Roy Gunter - Cattle, horses, and red hair brilliance

Of presidents and cow buyers

Roy Gunter

Cattle, horses, and red hair brilliance

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            The American Southwest is hard on genes that evolved in the coastal mists of Western Europe.

            The intensity of the sunlight, the constant, in-your-face winds, and the low humidity compete for the domination of authority over freckles and red hair. It is a losing proposition that eventually wears out the toughest opponents.

In the midst of this life battle, though, the most interesting stories are created in full color and must be shared. The most enduring don’t come from the Shakespearean dreariness of lives of quiet desperation. They come from the engagement of living without pretense. The very physical features that make old men out of young elevate a few into the status of lasting respect. The importance of what they accomplished doesn’t have to pass scrutiny by anyone but those they touched. There are perhaps a half dozen in my life that have earned that kind of respect.

Roy Gunter is one.

Primedo

As a young man fresh out of college, I fed cattle for Roy Gunter.

I wasn’t around him very long, but he left a huge impression on me. We had met at our kitchen table discussing the deal. He treated me with respect, and I now suspect he was as hopeful of my eventual success as I place in certain young men that I now watch with interest.

His memory was stirred by meeting his great granddaughter a couple of days ago. She was sitting behind a desk at the Luna County manager’s office with whom I had a scheduled meeting. Another staffer had wished me a fabulous Friday and I had casually responded by saying something about there being no difference in Friday or Saturday or any other day for that matter.

The young lady caught the gist of my comment and quickly reaffirmed the fact that weekends have become work days for all ranches. She, too, had spent last weekend working cattle with her own granddad.  It was then I asked what her name was. Her granddad was Roy’s only son.

“Yes, I know him,” I told her.

Knowing he also suffers from the ravages of sun sensitive skin I didn’t tell her of the first memory that came to my mind. It was when he leaned in against the cab of my pickup now 42 years ago peering into the mirror and fiddling with a place on his lip.

“Do you think it is serious?” he had asked me quizzically.

I responded by telling him I suspected he would probably live until he died …

What had made the biggest impression on me when I first knew both father and son was the relationship they seemingly had. Roy had the reputation of being a steel driving disciplinarian and yet the son showed no inclination to resent or challenge that fierce and competitive edge. They worked together, and, if there was conflict, they certainly didn’t display it publicly.

I respected that.

In time, I also got to know both of Roy’s daughters. True to their dad’s form, they are both mentally and physically tough, and they fight the same sun sensitive ravages of his red hair and light complexion. Perhaps that is the common theme that has truly united us all. They don’t make sleeves long enough or hat brims that are wide enough to keep us in the shade!

The Story

What Roy gave he could also take away.

The first pen of cattle I fed for him was both an exciting and disappointing experience. He was in the pen several times a week and he grilled me about the amount of whole kernels of wheat in the droppings. We tightened the grinder down and he still was not satisfied telling me one day he was going to take the cattle out. He couldn’t afford me.

That was followed by me calling him to summarize measured results. He had another pen of similar cattle at another feedlot and he told me what they were costing him. I arrayed the two results. I showed him how we were actually cheaper on a per pound of gain basis.

He brought cattle back.

Meanwhile, I got to watch him from afar and study his methods. Those were the days when you could order trucks just about any way you wanted them. Air conditioners were not even discussed. I think he did put heaters in his ranch trucks, but he wouldn’t allow a pickup or bobtail to have a radio in it.

“Those boys are supposed to be working not listening to the radio,” he lectured me.

The day we unloaded the first calves, the lead steer jumped out of the truck only to crash through the loading chute. We immediately got the gate on the trailer shut and then rebuilt the chute. The air was blue for 30 minutes as Roy discussed in detail the pedigree of the recent past owner of those corrals, but what he was really doing was telling me, without cussing me, that I should have been better prepared.

On another day, we were sorting calves and I pressed a high headed steer calf only to have him climb through the fence. Whoa …

Again, the sky got bluer as he discussed the point that “We work all (bleep) day and the rider on the gray horse doesn’t have the sense to be a cowman who ought to know (bleep) well that calf needed more support, and, now, we have to waste (bleep) time fiddling because the rider on the gray horse had his head up his (bleep) and we have to clean this mess up!”

I was two feet tall when the sky started to lighten enough to see, but I was a better cowboy. At least the rider on the (bleep) gray horse was a better cowboy.

His compassion or lack thereof in the heat of battle wasn’t just aimed at employees or colleagues. It extended to his kids.

One of the daughters was bitten by a rattlesnake in the branding pen one day when Roy owned the western half of the Corralitos. Assuming she should have had enough sense to avoid such matters, Roy served notice nobody was going to go to the doctor until the remaining calves were branded. They packed the bite in ice and finished the calves.

Needless to say, the memories of the days on the Corralitos, drought, and the shortage of help remains strongly imprinted in the mind of that Gunter offspring.

The race

Cowboys from neighboring counties around Luna County where Roy built his business knew him first for his cowboy skills. He was reputed to be a heck of a hand in the arena. He was also known by the horses he rode. He rode good horses and the ones I was around always fit the description of the “good lookin’ Gunter horses”. They were generally quiet and always athletic.

There is a great story when Roy was still buying bulls in numbers in Mexico. They were unloading bulls in a corral somewhere south of Deming and Roy was observing the proceedings while sitting horseback out from the pens. One wild bull came off the truck and never stopped. He jumped the fence on a line from the chute and there, in his line of sight, sat Roy on his snoozing horse.

The bull dropped his head and shifted gears.

Either Roy got the horse’s attention or the horse came to his senses and swapped ends in a heartbeat. For the next 75 yards, legend has it the horse’s rear end was trying to outrun his front end as the bull was trying to get his horns up under any part of the horse he could reach. The observations were Roy never touched a spur to the horse, but was inwardly cheering the outcome of the race. He was hoping the horse would prevail!

He never said much after the dust settled and the bull continued in the general direction of Mexico.

He was talking, however, another morning when President Nixon failed to alter the course of the Arab oil embargo which led to the crash of the cattle market.

“Hell, there is no difference in a president and me other than he is a little bigger cow trader than I am!” he had concluded. “But, I’ll guarantee you I could run this country better than the (bleep) fellow in that chair!”

The chances are he could have run the country better. Roy would have pulled his hat down and left his long sleeves buttoned. He wouldn’t have listened to the radio, either. He wouldn’t have cared in the least what others thought of him, and he, too, would have delivered all his speeches impromptu without the aid … of any (bleep) teleprompter.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “If there are heroes in my life … Roy Gunter is one.”