This happened on Paiute Mountain when Joanne was about five years old. Call it 1939. At the time Sid was up on the mountain and working at or had some connection with the sawmill. Possibly Norwin, Esther's brother, was there as well along with his daughter Beverly. Audrey and Bev were probably thirteen at the time.
At the time the cook at the sawmill was a girl in her middle to late teens. Audrey and Bev used to go up to the sawmill because it was another girl, some company. After breakfast was served the cook persuaded Audrey and Bev to go for a walk with her. So off they went for a walk. The girls didn't know that their friend the cook was running away.
In due course the three of them were missed and somehow Esther got word of it. She grabbed Joanne and Fritz, loaded them into the family flivver and went to Nick Williams. Nick asked Esther to wait for a little bit. They had some lunch. Then they drove to where a canyon emptied into Walker Basin. “Now, call to them,” asked Nick.
Audrey adds a few things to this account since she was an actual participant in the adventure. “I was the most timid and didn't want to leave (the sawmill) in the first place, but Beverly wanted to go and they chided me for being a coward, which I was. …
“Beverly always felt that no one wanted her and I think that was why she was so adventurous. She told me later that she was just showing off when she climbed one hundred feet up a big pine tree and swung the top of the tree back and forth... . She needed someone to take notice of her. The other girl was simply bored. I just wanted to go home and be safe.
“The canyon was shaped like a funnel. About halfway down the canyon it was so narrow it was hard to find a place to put our feet...At one spot there were a lot of rocks with the water running down and between them. We had to slide twenty feet down these rocks, which were very steep, once down we could not go back up. Fortunately there were leaves all over the rocks so we slid, not scraped, our way down, but the men following us were not so lucky and they had torn clothes and scratched bottoms from the slide.
“They were very angry and threatened us with having an axe handle broken over our butts.
“When it was nearly dark and we were coming to the desert, I wanted to build a bed by the river so we could sleep near water. We built a little shelter and then the mountain lion started screaming. Then they (Bev and the other girl) finally became scared too, and so we ran down to the desert floor where we met the biggest rattlesnake I have ever seen. By that time the men were close behind us and killed the snake just before Mother called us to the truck, which was parked on a dirt road nearby.”
Joanne adds that Esther called to the girls and they answered. Soon, they materialized out of the brush. Williams knew from the trail they had taken where they would have to come out in Walker Basin, and he didn't even need a global positioning device. Ranching all of your life and seeing the land from the back of a horse gives you a pretty good sense of the lay of the land.
Sid. And possibly Norwin, came out soon after the girls. He had found the tracks of a mountain lion following them. Probably the cat was curious about who was trespassing on his range.
Audrey adds, “I got to see Nick's place and one thing I remember was a huge service area with a long table and on it were large metal bowls with cream and butter in them.They looked so rich to me.
“Driving back to the mountain it was dark and cold. The headlights of the pickup brightened the bottoms of the trees and rocks, the wind blew our hair and faces, and it was silent except for the sound of the car, and the stars were bright and the feeling was eerie to be safe in the dark as the car struggled up the hill. We did not speak.”
Showing posts with label Walker Basin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Walker Basin. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
More About Walker Basin
More About Walker Basis
©Joanne H. Harris, 2008
The first memories I have of horses are when we lived in Walker Basin. We lived on a piece of land that was part of Nick Williams' ranch. It was just a log cabin in a meadow. The only other creature in that section was Bubbles, Nick’s Hereford bull.
Nick’s place had a corral, and I remember a corral full of horses. I remember walking into the corral and all of the horses rushed to the far side except for one, a horse named Shine that my mother rode when she helped Nick and his daughter, Nita, move cattle.
The next memory I have is about the same horse, Shine. Mama was peeling apples and she gave me some apple cores or apple skins to give to Shine. Unfortunately, she didn’t give me any lessons on how to feed a horse, so of course I presented the peels with my fingers bent. The poor thing proceeded to grab my fingers and bite me, but not on purpose. He really didn’t do me any harm, but I shrieked and mother came out and gave me a tardy lesson on how to feed horses. Even this didn’t make me shy of horses.
Our cabin had no running water or indoor plumbing. What was that stuff called electricity? I don’t think the main ranch had electricity. I don’t remember any thing about the inside of the cabin except mom making a down blanket for me out of a down blanket she'd had as a child. That blanket was around for at least 30 years.
Mom has told me that Nick was supposed to provide us with milk, which didn’t happen. Mom had had some experience with guns and had a 22. She could hunt and shoot rabbits. Fritz and I were fond in later years of saying we ate rabbit for breakfast, rabbit for lunch, and rabbit for supper. We also picked wild unions like the Indians did. Daddy came up now and then and brought staples like beans and flour.
Mom used to complain that Nick mixed his sourdough in the flour sack. This included eggs. When he was finished he left a little in the sack for the next starter. Mom said it got pretty strong. Nick didn't throw away coffee grounds daily, but just added more for several days.
The outside of the cabin is what I remember. There was a stream close by with willows to play in. In the spring there were wild violets that I picked by the huge hands full. In the winter Fritz rolled up snow balls and made a fort that lasted long after the snow was gone. One day Daddy shot an owl and stuffed it. Mom complained it looked like an hawk.
We stayed at the ranch in Walker Basin for almost a year. Who knows what was going on with my parents, I do not.
Strangely, I don’t have memories for the next two years. I have pictures of me and my sibling at various houses on Paiute mountain and I know the stories that go with them. For the next couple of years we lived at the Bowman mine, the ranger station, Tommy Thomas’ cabin near Frank and Jenny King's place. Nick Williams had summer range on Paiute at a place called French Meadow. So mom moved with all of us kids, five in all (Audrey, Fritz, cousins Beverly and Dana, and myself) up to the ranger station, which was empty at the time and on French Meadow.
Mom had a couple of goats to provide milk for us kids. The goats ran wherever they wanted to and one time Nick come over to complain that they had “eaten the ass out of one of his saddles”.
He, being a cattleman, would put his cows wherever he could get grass. Since the ranger station in French Meadow was vacant, he ran some cows in the “ranger meadow.” All of the gates were poor man’s gates. These go by many names but they are all barbed wire with a poll that one slips into a wire loop at the bottom and slips a wire loop over the top, I use the term slip loosely because they are very difficult to close, some times impossible. Sometimes a gate on the Ranger meadow got poorly closed or left open. Nick came over one time and told mother if she didn’t keep the gates closed he would wire them shut. She said that that was fine with her because then she would cut one where she wanted it.
Mom still helped out with the cattle from time to time. She had sort of a love/hate relationship with Nick and some of his family, but they never killed each other.
©Joanne H. Harris, 2008
The first memories I have of horses are when we lived in Walker Basin. We lived on a piece of land that was part of Nick Williams' ranch. It was just a log cabin in a meadow. The only other creature in that section was Bubbles, Nick’s Hereford bull.
Nick’s place had a corral, and I remember a corral full of horses. I remember walking into the corral and all of the horses rushed to the far side except for one, a horse named Shine that my mother rode when she helped Nick and his daughter, Nita, move cattle.
The next memory I have is about the same horse, Shine. Mama was peeling apples and she gave me some apple cores or apple skins to give to Shine. Unfortunately, she didn’t give me any lessons on how to feed a horse, so of course I presented the peels with my fingers bent. The poor thing proceeded to grab my fingers and bite me, but not on purpose. He really didn’t do me any harm, but I shrieked and mother came out and gave me a tardy lesson on how to feed horses. Even this didn’t make me shy of horses.
Our cabin had no running water or indoor plumbing. What was that stuff called electricity? I don’t think the main ranch had electricity. I don’t remember any thing about the inside of the cabin except mom making a down blanket for me out of a down blanket she'd had as a child. That blanket was around for at least 30 years.
Mom has told me that Nick was supposed to provide us with milk, which didn’t happen. Mom had had some experience with guns and had a 22. She could hunt and shoot rabbits. Fritz and I were fond in later years of saying we ate rabbit for breakfast, rabbit for lunch, and rabbit for supper. We also picked wild unions like the Indians did. Daddy came up now and then and brought staples like beans and flour.
Mom used to complain that Nick mixed his sourdough in the flour sack. This included eggs. When he was finished he left a little in the sack for the next starter. Mom said it got pretty strong. Nick didn't throw away coffee grounds daily, but just added more for several days.
The outside of the cabin is what I remember. There was a stream close by with willows to play in. In the spring there were wild violets that I picked by the huge hands full. In the winter Fritz rolled up snow balls and made a fort that lasted long after the snow was gone. One day Daddy shot an owl and stuffed it. Mom complained it looked like an hawk.
We stayed at the ranch in Walker Basin for almost a year. Who knows what was going on with my parents, I do not.
Strangely, I don’t have memories for the next two years. I have pictures of me and my sibling at various houses on Paiute mountain and I know the stories that go with them. For the next couple of years we lived at the Bowman mine, the ranger station, Tommy Thomas’ cabin near Frank and Jenny King's place. Nick Williams had summer range on Paiute at a place called French Meadow. So mom moved with all of us kids, five in all (Audrey, Fritz, cousins Beverly and Dana, and myself) up to the ranger station, which was empty at the time and on French Meadow.
Mom had a couple of goats to provide milk for us kids. The goats ran wherever they wanted to and one time Nick come over to complain that they had “eaten the ass out of one of his saddles”.
He, being a cattleman, would put his cows wherever he could get grass. Since the ranger station in French Meadow was vacant, he ran some cows in the “ranger meadow.” All of the gates were poor man’s gates. These go by many names but they are all barbed wire with a poll that one slips into a wire loop at the bottom and slips a wire loop over the top, I use the term slip loosely because they are very difficult to close, some times impossible. Sometimes a gate on the Ranger meadow got poorly closed or left open. Nick came over one time and told mother if she didn’t keep the gates closed he would wire them shut. She said that that was fine with her because then she would cut one where she wanted it.
Mom still helped out with the cattle from time to time. She had sort of a love/hate relationship with Nick and some of his family, but they never killed each other.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
