Sounds

Gone to the Horizons

Sounds

National Anthem like none other

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

  

            It was just after sundown on the last day of deer season, 1961 or 1962. My dad and I were coming off a steep slope in the exact location where Bill Evans Dam exists today. We had just reached the bottom of the Mangus when it screamed, or, rather, wailed.

            Never had I heard the scream of a cat like that before, and never …again. We never saw it, but assumed it was a lion and not a bobcat.

            Men and raw nature

            My maternal grandfather and his brother, Carl and Blue Rice, killed the last grizzly bear in New Mexico in the spring of 1931. The bear was killed just off the Rain Creek Divide in the Mogollons near the Grant County-Catron County line. That country had been Shelley and Rice family range since the mid 1880’s. The Shelleys believed the bear had killed 28 head of their cattle since the previous fall

            Lawrence Shelley jumped the bear on Lookout Ridge. The bear had come onto the trail on top of a shower that had just fallen.

Pushed, the bear turned off the ridge into the rocks and brush. Lawrence immediately trotted home to the 916 headquarters for dogs and to alert neighbors including the Rice brothers. The hunt was on.

The brothers and their hounds struck the tracks and the race commenced. They trailed the bear to where they couldn’t ride, dismounted, and followed the sound of the dogs on foot.

Soon the dogs were barking ground treed and a horrible brawl was in progress. As the brothers approached the howling, growling, and brush breaking battle of life and death, they emerged on a rock and looked down at the now bloodied dogs and the bear. Immediately, the bear saw them, and, “like a man climbing through willows”, the bear swiped the dogs aside and started to them never taking his eyes off their skylined image.

When they killed the bear coming up onto the very rock from which they waged their battle, they had only one loaded cartridge left between them.

Dust, smoke, and the sounds of that battle died away … gone forever to the horizons. What would it be like to witness and to hear those sounds?

More Sounds …

I often hear men working cattle. Most of the time, I am struck by the absence of what I remember as a kid. I think I only rarely hear the duplicated sounds of old time cowboys.

A distinct memory lingers when I think about a day about 1960 when my dad and I were coming down Clark Canyon. Way off down the canyon we could hear a lone cowboy. He was coming off a point with a bunch of cattle. My dad immediately told me it was Tom McCauley. How did he know that?

First of all, we could assume it was Tom because we were on his place. The cowboy was alone which also signified it was likely to be Tom, but there was more. Having been around Tom all his life, my dad would have known the sound of that old cowman implicitly. With a big voice, Tom would be starting cattle and moving them with his voice alone as he worked horseback.

Similarly, there are stories of the Shelleys working the Gila River bottom from Hell’s Canyon downstream to the mouth of Turkey Creek with a single man. Terrell Shelley recounts stories of how easy it was for a single man horseback to work miles of that river bottom by himself … and his voice.

I swear I think I could pick out of a recording the sound of my paternal grandfather, Albert Wilmeth, working cattle. A resonant high pitched yip was his trademark call. He never whistled like my maternal grandfather. He couldn’t. My memory of his sound was an unlikely utterance coming from his physical presence. It wasn’t so very loud in his presence, but it would carry long distances.

I’d give anything for a recording of that sound. I’d love to hear what, at one time, was taken for granted and commonplace.

Origins

Those historic sounds came from spontaneous, long ago events. Most of the cowboys in that era were one or two generations removed from Texas from which most of their families migrated. That made them one to three generations away from the Civil War and the big cattle drives. Few of the Gila River settlers would have been old enough to be in the Civil war, but their kinfolk and their contemporaries would have been.

My great grandfather, Lee Rice, would have certainly ridden with cowboys of Civil War experience when he rode “up the (Goodnight-Loving) Trail” three times with Charles Goodnight himself. On that trail, with its horrendous 45 mile dry walk to the Pecos and Horse Head Crossing from the common route with the Butterfield Trail, he would have heard the original historic yell.

That was the Rebel Yell. It likely formed the basis of generations of cattle calls that came from Texas replete with Texas customs and culture.

I would love to hear that original sound, too. If you read Jackson’s biography there is mention of the use of what became known as a trademark Stonewall strategy as early as the first Battle of Manassas. In his orders in the assault on the Henry Hill house where he earned his nickname, he instructed his men to “yell like furies”. There is every indication that result became the Rebel Yell.

It was used as Jackson’s strategy in the Shenandoah Valley battles. It was part of the psychological war he had to employ to even the disparity of men and material. It was extremely effective.

At Chancellorsville, Union troops led by General Joe Hooker were shocked into retreat by the eerie wail of the Rebel Yell as Confederate troops unexpectedly came charging out of the wilderness in fading dusk. It was to be Jackson’s last charge, but it was indelibly etched in the southern psyche.

For years, the veterans of the southern cause would gather for reunions. At some point, they would, in unison, join together with their brotherhood and their yell. As time went on, there were fewer and fewer voices. Finally, there were none.

Gone to the horizons was their original sound, but a version of it lived on in future generation cow camps from Texas to all parts of the West.

Fading …

Unabashedly, distant sounds in my mind remain dear. They are various, but they are dominated by times of youthful exuberance. The sound of basketballs bouncing on hardwood floors, the guttural and popping sounds for five seconds after a football was hiked, the soft recognition of a cow pairing with a calf, the appreciation of a tired horse waiting for you to fork some hay, the thump of a rifle somewhere off to the north on the forest on the first day of deer season, rocks rolling and the tell tale sound of a departing mule deer, a bull coming to water, the sound of a mourning dove at sundown, the real jing of bobs against tempered rowels, a John Deere A accelerating, a pruning crew in an apple orchard, all of my grandkids together laughing, a windmill pumping, and Mozart in the softness of a California morning rain all come to mind in succession. They are mine, and … they are not offered for debate.

Several years ago, Kathy and I were standing with our friends, Joe and Diane Delk, just off stage of from where the Delk Family Band was about to perform. It was there that a totally Grant County suggestion was made.  Joe took the idea and transformed it into a singular sound of uniqueness and importance.

He played the national anthem on his lone fiddle.

For a brief moment there was a bit of background noise, but it subsided. There was a pause, and, then, a gathering of human voices was heard. Softly with unity, those gathered sang as a respectful backdrop to that lone fiddle. Before the song ended there was not a dry eye in the hall. Never had we witnessed such spontaneous emotion. Never have we witnessed such reverence extended to our national anthem.

I saw Joe the other night. He talked about the most recent rendition of what is becoming a sensational patriotic offering. He played the anthem with a friend making it a twin fiddle experience. He tried to describe his emotions during the event. He couldn’t conclude the account.

I know, though. I heard and witnessed the original and it didn’t just drift off to the horizons to be forgotten. This sound needs to be heard and experienced!

It is that important, and this suggestion is also offered … without recourse of debate.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Yes, sir … this is Super Bowl significant. There is nothing like it.”

THE WESTERNER sez:

Here's Joe Delk playing the national anthem at Southern NM Fairgrounds and an image which illustrates how I feel about the whole darn thing.