eel with footpieces, like steps,
to tread, and you would have the wheel over the well and they had about
fifteen or twenty rawhide buckets fastened to a rope (that the wheel
pulled it went around), and when they went down, they would go down in
front of you. You had to sit down right behind the wheel, and you would
push with your feet and pull with your hands, and the buckets came up
behind you and as they went up, they would empty and go back down. They
had some way of fixin' the rawhide. I think they toasted it, or scorched
the hide to keep it hard so the water wouldn't soak it up and get it
soft. That was on that place, the Chacona Lakes. That old Meskin was a
native of the Rio Grande and run cattle and horses. In them days, you
could buy an acre of land for fifty cents, river front, all the land you
wanted. Now that land in that valley, you couldn't buy it for a hundred
dollars an acre.

"Did I tell you about diggin' that pit right in the fence of our corn
patch to catch javalines? The way we done, why, we just dug a big pit
right on the inside of the field, right against the fence, and whenever
they would go through that hole to go in the corn patch, they would drop
off in that hole. I think we caught nine, little and big, at one
trappin' once. It was already an old trompin' place where they come in
and out, and we had put the pit there. But after you use it, they won't
come in there again.

"You see, I tell you about them brush fences. The deer had certain
places to go to that fence to jump it, and after we found the regular
jumpin' place, we would cut three sticks--pretty good size, about like
your wrist, about three foot long--and peel 'em and scorch 'em in the
fire and sharpen the ends right good and we would go to set our traps.
We would put these three sharp sticks right about where the forefeet of
the deer would hit. You'd just set the sticks about four inches from
where his forefeet would hit the ground, and you'd set the sticks
leanin' towards the brush fence, and they would be one in the center and
two on the side and about two inches apart. When he jumped, you would
sure get 'im right about the point of the brisket. He'd hardly ever
miss 'em, and you'd find 'im right there. Oh, sometimes he'd pull up a
stick and run a piece with it, but he didn't run very far.

"I been listenin' to the radio about Cap'n McNelly and I tell you it
didn't sound right to me. In what way? Why, they never was no cattle on
t