted with Railston in connection with his official duties and collected many stories about the great old cowman.

"Railston was 78 when I knew him. He went to a dance one night in Magdalena, got to dancing with Mrs. Gibson, the wife of another Ranger there at Magdalena. They got to cutting up. Cole was so deaf, he couldn't hear the music, but he would get behind somebody and follow them. Apparently he got behind some high-stepper, for suddenly down went Mrs. Gib and ol' Cole. He broke her finger and she kicked out two of his ribs!"

Servis said he believed Cole Railston was probably one of the best managers of a range that he'd ever been around. "He knew range management from the word go. He knew so much about grazing that it was interesting to ride with him, and he had a reason for everything. He and an old sheepman up north—I think he was in Region 2—were the two people that the Forest Service first visited when they made the grazing policy and regulations in the Forest Service. Our grazing policy today is exactly as Cole dictated it to the Forest Service except for two things: the distribution policy which he never agreed with, and the free-use policy which allowed the homesteaders to come in. It was made for the homesteaders, and he had no use for the homesteaders."

Servis told a story that was current at the time about a homesteader and his family and their cattle and horses who came by the headquarters ranch of the V-Cross-T in those days. The homesteader asked Cole where he could get a little water. Cole said: "You can fill your quart jar up at the well outside here, and then go on—but you aren't to stop on my range."

Servis remembered with delight that he rode for a week with Cole. "He had an allotment out on the range—East Berley, I believe it was. He was extremely interesting. We would get up at 3 o'clock in the morning and work like the deuce and make our breakfast right quick, then ride until about 3 o'clock. We would come in and make biscuits and visit and play coon can until midnight. Then we'd sleep until 3 o'clock and get up and run like fools until 3, and then eat hurriedly and play coon can and visit."

Talking about the homesteaders, Servis told how Railston had paid his cowboys 50 cents a corner to ride all over the country and pick up section corners and turn them over. "When the homesteaders came in and endeavored to locate a piece of land, which they had to do, and it had to be surveyed, they couldn't find any corner. Cole would always say, 'Well, the country is not surveyed. You better go on about your business.' So they didn't settle there. This also happened with the outfit that was down on the Gila River. They did the same thing when the homesteaders came in. They shoved them all through to Arizona and elsewhere. That's one reason there weren't many old ranches along the Gila River on the New Mexico side. That's also the reason why the water of the Gila all goes to Arizona. It was settled prior to the time that New Mexico settled along the rivers. Our old-time stockmen pushed them out of this country and shoved them right on down the Gila River into the desert around Safford and Coolidge and so forth. That's how all the water got to Arizona. They established use rights that way along the river."

Servis said that Cole had eight or ten of the top gunmen of the West riding his west line.

"Those people came in to homestead or to hide out from the law. They endeavored to raise a few crops along the rivers, along the Middle Fork and the East Fork, and couldn't do it. So they naturally went to preying on the adjoining large stockmen. They started butchering beef and jerking it and taking it to the miners at Mogollon and Georgetown and Santa Rita and everywhere else they could peddle the jerk-meat."

The V-Cross-T was a big outfit and Servis described it as extending from the Gila River to Apache Creek, bordered on the west by the Negrito, on the east by the Rio Grande and on the north by the mountains beyond Red Lake.

"They had a light year when they branded 10,000 calves," Servis said.

He noted that Cole Railston was responsible for the Forest Service's salting policy, which was established after Talbot came out from Washington and talked to him.

Talbot asked Cole how he was salting livestock. "Why, away from water, Mr. Talbot, away from water, of course."

Servis said Cole's policy was to salt on feed most of the year but he salted on water two months of the year when he wanted the cows bred, then the rest of the time salted on feed, away from water. "And he moved the salt where the feed was quite continually," Servis said. "In fact, he carried a burlap sack to pick up salt and pack it around with him as he went around the range."

So when Talbot visited Cole and asked how he salted his range, and Cole told him "away from water," Talbot told him he'd have to prove it. So Talbot got on a horse and they rode out on a long ridge toward Magdalena. Salt was scattered up and down the ridge for about six miles. There was no water on either side.

Servis said that what Cole didn't tell Talbot was how the salt got there in the first place.

"It seems," Servis related, "that a cowboy was sent out to scatter a wagonload of salt along the range and was told where to put it.

"It was toward the end of the week, and he was going to a dance in Magdalena, so he hid his saddle under the tarp. When he got out on the range, he decided he wouldn't go around the regular trail or wagon roads to scatter the salt, but that he would cross the ridge. It was springtime, and when he brought the wagon out on top of the ridge, he got bogged down and couldn't get out. He unhooked the team and put the harnesses in under the tarp and sent one horse back to the ranch; just turned him loose and, of course, he went back to the ranch. He climbed aboard the other horse and rode to Magdalena for a big shindig on the town, and a dance and a drink. Well, he came back to the ranch the following week and ol' Cole was madder than a wet hen, and he said, 'Well, where's the wagon and where did you put the salt?' The cowboy said, 'I bogged the wagon down.' So Cole said, 'You go on up the ridge and get the wagon out and scatter the salt up and down the ridge, and don't go any farther.'

"Well, it was just about two weeks later that here came Talbot. Cole took him out and spent two days on that ridge with a big story telling Talbot just how to do it. But he actually did salt like that and he actually believed in it. Except at breeding time for the cows, and then he salted on water so that the bulls wouldn't have to walk too far to find the cows. He would always try to keep some waters closed up during the breeding time so that he could keep the cows pretty well gathered around for a couple of months, and the salt and bulls were kept on water.

"Now when you were riding with him and he found a cow that was bulling, he'd take off and spend the rest of the time hunting a bull and take her right to the bull, because it was too hard on the bull to get up there. But he sure would drive that old cow up to the bull. Another thing, he'd come along and a fence was down, boy, he'd stop everything right then and there and patch it up. Even though he carried a little sack full of new staples, he'd hunt up the old staples. As he pointed out, that was what made money in the cow business—instead of using something new all the time, instead of coming back with the work crew and fixing the fence—you fixed it as you went by, you did everything as you saw it. When you needed more salt, you went and found a salt ground that had salt on it, and moved it, and tried to determine why the cows didn't come to that particular neck of the woods and use the salt. That was the way to manage range and, of course, you had to ride everyday. You couldn't go to the bar and stand your foot up on the rail, so forth and so on. No, Cole knew, within a few cents, exactly what he paid for prunes, horse-shoe nails, or horse-shoes, by months, by the year. He had a tremendous mind and was quite a stockman, in my opinion."

Besides rustling there was also bootlegging down in the Gila country. During prohibition days, Federal officers made numerous attempts to dry up the source of the southwestern mountain version of "Taos Lightning."

When G. Lee Wang was a Ranger on the Mimbres District, he was almost arrested himself as a bootlegger.

It has been the custom of the State Game and Fish Department to stock the mountain streams, even the ones almost impossible to reach except on horseback. Wang would help out by leading a pack outfit of mules with fish for planting up the head waters of the Mimbres.

"I packed ten or eleven mules, two cans to a mule," Wang said, "and took them up the Mimbres. On the way down again, it got dark, and I hadn't tied these cans on particularly tight. Here was a string of mules, ten or eleven of them, with loose cans, jogging along. All of a sudden a couple of fellows came out there and stopped us."

One of the men said, "You're under arrest."

"For what?"

"For transporting white mule whiskey."

Wang was a bit flabbergasted. "Do you know who I am or what I had in these cans?"

"Well, I don't know, but you're under arrest."

Wang remembers that the revenuers really thought they had made a big haul.

"If you'll look in those cans," he told then, "you'll see that they are empty. This afternoon, they did have fish in them. I packed fish up to the head of the river."

So the prohibition agents had to look elsewhere for the source of the white mule that was coming out of the Gila.

There was probably a still in many of the southwestern mountains in those days.

Ed Groesbeck, who was a Ranger on the Sitgreaves and the Carson back in the twenties and thirties remembered that a cache of whiskey gave Bootlegger Hill, near Flagstaff, its name.

"When they were cutting timber in that area," he explained, "they piled brush along the road. It laid there most of the summer. That fall Bob Rinehart and his crew started out one day to burn brush. They had just started to light these piles when down the road came a car hell-bent for election. It went through and around this crew and got to about three or four piles ahead of them. A guy got out of the car and run over to the pile and got a jug and put it in the back of the car. He went on and stopped at every three or four piles and must of got four or five jugs out finally. His bootleg whiskey was hidden in that brush and Bob was about to burn it up. So they called the darned place Bootlegger Hill after that."

Rangers have a variety of stories of wrecked stills and ruins where stills were operated that they have come across in their patrols.

Lee Wang recalled that in McKnight Canyon there was a still about half a mile above an old sawmill camp. "I was coming up the canyon one morning on horseback," he said. "The prohibition boys had been there and wrecked the still. This must have been just the day before. They'd tipped over some of the barrels and some of them were still standing, full of mash.

"The chipmunks were in there—50 to 75 of them, I'd say. And the drunkest things you ever saw in your life. They'd eaten that mash, and they'd just almost fight you. It must have been good fightin' whiskey because those little devils would stand up there, straight up, just looking at you and cussing you out—drunker'n all get-out."

There was a lot of violence in the Gila country during—and before—the early years of the Forest Service. Ben Kemp who grew up in the Forest and worked as a cowboy, lawman, and Ranger, knew the Gila country like the back of his hand. He had wanted to be a Ranger ever since he was a kid when Fred Winn was the first Ranger in the District where he lived, about 1908.

Kemp said the naming of Dead Man Spring was a result of a gun fight between three cowboys that started over a snide remark about one cowboy's sister. He mentioned also a bunch of graves in a horse pasture at Negrito, where Victorio and his Apaches had killed nine of Solomon Luna's sheepherders in the 1880's.

"They killed the sheepherders and turned all the sheep loose on the range," Kemp said. "Sheep were running all over that country. Some sheepmen around Aragon got their start from those loose sheep. Two V-Cross cowboys were riding the range out there about a year later and they ran onto nearly 2,000 head of sheep. A couple of dogs were herding those sheep. They were trained to take care of sheep and that was a year or better after the Indians had killed the sheepherders.

"The dogs wouldn't let the cowboys come up to the herd. They'd charge 'em every time the cowboys got close. Those fellows killed the two dogs. Dad always said it was something pretty bad for them to kill the dogs after they had guarded their sheep for better than a year."

Later on Solomon Luna had the rock monuments set up in the pasture—one for each sheepherder killed—and a priest held a service there, blessing the campo santo, although actually there were no bodies. The bodies had never been found, although Bob Lewis, Marshall of Magdalena, later found several skeletons.

Indian raids were frequent in the Gila country until the late 1880's. Probably the last Indian marauder to live in the Gila area was the Apache Kid, as he was called, though he was not the same person as the Apache Kid of Arizona.

The Kid stole a horse that had once belonged to Ben Kemp's father. The horse was one of a band of wild horses that the elder Kemp and others had "walked down" from the high country in many days of running them tender-footed until they could be corraled. The horse* that the Apache Kid finally stole was just a colt then, a brown blaze-faced colt, with stocking legs. The Kemps named him Baldy Socks.

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*The horse was stolen a second time and resulted in an argument between the horse thief and a man who was going to report it, resulting in the latter being killed. Then the horse was killed and buried to destroy the evidence, according to Kemp.

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"That colt," said Ben Kemp, "made one of the best cuttin' horses in the Southwest."

The elder Kemp sold the horse to Charlie Anderson in 1900.

"That horse was the cause of two different men gettin' killed. One of them was the Apache Kid who stole him. A posse eventually trailed him to the top of the San Mateos.

"By the time they got up on Blue Mountain side there it was dark, or almost dark. They could see fire-light right down ahead, in one of the deep saddles. They tried to get down there but couldn't make it. They found it too rough, and got off on the wrong point and went down the wrong way and had to back track. By the time they got back on top it was nearly daylight. As soon as it got daylight they could see tracks going down this ridge. They went down the ridge and got down on the side of the slope into this saddle, and they run into horses grazing on the side of the hill. So of course Billy knew this horse of his Dad's as soon as he saw him.

"They just got off their horses and laid down in the grass among the logs and rocks, and waited amongst the horses. Along about daylight—the sun was just comin' up—the Apache Kid come up there to get the horses. Bill Kiehne said he walked up to within 16 feet of them. They had all agreed to shoot at once, and boy, they let 'im have it. He was carrying a rifle across his arm. They said he jumped as high as he could go, nearly, and went right over backwards and threw his rifle—he had a .30-.40 and they said he threw that rifle down the side of that hill about 30 steps.* There was another Indian with him and when they started shootin' at him he run off down through the saddle—and they never did find his body. But there was blood spattered on the rocks just like you'd shot a deer through the heart. So they figured he didn't get away."

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*A story of horse and wife stealing by Apache Kid, by Eugene Manlove Rhodes appears in the January, 1928 issue of New Mexico Highway Journal (now New Mexico Magazine).

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Henry Woodrow, who spent his entire career as a Ranger in one District of the Gila National Forest—the McKenna Park District—is another one of the authorities on events and people of the great Gila National Forest country.

In 1912 he was assigned to handle the count of sheep (nearly 20,000) to be grazed on the McKenna District.

At that time there were three big outfits on the District: the Bergere Estate, Frank A. Hubbell, and Solomon Luna, who also looked after the Bergere interests.

Woodrow had been warned by well-meaning friends that it would be a hard job and that he would have a difficult time trying to get along with Solomon Luna.

"I told them that I had been around Spanish-American people most of my life and that I thought I could get along with them," Woodrow related. "I met Mr. Luna and found him to be very agreeable, also his nephews, Ed and Manuel Otero, whom I met a great many times later on the sheep range.

"After I got the sheep counted that were to go on my District, Mr. Luna called all his foremen and herders together and made a talk to them. Instructed them to cooperate with me in every way they could in the way of keeping down fires and handling sheep, as I would direct them on the range, and to let me count any herds at any time and to keep off the cattle ranges. So I had no trouble to speak of from then on. Very few fires ever occurred on this District from sheep camps."

Old time cattlemen in the Gila country were Ab Alexander and Buck Powell. Henry Woodrow recalled that Powell was involved in a killing in E E Canyon in the 90s, as result of a feud between homesteaders.

"James Huffman was a homesteader on a piece of land on Middle Fork near the mouth, which is now part of the Heart Bar Ranch," Woodrow said. "Jordan Rodgers also had a homestead, which is part of the Heart Bar, and had a bunch of cattle on the West Fork in the Prior country, running with Jim Huffman's cattle.

"Huffman had threatened Rodgers' life and Rodgers was afraid to go up there and work his cattle. One day Rodgers and Buck Powell rode up EE Canyon and they met James Huffman and started a row. Buck Powell shot Huffman once, and Rodgers, thinking he was not dead, rode up and fired several shots into him. Rodgers stood trial and came clear. Huffman was buried beside William Grudging, killed by Tom Wood, just south of the Grudging cabin.

"Buck Powell was later killed at the little mining town of Fairview."

Ranger Ben Kemp was also familiar with the story of Buck Powell and remembered the details of his death.

"Some fellow by the name of Allen killed him," Kemp said. I suppose there was some kind of feud. Buck had come in the bar at Fairview. Old Man Marks was running the bar. Buck was standin' up at the bar and he had a pocket knife in his hand and was pecking on the bar—just standin' there absent-mindedly turning the knife over and letting it drop on the bar. Old Man Marks said, 'Buck, don't do that. The boys have beat it with six-shooters and one thing and another and dented it already. The old bar's already in bad shape.' Buck said, 'Yes, all right,' and just stuck the knife in his pocket.

"This Allen just jerked out his six-shooter and shot him from the hip and hit him right between the eyes and killed him instantly. They never did know what the trouble was. They sent Allen to the penitentiary for 50 years, I think it was, and he died in the penitentiary."

In later years, Ab Alexander, mentioned as an associate of Powell's, was a permittee on the Gila and ran some cattle from the N Bar Ranch on the Forest.

When A. O. Waha was working out of Silver City in McClure's time back in 1906-07, he used to stop over with Ab Alexander and Shack Simmons at the N Bar when on patrol.

"Ab owned cattle and Shack worked for him," Waha related. "They were bachelors and lived very simply. Their log cabin was very comfortable. The meals, usually comprising yearling beef cooked in a dutch oven in deep fat, sourdough biscuits, potatoes and thick canned milk gravy and coffee, were just what an outdoor man required and liked, and there was always plenty of horse feed, so I never passed up an opportunity of stopping with them. Besides they were good company.

"Ab was quiet and reserved, while Shack was inclined to be outspoken. His language was most picturesque. A forest guard had stayed with them at the ranch for awhile whom Shack did not like. It seemed that he bragged too much—and in other respects showed he was not the kind of man to be admired by a man of Shack's temperament. So when Shack was later telling me about this guard, he said, 'Hell, he hadn't enough brains to grease a gimlet. You can knock the pith out of a horse hair and put his brains in and they would rattle like a peanut in a boxcar.'"

Sam Sowell, who was Ranger on the Araviapa District of the Crook National Forest in the twenties, found in that isolated District that law and order were very limited even in those years of the late twenties.

"Over the years, it was the scene of many gun battles," Sowell related in a paper describing his assignment in the District. "In the early days, the Galiuro Mountains was a hideout for the tough element around Tombstone and Charlestown."

In those days, Safford and Wilcox were the nearest shopping centers and the Ranger usually made a trip once a month for supplies. Mail service was limited to three days a week. There were no telephones and no radio communication on the District.

"As late as 1925 to 1930, during my assignment on this District," Sowell wrote, "range disputes and murder continued. During this time there were thirteen cold-blooded murders committed, and only one man paid the penalty for his acts—he committed suicide.

"In the earlier days, it was the custom for Forest Rangers to carry guns, but I soon learned that was a sure way to get into trouble, and discontinued this practice.

"In June 1930, we were having Sunday dinner with my wife's family and someone called to me from the front of the Ranger Station. As I reached the door he called again and at that time I saw him fall from his horse. This was a young man about 25, and our nearest neighbor. I could readily see that he was badly hurt, with his clothing saturated with blood. Although shot through the body with a Winchester carbine he was able to relate the entire story to us and remained conscious for 45 minutes. Within a matter of minutes the assailant and his son drove up in a car, got out with gun in hand, walked over to the dying man, looked the crowd over and left.

"This shooting had happened approximately one mile below the Ranger Station, along the stream bed of the Aravaipa, and he rode his horse across country through a dense stand of mesquite to the Ranger Station. The assailant was following him by car, but had to go around the mesquite thicket to the highway, which took him a few minutes longer to reach the Station. It was assumed he was following him to finish the job as he was not aware he was mortally wounded until he saw he was shot through the body and dying at the time. Within a matter of only a few hours the entire community arrived at the scene, besides the tourists passing, and a very large crowd assembled. The victim was very popular in the community and the citizens were worked up to a point of a lynching party. A posse was quickly formed and organized to prevent the culprit's escape. Had he been encountered the results would, no doubt, have been serious. He no doubt realized the situation and drove direct to Safford, the county seat, and reported the killing. Self-defense, of course. But the young man was at the Station before and after the incident, and was not armed. The assailant and his son were placed in the county jail and during the night he committed suicide by cutting his throat with a dull pocket knife."

Ranger Sowell recalled another incident of a shooting in 1927 when a rancher named Clayton was riding his horse toward home from a cattle drive and was waylaid and shot from his horse.

The killing was not discovered for several days, then it was determined that Clayton's body had been dragged by horseback several miles into the Galiuro Mountains and left in a deep arroyo. The sheriff formed a posse, and Ranger Sowell was sworn in as a member. Indian trailers were employed from the San Carlos Reservation, but due to heavy rains the trail could not be followed. A hat and spurs were found, however.

Circumstantial evidence pointed toward a neighbor, who was arrested and brought to trial. All indications were that a conviction was evident, Sowell recalled.

However, on the night of the last day of the trial, Ranger Sowell discovered from his diary that the man was innocent. He rode into Klondyke, where the trial was being held, and showed his diary to officials. On the day that the accused was charged with killing Clayton, the diary showed that he was making a range inspection in company with the Ranger!

Sowell testified to the diary evidence, and the jury brought in a verdict of "not guilty."

Clayton's killer was never discovered.

When Zane Smith, the second generation forester, was just a boy, his father Garvin Smith was District Ranger at Mayhill, east of Cloudcroft.

"The country was pretty wide open," Zane Smith recalled. "There weren't very many fences, and one of the big problems confronting the Rangers was getting livestock numbers under control. Trespass was a tremendous problem. The National Forests hadn't been in existence long enough to be very well accepted. The established ranchers in the country included many individuals who had grown up and gotten established in the days of the open public domain, and they didn't like to have some body come along and tell them how many head of cattle they could run, or where they could run them, or what season of the year they could run them, on public lands.

"I remember dad had quite a hassle with one of the early-day pioneer families that lived down on the Penasco about 12 or 15 miles below Mayhill. I won't mention their names because probably some of their descendants are living and they might not see the funny side to it. Dad had made a trespass on them and given notice to round up and remove many head of cattle. I remember old Mr. Mayhill, for whom the little town of Mayhill was named, and who was quite friendly with the Forest Service and particularly with my father, came and told him that this family had gotten all the sons and brothers, everybody, together, and that they were going to refuse to move their stock. They were all armed, and he advised my father not to press his luck and, if he did go, to try to get someone from the sheriffs office, or other Forest Service personnel, to go with him, because he was afraid there might be violence.

"I remember my father refused, and decided not to go armed, because he was afraid if he did, that could in itself bring about some shooting or violence. He showed up unarmed and I think it so shocked the whole group that it threw them off-balance. Simply by standing up to the 10 or 12 people that were there, unarmed, he talked them into moving the livestock off. I've thought back about the early-day Forest Rangers, and some of the things they had to do, and I've known of other Forest Rangers who were doing similar things, coming up against similar bad situations.

Zane Smith recalled another incident involving his father in the Sacramento Mountains at the head of the Agua Chiquita.

"Dad was running a trapline at that time and I was stringing along with him. We were riding down a little drainage and saw a man walking along up towards us with his rifle over his shoulder. That didn't attract any particular attention because everybody more or less carried rifles in those days. In fact, my father had a .30-30 rifle in its scabbard, hung on his saddle, and he also had a pistol that he carried on his belt and it stuck down in one of his hip pockets. Well, we pulled up to stop and visit, as most people did in the country back in those days. A few words were spoken and this fellow suddenly raised his rifle and pointed it at my father. 'You're another one of these Forest Rangers that was sent in here, I guess,' he said. 'You know I run the last three Forest Rangers out, an' you're gonna be the fourth.' He accused my father of a lot of things that was new to both him and me and knowing my father, I could see him beginning to smoke quite a bit under the collar, and getting pretty mad.

"The fellow looked him over after he had cussed him out, and he seemed to run down with what he had to say—looked him over and decided that all he had was a rifle in the scabbard. So he set his own rifle down and leaned it against his side, and got out his Bull Durham and rolled a cigarette. When he stuck his head down to light his cigarette, my father pulled his revolver out of his hip pocket and when the guy looked up he was looking into this revolver, I remember his mouth came open and his cigarette fell to the ground. I thought my father was going to shoot him, he was so darned mad, but he didn't. He finally told him to drop his rifle and beat it down the trail, and if he ever saw him again he was going to shoot him.

"We went on down the trail a little ways and then my father got to wondering what this was all about. We had a dog with us, so we started making some circles in there and the dog located a badly wounded doe that had recently been shot. Apparently this was the reason for this man having tried to run us off with his rifle—he figured my father would prosecute him."