Harvey, Smokey, Tuffy, and The Gila River Kid

Nunn Better

Harvey, Smokey, Tuffy, and

The Gila River Kid

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Smokey Nunn’s was laid to rest June 18, on the Nunn Ranch in Luna County, New Mexico. He was a gentleman.

            He was also a great cowman, a native son of New Mexico, and, for the last decade, our neighbor. If there was anybody who offered the kindest wishes of wellbeing, it was Smokey. Every time I saw him there would be his handshake and then his hand on my shoulder asking how things were going. He had no idea how much I appreciated that simple gesture.

            Striking in appearance and humble and careful in speech, he was … a Westerner.

            There are many stories of Smokey, but none typifies him more than when the dude, discovering he was a rancher, set out to determine how big a rancher he was.  When the fellow asked him how much money he had in the bank, Smokey involuntarily expelled the mouth full of whatever he was drinking and contemplated how to answer the question.

            In his modesty, he was said to have answered under his breath, “Oh, maybe a million dollars.”

When that didn’t deter the dude, the next question was how many cows he had. Without hesitation and those Nunn eyes flashing, he spat his answer.

“None of your G**D*** business!”

Money was one thing, but cows … that was another!

Nunn Better

I knew three Nunns of Smokey’s generation. They were Harvey, Smokey, and Tuffy. All are now gone.

Brother, Harvey, was one of the first men I sought when we returned from California. He was a respected name in my family by way of my uncle, Roy, and their horse dealings. Harvey was the Marine who gallantly served his country and came home to the Flying Y. He was a stocker operator … a steer man.  

Good horses and stocker cattle were his credentials and set him apart from cow-calf operators. There was just a smidge of grand separation in that qualification that was worn by Harvey.

There was something about him that made me smile. We once spent an immensely pleasant afternoon in a fall wind storm on the ridge above McKnight Cabin. He had braces on his legs full time then broken up by horses and life. His smile and his black hat, though, were intact.

I had inquired how I could contact him and I was given several telephone numbers. When asked which one I should try, the qualified answer was to call the one to the Nutt Bar.

“If you call before 8:30 PM, call the Nutt Bar,” was the actual answer. I did …!

Tuffy was their cousin. The first time I laid eyes on Tuffy, he and his Black Range fire crew pulled into the crew quarters at Gila Center. They had hauled a mule they called Jumbo and that monstrosity was straddled over the divider in the two horse government trailer! That defining event mirrored every adventure that was to transpire with Tuffy Nunn. Every 18 year old in the world would never be the same again after spending a month in fire camp with Tuffy, and I was no exception.

With long white hair and goatee, he looked like a miniature version of Buffalo Bill.

I am going to hold most memories in confidence, but there was more packed into that short span of life than any similar period in my life. There was the night we determined Tuffy was dead. He was laying there seemingly lifeless and not breathing on his bunk clothed only in the white garments in which he came into the world. Somebody came to the conclusion it was too late to call the coroner so we’d call in the morning. The next morning he shocked the creases out of us when we found him cooking breakfast!

There was another night we lined the ’62 purple Bonneville Tuffy was test driving up alongside Hugh Reed’s new Chevy pickup at Lyon’s Lodge. Craig Dunn started the race to the pavement with his Smith and Wesson. Nine river crossings later and water mottes stuck through the Bonneville’s radiator grill, Tuffy turned left to take some young lady home to Silver City. The rest of us went on to Gila Center and to bed.

No … I’m just not going to divulge anything else except, when that fire bust was over and we were lined up out there to leave to go on with the rest of our lives, Tuffy announced that I was, officially, one of his boys … what a proud moment in the annals of life.

The Gila River Kid

Several years ago, I was in a meeting with several men including Tito Morales, a Mexican cow buyer. As we talked, Tito paused as if some great thought occurred to him, looked at me, and said, “Steve, you have family in Mexico!”

“No, I don’t have family in Mexico.”

“Yea, you do,” he concluded. “You have family in Mexico.”

Later, I saw another friend, Jerry Billings, at a local equipment auction. As we talked, Smokey’s son, Joe Bill, walked by looking at auction offerings. We greeted each other and visited briefly before Joe Bill walked on.

“Steve, did your granddad ever tell you about the Gila River Kid,” Jerry asked.

“No, I know nothing about any Gila River Kid.”

As Jerry stood there contemplating my answer he said, “You know, there is a brethren from the colonies here and I want to introduce you to him (Jerry is LDS and his reference was of another Mormon from Mexico who was present at the auction).”

We found that fellow and I was introduced to him. When he heard my name he stepped back and looked at me.

“Really?”

Without pause, Jerry told him, “Tell him the story of the Gila River Kid.”

The story took place circa 1916 after the Nunns and my father’s family had come to southwestern New Mexico. The gist of the story was the friendship that developed between a young Nunn and what we believed was a long lost younger brother of my paternal grandfather. The setting was on the Gila River at Cliff. The young Wilmeth’s name was Ben. There was no reference to the given name of Nunn.

The two were at a dance and, in the course of the event, the young Nunn got into a row. The tiff was serious enough that notice was served that they were to disarm and the fight would be decided with fists.

That was done and before long the Nunn boy was getting the worst end of a serious beating. He called for help and purportedly yelled, “Shoot him … he’s going to kill me!”

Young Ben Wilmeth did.

The victim was not killed outright, but, in minutes, the constable had Wilmeth in custody and both the gunshot victim and the shooter were on their way to Silver City … one to the hospital and the other to jail.

The story progressed from that point to the decision made by the Nunn family to make sure the Wilmeth boy wasn’t incarcerated or hanged depending on the outcome of the victim’s plight. They hatched a plan to spring Ben from jail and get him out of the country … to Mexico.

They did exactly that.

With horses staged on the route south, they relayed young Wilmeth to the border. Arriving there, there was an anecdotal suggestion the friends called their deal even with a handshake. There is no evidence they saw each other again.

The Mormon elder concluded the story by stating the Mexicans around northern Chihuahua and Casas Grande knew the young man by a different name, the Gila River Kid.

The finale

A year later, we were branding calves and I asked Casas Grande native son and vaquero extraordinaire, Ramon Villanueva, if he knew the name Wilmeth.

“Steeph, how du yu hs’pell su nombre,” he asked. “Tell me a’gin.”

When I did, his eyes lit up. “Veelmuth … Kiko Veelmuth!”

“Yea, Kiko … purty goot cowa’boy … con ojos azul, tambien.”

He knew this Kiko who likely would have to be the son of Ben Wilmeth and the generation of my father. They would have been first cousins.

Kiko had died within months of the Villanueva conversation. Ramon related how the Wilmeths had ranched somewhere southeast from Casas Grande. He knew nothing about Ben Wilmeth.

As Joe Delk played ‘Amazing Grace’ on his fiddle at Smokey Nunn’s service, I gazed at the picture of Smokey and thought about the story of the Gila River Kid. In the program was a poem. A line read, “Thinking of friends past and places far that held hunks of (our) history in their grip.”

Indeed, friends past and places far put us in this place at this time. We have crossed paths, and we shall do so … again.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “God bless Smokey Nunn.”