Book by Baker Pearl

ROBBERS ROOST RECOLLECTIONS

By PEARL BAKER

Utah State University Press

Copyright © 1976Utah State University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87421-154-2

Contents

Chapter I Getting a Start.......................................................1Chapter II The Trip to the Root..................................................11Chapter III Settling In...........................................................31Chapter IV Cow Camp Etiquette and Customs........................................39Chapter V The Killing of Shoot-'Em-Up-Bill......................................53Chapter VI Developing the Home Range and Our Early Childhood.....................59Chapter VII Home Is Where the Heart Is............................................73Chapter VIII Horses................................................................83Chapter IX Handling Cattle.......................................................103Chapter X Wildlife-Primary and Secondary........................................121Chapter XI Hired Men and Visitors................................................137Chapter XII Growing Up............................................................151Chapter XIII Hobbies-Rawhide and Horsehair Work....................................160Chapter XIV We Built a Ranch......................................................189Afterword...........................................................................193

Chapter One

Getting a Start

There was only one reason my parents took their outfit to Robbers Roost-it was a last, desperate stand to make good in the cattle business; and my father, Joe Biddlecome, was a cowman. Once in a while a cowman comes along who will "lay out with his cows" and build a herd. I have known only three or four, and they were looked down on by their more lethargic neighbors as being cow thieves, and they found their activities curtailed by one method or another. Usually they spent a little time in jail, and then either moved or became a bit less ambitious.

The neighbors were not entirely wrong. An energetic man who is willing to camp around winter and summer, and in spite of great personal discomfort, take care of his herd, is enough of an opportunist to recognize his rightful calf, even if "the stupid little bastard is following a cow with someone else's brand on."

However, that is only a small part of the story. This herdsman carefully eases his cows through the winter, moving them to feed and shelter and therefore cutting his loss. His neighbors spend the bad weather with their feet in "Ma's oven," and cows get into cul-de-sacs, are snowed in and die of starvation before spring.

In the summer this good cowman mixes his cows and bulls together. He herds, drives and corrals them often, so that his calf crop zooms; his neighbor's bull runs with four or five cows all year, and sees the rest of his harem only at the water holes and probably at the wrong times. Good herdsmanship does pay off.

Joe Biddlecome grew up around Ferron, which lies in Castle Valley, Utah, then went to stay with an older half-brother, Alex Reid, in Castleton above Moab on the Colorado River. He worked for his brother a year or two, then struck out for himself, working around in eastern Utah and western Colorado on and near the La Sal Mountains. He took calves for wages, traded and acquired calves by other means (I am told), until he had accumulated a small herd by the time he married my mother, Millie Scharf, in 1904.

Together they set up their outfit on Pion Mesa, that rough, broken high country running from the La Sals out to the Colorado River at the confluence of the Dolores and Colorado. Gateway, Colorado, lies on the southeastern flank of Pion Mesa; the Utah Bottom, where my mother grew up, lies just over the line into Utah, around a point on the Dolores some ten miles or so above the confluence. Pion Mesa covers some 400 square miles of heavily timbered, wild country of narrow ridges, high points and deep canyons, with very little open country.

A few years before, the S-Cross outfit had moved into the area, and had suffered the customary depredation of the local ranchers. All of the big outfits of the West were finally put out of business by just this same thievery; while many, many small outfits, some of which became important later, sprang up throughout the ranges. The S-Cross had not yet met this fate, but small outfits were springing up. When the big outfit had no more cattle to graze, it didn't have any range to run them on, either. There were no vested range rights, a man took his cattle and horses into a country and set up an outfit, and that is what my parents did on Pion Mesa.

Joe Biddlecome had a rare gift: he was always perfectly oriented. He never got lost, and he never lost anything on the range. Riding for his cattle on Pion Mesa once, he watched from a high point as a couple of neighbors tied up two S-Cross calves, then drove the cows down the gully and shot them. This was standard procedure, but he considered it wasteful since those cows would likely produce calves again the next year.

After killing the cows, the fellows went back up another draw, instead of back to the calves, which puzzled Joe. They rode around some, never coming near the calves, then turned and went home.

The next morning Joe perched again on the point, not to watch developments particularly, this was none of his business, but just to look around generally. He had phenomenal eyesight and didn't need field glasses to see everything that would be of any interest to him. The fellows were back, riding around in circles, criss-crossing back and forth. They didn't go near the cows, but by the time they had made a couple of passes over the area, tracks were no longer a help to them, but a hindrance.

Joe watched in amazement while they completely "rode out" a canyon off to one side of the one where the calves were tied in a cedar copse. Then they moved over into that canyon, rode back and forth across it until well up past where the calves were, missing them by yards as they rode past the clump of cedars.

About this time it dawned on him that they had lost the calves. He dropped down off the point, gathered in the calves and, necking them together, drove them home to his own milk cow. If the boys came along and recognized them, what could they say?

All his life Joe Biddlecome had a blacksmith shop. He liked to work with metal, and his profession required tools that he could make cheaper than the ones he could buy, and he loved to do it. He was always most creative, usually with material at hand. As soon as he had built a one-room log cabin on Pion Mesa, he set up a simple shop where he made bridle bits, spurs, branding irons and other tools of his trade, as well as shod horses, which was a necessity in the sharp rocks of the La Sal mountains. Passersby often stopped and talked a while, then rode on.

Mama tells about one fellow who stopped at the shop and asked, "What do you think of my new horse, Joe?" My father didn't even look up from the horseshoe he was shaping, but said the horse was all right-still a little "wet," but a good animal. My mother was amazed; the horse was not even sweaty-she didn't know that this referred to the brand which had been "worked" so recently that it was not yet healed, but that fact had not escaped my father's expert eye.

One day in early fall three of the leading cattlemen of Gateway rode up to his camp and found him at the forge. He was alone; Millie was down on the Dolores at the Utah Bottom visiting her folks. Joe laid aside his work, a spur he was roughing out, and invited them to step down and go up to the cabin for dinner.

"No, Joe, we just want to talk to you," the leader said.

"Talk." He banked the fire in his crude forge and turned his attention to them.

"Well, Joe it's like this," the leader seemed to be making heavy work of his errand, and he was getting little help from his committee. "We like you fine-"

"Good. Like you fellows, too." Joe swept his hat back to enjoy the afternoon breeze on his white, untanned forehead, while he built and lighted a Duke's Mixture cigarette. "So?"

Not because he was the tallest man there, six feet two inches, or because he was the smartest or the best-looking of the group, but just because he had a kingly bearing and masterful air, he plainly was the dominant figure. The spokesman hesitated, looked at one of the men with him, who gestured with his thumb to go ahead.

"Well, Joe, you're a good cowman-"

"Try to be."

"Well, you are, and now you've got a little bunch of cows. But we figger the range is all took up hereabouts. There just ain't room for another outfit."

"Don't feel crowded at all."

"Well, by God, Joe, we do." The older of the fellows spoke up. He was a grizzled old cowman, twisted and scrawny, with the mark of many hard rides on his wasted body, while his blue eyes looked out through wrinkles of many suns. "I told Bill here we wouldn't find you easy to handle, and that's why I come along. I like you, and I like your brother Alex, and I don't want to see you get into trouble."

"Just how am I going to get into trouble?" Joe looked up at him sidewise under his eyebrows. "I can handle quite a bit of that."

"I know you can," the old man spoke ruefully. "And if I was a younger man, you'd sure be a challenge, but I'm too old to range war anymore, and I don't want my son to have to learn." He dropped his hand on the young fellow's shoulder. "So why don't you just pull up stakes and move on."

"With a hundred and twenty-five head of cattle? Where the hell to? All the best range is taken and us young fellows have to take what's left out on the fringes. I just don't plan to do that. Since the S-Cross is about gone, there's room for another outfit here and it's gonna be mine."

"No, it ain't." Bill put in his oar again. "We'll take care of all the extra range as time goes along."

"Like hell you will." Joe's temper was always on low boil with fellows like these. "You birds set on your tails on your little ranches down on the rivers and let your cows take care of themselves. Me, I take care of mine."

"And some of ours, too-so they say," Bill added hastily as the big man took a step toward him.

"Now, Joe," the older man spoke kindly but firmly, "don't get mad. We are trying to tell you something. We like you fine, but we-just-can't-afford-you. That's right, Bill?" He turned to let Joe think a few seconds.

"That's right." Bill slapped his palm with the ends of his bridle reins. "We just can't go through another calf season with you on the range. Think it over, Joe. You're going, one way or another." And without another word they mounted and rode away.

Joe yanked his hat low and stood with his head down, hearing the horses' hoofs click on a rock now and then in the steep mountain trail. The message was clear-loud and clear. If he stayed he'd go to jail or wind up dead in the bottom of a hidden gully. He had to move. Thoughtfully he went back to the forge and worked the bellows to bring up his fire again.

The next morning he started gathering his cattle, pushing his "hold" into a canyon he had been saving for winter. He wouldn't need that now.

When Millie and the baby came back from her folks', he told her the ultimatum and sent her back with word for her brother, Offie Scharf, to be ready to help him trail his herd to the San Rafael desert for the winter. In the spring he'd probably move on back to Castle Valley, or do whatever looked best at that time. Now, it was fall, and winter was his main concern.

A couple of weeks later he crossed the Colorado at Dewey, and he and Offie trailed the small herd across the country to the Green river at Little Valley, where they forded the river. I have been told that he had about thirty head of grown cows, forty head of yearling heifers and about that many calves, not counting the eight head following the three milk cows. This was quite a calf crop, considering he had only two bulls, both yearlings.

As soon as he had his cows on feed south and west of Green River, he sent for his family. His father-in-law brought Millie and the baby, 1VIay, just past a year old, over in a wagon. They crossed the Colorado at Moab on the ferry, and ferried again at Green River.

He planned to settle his family in Green River, but that town was in the throes of the 1906 land boom, and there wasn't a house to rent. They pitched a tent down on the river bottom, intending to live there that winter. Little May died in November, and Millie was so shattered Joe couldn't leave her there alone. He had to stay with his cattle, so he moved the tent out to a little spring where they stayed that winter. His brother, Nate, and his family moved down for a while, too, living in another tent close by. This was called Biddlecome Spring (the only place that ever carried his name), but since that time, another family, the Smiths, moved their cattle into that area, and changed the name of the spring to "The Cow Camp."

Joe was reluctant to build a permanent camp. He didn't like the country, and neither did his cows. After a miserable winter, and a worse summer, he moved his cattle to the San Rafael desert country, where his old friends from Castle Valley were wintering their herds. I was born in that awful summer, 1907, but since all this is before my time, I prefer to tell it mostly in the third person.

Castle Valley runs from Emery on the south to Elmo on the north, with towns and farms along its streams. These farmers ranged their cattle on Ferron Mountain in the summer, but if they could find a suitable winter range, they could sell their hay, rather than feed it to their herds, thus making two incomes. The first year (1906-7) that they took cattle to the San Rafael desert through the Reef from Sinbad, the cattle had done well. The winter my father moved out there was long and bad, and the spring uncertain, with warm spells that made the water level in the San Rafael river fluctuate, increasing the loss in quicksand many-fold.

When the water level dropped, exposing bars and banks of quicksand, cows coming in for eater had to wade out over these traps. Their sharp hoofs cut through the firmer sand on top, and sank down to where the sand was water-logged beneath. When they tried to pull out their legs, some of the water was forced out and the sand set up almost like concrete around their slim shins. They could no longer pull out a leg easily, and as they tried first one then another, they worked down until their bellies rested on top of the sand bank, and often deeper than that. There, if someone "riding bog" didn't find and extricate them, they died.

The drive in the spring of 1908 to the Ferron Mountain was one for the books: my mother and I rode in the chuckwagon with Charley Larson, who grieved because he could find neither feed nor water enough for his beloved team. The drive started too late, after the calves started coming, with numbers of them born on the trip. These young, tired calves dropped behind, often lying down behind a bush where they were not seen, with the ones discovered hauled or carried until they were rested enough to go on a bit farther. Cows dropped back, sure their calves had been left behind, and had to be forced along. There was no leader among the men, and therefore no order to any of the drive.

The days were hot and dry, and there was never enough water for either the animals or the men. A rider brought in a water bag of water he had found in a small rock tank in a gulch one day and passed it along. When it got to a fat kid, who had suffered more than most from the blazing sun, he took a drink, then upended the bag and poured the rest of the water down over himself. It was not a popular thing to do!

After reaching the mountain, Joe was miserable. His cattle weren't doing very well and he couldn't help them much. That fall the Castle Valley farmers put their cattle back on the farms, but there was no place else for Joe to go but back to the San Rafael, which he did. He built a small cabin on Harris Bottoms, where he settled his family while he rode with the cattle. But he knew this was only a stop-gap; in the spring he had to find range somewhere.

Chapter Two

The Trip to the Roost

Joe Biddlecome sidestepped the slashing horns of the cow he had just pulled out of the mud of the river bank, and, having held the end of her tail for just this contingency, gave it a yank and headed her across the saltgrass flat away from the river. She let out a "Blur-rt" of panic and staggered off through the cottonwoods.

Joe picked up his rope and started coiling it as he watched her. He hoped she was scared and mad enough to carry her bulk across the unpalatable salt-grass and into the highly nutritious fresh, spring sandgrass in the hills and draws bordering the river bottom. This was the third cow he had pulled out of the San Rafael mud while riding bog the last two days, and while she had not been in deeply, her calfy bulk made her hard to handle. He was wet above the knees and elbows, while the sticky blue river mud plastered his boots and spurs.

He had dug the cow's legs loose by hand, while she tried to hook him every time she got a chance. Then he had hitched his rope around her horns and dragged her around and out of the mud hole. As he had expected, she could not get on her feet, so he tailed her up; when she, again expectedly, tried to kill him, he handled her expertly.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from ROBBERS ROOST RECOLLECTIONSby PEARL BAKER Copyright © 1976 by Utah State University Press . Excerpted by permission.
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