August 20 - 31, 2005: No Guests

Sunday 8/28/05

No guests this last week but it has been a busy one.

I was back out at camp Saturday night through Tuesday. I found no fresh track out there anywhere. I kept up my nightly patrols but with no shooting. Just being out there and being around. During the days I spent my time digging postholes for a new branding pen at the Canyon Creek cabin. It’s slow digging, the bottom there is clay and it’s saturated with water so really stiff and hard to dig.

Tuesday 8/30/05

Nate and Leasha came out and took over at the cabin. I left them a list of little odd jobs and told them the branding pen has to be done in two weeks.

Lyndsey was in Albq. till Tuesday doing errands and trying to find parts for my backhoe that’s broken.

Wednesday 8/31/05

I had to go to town for a meeting with the Forest Service. It was one of the few I came out feeling good about. The administration in the office there is the easiest to get along with we have ever had. After dealing with the wolf people the Forest Service folks seem like champs now.

Lyndsey went out on Gambler and gathered about 20 head of strays out of 7HL pasture. She was out all day dodging thunderstorms but never getting wet.

I checked e-mail last night and found the wolf locations for the weekend flights. The big Saddle pack of wolves has moved five miles east onto another ranch. I like to think that all my work has finally paid off tho five miles is only a couple hours walk for the wolves.

Thursday 9/1/05

I spent the day trying to fix a leak on one of the water heaters at the guest camp. Of course I came up a few parts short. I need to get to town and buy a bunch of various parts to restock the shop.

Late in the day I went out to see how things were out at the cabin. A little bit had been done and more to do.

Lyndsey went back out into 7HL to get a few more cattle she saw on her way home yesterday. She got them found and moved into Loco and was home by 5pm.

Friday 9/2/05

I went to get a load of hay. I took a horse trailer and the F550. I got there and wished I had brought the flat bed as they had some great grass/alfalfa mix but only a few hundred bales of it. There was no one around but I know the folks well so I loaded up and squeezed in a hundred bales and headed home. I had left the house at 6am and was home by 2pm. When I got home Nate and Leasha were back so I had some help unloading the hay. From Leasha, Nate was having an allergy attack so he watched. I was glad for any help, these bales run about 85 pounds and after loading it I was pretty tired.

Lyndsey went to Silver City to wash horse blankets and get my plumbing parts.

Saturday 9/3/05

I went back to get more hay, this time with the flatbed. A friend had loaned me some money till shipping time so I am out to get as much of this good hay as I can before it’s all gone. I hope to get about 500 bales in the next few weeks so I won’t have to be doing it this winter with lousy roads. I left the house at 5am this time trying to beat the heat down there. Yesterday it was just blazing hot there on the plains. Sure am glad I don’t live down there. Up here we have not been over 72 all week.

Judd was home today so I had some help. He’s a good guy and let me tell ya he can throw a bale of hay! I keep trying to fix him up with Lyndsey but he’s too shy to call her.

It got hot before we were done loading; we were working on the sunny side of the barn. I was sweating like I hadn’t since my days haying in Virginia. I hated it then and found I still do.

We got 250 bales on the trailer, a bit over loaded but like I said I was after all I could get.

The trip back went well till I was about 20 miles west of Datil. I blew a tire just before a Cowboy Church out in the lonesome. The trailer had about 18,000 pounds on it so of course my high lift jack wouldn’t think of lifting it. I got out my boards and blocks and tried backing up on that to raise the blown tire off the ground. The boards kept breaking so I had to go behind the church that was just built two years ago and pick through their scrap pile. I came up with more boards and a concrete block. Finally an hour later I had the blown tire off and the new one on and drove off the ramp. The new tire was just about flat.

I went down the road a few miles to a ranch, but no one was home.

I was able to call Maggie on the cell and asked her to start heading my way with the portable air tank.

An hour later I felt the trailer start shaking hard and stopped to find another wheel had worked loose and worn out the holes in the wheel and ruined the studs on the hub. I was wondering what to do when Maggie showed up. The air tank she brought was empty there is no gauge on it so she had no way of knowing. It’s a ranch rule that when you use the tank you refill it. I guess someone was just too busy or lazy to bother. But even if we had air for the one tire I knew the other would never make it home with out falling off. As I scratched my chin along came Donnie and Jeanie. We looked things over a bit and Donnie said he’d go to his house and get some washers to put on and try to snug the wheel up so it could make it the last 20 miles. When he got back he had a whole hub for the axle and all the tools to fix it. It didn’t take long to pull the damaged hub and put the other one in place.

Good neighbors are some thing special.

About a mile from the H.Q. the Check Engine Light came on. The truck bucked a few times and tried to die but recovered and the light went off. I pulled in the yard about 6:30pm and started backing into the barn. The warning light came back on and the truck died twenty feet from the barn doors.

It was a hell of a long day to get a load of hay.

Sunday 9/4/05

Lyndsey and I unloaded the front half of the trailer by first off loading 20 bales in the pickup then driving that into the barn and stacking it. A bout five trips like that we had the front of the trailer light enough that we were able to jack the trailer off the F550, chain to it and pull it out from under the trailer. We then backed the Dodge under and rehitched to that now finally able to get the trailer backed up to the barn.