PE: Thirty three years I worked for the Highway Department. They gave me a chance to retire early, so I took it. I was only retired about three days until a fellow that worked for Farm Credit Service. They had finance branches and farms and stuff. Max McKeon, he was over this office here.
I asked him, I said, “Max, has your office ever talked about hiring somebody to count the cattle on these ranches?”
He said, “They did.” And he said, “I’m having a meeting right here in the next day or two in Phoenix,” and he said, “I will bring it up.”
So he went to this meeting and he asked them. He said, “You guys talked about hiring somebody to count the cattle on these ranches that you finance.” He said, “Pete Ellsworth asked me if you was going to.”
And they said, “Is Pete available?”
And he said, “Yes, he just barely left.”
And they said, “Go hire him.”
So Max came back and called me and said, “Were you serious about going to work?” I said, “You bet!”
He said, “Come up to the office.”
I went up to the office and he told the secretary, he said, “Bobbie go in there and get them papers for Pete to fill out.”
So I went up and filled out those papers, and two days later I was counting cattle on the Babbit Ranch on the other side of Flagstaff. I work for them for 20 years!
JM: After you’d retired?
PE: Yeah, I retired from them! But I never worked for a better outfit. Oh they!
JM: Were you back to riding horses? Or did you have four-wheelers or something?
BE: No, he had horses.
JM: Horses! You got back to horses!
PE: Well, I was so fortunate that Sam Solomon, Gary Hatch, you probably know who I’m talking about. We were very close. We camped together a lot and our kids and everything, families going out to camp for a week at a time. But when I went on these big ranches, I told the people in the office. I said, “I need some help. I’ve got two guys I can take.”
They said, “Take them.”
So we took a big horse trailer with all of our horses, our Dutch ovens, our chuck boxes, our bedrolls. They had foreclosed on a ranch out of Bagdad, in that area, so they sent me. At first they sent me down there with the fellow that had the ranch to gather the cattle. So I helped him gather the cattle. But this fellow would find a cow that belonged to another ranch and he’d say, “Oh just leave her.”
I said, “Look! We’ll come back here and we’ll find a cow track. We won’t know whether it’s hers or you know. We need to gather these cattle.”
JM: So you were picking up mavericks then.
PE: Yeah, working for Farm Credit, yeah. So then, we pretty well got them cattle. They asked me, the boss in Phoenix, said, “Have you got the cattle?”
I said, “No, there’s quite a little bunch of cattle still there. The wild cattle are still there.”
He said, “Will you go get them?”
I said, “If I’m running the job, I will. I’m not going back with the other people.”
So he said, “You go get them.”
So I took Gary Hatch and Sam Solomon and their brother Boyd Hatch. He was a good cook. And this house out there had a stove that was butane and we put a butane bottle on it. It was rigged for electricity at one time, and they had an old generator but it was still rigged. So I had a little generator, we plugged in it. We had electric lights, a cook stove, a big fireplace. And so we went to gathering cattle, and we gathered a bunch of wild cattle.
When we finally got down to where there was just a few, we come in from the ranch back into where there’s corrals and stuff. And this one bunch of wild cattle left out. We had to load them horses.
I said, “Boys, we’ve got to beat them to the top! We’ve got to stop them up!” We outrun them to the top.
I said, “What’s Gary doing?”
“Oh, he’s messing with his saddle.”
I said, “Tell him to get on his horse. These cattle’s going to go! What’s Boyd doing?”
“Well, he lost his hat, but he’s hunting it.”
“Tell him we’ll get the hat later! These cattle’s going to go! We’ve got to beat them to the bottom!”
So these cattle left out and I see they wouldn’t going to be, so I was riding that horse. That’s as good a horse as I ever put a saddle on. (points to a picture of a horse on the living room wall) And so, after we got these cattle stopped, I told them we just got to hold these cattle up.
There was a big ol’ three-roll steer. He had horns that long. He decided that’s how I got to grow this big is because I didn’t hold up. And he left.
I told them, I say, “You hold these cattle!”
So while they’s a holding the cattle I took to this big steer. As soon as I could get a play open enough out of the brush and that, I roped him right around the horns and I just throwed my rope over the back of him and went by. I don’t know whether you’re familiar with single-steer roping, tripping steers?
Well, some of the Cheyenne, Wyoming men up there, they still trip steers. You rope them around the horns, throw over, go by them and, but you gotta light on top of them when they hit the ground.
So, I had my pegging string out and when he hit the ground, I tied two feet, jerked my rope off and I’d come back.
That guy said, “He got away, huh?”
“No, he didn’t get away. He’s tied down right out there.”
He said, “You haven’t been gone long enough to even throw a calf! How’d you get that steer?”
I said, “I tripped him.”
“What do you mean, tripped him?”
They didn’t know about single-steer roping, so I told them.
About that time a big heifer that had been running with this steer, she decided that steer got away, so she’s going to go. So, she left out. I said, “Just hold the cattle.”
Me and her went up the same way, and when I got just about where that steer was, I put it on her and turned her over, tied a couple of feet.
Then we decided we had to lead them off the hill and back down to the corral and load them in the trailer.
Gary Hatch was riding a big mule, one that he named after her. Its name is Betty. So he was riding ol’ Betty.
I told, I said, “You got put your rope on this big steer to keep him off from me. Otherwise he’ll just run and hook me, you know. I’m going to tell you.”
We got all rigged and I told them guys to turn him out. I must have give him a little too much slack, but he run at ol’ Betty. He almost hit her, but she jumped and kicked that high!
Hatch said, “You keep him off of me!”
Anyway, we took them both down to the bottom and tied them up in the trailer and took them to the ranch. After we was all pretty well, there was still few head left, an old rancher that lived across the road over there. Good rancher, and he had some dogs.
I told him, I said, “You gather the rest of these cattle and when you can, you take them to Phoenix.” I told him where to take them. I said, “Then you give us how many head, and I’ll pay you this much per head for gathering and hauling them to Phoenix.”
So, we went that route. We had a big cattle truck come in from Phoenix into the ranch and I loaded the cattle we had on it and sent them. I got a call from Art. Art was his first name. What was Art’s last name?
Anyway, he said, “Pete, I took this many cattle to Phoenix and I give them a bill and I still haven’t got a check.”
I said, “Where are you at, Art?
He told me. “I’m here at this phone.”
I said, “Give me that number. You stay right there.”
I called the big boss in Phoenix and I told him. I said, “Art delivered these cattle. He gathered them. I told him what we would pay him and he hasn’t got a check and he had given your office a check (bill).”
He said, “Where is Art at?”
I told them this phone number, so they called him and they said, “Art, you give us your address. This check will be in the mail tomorrow.”
So, I told Art, “You call me and let me know.”
So he did. He said, “The check showed up.”
You know I handled them things for the office just like they were mine. And the office depended upon me, you know, to do. So anyway, I worked for them for 20 years.
JM: So, you were more than counting, you were rounding them up.
PE: Several places we rounded. If their bill become due and they couldn’t pay, didn’t pay, we went in and gathered the cattle. So I done that on two or three ranches.
The country was real rough and steep. We were gathering cattle and this fence went right up a steep hill there. There was a gate to go through a’ horseback. But it was, there was an old dead cedar tree there and they used it to tie the gate to. Well, I went through that gate and a limb caught the back of my shirt just tore it.
Sam and I was camped down there in the bottom at what they called “Murder Camp” and there was these big trees there and there was a stream of water goes by and that. Anyway, we had been cooking potatoes and the peelings, we just throwed them out there.
This javelina came and went to eating potato peelings. This shirt, I throwed it over there by a tree, and that javelina got rooting it around. When she (pointing to his wife) got there, first thing she noticed was my shirt.
She said, “What happened to your shirt?”
I said, “A javelina got it.”
“Well,” she said, “I know better than that. I knew you’d tell me something like that.”
It wasn’t three minutes until this javelina come. I said, “There he is, right there.”
She said, “It is! It’s a javelina!”
(Laughs) I said, “He’s the one that got my shirt.” So anyway, uh!
JM: Got the heat off of you!
PE: This girl, her father owned this ranch and cattle. She lived. She had a house down the canyon and she had raised this javelina since it was just. I bet it just run around there anywhere.
But she only had one arm. She was working for a contractor, and she was working on one of these conveyor belts on this big machine. She caught her sleeve in it, and it jerked that conveyor belt, and it took her arm out. That happened, one of them deals.
We were bringing a bunch of cattle. Over there I could see the road, and this girl, she rode with us every day.
She said, “That car over there on the road is Mother,” and said, “She’s coming to bring us lunch today.”
“Oh, darn!” I said, “It was Sam and I’s turn to make lunch today.” I said, “We barbequed a pig last night and . . .”
She said, “You better not have hurt ol’ Porkie!” (Laughs)
“Well,” I said, “He was bothering us, so we just went ahead and barbequed him.”
We never touched him.
JM: Dutch ovened him, huh? Oh! Goodness!
PE: Oh I tell you. Sam had his cot with his sleeping bag, and there was these big ol’ Sycamore trees and them big leaves were all over there. But that pig come in there to hunt for, like I say, potato peelings and stuff. Then he clumb up on Sam’s bed when we wasn’t there, and he wet on Sam’s bed. (Laughs) Oh! I laughed and giggled.
He said, “Well, there ain’t ever body’s had a javelina wet on their bed.”
JM: Positive thinking!
PE: Stuff like that. We’ve had a lot of fun.
JM: That’s great.
BE: Go ahead and tell her about Murder Camp.
JM: Yeah, why is it called Murder Camp?
PE: Well, the feller that owns the cattle there. Like I say, there’s these big ol’ trees and the stream of water, good camping spot. He’s built a big corral there now, and that’s the name of the place is Murder Camp.
I said, “Where did it get that name?”
He said, “I’ll tell you what I know about the deal. Years ago, before there was any big fences in this country, there were several big cattle outfits and they would bring their cattle. A lot of them would camp here because there was water. They’d hold the cattle out there before they went on to the railroad head with them.”
He said, “One day a feller rode in there and said, wondering if they’d give him a job. He was a cowboy type of feller, you know.
And he said, “Yeah, I could use another man.” So, he said, “What’s your name?”
“Well,” he said, “I come from this other ranch.” This other cattle outfit, the Circles. The circles was two circles.
He said, “I’ve been working for the Circles.” And he wouldn’t never tell him a name, so they always called him the feller from the Circles.
Well, he sent him and another cowboy with a pack horse down into Clifton to buy supplies. They killed their own beef, but they probably uh, coffee, sugar, beans, pork belly or anything, you know, but just the regular things they would need.
They probably had 15 to 20 cowboys and each cowboy had at least 3 or 4, probably 4 head of horses. They would probably uh, 45, 50 head of horses in the remuda.
Back in them days you didn’t truck hay in. You day-herded these horses and then, in the morning you’d put a rope corral around them and they’d rope out their mounts for the day, you know.
He sent this one, this feller from the Circles, and another feller to Clifton to get supplies. That night the feller come back with the pack horse, but this other feller wasn’t with him.
He asked him, he said, “What happened to him?”
“Well,” he said, “he got to drinking down there in a bar in Clifton.” He said, “He told me to just go ahead. I’ll be there later.”
So, sometime during the night he did come in. Of course, he had his own bunk and everything, bedroll. But the next morning, to punish him, and that’s something that a cowboy didn’t want to be doing, was put on the day herd, a’ herding horses. They wanted the cows. They thought it was a lowly deal to herd horses. So he put him to herding the horses that day, and so they went on.
When they got in that evening, come riding in, the horses were just scattered all over, wasn’t around. They rode in the camp and the cook was laying there dead. This feller had shot him, and took some of the supplies and left.
So this boss of this outfit said, “He ain’t going to get away with that.”
So the next morning, they took his trail. He had left going east, toward New Mexico. So they took his trail and they trailed him as far as Daddle. Daddle, New Mexico. Do you know where Daddle is, on Highway 60 east of Springerville?
JM: Okay
PE: When they got to Daddle, they went into, there’s a bar there. They asked, “Have you seen this?”
They said, “He come through yesterday and he’s still going east.”
So they trailed him to Magdalena and this ol’ big hotel and bar and stuff. The last time I was through Magdalena it was still standing there, you know. But anyway, they trailed him to Magdalena. His horse was tied outside.
They went in and asked this bartender there, “Where’s the feller that’s riding that horse out there?”
He said, “He’s upstairs with Katie.”
Like I said before, every story or movie I ever seen a barfly their name is generally Katie, anyway.”
JM: Or Rosie
PE: He said, “He’s up there.”
So they hollered for him to come out. They had their guns drawed. When he come out, well they shot at him, and he jerked Katie in front of him and they killed her too.
Anyway that’s where it got the name of Murder Camp, because he killed the cook there at this place.
Well, then I’ve got to tell you a little more about this story. These guys, they made a monument there. It’s a pretty big monument. If you ever see it, you’ll know what I mean by a big one.
All they ever knew him about was the man from the Circles. And of course, there was Katie. So, they named this monument the Circle K.
JM: And we have them everywhere! (Laughs)
PE: So, there’s a bunch of them around. If you ever see one, you remember how they got . . .
JM: Okay! (Laughs)
PE: They get me to tell these stories, sitting around a campfire. It’s just stuff I made up! (Laughs)
JM: Well, I’m putting it down. Pete Ellsworth said it! (Laughs)
PE: You don’t have to put that stuff in though.
BE: That’s the best part.
JM: That’s the best part! (Laughs)
BE: It’s all the truth until that part.
JM: Until that part! Until you get to that one, that last sentence! (Laughs) Well that’s a good one. That’s good.
PE: Murder Camp is where the javelina ate my shirt. (Laughs) Yeah
JM: Getting even! Quite a bit of cowboying
PE: Oh, quite a lot of it.
BE: He rodeod too.
JM: Oh, I was going to ask you that!
BE: He rodeod a lot!
JM: A lot of cowboys, when you were talking about tripping them, I was going to ask you if you got into rodeoing.
PE: Well, this Indian down there, Yellowhair, that’s a pretty good artist, he took one of my pictures and painted that one off my picture. That bull there, he’d only been rode two or three times in his life, but he got rode that time, right there. But the first time I got on him he throwed me as far as that wall right there. He was a tough bull, but I rode him the second.
JM: Do you remember his name?
PE: Ah, yeah
BE: Chubby
JM: Chubby?
PE: Chubby, yeah.
JM: What was your horse’s name?
PE: Duke, ol’ Duke. Oh, he was a good one. I rodeod quite a lot.
JM: Did you get into the 4th of July rodeos that we used to have here?
PE: For years I was the arena director of this rodeo and I done the pickup work over the. . . But I always rode bulls and bulldog steers, so in ’59 the Arizona Rodeo, I won both the bulldogging and the bull riding in ’59. In ’57 I won the bulldogging, in ’56 I lost the bull riding by 3 points. But I enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun.
JM: Why did you pick bulls?
PE: Well, I rode a few bareback horses, but I couldn’t spur a bareback horse the way you were supposed to. So, but I loved to ride bulls.
JM: When was the first bull that you rode?
PE: Oh, first Brahma bulls was, they brought a rodeo into Holbrook and they brought Brahma bulls in to that rodeo. That was in, I believe ’46, the first year we was married.
JM: When you were taking care of those bulls out there, did you practice on them?
PE: No, they was just Hereford bulls used for breeding purposes, and they was nowhere, you know. You need corrals and a shute to put them in. Stuff like that. Uh, no, but you know, over in New Mexico, Arizona and in Houston, Texas in ’59, I won second for the bull riding. In Houston, that’s the second biggest rodeo. We was 19 performances. We was down there for a week and a half just rodeoing.
JM: Did you ever go to Las Vegas to that rodeo?
PE: No, just, I go to it every year to watch it, you know. But by the time it uh, no I just ain’t that sharp a bull rider. I rode one bull in New Mexico that had never been rode. I rode him and that contractor was telling a bunch of bull riders at rodeo somewhere else a year later, or almost a year. He told them, he said, “I’d like to tell you boys that that red bull ain’t never been rode, but” he said, “a feller, I don’t know who he is, but he rode my bull.” Dallas Stocks, do you know Dallas? Well, he used to live here. He lives in Taylor, but him and I rodeod a lot together. He was there listening to this.
He said, “I’ll tell you who rode your bull. Pete Ellsworth rode your bull.” So, anyway, it was quite something.
I rode another bull, a black bull that hadn’t been rode. Just as the whistle blowed, he turned over right up in the air, turned over forward like that. But I had my – and right in the same sentence I’ve been bucked off bulls that my wife can ride! You know, like I said, you just make one little mistake and pick up a mouthful of sand and go on back to the shute. You know.
JM: Did you ever get hurt bad?
PE: Nah, I had this collarbone broke from bull riding in Gila Bend. And ribs broke; two or three sets of ribs broke, but nothing serious.
JM: Ah, a lot of bruises!
PE: I had this collarbone broke and they was down in Gila Bend. They took me to the hospital. A doctor come and he looked at it and he said, “I’m going to have to operate.” He said, “One bone’s like this, and one’s like that. You’ve got a piece sticking up between then.” And then he left. Well, the next day, they hadn’t even come wash my face yet. I told Jo, I said, “Get my clothes. We’re leaving.”
So we left and went to Phoenix. I went to a doctor deal that I used to go to when I had back trouble and they put a cast, put a crutch in this cast and lifted this up here, and put the cast. Well, I sit up in a motel room in Phoenix like this. We come home and I said, “Jo this arm’s gone to sleep. It’s dying. You’ve got to cut this cast off!”
So, she went and got a saw and she went to sawing this way. I said, “You hit me in the chin! You’ve got to cut this way!”
So she started to cut this cast this way. She got it off.
Then they took me to St. Johns. The doctor here in Show Low had an office at St. John, so they took me over there. He knocked me out with Pentothal and they put a cast from here around to here.
I went back the day and I said, “Doc, you’ve got to cut that cast a little. I can’t reach the steering wheel.”
He said, “You just get out of here and shut up!”
I said, “You gotta cut this cast!”
The next day I was back in his office. I said, “You got that deal, you can cut that cast. Cut that cast to where I can reach my steering wheel.”
So he brrrr, brrrr a little bit.
Next time, I said, “Doc, you’ve got to cut this cast a little more.”
And he’d cuss me out.
Well he finally got this cast cut where I could uh. She was gone and I was home alone with nobody watching me. I got to doing that until I broke that cast. And, of course, the material that’s in it, you know. I was going to have to get a butcher knife this big to cut that. I finally got this cast kicked off. Then I could drive.
Five weeks from that day, I was to St. Johns to a rodeo and I drawed a big ol’ black mare in the bareback riding. She jumped out of the gate and fell head over heels and jabbed this right back in the ground. And so, by that night that was swelled up. I couldn’t even turn my head.
I went to Doc the next day and he said, “I don’t want to see you! Nothing about you! Don’t you come back!”
So, the rest of the year I didn’t talk any until I finally healed up,
JM: Oh, Goodness! Oh!
Oral Histories of the White Mountains
