Interview with Roy Wilhelm, December 24, 1992

'''Roy''':  The Indians run them out they never went back.  When they moved up there for the summer, this was summer and winter in Concho, why Uncle Haight, he was a big boy three years older than Pa.  Pa'd be at least ten by then if it took them a year to get settled in Concho, see.  Uncle Haight be about thirteen or fourteen, so he'd go punching cows with the old man, I know that because I left home when I was thirteen and I went punching cows with the old man.  So they went out one day gathering in the strays, they was keeping them from straying, they was cattle and they wanted to go back to Utah and they'd go anywhere to get away from where they were.  They had to locate 'em, they called it.  Just bringing 'em back all the time.  This Indian bunch come along and it was Grandma with all the little kids there about a 100 yards from the spring.  The Indians they kept a jabberin' and making motions over at the house and everything and finally they put their warpaint on, that's what they always did when they exterminated a bunch of ranchers, they'd get their warpaint on.  I don't know what part that had, it made it alright, I guess.  Well, Grandma knew they were in for a bad time but it was time for the kids to eat and they needed some water to drink and there wasn't any.  She knew if she went out there and the Indians grabbed her, which they most likely would, the kids wouldn't have any water and they wouldn't have any mother either.  So she had a long tom rifle (like an old Kentucky muzzle loader) there and she had it positioned there where she could put it out through the window or port hole.  She told Pa and Aunt Fan,  the sister just younger than him, to take the bucket and go to the spring.  The Indians was all around the spring, had possession of it, and get a bucket of water and no matter what they did stand right up to them, look them in the eye and tell them what they thought.  The Indians didn't know English but they'd understand anyhow if they told 'em.  So Pa was brave and he went and the Indians start messing with him and he just got all over 'em and they thought it was funny but they respected him see.  But Grandma was laying back there and what the Chief to that Indian bunch didn't know, she had a dead sight on him all the time. If they'd ever laid a hand on those kids, why she'd kill the chief first and according to Indian tradition if you killed the chief in a war party the rest of 'em'd run.  Without leadership they just didn't  know what to do.  Well, the kids they played it tough, filled their bucket.  And the Indians, they turned if off to kind of a jovial thing and bowed and scraped to 'em and let 'em go and bring the water on back.  They kept lookin' at the cabin and jabberin' and finally they decided it was bad medicine and they got on their horses and headed on.  Well it wasn't very long after that until a rider, perhaps the next day, the rider came by to tell them to get off the mountains that they . . . that the Indians had declared war on all white men.  And they was going to kill the best one first, that 'd be old man Cooley.  He'd married three or four Indian girls.  So the Wilhelms loaded up and come to Malpai with their cattle.  Now I don't know how come  they got in at Malpai at that time.  I feel sure that if we checked the dates why ol' Sol Luna still had it at that time.  He was the big sheep man in the west and he used that as a dippin' place.  Just run his sheep in from New Mexico round and round.  Well, they got settled there and they ran the cattle the rest of that summer there.  The Indians got worse and finally the war was on for good and here come a runner and told them, "Come along in the evening and don't wait till morning.  The order is to tell every rancher, everybody, to go to St. Johns.  No matter what religion you are or what color you are.  Go to St. Johns and bunch up there for safety."  I guess Snowflake was another strong point. But that's where they had to go so Pa said they got them in the wagon and after that Indian experience up there, he was pretty Indian wise and scared and he was telling about when they'd drive them as fast as they could in the dark and he was lookin' out the covered wagon, they had to cover up bout that way so they could see out. Said he'd get to imagin' he could see Indians ridin' along with their bows and arrows, keepin' up with him on both sides and then he'd shake his head and it ud' come to him that it wasn't.  It was just his imagination.  He'd get fearin' to see if he could see 'em and he always told us guys if you peer hard enough you'll see what you're lookin' for.  So they moved in here (St. Johns) and they had an election.  They organized and there was all these different factions there.  There was the Jewish merchants, the Mexicans, there was the outlaws that was outlaws and their counterparts, the guys that had been sent by the government as officials for the county, everything was appointed, see.  There was them and anyhow, they were all at each other's throats, they didn't trust each other, see.  But here comes B.H. Wilhelm and they all liked him, he was kind of like Andy, he was a good mixer and a good drinker and they liked him and so they trust him and they all centered on him as the captain of the guard.  And they put him on the payroll and he was the captain of the guard.  And so he, I don't know how long he was here, 2 years anyway I guess, as captain of the guard.  

'''Roy''': 5 kids.  (6 also Clarissa Isabell?) Well, they had a hell of a time, first the Mexicans, they tried to starve them out, then they got to feelin' sorry for them and gave them a little work, see, but they just damn near starved to death but they had the best damn place in the whole country there.  Some things you can't raise and when your clothes wears out, it's hard to produce them on a farm.  They  had the Greer boys, about the only friends they had but they didn't, they might as well, probably been better off without 'um sometimes and Pa was a tellin' about when Cleveland's time, it was a great depression before the turn of the century, when Grover Cleveland was in and he was elected on a certain thing that he guaranteed to do and everybody told him, says, it'll throw the country into a panic but he didn't think so but he kept his word and for 4 years they had  "Cleveland's time" and there was just no money, it just went out of circulation and that was it.  There was for 2 years there wasn't even a cattle buyer at any price for the steers that was raised in this country and the sheep men could sell a little wool on account of the government used it for uniforms for the soldiers, but the meat they couldn't sell.  Well, they had to shear those sheep and it was a nasty job and somehow they got started off they had to pay for that and they only guys that had any money was the sheepmen and they had to pay for the shearing and everybody wanted to shear sheep for them, even the Greer boys. Pa and Haight, they got a job shearing sheep and so did the Greer boys.  Pa says they was a shearin' away there and the Greer boys was down there really getting with it and oh they hated it.  They were the ones that would hold their nose  when they rode up to the camp to visit with Pa and Haight 'cause they were sheep men, see, hold their nose all the time they visited, they couldn't stand the smell here they are down in the bottom  a shearin' sheep so these two old big fat Mexicans got up there and oh, you never seen a dandy till you've seen those old Mexican sheep men, dressed up you know, they always wore suits, tailor made suits, see and they was on a, put on a new one and here they'd go a chain here with an elks tooth hangin' on it, it fastened on one side and there was a watch pocket over here and they could look at the time, lot of crap like that.  Well they got positioned up there and they each lit a cigar and they pretended that they didn't know the Greer boys was there and one of 'em says "they tell me the Greer boys do not like sheep, I wonder why they don't like sheep?"  the other one said, "That is a false statement my friend, the Greer boys like sheep, look at them.  They are hugging them!  They love them!"  Pa said if those Greers 'd of had a pistol they'd a killed those two Mexicans, he knew damn well.  There was nothing they could do about it, they had to have that money and they put up with that kind of insults. Better not play that tape to the Greers, it won't be too popular.  That ain't part of their script at all.  Well, finally there was one old man over there, an old Mexican man, come to Pa and Haight and says, "Why don't you boys go into the sheep business, that's where the money is, if you have stock, why you're all right.  Unless you can cash in on your share of this grass, you just as well give it up.  Well, they couldn't go into the sheep business, they couldn't even pay taxes,  He says,  "I'll tell you what, now these old sheep are doomed to die, maybe she's pregnant, and in the spring she would have just as good a lamb as any other sheep but she won't live.  She won't have teeth; she can't keep up, she'll die.  So every sheep man knows 'em they can go through and they can tell you just which ones won't.  He says,  "I'll let you have all that are in my herd for a dollar apiece, and pay for it when you can, I won't get nothing otherwise.  When you can!  Someday; years!  And I'll spread the word to the others and some of 'em 'll take it up."  And some of um did.  And said,  "You boys have raised all this feed."  They were working son of a guns, but they'd raised this feed cause they had nothing else to do and then nothing to feed it to, see, and that's what they did.  They bought those sheep on time, dollar a head.  They went in the sheep business that way.  After a few years, Pa said it never dawned on him until suddenly, he was a riding along and he had a new saddle and a new fat horse and following two herds of sheep to the mountains, check book in his pocket, he still thought he was poor.   

'''John''':  That's when Candelarias bought that place from her right?  '''Roy''':  I don't, I never, I'm sure that Roman's got the papers on it.   

'''John''':  I was just thinkin' I heard that somewhere.  '''Roy''': Yeah, well, that's logically, that's right.  Roman didn't buy it, some other guy bought it and Roman bought it from a second there was two or three owners there.   

'''Roy''':  No, she put up a homestead, see.  Time they got up there, John Wilhelm was old enough that he was married and had a little bunch of cattle and he homesteaded.  (Ed. note:  In Gloria Andrus' book she states that John and his wife Luella homesteaded in Vernon in 1907)  Ya had Haight's homestead and Pa's homestead, side by side.  And John's was on the west of Haight's where the west side of Vernon is on Haight's homestead, just a quarter of a mile strip there was Haight's and John's bordered onto that thing there toward the knoll and Grandma's was over in the flat there west of John's and that's the way it was. (Ed. note:  Why, if B.H. could not homestead twice, could his wife?)   

'''Roy''':  Well that's the guy; she buried him there, plus three kids and just had the two boys left.  (Ed. Note:  According to genealogy records, James Return, Susan Clarissa, Bateman Haight and Ellen Albinia were alive when they left Missouri.)  And then this Holliday, this wagon master, was lookin' for a good cook.  And she was a good cook and so she signed on to cook for him and his out riders for passage for her and the two boys.