SLEEPING ON THE RANGE

La Bonita Ranch, was 15 miles in off the main highway.  That was where the entrance to the ranch was and that’s where you start unlocking gates.  Each gate had several locks.  You’d have a key and it unlocks your lock. There were many small sections of chain with locks connecting the small links of chain. There might be 5 or 6 locks connecting small pieces of chain.  That way many different people could enter thru that gate and they each had their own lock and key.  Each person had their key so when they opened the lock, it opened the whole chain. Then he could open the gate. 

So my Grandfather would get a key from Albert Martin, the owner of the ranch, to open the gates. That key would unlock one of those locks.  We’d have to try several locks and then we’d get the right one.  We’d try to remember which lock it was.  Then we’d open the gates. 

That’s where they say, “Who’s the real cowboy sitting in the truck, the one in the center, you don’t have to get off to open the gate."  He knows that he doesn’t have to mess with the gates.  I always wanted to sit at the end. Okay, go ahead.  We’d come to a gate, I’d have to get off, open the lock, open the gate, wait for the truck to pass and then relock the gate.

When they were doing work right close to the entrance of the ranch, they might go back and forth to Encinal every night from the ranch.  He’d say, “Okay boys, I think it’s about 6pm, let’s go ahead and go home. He never used a watch, he went by the light. He’d leave the tools right there.  They’d get on the pickup truck.  Drive back to Encinal, he’d drop off all of the guys and then he’d come home.  I’d get to see my grandfather every day. 

La Bonita Ranch was big, 10,000 acres as I remember it. Sometimes the job would be way out there.  Going on little roads, past windmills and more windmills then we’d get to the Nueces River.   If they would try to go home every day from way out there driving on those dirt roads, by the time they’d get to the entrance of the ranch, it would be 8:00 at night.  During those kind of jobs like that, he would tell them that they were going to have to stay the whole week and they would go home on the weekend, maybe.  Sometimes they would stay two or three weeks.  That’s when he would hire the cook.  He preferred Braulio. 

We’d try to park by a pond and we’d build a campfire.  My Grandfather would back up the pickup truck fairly close to the campfire.  He would sleep on the back of the truck and the other guys would sleep on the ground or on cots around the campfire.  Having the campfire going all night would keep the coyotes away.  We could hear the coyotes howling all around them.  Aauu, aauu, aauu, over here, aauu, aauu, aauu, over there. 

I remember one time I went with them and slept out there.  This guy Martin, who used to live in Encinal but had moved to Cotulla was a small little guy, slept on one of the cots.  Another guy and I said, “Tonight, when he falls asleep, let’s move him so he’s not where he went to sleep.”  “Okay.”  So we waited and waited, we had to stay awake until he went to sleep. When he went to sleep we lifted up the cot from each end real slowly so not to wake him.  He was real tired; he had been working hard all day.  So we walked into the pond with the cot and sat it in about a foot of water.  But the water edge was way out there because the ponds were wide but not too deep.  We snuck away and went back to our beds. We’d wake up in the middle of the night and look at him, he’s still over there.   He was snoring. He was lying on the cot in the water, it looked really funny. 

 In the morning when he woke up, he looked around and saw that there’s water all around him.   “What happened did the water come up to where we were.  No, all of the guys are over there and I’m over here.  What the heck.” He couldn’t figure out what happened.  And then we all started laughing. He said, “You guys did this, right.”  Later when we were drinking coffee, laughing about it, we asked him, what did you think, what did you think when you woke up.  “Well, I look all around me and I see water all over.  I’m thinking, I guess the pond must have risen and the edge of the water must have moved out.  I guess all of the other guys must have gotten up and moved their cots away from the water when they saw the water coming up and I was asleep and didn’t realize it.  But when you all were laughing, I thought, oh no, you all moved me over here."  We just did that that one time.  He was protected from the coyotes.  They wouldn’t want to get into the water.

I asked John, “Did you ever do anything like that to the cook?”

He said, “No, not to the cook, no way, never do anything to the cook.  You wouldn’t get good food anymore.  You’d get cactus or something like that.  ‘Oh you’re the one who did that to me, I have cactus for you with the thorns on it.’   No never did that to the cook.  The cook slept in a tent.  We had a little tent for him and he had his own cot to sleep on.  And the big box with the food was in there.  He took care of that." 

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