Page 243 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

noted that she once saw him shoot three times at a
stock back to him for the original amount. 11 George was reputed to have been the last person to leave Cooks when he moved to Deming in 1959 where he
1
died in 1961 at the age of 84.
friendship with George apparently paid off, because after George died, Hyatt bought his Cooke’s Peak claims from George’s half-sister, “Mertie” Mc-
13 Daniel Hewitt Moore, for $1,000.
ThomasJ. (orH.)Grover,theprimogenitorofthe Grover clan, homesteaded 160 acres close to the Graphic Mine in 1891 with one Brindle milk cow. He and his wife Luvinia eventually had six boys and six girls, including Charles Jefferson Grover, who was about three at the time of the move. Later, perhaps at least partially from sheer number, they would be one of the more prominent families at Cooks. 14
At the base of the mountain, Morris Bien, a clerk from the General Land Office of the Department of the Interior, made a routine inspection of the spring on September 17, 1894. In his report to the commis- sioner, Bien noted that although another natural outlet had developed in the bed of the arroyo south of Cooke’s Spring, the flow of water at the railroad siding was still measured at 360 gallons per hour.
Bien also noted that a stockman for the Carpenter Cattle Company was living in one of the run-down buildings (Figure 66) left on the military reservation after the soldiers departed. This man turned the water on and off to fill the troughs for the 500 head of cattle that grazed in the vicinity of the spring.
Bien made two recommendations. First, he sug- gested that the railroad be charged with continued maintenance of and security at the spring. Second, he indicated that, because the peak seasonal re- quirements for the railroad and the cattle were suf- ficiently different, a variable percentage agreement should be worked out so each party could benefit in
1
their time of maximum need.
Exactly a month after Bien’s inspection at Cooke’s
Spring, Fort Bowie was closed. The Second Cavalry garrison of 118 men, with 9 women and children, rode out and boarded a train for Fort Logan, Colorado. Now both forts that had so successfully guarded the water sources and the road between the
16 two facilities were closed, never to reopen.
Just after the turn of the century, an event sig- nificant to New Mexico history changed the residence of record for the people of Cooks. Per- sons desiring to restructure New Mexico’s political
coyote without 9 Of course, hitting it.
a running coyote is a much more difficult target than a close-up
man (and a horse).
George’s quick resort to a gun to solve his
problems later caused his family a great deal of anguish and landed him, at least temporarily, in
serious trouble. By 1910, the McDaniel family moved to Deming where Winnie continued her boarding house business. Just one week after their daughter Millie’s wedding to Otis Goodman on February 2, 1912, McDaniel apparently came home late and drunk and began abusing Winnie. “lively affray” ended suddenly when Riley George shot his step-father in the right side. McDaniel died the following day, and the temperance-oriented local newspaper laid the blame more on the ready availability of strong drink than on George. The
jurists must have agreed with the editor, because later that year, on November 23, George was ac-
10
quitted of the murder charge.
that George moved back to Cooks following the family tragedy, if indeed, he had permanently moved to Deming.
Despite George’s proclivity toward incompatibility with the other residents of Cooks, he apparently got along well with Leedrue Benton Hyatt (Figure 65). One time when George’s mother was ill and he needed money, he sold his X Bar-brand cattle to Hyatt. Hyatt kept the cattle, branded the calves, and when George had recovered financially, sold the
Hyatt’s bond of
Figure 65. Leedrue and Elizabeth Hyatt. Photo courtesy of the Deming-Luna Mimbres Museum.
It is quite probable
had
The
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