Moving to Arizona, Part 5

The ranch was 66,000 acres, which amounts to 100 square miles.  It abbuted a national forest, much of which was also leased to the ranch for grazing.  The driveway was approximately 13 miles long.  It took us over half-an-hour to drive it when we first moved in.  There were watering tanks along the roadside between the ridge and the ranch house.  As I remember, the corals in front of the house were the entrance to the Coronado National Forest, more specifically to Cochise Canyon, where the Chiricauhua Apache chief, Cochise, and General Oliver O. Howard signed a peace treaty in 1872.  The movie Broken Arrow was about this occurance.

There was a large windmill, which normally ran with the wind, but it did have a little motor for when the wind did not blow enough.  There were two holding tanks.  The smaller, but higher one, was enclosed and held the water for the house.  When it filled up the overflow ran into a huge tank and was then dispersed by underground pipes throughout the ranch to the watering tanks. 

Up until recently the company who owned the ranch had engaged a cowboy to live in the house, but this was no longer finnacially practical.  If they left it empty they had no way of knowing when the wind was not sufficient for pumping the water.  Also, if it was empty, hunters sometimes vandalized it.  They needed someone to live in the house to check the water tanks and keep the house from being torn up.  No rent was required and 1000 acres could be used for our own animals.

We said, "Yes," eagerly.  It was a boyhood dream come true for your Dad.  All he had ever wanted to be was a horse rancher.  Of course, he was still going to have to work as an engineer, but now we would be on a real ranch. 

In the next day or two, as I thought about the ramifications of this new living situation, I had some real misgivings and even fears.  There was no phone; we were too remote; and both cars would be gone all day.   I would be truly alone for probably the first time in my life.  I wasn't sure I was going to like all that isolation.  But as the apprehension mounted, I would hear this little voice in my head, "Just you and Me."  And I knew this was going to be a time of learning for me as I was alone with the Lord.

One morning after we had been there a day or two, some cowboys came up to round up a few cattle.  They seemed really surprised to see me.  I asked why, and they laughed and said they thought we wouldn't be able to take the isolation and primitive conditions and would be gone when they got there.  Well, we stayed two years. 

Sometime during the first two weeks we were on the ranch I received a letter from Ione.  She had heard from me about the ranch and wrote we were going to be like a city on a hill and the light from that city would draw many people to us.  I was sitting on the front porch when I read that and laughed out loud as I looked around me to the mountains on three sides and the driveway that went on forever, seemingly.  The following letters, written to Ione, Mary and Grandma and Grandpa Livingston, confirm the accuracy of that prophetic word.

Moving to Arizona - Part 4

We had to drive fairly slow, and we did stop every two hours to exercise the horses and give them water.  I don't remember how many nights we were on the road, maybe only two.  All across the western part of the country there are animal hostels.  We would put the horses in a corral so they could move around and we slept in a nearby motel.

We got to Benson Arizona late in the morning.  We had just enough money to pay for a hotel room for one day, with enough left to buy some lunch.  We called Mary and borrowed some money from her.  We put the horses in an animal hostel, got a motel room and then went to get a good meal.  Since Daddy had sked Hughes to send any job offer that might be forthcoming to General Delivery, Tucson, after lunch he drove into Tucson while the rest of us went to the motel to clean up and rest.

Another miracle: there was an offer of a job with a good salary, more than he had asked for, and a reimbursement check for his travel expenses when he had been there earlier for his interviews.  Now we were ready to look for a place to live.  That was going to be difficult as we had spent the money on the horse trailer that we would have used as first and last month's rent money.

Your Dad had a thing about Benson.  He had stayed with someone there when he came to Tucson for the interviews.  He felt certain the Lord wanted us out, away from the city.  We searched for a day or two, but found nothing that we would be able to afford.  In the meantime, Daddy had a local vet come to check Sioux P, just to make sure she was healing as well as it seemed to us.  She was doing great.  Our miracle had held.

Later the vet sought your Dad out and asked how we would like to live on a ranch between Benson and Tombstone?  He explained that it belonged to a big oil company that owned a number of very large ranches in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.  Well, you know your Dad.  How excited can one person get?  Of course, you have to transpose that to how low key your Dad was.