Village Horse Doctor (23 page)

I
hadn’t had any long-distance calls from New Mexico after the poison-corn call until the Navaho Indian agent wrote me a letter asking about information I had gained on the poison plants that the sheep had been eating on the Hubble Ranch back in the spring.

He was referring to some weed problems that the Hubble Ranch Company had called me in on for consultation when they had some sheep under herd north of Quemado and Pie Town that were in a short dieout, and with the other young fresh spring weeds coming, the dieout took care of itself. I had such a short time to work on their troubles that I really didn’t make any worthwhile finds while I was there.

Since I had no real information that I could put in a letter, I telephoned the agent and explained to him that my suspicions were that pinguey was the weed that had caused the trouble at Hubble. However, due to the short time I had to work on it, I had no real information and would welcome the opportunity to continue my research if they were having sufficient trouble on the Navaho Reservation for them to justify having me come up there.

Due to the prolonged drouth, my practice was so light that I was glad for some work among the Navaho at the government’s expense, and at the same time, the information I was compiling might be of use in my future practice.

Research is always time-consuming and expensive, especially so where desert plants are involved. Outside of a nervous mental curiosity, the only other justifiable reason for such time
and expense is that there’s always the possibility and probability that you are better qualifying yourself for future cases in your practice.

We agreed that I should get up there as soon as convenient and start work since they were already having more than the usual amount of death loss for that time of the winter. It took me a few days to turn all my horses out into big pastures where they didn’t need to be looked after and spread the word that I would be in New Mexico probably until Christmas.

When I got to the Navaho Reservation, the agent said it would be well for me to set up whatever laboratory equipment that I needed at their headquarters in Gallup. I had no idea whether that was good or bad, so I went along with his suggestion that he provide me with sufficient space, and I began to work among the affected flocks. Almost all of them were from sixty to a hundred miles from Gallup.

All these sheep were under herd and the Indian sheepherders were very observant. After they decided that I wasn’t a smart aleck, which took them awhile, they began to volunteer good information as to the eating habits of their sheep; they also knew the different families of weeds growing on the range where their particular flocks would be.

For a few weeks I was learning more about Indian lore than I was about sheep. However, I was no stranger to the Navaho and had bought horses from them many years before I had begun the practice of veterinary medicine.

I was in a flock of sheep in the Zuni Mountains. An old herder told me that the youngest ewes here would get sick first and later the old mutton sheep that they kept around to shear and eat might get a little sick but would live a long time. When they moved the herd to new range, many of the big old mutton would get well.

This information in itself meant that it was fresh, tender
weeds that were causing the trouble because the youngest sheep ate the tenderest feed and it would not be from brushy growth where the bark or seeds might be poison. I gathered some specimens of the different types of vegetation that were growing in the mountains at this time of year and went back to my temporary laboratory to do a little analyzing.

I explained to the Indian agent one morning that I would have to “post” several sheep in order to determine what type of poisoning was involved. He said that he would put out the word among the herders and make it all right with them for me to do this. I had begun to learn that a flock of these sheep might belong to as many as eight or ten or even more Indians, and that they took time about herding, and that they had different earmarks and other means of identifying their sheep.

A few days later, I drove to Sheep Springs, I guess about forty miles north of Gallup, to see a herd that had been reported as having some sick sheep. I got there about the time they brought the flock in from the hills to the Indian settlement and I saw a sheep in the bunch that showed symptoms of being sick. I told the herder that I wanted to kill that sheep and asked him to catch him while I went to the car to get some instruments.

The car was maybe a hundred yards away and when I got back, he had a sheep hung up by one hind leg in a mesquite tree with his throat cut. I didn’t think it was the one I had pointed out, so I looked around through the herd and saw that the sick sheep was not the one he had caught. I didn’t make any mention of this, thinkin’ I might find some symptoms in the sheep that he had hung up.

When the sheep was dead and had quit bleeding, I told the Indian to lay him on the ground, where I could tell more about his insides when I cut him open. While this
short conversation went on, a whole bunch of Indian squaws and little kids gathered at my back without me knowing that they had gotten there.

I laid this sheep open and looked at his liver and spleen and kidneys and took a sample of fresh-eaten stuff from his first stomach, then got up off my knees. The herder asked me if I was through with him and I nodded my head and walked to the car.

Out of curiosity I decided to go back and see what was goin’ to happen to the sheep, but I was really a little too late to tell. That flock of squaws had stripped the hide off him, had cut him up, and had disappeared to their hogans; and there were a few small children still in sight, eating chunks of raw liver out of their bare hands.

I went back to the laboratory and worked on this mass of green stuff that I had taken from the sheep’s paunch, putting it through a short lab process I used—rather a force of habit than really hunting for something, as I knew the digestive process could have made chemical reactions and I didn’t expect to find anything worthwhile.

The next morning I went to another flock of sheep that were being herded near Crown Point and had been moved from Standing Rock because they had been getting sick on that range. This time I found a sheep that was really sick and told the herder to catch him and hold him until I got back from the car where I needed to get some instruments.

Sure ’nuff this herder had caught and killed the wrong sheep. After I had seen that other one evaporate with a bunch of squaws, I decided it wouldn’t hurt for him to have two dead sheep, so I made him catch the sick one. By now there were about fifteen squaws there who I guess came out of the rocks, and there was a good deal of gruntin’ and head shakin’ going on, and this herder didn’t want to kill this sick sheep.

There are always some Indians who have been sent to reservation schools and can speak good English. They would grunt and make signs and talk Indian to each other, and if I could get one to say anything to me, it would be in English, but this particular bunch all of a sudden lost their education. When I told the herder to kill the sick sheep, nobody could understand what I meant, so I stepped astraddle the sheep and held his shoulders with my knees and turned his head up with one hand and cut his throat with the other. When I glanced up at the Indian squaws, I recognized their blank expressions as being ones of disgust and contempt.

I told the herder not to touch the sheep that was hanging in the tree and I began to post the one on the ground. I found some enlarged welp-like spots on the liver and a darkened spleen. Then I turned to the sheep in the tree and told the herder to lay him on the ground.

It was noticeable that the squaws didn’t touch the poor, sick sheep that I had just finished with, but when I got through looking at the fat sheep, they nearly had a fight among themselves as they skinned, quartered, and carried off the fat sheep. Those who had been pushed back and hadn’t gotten a chance at that good mutton turned and cut up the poor one and went off with it.

The next morning I was telling the Indian agent at Gallup about this little scuffle and about the two different herders killing the wrong sheep. He explained to me that under their ration rules they were not supposed to be butchering any of their breeding flock and that the Indian sheepherder was still smarter than a white man because he wanted to kill a fat sheep so they could eat him and have good mutton whether or not I found out what I wanted to know from the post-mortem.

He thought this was funny and told me that I might
know a lot about medicine, but I needed to smarten up about Indians. I thought this was a little funny myself, but I started making plans to hold my own the next time me and my red brothers did any sheep work together.

The next bunch of sick sheep that I went into were back up near Toadlena on a primitive road. I wanted to post a sick sheep and since there were several in the flock, I told the herder for him and his dogs to hold them up in a tight band. I walked into them and took the sick sheep that I wanted by the hind leg and pulled him out of the bunch.

I stood over him and cut his throat, and when he quit kicking I laid him out on a big, clean, flat rock that was almost an ideal operating table. His internal organs confirmed the last sick sheep I posted and furnished some further evidence of vegetable poison.

When I told the herder goodbye and left the flock, no squaws had shown up for the sick sheep that I had killed and I don’t know whether or not any came out of the rocks after I left.

There had been some little snow flurries of no major importance and most of the snow had melted a few days after it had fallen, which caused a slightly better assortment of small weeds to start coming to the top of the ground. I had begun to get some fairly good ideas about their troubles, and for the next several days I gathered and ground the pinguey weed and was working at isolating the toxic substances.

It was almost Christmastime and I told the Indian agent that I would lock up my office and go home for the Christmas holidays and would be back soon after the first of January.

The sunshiny, balmy winter days of the desert cause people who are simple enough to be fishermen to go fishing
in the Rio Grande River in the Big Bend country, and Frank Hinde was one of these people.

Frank’s wife, Ruth, had gone to Oklahoma City to see her mother and Frank had promised faithfully that he would not go to the river. However, Lige Warnock and some more of his other cronies came up with the proposition and, knowing that Ruth would be gone for several days, Frank didn’t see any harm in goin’ fishin’.

They camped on the Rio Grande River several miles upstream from the trading post at Lajitas. Fishing was good, the weather was nice, and they were having a big time.

Frank was six feet eight inches tall and well proportioned, and of course, all his fishing partners were much smaller men. The day they decided to come home, Frank went into the river to do some grabbling along the banks for the big ones that might be in the rock holes in the water too deep for the other fishermen to get to.

By the time he drove the one hundred and seventy-five miles home, it was late afternoon and he was running a little fever. The next day he was sick enough that he went to bed without anybody tellin’ him to. He lay there long enough to get worried about himself, and he called Lige Warnock to ask him to find the village horse doctor to have me come and look at him.

I had been to my folks at Cumby, Texas, for Christmas and it was late afternoon when I drove into town and Lige saw me. We went up to Frank’s house, which was in the farwestern part of town. He had a great big rambling house, and nearly everybody in West Texas drives up to the back door and goes in.

Frank was in the back bedroom, and due to his size, his bed had been specially made and was extra long. He was lying there in his longhandle underwear in cold weather,
kickin’ the cover off, and had a raging fever. I talked to him a few minutes; then I went back to my car and got my stethoscope and listened to his heart and lungs.