Strong Women

The Gate Keepers

Home Range

Strong Women

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            If I could, I’d ask you how you did it all,

                        because from here it now seems so hard.

            You gave of yourself everyday for the greater part of a century,

                        with so little attention for your own regard.

            I heard you once suggest that when St. Peter signaled

                        you’d probably miss your one big chance,

            Because you’d likely be out fixin’ fence in the Cross H pasture

                        rather than primpin’ for the dance.

            The truth is you filled so many lives with your simple dignity and grace,

                        and gave yourself so little due.

            But, those of us who knew you and loved you so dearly,

                        now wish a thousand times we’d told you … what we really owe you.

            Home Range

            The Westerner filed the report on the Texas ranch that sits in the middle of the oil patch that may be worth upwards of $7B. The story line suggests the family has no intention of cutting the heart out of its heritage by selling at any price. Truthfully, that should make every cow man tingle with emotion. In the face of all those $billions and to offer the response, “We aren’t for sale” takes a lot more than casual nerve.

            Good for you!

            It makes you want to know more about that family’s now departed matriarch, Barbara Fasken, who wed the grandson of founder David Fasken, and ushered the ownership into the modern era intact. She must have instilled in her heirs more than the worship of money. The tracks certainly don’t suggest the family hurts for anything, but to hold the line on excess is for sure a rarity in most humans.

            The fact is obvious. At the heart of this story is the family’s 165,000-acre Permian Basin ranch. In short, it represents more than money. It was the culmination of real dreams. It became the true home range of a family. That is a timeless and rare treasure. It is also a foundational tenet that Westerners sought when they searched for a place to call home.

            In that regard, original America was a most special gift. Few circumstances on earth have offered the opportunity to find that most special place. Ordinary people, with the chance to stake a meaningful, lasting hold on private property, were the vanguard on the edge of a vast wilderness. It was not a showcase for the timid or the weak of heart.

            It wasn’t an exclusive masculine realm, either.

            Indeed, it was personified by the fearless Westerner, but the most enduring examples always had a supremely strong woman in the harness. Without knowing her, Mrs. Fasken must have demonstrated that trait or the modern outcome would have been much different. She emerges as the strong partner in a union that not only benefited from its surroundings but was welded together from within.

            That is the stuff of legacy love.

            Strong Women

            Think about generational ranching operations. They just don’t exist with timid participants and that includes strong women.

            When Tom McCauley first laid eyes on his future bride, Marie, she had just been thrown from a bronc in the corral. She sat there in the dirt trying to get her bearings while Tom critiqued the situation.

            “Here, let me come in there and show you how to handle that little pony,” he had offered.

            He strutted in there, caught the horse, pulled his head around to him and stepped only to have said caballo explode under him in every direction. In one account of how hard the horse bucked, none other than Tom himself had admitted the horse had him pitched off twice only to jump under him to reseat him. On the third jump, though, he hit the ground hard, and sat there trying to get his own bearings.

            Marie then smiled.

            Literally, and from that day forward, they were partners in all ways. They were together every day. Theirs was largely a horseback country, and work was all they knew.

            In the visions of Marie, she was booted, spurred, and wearing leggins as a matter of course. When she talked, she always had that half smile on her face almost as if she was expecting her punchline to be humorous.

            Relying on each other, they put lots of country together.

            Today, both are gone, but you can see the traits of both on the land. Tom was the cowman. Marie was the matron and the weaver of permanence. The fruit trees, the lilacs, and the other flowering shrubs around the Ash Creek Camp and other places are there because of her. She planted them. She packed water to them. She nurtured them just like she nurtured her first calf heifers.

On Sacaton Mesa, Minnie Rice was the lady among ladies, an enduring cow woman, and a defender and best representative of her legacy.

She was the epitome of grace. Her hands showed the routine and harshness of the ranch, but, always, they were soft and kind. She was lots of things to many people. The honesty that was ever present in her was as disarming as it was charming.

She was biblically loyal.

            She and Blue, too, were always together. They worked hard, put together more country than they started with, and handed it off at their finish line.

            The Gate Keepers

As time passes and life and duty etch the scars of endurance on our faces and souls, memories of women like these two are too few and far between. The immensity of their lives is being forgotten or never told. In no way were they perfect, but in all ways, they were gifts to us. We still talk about them. We enjoy their recipes, their permanent words of encouragement, and stand amazed at their work ethic.

            Indeed, the respect we have for them has only grown. They were the consummate gatekeepers, and … we miss them.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.