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16 The Last Years, Travels with Juan The last ten years of Juan Salinas’s life were the years I came to know him well. In the first year and a half after Tía Bertha’s death, I spent an hour or so every day in the afternoon at his house, waiting for my brother Abe and his wife Angie to show up. When Abe and Angie showed up, I went home. After a year and a half, I took over night care because Tío Juan and Abe had a personality con- flict. I stayed with Tío Juan at night, got up early in the morning and waited for his driver to show up, then hurried home for grooming and breakfast and off to the office in Laredo 35 miles away. Staying with him in the evenings, I listened to more stories for about two or three hours per day. Then on Saturdays and Sundays, the driver, Abe, and Angie were off, so it was my turn to drive Tío to the various pastures. It was a long ride because he had land leased and owned land from 4 miles south of Encinal to 4 miles southeast of Encinal, an 8-mile trip from one end to the other. Then we rode around and checked fences for breaks, checked each windmill or water well, and made sure the water valves worked properly. We checked about half the watering holes in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. It was really overdoing it, but Juan could not stand to stay home in an easy chair. He wanted to get out see the cows and to talk to people. After a year or so, we decided that I needed to be with my young family, and Tío Juan moved into my house. He lived with us a couple of years until his death in 1995. 162 Tío Cowboy The following are short summaries of the stories I heard during the evening talks and while traveling around from pasture to pasture. “This ranch did not have a tall fence around it. One of my hunters poached and shot a deer on the neighbor’s land, and they got mad and put up this tall fence on my south side here. They wanted me to pay for half the cost of the fence. I told them no. Then they put up the fence and stayed about a foot or two away from my fence. When the tall fence was up, I took my fence down and I gained a foot or two of land here and there. I showed them. “You see that white bone about six feet up on the tall fence. That’s what happens with tall fences. A doe tried to jump the fence and did not make it; she got hung up on the wire. I came up on her when she had been dead about three days. I just left her there so the neighbor could see what his fancy big tall fence did. “I bought this 400-acre ranch from five people. My lawyer in Laredo, ole Judge Blackshear, fixed the papers. Years later, I got a call from three people that said that they was the owners of the property. I told them I bought it. They hired a lawyer and sued me. I went to court, and all I know is my lawyer told me I won and the ranch was mine. “You see that little stock tank. We call it the violín tank. This guy in Encinal he built it for me with a bulldozer and a scraper, dug it out of the earth. That is what is called an earthen tank, or a stock tank. Then, I paid a lot of his bills, and when it come time to pay him, I took credit for all the bills I paid, and he didn’t remember me paying the bills, and he said he had dug the tank for free, for violín. In Spanish when something is free, it is for violín or viole. We call it La Presita de Viole, which is what the tank builder called it. “When Daddy bought this ranch, we had to travel about 45 miles cross country with cattle and mules and wagons, and when I come to this Jaboncillo Creek, it was plumb full to the top. My men and I had to swim across on...

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