by Ben K. Green
All these sheep were under herd and the Indian sheepherders were very observant. After they decided that I wasn’t a smart aleck, which took them awhile, they began to volunteer good information as to the eating habits of their sheep; they also knew the different families of weeds growing on the range where their particular flocks would be.
For a few weeks I was learning more about Indian lore than I was about sheep. However, I was no stranger to the Navaho and had bought horses from them many years before I had begun the practice of veterinary medicine.
I was in a flock of sheep in the Zuni Mountains. An old herder told me that the youngest ewes here would get sick first and later the old mutton sheep that they kept around to shear and eat might get a little sick but would live a long time. When they moved the herd to new range, many of the big old mutton would get well.
This information in itself meant that it was fresh, tender weeds that were causing the trouble because the youngest sheep ate the tenderest feed and it would not be from brushy growth where the bark or seeds might be poison. I gathered some specimens of the different types of vegetation that were growing in the mountains at this time of year and went back to my temporary laboratory to do a little analyzing.
I explained to the Indian agent one morning that I would have to “post” several sheep in order to determine what type of poisoning was involved. He said that he would put out the word among the herders and make it all right with them for me to do this. I had begun to learn that a flock of these sheep might belong to as many as eight or ten or even more Indians, and that they took time about herding, and that they had different earmarks and other means of identifying their sheep.
A few days later, I drove to Sheep Springs, I guess about forty miles north of Gallup, to see a herd that had been reported as having some sick sheep. I got there about the time they brought the flock in from the hills to the Indian settlement and I saw a sheep in the bunch that showed symptoms of being sick. I told the herder that I wanted to kill that sheep and asked him to catch him while I went to the car to get some instruments.
The car was maybe a hundred yards away and when I got back, he had a sheep hung up by one hind leg in a mesquite tree with his throat cut. I didn’t think it was the one I had pointed out, so I looked around through the herd and saw that the sick sheep was not the one he had caught. I didn’t make any mention of this, thinkin’ I might find some symptoms in the sheep that he had hung up.
When the sheep was dead and had quit bleeding, I told the Indian to lay him on the ground, where I could tell more about his insides when I cut him open. While this short conversation went on, a whole bunch of Indian squaws and little kids gathered at my back without me knowing that they had gotten there.
I laid this sheep open and looked at his liver and spleen and kidneys and took a sample of fresh-eaten stuff from his first stomach, then got up off my knees. The herder asked me if I was through with him and I nodded my head and walked to the car.
Out of curiosity I decided to go back and see what was goin’ to happen to the sheep, but I was really a little too late to tell. That flock of squaws had stripped the hide off him, had cut him up, and had disappeared to their hogans; and there were a few small children still in sight, eating chunks of raw liver out of their bare hands.
I went back to the laboratory and worked on this mass of green stuff that I had taken from the sheep’s paunch, putting it through a short lab process I used—rather a force of habit than really hunting for something, as I knew the digestive process could have made chemical reactions and I didn’t expect to find anything worthwhile.
The next morning I went to another flock of sheep that were being herded near Crown Point and had been moved from Standing Rock because they had been getting sick on that range. This time I found a sheep that was really sick and told the herder to catch him and hold him until I got back from the car where I needed to get some instruments.
Sure ’nuff this herder had caught and killed the wrong sheep. After I had seen that other one evaporate with a bunch of squaws, I decided it wouldn’t hurt for him to have two dead sheep, so I made him catch the sick one. By now there were about fifteen squaws there who I guess came out of the rocks, and there was a good deal of gruntin’ and head shakin’ going on, and this herder didn’t want to kill this sick sheep.
There are always some Indians who have been sent to reservation schools and can speak good English. They would grunt and make signs and talk Indian to each other, and if I could get one to say anything to me, it would be in English, but this particular bunch all of a sudden lost their education. When I told the herder to kill the sick sheep, nobody could understand what I meant, so I stepped astraddle the sheep and held his shoulders with my knees and turned his head up with one hand and cut his throat with the other. When I glanced up at the Indian squaws, I recognized their blank expressions as being ones of disgust and contempt.
I told the herder not to touch the sheep that was hanging in the tree and I began to post the one on the ground. I found some enlarged welp-like spots on the liver and a darkened spleen. Then I turned to the sheep in the tree and told the herder to lay him on the ground.
It was noticeable that the squaws didn’t touch the poor, sick sheep that I had just finished with, but when I got through looking at the fat sheep, they nearly had a fight among themselves as they skinned, quartered, and carried off the fat sheep. Those who had been pushed back and hadn’t gotten a chance at that good mutton turned and cut up the poor one and went off with it.
The next morning I was telling the Indian agent at Gallup about this little scuffle and about the two different herders killing the wrong sheep. He explained to me that under their ration rules they were not supposed to be butchering any of their breeding flock and that the Indian sheepherder was still smarter than a white man because he wanted to kill a fat sheep so they could eat him and have good mutton whether or not I found out what I wanted to know from the post-mortem.
He thought this was funny and told me that I might know a lot about medicine, but I needed to smarten up about Indians. I thought this was a little funny myself, but I started making plans to hold my own the next time me and my red brothers did any sheep work together.
The next bunch of sick sheep that I went into were back up near Toadlena on a primitive road. I wanted to post a sick sheep and since there were several in the flock, I told the herder for him and his dogs to hold them up in a tight band. I walked into them and took the sick sheep that I wanted by the hind leg and pulled him out of the bunch.
I stood over him and cut his throat, and when he quit kicking I laid him out on a big, clean, flat rock that was almost an ideal operating table. His internal organs confirmed the last sick sheep I posted and furnished some further evidence of vegetable poison.
When I told the herder goodbye and left the flock, no squaws had shown up for the sick sheep that I had killed and I don’t know whether or not any came out of the rocks after I left.
There had been some little snow flurries of no major importance and most of the snow had melted a few days after it had fallen, which caused a slightly better assortment of small weeds to start coming to the top of the ground. I had begun to get some fairly good ideas about their troubles, and for the next several days I gathered and ground the pinguey weed and was working at isolating the toxic substances.
It was almost Christmastime and I told the Indian agent that I would lock up my office and go home for the Christmas holidays and would be back soon after the first of January.
The sunshiny, balmy winter days of the desert cause people who are simple enough to be fishermen to go fishing in the Rio Grande River in the Big Bend country, and Frank Hinde was one of these people.
Frank’s wife, Ruth, had gone to Oklahoma City to see her mother and Frank had promised faithfully that he would not go to the river. However, Lige Warnock and some more of his other cronies came up with the proposition and, knowing that Ruth would be gone for several days,
Frank didn’t see any harm in goin’ fishin’.
They camped on the Rio Grande River several miles upstream from the trading post at Lajitas. Fishing was good, the weather was nice, and they were having a big time.
Frank was six feet eight inches tall and well proportioned, and of course, all his fishing partners were much smaller men. The day they decided to come home, Frank went into the river to do some grabbling along the banks for the big ones that might be in the rock holes in the water too deep for the other fishermen to get to.
By the time he drove the one hundred and seventy-five miles home, it was late afternoon and he was running a little fever. The next day he was sick enough that he went to bed without anybody tellin’ him to. He lay there long enough to get worried about himself, and he called Lige Warnock to ask him to find the village horse doctor to have me come and look at him.
I had been to my folks at Cumby, Texas, for Christmas and it was late afternoon when I drove into town and Lige saw me. We went up to Frank’s house, which was in the farwestern part of town. He had a great big rambling house, and nearly everybody in West Texas drives up to the back door and goes in.
Frank was in the back bedroom, and due to his size, his bed had been specially made and was extra long. He was lying there in his longhandle underwear in cold weather, kickin’ the cover off, and had a raging fever. I talked to him a few minutes; then I went back to my car and got my stethoscope and listened to his heart and lungs.
He said, “Well, fool, I didn’t call you up here for company. What’s the matter with me?”
I said, “Well, me and the rest of the boys will go have our blue serge suits cleaned and pressed and some will have to set the buttons over on their vests since they wore them last. This is Friday and you have virus pneumonia, and you’ve got it bad, and you ain’t goin’ to take no medicine or cover up or do anything that anybody tells you, and you’ve already told all of us not to call Ruth, so I’d say by Tuesday, you’ll be deader than hell and we’ll have to wear them dark suits.”
We hadn’t been able to keep the cover on him and he reached down to the foot of the bed, pulled up the blanket under his chin and said, “My, God, call the old lady.”
Then, he said, “Why don’t ya give me something? You gonna let me lay here and die for the lack of medical attention?”
Aureomycin was a new drug and was not readily available. The advanced literature on it indicated that it was at that time the most effective antibiotic to treat virus pneumonia. By my various connections in research, I always managed by some devious means to have the latest so-called wonder drugs, and I had a good supply to use on Frank Hinde.
The prescribed treatment was two capsules the first dose and one capsule every three hours thereafter for about twenty-four hours. Well, I knew old Frank was nearer the size of a horse than he was a man, so I gave him four the first dose and two every three hours thereafter.
I told the rest of the boys who had gathered around (they were all old men) that they could go home and go to bed and I would go in the other bedroom and spend the night with my patient. I took the alarm clock in the bedroom and when it would go off every three hours, I would raise up and holler for Frank to take his medicine.
About the third time I hollered that night, he didn’t answer. I said to myself, I never have gone to sleep and let a horse die. I wonder if I’ve gone to sleep and let a man and a half die.
I slipped my boots on and walked into the bedroom and Frank had gone to sleep and the bed covers were wringin’ wet with sweat which, of course, meant that the fever had broke. I changed the covers on him and kept givin’ him medicine for the rest of the night.
Ruth had a big linen closet full of nice clean linens and every time I got a fresh batch, I threw the ones I took off in a corner of the room. By morning I had all the corners of that great big bedroom covered up with wadded-up sheets thrown against the wall. My patient was well, with no fever, no sweat, and damn little color. He had quit cussin’ me and was really too weak to brag on me, but was awful proud to be alive.
In the meantime Ruth had landed at the airport at Midland, which was a hundred and ten miles away, and Lige had gone over there after her. I had never used female nurses in my large-animal practice and didn’t care to be around when she saw her husband (and my patient) after this siege of sickness and miracle medicine administered by the eminent horse doctor.
Albert Kay came in about sunup and I told him I believed I’d go and tend to my more pleasant large-animal practice, and if Frank wanted some breakfast, he could fix it for him. Soon after that, Lige and Ruth came in and when Ruth walked in the room and saw all them dirty sheets and saw Frank layin’ there kind of an ash color, sensitive womanlike that she was she nearly came apart and asked him if he had had the doctor.
She, knowing that he never went to a doctor, asked, “Who did you have?”
He said, “Doc Green.”
Well, she blowed all to pieces and broke to the telephone and called a young doctor that was just out of the army, Ben McReynolds. In fact, he was still wearing his army uniform on calls. He was a nice little fellow with a kind, quiet bedside manner and a cute little mustache.
Ruth met him at the front door and as he came down the hall, she was explaining to him the awful thing that had happened and that she sure hoped that Frank wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t save him. The little young doctor had never seen Frank standing up and didn’t know how big he was and when he walked into the room and looked from the foot of the bed to the head of it, he thought he was lookin’ up the highway.
Ruth told Frank who the young doctor was. In cowboy fashion, Frank said, “I’m glad to meet ya. Have a seat.”
Dr. McReynolds pulled up a chair and in his very best manner asked Frank a few simple questions and then began to examine him. He asked Frank whether I gave him any medicine and Frank said, “Yep, and it sure got the job done. I was sick as hell this time yesterday.”
The young doctor asked, “How do you feel now?”
“I ain’t got a pain. I’m just weak and hungry as hell.”
Dr. McReynolds asked, “Do you know what kind of medicine Dr. Green gave you?”
Well, I had known this was comin’ so I had left the empty vials from the medicine we had used up under the corner of Frank’s mattress close to his head and told him not to throw ’em away. So, he told the young doctor, “Yeah, he left these empty bottles,” as he reached under the mattress and handed him a big handful of empty bottles.
Dr. McReynolds studied the labels and the quantities, got up out of the chair, pushed it back to the corner and said, “Mr. Hinde, you are a well man.”
All during that time Ruth had been taking on about how foolish it was to call me for a human being. The young doctor turned to Ruth and said, “Mrs. Hinde, you will never realize how fortunate you were to get Dr. Green on this case.”
Ruth burst into another fit and said, “What do you mean by that?”
He said, “I mean to tell you that I would never have known the dosage required for an animal of this size.”
I left in early January and went back to the Indian reservation in New Mexico to continue my work on the sick Navajo sheep. I had determined that some of the toxic substance in pinguey was the same as that in yellowweed, and I took enough medicine to compound into the feed to run some experiments.
I explained to the Indian agent what I had in mind and he said that there would be more weed and it would be easier to get it pulled and fed to the sheep by a certain herder over at Nakaibito. He went over there with me and after visiting with the Indian and explaining what we wanted done, we went back to town.
I got some cottonseed meal and mixed the medicines that were in dry powder form into the meal. The next day the old Indian herder had a small corral ready for the sheep; it was built against a rock bluff with brush and cactus cut and piled on the other three sides for a fence. This corral was near a little spring from which he could carry water for them.
This old Indian herder was a good sheepman, and with the patience of his breed, he managed to get them all to eating the medicated feed out of a trough within a week. This experimental bunch of sheep started with the handicap of already being on the weed. However, this was almost typical in that they would be on the weed before they would be sick enough to justify treatment—provided the drugs were going to be effective.
I don’t know how many Indian kids the old Indian herder had pulling weed, but every time I was by to look at the sheep during the next three weeks, the pen would be bedded with dry wilted weed that had been left and there was always fresh weed that had just been pulled and given to them.
I stopped posting any sheep, and where flocks would get sick, I would advise that they be moved to some other range. Since they were under herd, this was not hard to do.
While I was killing time waiting on the little bunch of ewes that we were running the test on, I, true to my nature and in keeping with my weakness, went up around Shiprock and Farmington and bought a few Indian horses and sent them home by truck. This helped fill some time and, besides, I hadn’t had any Indian horses in a few years and an old horseman always likes to change colors and models.
The sheep on feed got better and, in fact, had begun to get fat. I had the medical answer to the pinguey problem and decided to make a complete report to the Indian agent. He had been fully aware of all the details of the medicated meal and experiments that he had helped me set up with the old herder.
When we were talking about this work, he asked me to give him a written report for the government records of his Indian agency. I dictated and had this report typed out in good order and delivered it to his office and was making arrangements to pack up and leave. However, I had offered to help secure the necessary drugs and furnish them with the proper proportions and let them mix and feed it themselves.