Voices from the Past From Cowboy to Saddle Maker Interviewee: Clayton Samuel Lunsford March 6, 1982 Tape #95 Oral Interview conducted by Harold Forbush Transcribed by: Natalie Groen January 2007 Edited by: Mary Brosnahan January 2009 Brigham Young University- Idaho
Harold Forbush: From reel to reel tape onto C60 cassette on the 31 st of December 1983. Oral History, of the upper Snake River Valley, it s my privilege this morning at being on the 15 th day of April 1971, to have come to my office here at 68 East 1 st South in Rexburg, Idaho, Mr. Lunsford. And, I want to welcome you for the few moments we spend together, sir, that we might talk about your past and the experiences that you have had as a cowboy and other related experiences. Now, Mr. Lunsford, incidentally, how do you spell that name? Clayton Samuel Lunsford: L-U-N-S-F-O-R-D HF: F-O-R-D. Will you state your full name? CL: Clayton Samuel Lunsford HF: And the date and place where you were born. CL: I was born near Beattyville, Kentucky in Lee Country, April the 28 th, 1897. HF: And, just generally how have you earned your livelihood through the years? CL: Well, I had paralysis when I was about a year old. I had to learn to walk all over, and I ve been crippled all my life since. But, my parents moved to Estill County from Lee County well, when I was very small. I don t remember the moving. Then we lived there till we moved to the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas and then homesteaded there in 1914. And, I broke horses there and mules. HF: Well, in other words has, to my question, what has been your principal way of making your livelihood? Has it been pretty much been working with cattle and horses, and so on? CL: Yeah, Yep. HF: That s pretty much been your way of life? CL: Well, I ve always been a horse lover and got along good with them, and I wanted to ride because I was crippled. That was one of my main purposes of wanting to ride. HF: I see. You couldn t walk very well, so you wanted to ride, huh? Well that s CL: I went out in Kansas; the man that we knew there, close to home in Arkansas. He d been out in Kansas and he d give me reference to Louisburg, there an advancement in Kansas in Garden City, Kansas right near [in auditable]. I went out there and broke horses and worked for them for about a year, then I went on down in Texas and got on the bigger ranches. HF: I see. CL: And, they always drive amber horses and they give me the kind of crazy ones to work with because I d try to make something out of them. 2
HF: Now, I m going to just interrupt, just for a minute, and I have a kind of procedure that I want to follow here. Now, what is your present address, Mr. Lunsford? CL: Well, now my home address is 310 West 9th South Saint Anthony, Idaho. HF: And your business address? CL: It s 22 College Avenue in Rexburg. HF: And, what is your present day business? CL: My present business? HF: Uh, huh. CL: It s principally saddle making and related leather goods and a cowboy trade. HF: And, you have a kind of a partnership operation with Mr. Grant Bowen. CL: No. HF: Oh don t you? CL: Two separate businesses. HF: Two separate businesses. You just occupy the same premises? CL: I have the building leased and I lease half of it to him because I didn t necessarily need all of it. HF: I see, I see. Well, now, Sir, what were the circumstances, the factors that brought you into Eastern Idaho; here in the upper Snake River Valley? CL: I was looking for a location for a saddle shop. And I met a salesman from the Montana Leather Company down in Wyoming, and he told me he had a shop in St. Anthony for sale or lease. So I come to St. Anthony second day April 1937. And, the shop had been leased the day before and the papers signed. So I went to work for the state out at the boy s cleaning crews worked there four years, and then quit and went into business for myself. HF: You found a place here in Rexburg by then? CL: No, I was, I was in St. Anthony. HF: Oh. 3
CL: Till 1965 HF: When did you actually move to into Rexburg then, and establish your business? CL: 1965, October HF: Oh, so you were over in St. Anthony for a long time then, weren t you? CL: Yes HF: Where were you living at the time that this salesman advised that there was a vacancy over in St. Anthony? CL: I was just on the road looking for a location and I stopped in Evanston, Wyoming, and met him there in a hotel. And I got on the bus and come on up to St. Anthony there. HF: And, you had been, your home had been where? Down in Texas maybe, or? CL: Well HF: Where had you been living prior to that time? CL: I d more or less made my home in Texas and New Mexico for quite a number of years, but I got on them ranches out in there. Never sat home, I just worked in first one ranch, then another. HF: Were you a married man during these years? CL: No. I d married a girl and she d died in 1927 and then I was all alone. But, we lived on a ranch, and worked on a ranch while she was alive. HF: Uh huh, I see. Well, now you ve indicated that you have earned your livelihood in part at least these last few years by leather work, working with leather and so on. And, before we get into your cowboy background, I d kind of like to have you describe for me a little something about your talent in working with leather. Tell me something about the leather business and what your talents are in working with leather. CL: Well, I suppose we go back to this cowboy life. I was working on a ranch out in Midland, Texas, and it was a big ranch, and I, they had five camps on it. The main headquarters and then four camps. HF: What was the name of this big ranch? CL: It was O.P. Jones the O.P. was his brand. O.P. Jones owned it and he lived in Amarillo, Texas. And, they d have a man camp and he d be more or less forward over that particular area that he worked in. And, I had steers, young steers and calves and work horses and about 4,000 4
of them. And, I was working horses along with that. That been my general life s work. And a horse fell with me down there and hurt my back and cowboys had attention to loaf around the saddle shop. If a saddle man came in looking for a cowboy, he d go to the saddle shop to get his help. We didn t have no agents in there to take care of it. So I told this man that owned the saddle shop that I wanted to learn to make saddles when I got able to go to work. And, he said he d put me on, and he did. Now, I ve been at it ever since. HF: And, about how long has this been? In the thirties? CL: That was 1948 HF: When you started learning? CL: Yeah HF: I see CL: And, I ve done a lot since. I rode a lot after that, but I still worked at it. And I prepare saddles on the ranch for other boys and myself and make barrels and drill holes and I HF: Are your saddles generally made out of cow leather? CL: Yes. There s cow and steer hides and they tan. They tan in a vegetable tan. They call it more or less a bark tannage, and it s the close to the thickness of the leather the way it come off the cow. HF: What portion of the cow is best for saddle leather? CL: Where you get your choice clips of meat, that s along the back and over the loins. HF: The leather is a little heavier or thicker, perhaps? CL: Yes, and it s a finer texture in there too then it is up in the neck and down in the flanks, it s a softer leather. HF: Now the lower portion of the saddle as you go down towards the, what do you call it, the stirrups, down towards the stirrups, is that all made out of the same type of leather? CL: Yes, it s all made out of the same type of leather, and there s a certain place in the hide for most every place on the saddle. And, you put your flanking leather or what do you call it? HF: We were talking about the various types of leather, where you would use it on the saddle in making the saddle. Would you like to kind of just go along with that? CL: Well, in making a saddle you have a more or less a certain place for each part of the saddle that you cut out like your seat covers and your fenders, your fenders and stirrup leathers are some 5
of the best part of the hide and your seat cover. Then, you take your ground work building up your seat like you wanted. You use your scraps and soft part of the leather for that because there s no wire over it, and HF: Do you still use wood or metal underneath the, for the framework? CL: Well, most of the freeze of values is just wood, and you take up in the West here early on in fur pine and your framework is wood and cut out and put together and covered with heavy raw hide. And that raw hide dries and that s what you use as the strength. HF: Now when you order your framework, I mean, what do you really receive when you get your framework? CL: Well, when you come in and order the saddle, and you wanted a certain type of tree. They make that tree up to my specifications. I order it the way I want it and they build it that way, and then I put the leather on it. HF: Can you state the average specification just for the interest of it? CL: Well, most of the saddles I make now will have an anywhere from 14-16 inch seat and most of them will have from 12-14 inch furrows on them. And, the cattle maybe from 2-4 inches high. And I make about as many as padded seats as I do of the plain seats. But, I believe they re going more and more back to the plain seat than they are in the padded. HF: Is there any metal used now in the tree? CL: No, not in the trees. HF: Formally, they did use metal, didn t they? CL: No HF: Years ago? CL: No, they did come out one time with aluminum trees, but then it didn t last very long. They soon quit making them, I don t know why. I never used one of them; I never worked on one of them. And, now they re coming out with, they call it rhyolite and it s all molded in one piece with a metal horn in it and the horn molded right in to that, and I don t know that may work out pretty good. They ve come out with a fiberglass covered tree, but they re not much good. HF: They don t hold up? CL: No, they work down; they break easy. And, I don t, I haven t made a saddle on one of them since the beginning of the year. I haven t had an order for them. And, I have sold a few of them, but I don t like selling them because they don t stand up. And, up to now, to the best of my knowledge, the old raw hide covered tree is the best tree on the market. 6
HF: Then you would put your leather over on top of that? CL: Yes, you put it in there and work it down till it fits, and it s a quite a chore to get that leather wet and fitted in. And get it down where it s smooth and that. HF: In sewing, with putting it together, and so on you do that with also leather? CL: Well, no we use the flax leaf and thread for our stitching. And we have a stitcher there, a machine that we do some sewing with. We do a lot of our sewing by hand all of the cattle bindings and horn covers and basics like that, we have to sew them by hand. We can t get to them. Some of these big factories have machines they can do that on, but a little shop like we have here can t afford them. It costs too much money. HF: How many hours would it take you to put together a nice saddle? CL: Well, I always want three days. Three eight-hour-days at least to put together a good flow stamp saddle. HF: And, how much would one of those cost to the purchaser today? CL: Well, a good flower stamped saddle today would be up around $300 to $375. HF: And, how long would the, what would the life usage of that would be, anticipated. CL: Well, I have them in there that are sixty years old and they are still good. That depends on the use and that, and how they ve been taken care of. Ordinarily, a good well-made saddle will last a man a lifetime with just ordinary use. HF: Mr. Lunsford, how much would a regular saddle we ve been describing weigh? CL: I didn t understand that HF: How much would it weigh in weight? CL: Ordinarily, a saddle with good heavy leather would weigh 36-40 lbs. HF: Now, would one saddle ordinarily fit any type of a horse or what often do you have to match the saddle up with the horse? CL: Yes, you do. They getting these quarter horses that are brought across the weathers and back and they have to make a wider fork in the saddle or a quarter horse mark; they call them to fit that type of a horse. Now, back when I cowboyed, we rode most of these mustangs and high weathered horses, and the standard width of the saddle was about 5 and ¾ inches. Now, we make them up as wide as seven inches. 7
HF: I think it would interesting for you to tell me when and how you got started being a cowboy and breaking horses and being the cowboy. Now, you ve referred to this just a little bit, maybe you d like to tell the first experience you had of being a cowboy. CL: Well, when I started out, we moved into the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, and my father homesteaded there. And, we d come from another state, so we had to start out and get our teams and everything to haul timber, and people was moving in and homesteading, they d cut the timber off of that and haul it to market. This new laws lived, when they got to marketable timber off of it. A lot of them did that, but we stayed or my father did, and we bought young mules and horses, and I got to working with them. I got a kind of a reputation and I was working horses for a lot of people around, and we d work them to work with wild bulls. Every one was broke for riding work bulls. And that was pretty easy to break them. Like I said, I was crippled, and I wanted to ride because it was hard on me to walk, and I went out on the big ranches and went to work. We d catch a wild horse who had a usually a round corral on the big ranches. This snubbing post in the middle of it, and this man kept his horse and snub him and get a hackamore on him and we d usually tie up a foot and climb over him, and take an old sack or something and wave it around him and rub it over him and beat him over the head. And, get him used to something that wouldn t hurt him, then we d put the saddle on him and get on him and move him around a little in the corral. Stake him out with a long rope, let him get used to that rope and driving around it. HF: Now, all the time you were doing this, you had him pretty well pinned down? I mean with a, snubbed down with a rope. CL: Yes. To start with, after you got him kind of rope broke where you could kind of lead him and handle him, why then you d saddle him up and got on him and went out on the range and would try and to teach him to do the things you needed him to do on a horse. And, I broke 40 head and had two to broke with me. HF: Just two? CL: Just two out of 40 head. And I got a long good with them, but I spent more time with them than most fellows now. The big ranches would have a rough spring man, they d call him, and he s usually an active man. Well, I was crippled, and it was hard for me to mount a horse so I took more pains to getting him where I could get off and on and handle him than they did because they could just jump up and catch the stirrup and sit down on him where I had to get a hold of the saddle horn, balance myself, and get up there the hard way. And I worked on them ranches where we branded as many as 20,000 calves in a season. And, you talk about that up here, in this country, and they find it hard to believe you. HF: Twenty-thousand? CL: Yah, that s a lot of calves. HF: And, in those days, they had to do it the hard way. 8
CL: Yes HF: I mean they didn t have, what do you call these, chutes and all those things as much, did they? CL: No, no, I ve worked on a well, we ll just say, the Adam s Cattle Company made here at Vermejo Park in New Mexico. Now, we branded 20,000 calves there and shipped 20 load into Denver and they had scab in them. The government made them dip, and we d go work in there and it was all open, very few fences in it. And, John and Ranches had a man over there that was representing that ranch, and they sick as they had man on these others that was representing them, in fact it wasn t very many, six men working on them. Eighty six ranches was representatives from the other ranches and we all bunched cattle together and we d mother them calves up and rope him and drag him out and call it branded on the cow, and that s what they put on it. And this went from, we ll say from the WS s or CS s or few marks, whatever brand was on it, why you looked after that particular bunch of cattle. And, when they got through working, maybe, they d take them to their own home range. And, they d have a drift fence sometimes and a cowboy s general work where he was in camp and his general work was to come and keep the cattle on the ranch that he was working for on their territory HF: How would they demarcate or note their rangeland from un-taped and joining ones. CL: Well, they more or less knew their lines. They could go by the mountains or maybe there would be a drift fence for ten miles between an outfit. HF: What s a drift fence? CL: Well, it s just a lined fence, and there s HF: Made out of poles, or? CL: Most of them was made out of wire and poles and whatever was handy. We take them a more or less open country, why we wire and in the mountains where there s plenty of timber why they d put it up out of poles. And, in that a way a man could line ride and he could keep kindly making a ride each day so certain areas, another man another area and there d keep work back and other cattle back the other way. And, the cattle would congregate around the watering hole, and that way they could more or less ride around them and keep from back going onto their own range. HF: How near would a water hole have to be to the cattle you were taking care of? CL: Well, I ve known them going as far as seven miles to water HF: To water? CL: And, that s so they could graze to it and from it. 9
HF: And they d have to have water every day, wouldn t they, almost? CL: Most every day, it depends on the weather a lot and the dew on the grass in the morning, that helps them a lot too. But, on the plains in Texas, when I first started there wasn t very many windmills. But, now they ve got them where there s windmills and maybe they ll have five or six maybe ten sections in a pasture and a windmill in it and pump the water for them. HF: Subterranean or well water, then? CL: Yah HF: They d bring it up from the well? CL: But, up in the mountains, why, they watered in the streams and there d be springs come out and water holes in different places. Cowboys would keep his water holes cleaned, leaves and things out of them, so they wouldn t stop up. I d seen lots of them were, and they d fill up, and, HF: Mr. Lunsford, can you enumerate some of the big cattle ranches that you worked for or those that existed at the time that you were working in Texas and New Mexico, some of your bigger ones? CL: Well, now you take a Shelton s, at one time it was the largest individual cattle herd in the world, but he had little ranches all around over the country, down in New Mexico and Texas and scattered around what they d call little ranch there and maybe in a hundred sections. There probably around 35-40 head of cattle year round on a section. HF: Now that d be 640 acres? CL: Yes. And, when you got over in the mountains, they d be taking Drew West Cattle Company. Now, I worked for them in Silver City, New Mexico and they had three big ranches in there. Dick Culbertson was the general manager of all of them and had a big heck with being each one of them, but he had different partners in trying to take the 86 ers or let s see, there s Culbertson, Fauter, and Dillcrisp. And they had different partners in the 2S brand and the 2C brand, and the flying A brand. You see you had three there and you had a different brand for each one of them different partners in each one. In the smallest one of them running around 8-10 thousand cattle. And, they d, I worked for flying A and I broke forty head of horsed there. I didn t want to break them, but I did. HF: In the act of breaking a horse, of course you I imagine were working on a kind of a salary, so much a month a cowboy would receive. CL: Yes HF: Did you receive an additional commission for each horse you would break? 10
CL: Well, ordinarily not. But ordinarily if you were breaking horses, you d get 10-15-20 dollars a month extra, more money than just a regular cowboy. And, I ve worked for many months for 20 dollars and your each if you could get to it. [Laughter] HF: How were the bunk houses arranged and handled in those days? CL: Well, now your bunk houses would usually on a big outfit where they had a lot of hands and their main headquarters would have maybe a bunk house that probably 20-25 men could sleep in. HF: Would you also eat in these bunk houses? CL: No. HF: You wouldn t eat there? CL: No. HF: You d go over to a mess hall some place? CL: Yeah, on the big ranches you would. And on the smaller ranches they d just have a shack that was big enough for two or three men to sleep in and the stove in it to cook in, and you done your own cooking, and washed your own clothes, and took care of yourself. That s where I learned to cook, [laughter] to keep from starving. HF: With all the cattle around were you pretty well assured of having plenty of meat or would they allow you to kill a critter? CL: Yah, we had plenty of meat, but never milked a cow on them ranches hardly. And ranged cattle and they are just about as wild as the deer and antelope. And, like I seen a little cartoon in the paper, and the cook said 5,000 cattle and not a drop of milk. [laughter] Most of them just drank their coffee straight. HF: That s about like Coleridge in his poem, The Ancient Mariner, Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink, referring to the sea water and so on. Well, this is interesting, in those days, in the 20 s and 30 s what type of cattle did they run down there in Texas and New Mexico? HF: Side two continuing the interview with Mr. Lunsford dealing with from Cowboy to Saddle Maker. CL: So back when I first started out there was a lot of the long horns still running wild and that part of the country, but they gradually getting into the more or less Herefords down through that country, more Hereford than anything else. And, some black angus and they re getting them better now. You take the Cain ranch, they got a big strain of cattle that they build up of their 11
own that crossed up, but stand that country down there where it s more ticks and mosquitoes and flies. HF: Did they import some of the Hindu Brahma animals from over in India? CL: Yep, yep. But they are building up their herds and different better bred cattle all the time. And, I know some of those big ranches that I ve worked on, I ve seen in a magazine here not long ago where the Bell Ranch had sold out. And, they wouldn t sell anybody over 100 sections. They cut it up in little ranches and sold it out that way. HF: Does the King Ranch still exist? CL: Yes. HF: And, and it, I ve heard that it is the largest ranch, cattle ranch in the United States? CL: Well, I, as far as I know now it s the largest cattle ranch in the United States, largest one I know of at the present time. HF: What s the address of the King Ranch? CL: I can t tell you for sure right now, but they ve got their own post office there and everything out on the ranch, and with that in the South East corner of Texas next to Old Mexico. It lays along the right along that Colorado River there. And it s a big ranch, I never did work on it, I never worked. HF: You ve been there though, haven t you? CL: No. HF: Haven t you? CL: No, I ve never been on the King Ranch, but you take Lee Bivens in Amarillo, Texas now he was one of the biggest individual cattle owners, when I worked for him, in the world. But, he had small ranches all over the country. He didn t have just one big ranch; he had a lot of smaller ranches. According to the paper, the Shelton s at one time was the largest and then Lee Bivens. Bivens got to be another one of the big ones, and then you take your Matador Land and Cattle Company was another big one, and the Diamond A s was another big one. And I don t know whether you ve ever heard of Cap. Watson or not? He was captain of the out on the ranges, when they organized, why he was captain of it. And, then he finally got to be general manager for the Diamond A Cattle Company. They had a ranch up here in Montana, New Mexico, and they had them in Texas; they had them scattered all around. HF: Mr. Lunsford, in your experience as a cowboy, are there any noted cowboys that you could mention that perhaps the common man would know about? 12
CL: Well, yes, there s lots of them. You take; let s see I made a note of some of them, if I can find it. Number six. Maybe I can pick them out faster here and back in my time now here s Jack Miller, the One-Hundred-and-One Ranch in Oklahoma. He had the Wild West shows, and was a very noted man. And, they had the Miller brothers; there were three of them and they had a real big ranch in there, in Oklahoma. And, this Buck Joe s that s in the movies, that got burned up back in New York somewhere; I cowboyed with him, and snubbed horses for him out on the ranch before he got in the movies. And then, there s Booger Red and he s famous rider and cowboy and had a Wild West show of his own. He more or less stayed in Texas; he didn t cover the whole world like the Miller brothers. And, then there s the Bowman brothers and Bob Crosby, and I ve worked around the same territory as them. They were just old working cowboys out there on them big ranches in New Mexico. Bob Crosby and the Bowman brothers and, but they were famous ropers and both riders, and they got world fame as cowboys in the rodeo business. HF: In the entertainment world? CL: Yes. HF: It s when they got in the entertainment world. CL: And they made money at it, and they were well noted and then there was Newater Slim from Nowata, Oklahoma and he never did, I don t know of his much of his working, but he was a rodeo show man. And so was Tom Mix; I knew him, the first time I seen him, and he was breaking a horse, training it on a ranch in Oklahoma. HF: Well, isn t that interesting? CL: And Dill Hard, I never worked with him, but I worked in the same country. I knew of him, something about his early life. And, there are others that I could name if I sit down to think about them. HF: You know, as a young fellow, I used to read a lot of Zane Gray, his books; and the cowboy. It seemed like he would paint the cowboy as a pretty tough character that did a lot of shooting come into a town on a Saturday night, you know, and a maybe get a little whiskey in his tummy and then really shoot up the place. Have you ever known cowboys of that particular nature? CL: Well, I ve known some of them. You take the average working cowboy out on a ranch; he d probably go out there out on the road and go around and stay on four months before there was a town. And, they drop their money and go in and probably drank it up and throw it away in two or three days. And, now since they ve got cars, and they can get in, why they go in regularly, you don t hear much of that. They ll go to dances and fight and get drunk, but as far as shooting up a town, why, they don t do much of that anymore. But, I have seen some of it done, and it generally starts in a saloon and they d get to fighting in there and get mad and then they d get out here on their horses and take their six shooters and go to shooting and hollering. They wasn t necessary shooting at anybody or anything, but they just making a fuss and showing off, and I remember one incidence. I was working for the JEW S S Company, and they brought 13
their cattle down, the Jew S s did, on the two seed and shipped them a little shipping. Just a little switch out on the flats there, close to Deming, New Mexico, they call it a quiet water. And, another boy and myself went into Hurley, New Mexico, in just a little town and there s a drug store and a grocery store and not much there, but the main street run east and west. And, we tie our horses just off the main street to the north, and we went in this drug store and around there for a little bit, and got some little things we wanted, and I bought me a shirt and a pair of pants. When we got ready to go, why, they stole coffee, it was a, just an old cowboy had been and I took that job, and this boy that was with me said, you know can ever put on a new show and it start out was pretty cold that day and these horses were probably bucked because give them a chance. He said I don t care as long as you don t do any damage. We went up and got our horses and got on, and Tommy s horse wanted to buck, his name was Tommy Colewood, so we let him buck. And, was riding, and we came down on this main street, and there was a man in an old Model-T Ford with a chicken coop on the back of it, and the horse stuck his four feet on the fender of that and it pulled it out from under him and he fell over and knocked this chicken coop off. White chickens were flying all over the place around there [Harold laughs] and his saddle blanket was working out and I got up to the side of him and got a hold of this saddle blanket. We d headed down Main Street in the direction we wanted to go back to the ranch, when it come out, why it hit my horse, and he went to bucking. So, we went down side by side a bucking down Main Street. I figured we d be arrested for it, but I never did hear any more of it. [Laughter] HF: Well, that s quite an experience. Well, in the course of your experiences, there as a cowboy in Texas and New Mexico, how did you, did you ever have an occasion to have to face the problem of wild animals killing off your steers and cattle? CL: Well, yes, I ve had some experience with that; mountain lions and bear. I ve killed a bear that was killing cattle, and that was on the Flying A ranch in the JEW S S Cattle Company range. And, this bear had been a killing steers there for quite awhile, and I went after him. HF: This was in a mountainous area? CL: Yes, that was up in the mountain country. And, the mountain lions, they d get one of them once in awhile and they d get to killing cattle. And, they was usually one that had been crippled up or something wrong, and then couldn t walk too good. And, this bear to take back to the story, we were working cattle, and Mr. Trotter was the boss and he had some dogs. And, I took a lot of pains with his dogs, and I d feed them and pick the porcupine quills out of them when they got them or anything wrong. And, usually if they got after something, why he d say, follow them dogs and see what they re after. And, this bear, we d been trying to get it for several months there. One day we had a bunch of cattle pulled together, and the dogs got after something. And, he said, our four strings are working with us. He said, Irvin and I will go see what them dogs are after. He said, as soon as we get these cattle ready, let the boys take them and you go get your gun. I hadn t took my rifle with me that morning. We usually carried a rifle with us all the time, but we hadn t aimed to work there very long. And, he said, you go get your gun and come back; I think they re after that bear. Well, I did, and when I come back across the ridge, the camp was just across the ridge from where we was working. Why this bear was up on 14
a hillside. And, there was an open place up there, but the cat claw bushes was up about my saddle stirrup, and this bear would get going through them, part of the time you could see him and part of the time you couldn t. And, I got up on the hillside, and got above it, and it come into an open place, and I shot it. And, I shot it four times, I think, before it ever went down, and when it quick kicking around, the dogs come up to it, why, I had it killed. And, it was a big, well we called them brown bears there, big brown bear, and it had killed 10 or 12 head of cattle right around in that neighborhood where we were working. HF: What would it have weighed, would you say? CL: Well, they figured it would go 1000 pounds. I don t know; I never seen one weighed, but he was a big one. When we skinned him out, I don t remember now, but it seems to me like that hide was about nine feet long, but I don t remember for sure. HF: You know as we close here, Mr. Lunsford, I d like to have you make some comment about your experiences with bringing in these wild horses. I recently read an article; I think it was from the National Geographic about hunting wild horses. And, in this article, they pointed out that when the Spaniards came in, in the 1500s, they brought some very sturdy horses with them, the Andalucian, a kind of Arabian or type of horse that was plenty sturdy. And, a lot of these horses, perhaps over the years, were stolen by the native Indians and come wild, and they ve been maybe mixed up with domestic horses. Are those commonly referred maybe to as our western mustang today? CL: Yep, yeah, that s where most of the wild horses, as far as my knowledge goes, come from. They were offspring from horses that the Spaniards brought in here, and introduced into this country to start with. And, like you said, the Indians probably stole them, and they got scattered around. And I guess there s a few left in Nevada, quite a few yet maybe, and some in New Mexico and there s some up here in Montana that s run wild. But, you take the government, they put out a lot of these high bred stallions, and they run them on the range with them mares, and they got pretty good strain of horses now. Most of them big ranches all have a bunch of wild horses, but they re not the original that run wild; they re on the fence now, and they ll brand them Coach in the fall usually and then they re never bothered anymore till they re ready to brake. And, they run in maybe four hundred and cut them out to brake. I know over on the Baulker Ranch in New Mexico, right in close to Rosebud, just a little place like Sugar City. And we run in about 5000 head there, and cut out what horses that was ready to be broke, and that age group three and four and five years old. And, the outfit I was working for, I was working for A.Q. Bonner at the time, and we got a few of them. They sent me over to get them, and we brought them over and went to breaking them out, and then we turned these mares and horses back out and them stallions, one of the prettiest sights I d ever seen was them stallions cutting them mares out. And, they d cut them out and burn them out, throw them in there once and then they separated. HF: You mean the stallion would get a few of his own mares? CL: Yes, he d get a few of his own. 15
HF: How large a harem would they ordinarily select? CL: Well, on that, it looked to me like, from what I observed in the time I was there, they wasn t completely through when I left. Some of them would have maybe 100-150 head that was mixed up; they re would be some mares and colts and HF: Would one stallion take care of all of those? CL: Well, now as far as I know, they did. And, I know we had close to 5000 head of them, and I don t know now how many stallions there was in the bunch, and I don t guess they did either, but they had them just turned out there, and they run wild on the range. HF: Stallions get pretty jealous of each other, don t they? CL: Yeah, they do quite a lot of fighting. But when they get on the range and get separated, why they don t get together very much and fight. They water at the same holes, sometimes they ll fight a little around there, but generally they get along pretty good. But, they generally have their own harem and they keep them together. And that old stallion, he watches out pretty close for them. You ll see him standing up on a high point watching and if he snorts and gives a signal, they take off. HF: Have you ever seen a fight between two stallions? CL: I ve seen them fight some; I ve never seen them fight to death like they picture in these magazines, but I ve seen them fight. HF: Do a lot of biting, do they? CL: Not too much. HF: A lot of kicking and using their front paws as well as their CL: Well, they ll paw at one another and kick and bite, and that s their main way of fighting. And, I guess maybe they do kill one another sometimes, but I never did see any of that, and I never seen much fighting out of them. They come in and water, and maybe if they got mixed up, why they would fight some, but they generally quit pretty quick. One of them would take off. And, another thing that I ve seen now that is interesting, I was on, let s see what is the name of that, that ranch in California. And they d round up their cattle and they d take the bulls out. They d let the bulls run with them at a certain part of the season and then they took them out. We cut out 500 bulls and pulled 500 bulls from different sections of the ranch into one pasture together along next to the sea coast there on the Santa Margarita Ranch. And, some of the hardest fighting I d ever seen was down in those bulls when they was throwed in there together. HF: Oh man. 16
CL: Five hundred of them, and they were all just a bellering and hollering and fighting around all over the place. HF: They all had horns on too, didn t they? CL: Not all of them, but most of them did. HF: Didn t they? CL: They had pretty good cattle. They run a lot of the of this roan Durham cattle in there, and red Durham and white faces. Most of them had horns; we sat there and watched them two or three hours, but in a week or so they was all settled down and just had a little scrap off and wild on themselves. HF: Well, now you cowboyed in, let s see, in Kansas, and Oklahoma, and Texas, and New Mexico, and California. What other states? CL: Well, I worked some in Nevada, not very much. But I ve handled cattle from Arkansas, and Oklahoma, and Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, California, all through there. HF: And, this would have been between, oh what, 19 CL: 1917 up to 1930. I did a little work after 30 on ranches, but most of it was between 1917 and 1930. HF: I ve noticed here in Rexburg, as people come into your saddle shop, they refer to you as Tex. Can you tell me how that handle came to be? CL: Well, I ve had several nicknames in my life. But, I come up here, I d been working in Texas and the Depression was just getting over and things were beginning to pick up, and I was looking for a place to start a shop. I d worked down there, and when I came up here, why, they found out I was from Texas and they called me Tex, and I ve been Tex ever since. And, I ve been called Slim, and I ve been called Cripp, and I ve been called a lot of nicknames. And, you take in on them ranches in cowboy country, why, a nickname is quite a common thing. And, the boss will say, well what name you want me, so I can put you on the payroll. HF: In those days, they didn t have to worry so much, though, about Social Security and a Social Security number and all those things. CL: No, they didn t have that. HF: No. CL: And, you take when I first started out, there s still quite a few fellows that was trying to get out on them ranches to get away from the law. And they d go out there and work and the law didn t find them as easy. And, they d go by nickname, and then the boss would ask them what 17
name you wanted to put on the books, so they could put them on the payroll. I ve had them ask me that. HF: Did you ever have any experience with being in contact, or to know about some of the Desperados, Billy the kid, and some of those down in Texas, New Mexico? CL: Well, now I ve worked right around where Billy the Kid spent most of his time as an outlaw. I worked out of Roswell there on a ranch for Block Dots. And Billy the Kid s old home town was right up there and just a few miles from it. In fact, I took a fellow that was snake bit up there to the doctor; that was Lincoln, New Mexico. I ve run into several of them old tough fellows, but I never seen any of them that got tough. Billy the kid, I never knew him, but I worked right there in that country where his more or less on the town than a lot of people and talked about a lot. And, you heard a lot of stories, and some of them were true, and some of them of was part true, and some of them wasn t any truth in them, probably. And, then when I was working for the Jew S s, the heart bar had gone to Jew S s, and they were the fellar Tom, Tom Three Person. He was an Indian, or part Indian, he d been on the border patrol down there around El Paso, and they fired him for killing too many men. Well, there was a fellow named Long Bottom that had a ranch in there, and there was quite a little cattle stealing a going on in the country then. And, I d seen Long Bottom and Three Person s there one morning and something come up, I don t know the start of it, hardly, but something about some cattle a being stolen. And, they faced each other, and they both had guns, and hands on, but they never did pull them out. Settled it enough that they separated, and didn t never fight it out, but satisfied it. If one of them made off with move, why one of them would have been shot. HF: You ve had quite a frontier life, Tex, and we appreciate the opportunity this morning of interviewing you. These are days gone by somewhat for you, but before we close, what might be your comment about the upper Snake River Valley? How do you like living up here? CL: Well, now if like every other place I ve been, it s got some drawbacks. But, the general country, I think it s one of the best country s I ve been in. Just take it all the way through; you have some rough winters and things like that. HF: Do you like the scenery of the upper Snake River Valley? CL: Yes, it s very pretty. You take that New Mexico country, there s a lot of it just as pretty as any of this up around Yellowstone. Some awful pretty country down there when you get back in them mountains, and its high altitude as this. And, some of it s even higher than it is around here. And, the winters in the mountain part of it, just about like they are here. And, the good deal the same kind of the country. And, when you get on the plains in Texas right now some of that country where I worked, they re having another drought. You take 1934, they just about wiped them out down there. Until then, I rode through there on a plain, and I could just see cattle all along close to the railroad where they just died from thirst and nothing to eat. HF: Tragic isn t it? 18
CL: But, up in the mountains, why, they wasn t hurt too much because they had their running streams and water and with that down on the plains, they had to depend on windmills mostly and they just didn t have water. And, the grass had it more or less over stocked all the time. And, I know OP Jones told me one time, we was a talking about it, he said you ll see this country blow away someday. He said, they re over stocking it and there come a drought, he said they got it branched out and the dust will just blow away; and I seen it. HF: Well, Tex, I appreciate the opportunity of visiting with you this morning. Thanks so much. CL: Yeah, sure. [In audible] 19