“Mogollon’s fire of ‘42─‘It was set for the insurance’
It was February in ’42. I was rising sixteen. It was winter, of course. The roads were covered with knee-high snow. My mother (Mettie sic. Hulse) and I were at our ranch in Canyon Creek. Our neighbors, the Gilsons, lived about twenty miles from us. The government was still drafting. And Earl Gilson, he must have been in his forties, had to go to register for the draft in Mogollon. Bert Magee, a trapper─he was in his forties, had to go too. That winter Bert and his wife lived where Snow Lake is now. There was a dippin’ vat there and a cabin. He trapped.
Mother stayed with Nina Gilson while I went with Earl and Bert. I had check to get some supplies. We’d do that once in a while. One or the other would go off and the other would stay somewhere.
We spent the first night at Clairmont in Shellhorns’ cabin. They had a ranch there.
When we got to Mogollon, the lower part of town had burned. Both sides. It was still smokin’. I think they had dynamited one building to stop the fire. There’s probably twenty men to put out the fire when we got there; there was maybe ten or fifteen trying to salvage stuff. They’d stole enough whiskey to start another bar. There was two businessmen, and they both had bars. Que Holland was one of the owners of the two bars. He was a big, big feller. Big whey-bellied man. He had on a six-shooter belt, and I thought it sure took a lot of leather to make that.
Todd Hilliard was the other. He set the fire. He did it because Mogollon was closin’ down. He had a dance hall and a skatin’ rink and a bar. He wanted the fire insurance. He was all packed up and ready to leave. Mogollon had just one mine still workin’ there. The Fannie. Hilliard’s bar and Holland’s bar were close. There was a lot of businesses. And there was a barber shop. I remember my father and I went in one time. He got a shave. The shop was on the south side of the street.
The school was still open. That’s where the draft board and everything was, where we went to register. Mae Tipton, Clarence Tipton’s wife, was the teacher. She was taking care of the draft registration too. There were probably twenty students all in one room.
Coates’s store was still in operation there, and they had a corral and sold hay and feed. That’s where we left the stock, and then caught a ride to Glenwood. We got there at dark.
Stevie Hudson had the bar where the Blue Front is now. It was called the Blue Bonnet, I believe. He gave me a hot toddy and told me to go to his house, which was down the street, and stay there. Stevie’s mother was staying there at the time. She was very old. His wife, Myrtle, gave me something to eat and a good breakfast the next morning.
Earl and this trapper, Bert, got in a poker game, of course. Played all night, I guess. Bert had about thirty dollars Earl had paid him for staying at his ranch at Christmas time while he went back to Oklahoma, vacationing. Well, that thirty dollars didn’t last long.
We caught another ride up to Mogollon and had hotcakes for breakfast at Maloneys’ boarding house. Mrs. Maloney’s name was Ann. They were an older couple. The house was just above the bridge at the foot of the hill. Tom Maloney was a night watchman at the Fannie, and the men in town would play tricks on him.
“Come on, Tom, have a drink,” they said one time. “No, I can’t.” The men filled the glass with whiskey, then put beer foam on top. After he drank it, they followed him. When his wife was mad, he said, “I just had one beer, but I think it soured my stomach.”
We went to Coates’s store. Mrs. Coates waited on me. We couldn’t get much. Coffee was rationed. Oatmeal was about the only thing we bought. The Coateses had two boys, Eldridge and Ted. Ted was the youngest one, and he was the black sheep of the whole family. He was off to war. He was a friend to the kids. They all liked him.
We got back on our horses and went up Fannie hill and stopped at the graveyard. Then Earl said, “Burro. We should have got a burro.” We had some gunny-sacks to carry our stuff, oatmeal and a little coffee and some cans. “Let’s get a burro. We don’t have saddles, bridles, and everything. I’d go back and get one, but they know my horse.” He was riding an old bay horse. I was riding that old paint horse, Apache. So I went back there and got a burro from a man’s yard. We turned him loose when we got over to Clairmont.
We spent another night there at Clairmont in the Shellhorns’ cabin. Kenneth Shellhorn was there then. There was one bed. We all slept in it.
I remember Kenneth the next morning. He had a bunch of good hounds, and they started a bobcat track right there. So he went with them. In fifteen minutes we heard him shoot. Bobcats weren’t bringing very much then, seven dollars, or eight dollars, but that was a lot of money then too.
When we got back at the Gilsons’ the hounds weren’t there. Where were they? Nina and Mother took the hounds huntin’. The were going to catch a bobcat. Nina Gilson was a great hunter. Oh, she liked to hunt bobcats in winter. It’s easy to catch a bobcat there ‘cuz there are no bluffs.
Ike Talley (a business man from Albuquerque) had brought these hounds for Earl Gilson. Talley came down there deer huntin’ for years. He had started huntin’ with Johnnie Higgins, the man that owned the ranch where the Gilsons lived. Johnnie Higgins was married to Nina’s sister Sarah.
The Gilsons had young dogs. Tom and Jerry. Big old blood hound types. Probably a year and a half old. Well those big old pups got after some wild horses, and they run them off. Took after ‘em. Couldn’t catch ‘em. The snow was deep. Finally, Nina caught some of the pups, Tom and Jerry and whipped ‘em. The other dogs left. Two of ‘em, two of those trained dogs, disappeared. They never did come back.
Then the trapper’s wife asked Bert, “Where’s our stuff? What you were supposed to bring back from Mogollon?”
“Oh,” he said. Everything there was so damned high. I didn’t buy nothin’.” He lost all his money in the poker game.
The Magees went up that night and stayed at the N-Bar, which was a good mile from Gilsons’ They had to walk. Alfredo Morales was caretaker there. The Magees walked back to Snow Lake the next day.
We went back to Canyon Creek the next day, about twenty miles with coffee and oatmeal. It was about the last of Mogollon that winter. By spring, I imagine it was all over. The following summer Mogollon looked like hell.
The Messenger, August 7, 2001
Reserve, New Mexico