Notes for Roland and Maureen, book two
by Kathryn Barger
January 1983

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Since I writing on this, there have been things come to mind that I think maybe should be added. Since I began I’ve not, in particular, tried to keep the events I’ve written in a chronological order. These last items will be even less so.

Roland suggests I write about Old Nick, a dog we had when he was very young. He was the first do we had after we married. We called him Nicodemus. Like other animals there are intelligent ones and there are dumb ones. Old Nick was the very dumbest that ever lived and so was he the unluckiest. Daddy brought him home from Old Horse Springs when he was six or eight weeks old. Roland was probably a year and a half old at the time. One thing I remember so well about Nick is while he was still a young pup he chewed on a line of clothes one night. It was winter in Horse Springs and that meant very cold weather. I had washed clothes and hung them on the line in the back yard. When night came they weren’t dry, so I left them. During the night, Nick pulled at them until the ones he could reach were in shreds. Two things in particular I remember he ruined: an embroidered scarf and one of Daddy’s only two everyday shirts.

You couldn’t teach him anything and he was afraid of his shadow. He would bark at a cow or another dog and then run behind us for protection. He followed us everywhere we went. The summer the lightning killed the bull up above the house and Helen was staying with Roland and I, we noticed that no matter where we went we couldn’t get away from the rotten smell of that dead bull. We couldn’t understand how that odor would reach us no matter where we went. We eventually learned that Old Nick would go up there and chew on that bull, just enough to get to smelling just like it did, and, as always, was trailing behind us.

He followed the Model T all the way to Greens Gap and back one time when we went to spend the day with friends – that was about ten miles. He got home the next day. One evening right about dusk, when Nick was four or five years old, some folks in a pickup, by the name of Turner, was using a shortcut to their place through our fields and yard. Nick ran out to bark at them and two of their younger boys where were in the back of the pickup shot at old Nick with a sling shot and put one of his eyes out. They aimed to hit him alright, but not necessarily his eye – it was too dark for that. Then six months or so later, one of the horses kicked him and put his other eye out. He had to be destroyed. He was not only dumb, but also unlucky.

We had several dogs over the years, but two other in particular might be worth writing a little about – one we got when Roland was about seven years old and Maureen was one year old. He was a full-grown German Shepard that we called “Old Pup.” He was the smartest dog we ever had, but you couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do.

We came by him in a strange way – Grandpa Reed (my dad) was still working at Santa Rita for Kennecot and this summer he was supervising some high school boy the company had given summer jobs to. One day they were working up on what was called Santa Rita Hill, when this stray dog came by. Grandpa Reed thought he looked like a good dog and thought he would be a good one for Roland. He tied the dog up in someone’s garage until he got off work that evening and then brought it in to our place. At that time we were living on a little creek a few miles out of town. Grandpa told Roland to keep the dog tied two or three days until he got used to us, so he wouldn’t run away. They tied him that evening. I really didn’t want that dog, so the next morning I told Roland to untie him. Roland said, “Grandpa said to leave him tied two or three days.” I said, “Oh, he wont’ go any place; turn him lose.” He did untie him, but you couldn’t have run that dog off. He had been looking for a home and he figured this would do just fine. We all learned to think a lot of Old Pup and he thought as much of us.

Actually he was Roland’s dog, but his loyalty started with Maureen, the baby, and went right on up. He wouldn’t have hurt her for anything. He was such a big old thing and she was so tiny he would knock her down just wagging that tail and bumping her. Roland was next in line for Pup’s affection, but Roland wouldn’t have dared hurt Maureen with Pup around. I came next but I think he actually would have hurt me if I tried to do anything to Roland. Daddy came last. Daddy used to tease Pup by picking on me – really made him nervous. He was so sure his main job was to protect us and he may have more often than we knew about. We lived right along the railroad tracks over which ore for the mines was hauled to a little town called Hurley, where the smelter was. They made six trips a day and hauled fifty or sixty cars each time. Times were hard then and lots of men would catch rides on this ore train to get to Santa Rita to look for jobs. And there were some just plain bums or hobos riding the train. Old Pup never let any of them bother us. There were a few brave enough, or maybe it was hungry enough, to come to the door to ask for something to eat. We fed quite a few. With Pup on guard we had nothing to worry about.

This ore train was Santa Fe engines and cars. The brakeman and the engineer practically adopted us. They threw a daily paper to us each morning, they threw ice to us in the summer to keep us in ice and in the winter they threw coal off to us – we never bought fuel the three years we lived there. The brakeman in particular became very fond of Maureen – she was only eight months old when we moved there, so he had watched her learn to walk and grow. Most every day he brought her a treat, candy, etc. and would call her to the fence that separated the yard from the tracks to give it to her. The fence was about five feet high, so he would have to reach his arm over the fence and down to her to give it to her. Pup was right there. Sometimes he would take that fellow’s arm in his mouth to warn him, but never did bite him.

While we lived at this place, Roland had to walk a short ways out of sight of the house to catch the school bus. Old Pup met that school bus every evening. Roland was hospitalized for surgery one winter and Pup was so upset at not being able to find him. He would meet the bus, and he went to other people’s houses when ordinarily he never left the place. The day I brought Roland home from the hospital I carried him from the pickup to the house. Pup was so excited at finally finding him, I was afraid he would knock him over.

We moved back to the ranch after three years at this place and too Pup with us. He soon learned to “help” Daddy or Roland with the stock. He loved to bring the milk cows in at night. The only trouble was that he was too rough with them. In fact, he liked to do that so well that one Sunday, while we were spending the day at a neighbor’s, he had gotten restless and lonesome, so he had gotten the milk cows in early – long before time.

We had a neighbor who had some sheep and, instead of herding them, he just turned them lose to graze. Eventually they got into our fields. Old Pup, being the self-appointed guardian of us and all that belonged to us, didn’t like that. In running one of them out, he grabbed one by the throat and killed it. After that taste of blood, he didn’t wait for them to come into our fields – he went out on the range and hunted them up and killed several. We tied him up, but knew we couldn’t stand to do that to him for long. Daddy talked to several men who had had the same experience with dogs and all said once they started killing sheep you could never stop them. So we had to get rid of him. We all hated that, but in a way I didn’t. Sooner or later something worse was going to happen. Unless it was something he wanted to do, you couldn’t make him mind at all. And as he got older he became more protective of us than ever. He was eventually going to attack a person and kill him. Charley Hobbs was deathly afraid of him. An example of what I mean happened one fall at “roasting ear time.” A Mexican rancher from the Augustine plains came to the door and asked if I’d pick him some roasting ears. Now, Pup hated a Mexican. I really didn’t know what to do. I told Roland to stay in the house with Maureen and I called Pup and put him in the yard with some food and started to the field with the Mexican. I hadn’t gone 25 feet when Old Pup faulted over that five foot fence and got between me and that Mexican. I was petrified. I knew that if he decided to take to that fellow I wouldn’t be able to do a thing. And the Mexican was as scared as I was. But I got the corn picked with Pup circling around us and I was never so glad to see anyone leave as I was when that fellow left. He was just as glad to get away, too.

Another doge we had was given to us by Pete and Cletus Vaughn. A pair had been left with them by some relatives who couldn’t keep them. They were fairly small, long-haired, black and white dogs called Grumpy and Grouchy. We got Grouchy. We were told they were of the breed circus people used in their dog acts. I would never think of the name. They wee sort of a useless dog – just good for a pet.

We sold the ranch soon after getting him and took him to Bayard with us. He too had to be killed. He got ringworm so bad and all that long hair made it impossible to kill it. In a way it was our fault he got ringworm. Maureen was six years old at the time and no one liked cats better than she did. Some Mexicans lived a half a block or less from us and she could see those new kids throwing a baby kitten like a ball to one another, throwing it up in the air and mistreating it so badly. She couldn’t stand that, so first chance she got she brought that cat home. At the time I thought it looked pretty scroungy and poor, but supposed it was from being treated so bad, but that cat had ringworm. It loved to rub against Grouchy’s long hair. He didn’t like it but we made him put up with it, so he got the ringworm, too. Then, on top of that, Maureen played with the cat – she would carry it around on the top of her head. At that time she had long, long hair – it had never been cut – and she always wore it in long curls. She got her scalp full of ringworm, too. We tried one doctor’s recommendation plus a couple commercial products and couldn’t kill it. I finally used a home remedy of sulphur and hog lard worked into an ointment – that got it. Having to keep her head so greasy kept us from making her long curls, so we started braiding her hair. From then on she wore braids.

We had a mule we called Huldy. Really her name came with her. Daddy had traded with Bruce Cauthen for her and before Bruce got her Jack Hulse had her – she was always Huldy. Roland called her “Holy” when he was learning to talk. I guess mules have a reputation for being smart and Huldy lived up to that reputation. Simple latches on gates wouldn’t do. She would open them all. You had to make a special effort to keep her where you wanted her. She was very gentle. While Jack Hulse owned her, his five kids drove Huldy hitched to a buggy from the ranch to the Old Horse Springs school. That must have been five miles.

One year, Pearlie, Daddy’s sister, gave me some of her prize dahlia bulbs. I planted them all around the inside of the yard fence. They had grown and done so well. The blooms were as large as plates – 8 to 10 inches across – and had grown within two feet of the top of the fence. One Sunday eve we came home from spending the day with neighbors and, while we were gone, Huldy had gone all the way around that fence leaning over and biting the blooms off my dahlias and dropping them on the ground. I guess that was fun to her.

Then we had a little dun-colored horse we called Apricot. I always supposed he was a little loco, but Daddy says that he was just not too smart. In spite of that, he was a handy horse – he was the one gentle enough for Roland to ride, and Daddy would put Maureen on him occasionally, even thought she was pretty young. Not only could he be ridden, but also he could be worked with other horses doing field work. I remember Daddy had had three or four horses working in the field that morning, one of them Apricot. When noon came, he took them all to the creek to drink, and while they were drinking, he went on to the corrals to put their feed out. All the horses went in the