Reeves County Pioneer Elmer Jones

Transcribed and submitted by Kay Woods-Lopez (kwoods@apex2000.net)
Permission granted by John Edgar Haley


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Excert from the book "Windmills, Drouths and Cottonseed Cake, A Biased 
Biography of a West Texas Rancher, John A. Haley" written by John Edgar Haley


A cowboy is hard to wean from the country, and for some reason the spring 
of the year is the most difficult. When he is away from his horse and 
saddle he does not recall the cold dry winters and even drier springs. 
A puncher's memory conveniently deletes the suffocation dust and blinding 
sandstorms, the helpless rage and frustration when riding crazy, cold-jawed 
horses while driving slow-moving herds of weak cows and baby calves. He 
remembers instead all the good things.

A rider thinks of cool, crisp mornings, yearns for the smell of burning 
mesquite and an unobstructed view of the heavens at night. In his daydreams, 
the displaced cowboy pulls on his boots, rolls up his bead and can almost 
feel the damp stiff tarp. He inhales the delightful odor of frying bacon, 
remembers the tingling excitement of saddling an unknown bronc before 
daylight, and revels in the exhilaration of "fitting" a good ride on a 
hard-pitching horse. The creak of the saddle on a favorite mount, the 
jingle of spurs and feel of a rope, cattle on the mend, and the promise 
of rain are magnetic forces that few cowboys can long resist. Certainly 
John (Furman Haley) could not. He came back to Midland in the spring and 
probably helped Papa deliver what cattle were left from the Young place, 
southwest of town. Then in late spring or early summer, he started punching 
cows west of the Pecos River.

He worked on a ranch north of Van Horn for a short while, then for Elmer 
Jones, a great cowboy, who ranched southeast of Pecos. "Elmer Jones was 
one of the best cowpunchers I ever knew," John once said, "He knew how to 
handle cattle and made quite a name for himself as a roper. He could ride 
anything that had hair on it, and it was all fun.

"There were five or six big Mexican steers on his place that were strays. 
They were seven or eight years old and weighed around 1100 pounds. Old 
Elmer never would throw 'em out; he'd just rope 'em every time it came 
handy. He'd forefoot one, jerk 'im down, then ride up and give 'im slack 
so he could get up. That way he never would have to get off his horse. One 
day though, when he rode up to turn one loose, the rope slipped off one 
front foot and drew up around the other one. He jerked 'im down again and 
I got off my horse to take it off. I got a tail-hold and pulled the rope 
off his foot and Elmer hollered…."

'Ride 'im!"
'Hell, I don't want to ride 'im. Ride 'im yourself!'
'Hold 'im!'
"He jumped off his horse and stepped astraddle the steer. I handed him 
the tail, and the show was on. That old steer came up so fast that it 
almost seemed like he started pitching from flat on his side. Elmer rode 'im 
twenty or thirty steps lookin' back over his shoulder grinnin' and then 
stepped off. He sure made it look easy."


Copyright 1995 by John Edgar Haley