Yaqui Tatom Rode Many A Bronc
And Captured Many A Maverick

By Colleen Schreiber

TUCUMCARI, N.M. — Broncs, maverick cattle and Bill Tatom go hand in hand.

Tatom, better known by most of his friends as "Yaqui" Tatom, has cowboyed for some 60 of his 77 years. A good part of those cowboy years, 31 years in about three different hitches to be exact, have been spent working for the Bell Ranch in northeastern New Mexico. This is home.

Many who know him and had the opportunity to work with him say Yaqui Tatom was one of the best bronc riders the Bell Ranch ever had. Then, in the same breath, most of the oldtimers will mention his hat. Those who worked with him in his younger days say Yaqui Tatom was always easy to spot because of the distinctive hat he wore.

"The wagontrack had kind of gotten crossways," Tatom explains, "so I just pushed it in flat and turned the sides straight up. I was recognized a lot by that stupid old hat."

Tatom started working for wages when he was 17. The going wage back then was $40 a month, and it was 10 years before he got a raise.

"I guess the hardest thing about being a cowboy is always being broke," Tatom says. "There aren’t many rich cowboys."

A quiet, reserved and shy type, many of his friends who don’t know the real story behind his nickname thought that Yaqui Tatom was quite misnamed.

Tatom says his name came about one evening when his mother was reading to him and his father.

"My father didn’t read much but he loved stories, and so Mother would oftentimes read to us at night," Tatom says. "I was sitting on my father’s knee listening to a story about the Yaqui Indians from Mexico. I was chattering away, saying ‘Yaqui, Yaqui, Yaqui,’ so Daddy just gave me the name and it stuck."

Tatom’s parents came from Snyder, Texas, to the Bell Ranch in the early 1920s. A good cowhand himself, Tatom’s father was cowboying for several ranches in the area when he heard of the 435,000 acre spread in northeastern New Mexico. Yaqui was two when his father hired on at the Bells.

The Tatoms lived on the Bell until Yaqui and his sister started to school. Needing to be closer to town, his folks bought a dairy near Tucumcari. They stayed there for a couple of years. They were leasing a little ranch north of Tucumcari when the Depression hit. Those hard times, Tatom says, basically took his folks out of the business.

"After that we just got what we could where we could find it," Tatom says. "We never did go hungry, but it was pretty scarce sometimes."

His dad began building tanks with teams. He did that until his death in 1938.

Bill hired on with the Bells for the first time in the summer of 1937. He worked that summer on the branding crew and then returned to school. He came back full-time the following fall.

Though Tatom hadn’t worked for any large outfits, he was a schooled cowboy already. He had been riding ever since he could remember. He and his sister used to ride the five miles to school every day. Later he helped his dad with the teams, building tanks and what not, and he day worked for some of the neighbors.

Various stories have been passed around about the day Bill Tatom showed up looking for a job on the Bell, but he’s not much help in sorting them out. "I don’t know as I remember it," he says simply.

One story is that this young kid dressed in overalls came riding up on a mule. Tatom says he figures his dad kind of promoted him and helped him get the job.

Albert Mitchell was the general manager and Mark Wood the foreman.

Tatom doesn’t know for sure, but he figures they branded between 12,000 to 15,000 calves that summer over about a six-week period. There were usually about 15 in the branding crew and generally they could work 125 to 150 head a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. There was the Bell man who operated the branding iron, the age-iron man, the flankers, dehorner and the vaccinator.

Two ropers heeled and dragged the calves near the fire while pairs of men took turns flanking and holding the calves. One man stamped the Bell brand on the left ribs and a year brand on the left shoulder of the heifers.

A man with a good sharp knife and a carpenter’s apron earmarked and castrated. The tips from the bags of the bull calves went in one pocket and ear crops of the heifer calves in another to provide an accurate count of calves branded.

Back then, blackleg was about the only thing they vaccinated for. In the beginning it was just a one-way vaccine.

Screwworms were always a concern, particularly in the wetter years. The year 1941, Tatom recalls, was one of those particularly troublesome years.

"We started out branding down the south side of the river. We branded for a week to 10 days, but the screwworms were so bad in the fresh-branded calves that we didn’t brand another calf until later that fall."

In those early years before the old Bell outfit split up, it had its own windmill crew, fencing crew, and a crew dubbed general labor.

When Tatom’s father first came to the Bell the only fences on the ranch were perimeter fences. It stayed that way for a long time, even after his son worked there. Tatom figures there were some 100 miles of perimeter fence.

Back then, line camps were strategically placed along the perimeter fence. The men who lived at these camps, mostly married men who often had a family, were responsible for upkeep on a particular section of the boundary fence. They were also responsible for the cattle in their particular unit.

Living at a line camp, Tatom says, was often a lonely life because the camp man didn’t get to interact with the other cowboys except when the wagon was working within his unit.

Tatom never lived at a line camp. He stayed at the headquarters bunkhouse when the wagon wasn’t out, but for the majority of the cowboys on the Bell, the wagon was home more often than not. They were with the wagon for months at a time. Tatom says the cowboys went into town every now and then, whether they were let off or not.

"We’d always come back ‘in’ time, not necessarily ‘on’ time," he remarks.

The wagon crew consisted of a cook, the cook’s helper, horse wrangler, the strawboss, the nighthawk and 10 to 15 cowboys. Two wagons traveled together, the chuckwagon and the hoodlum wagon. The hoodlum was the smaller of the two and hauled wood and water to the camp.

During Tatom’s tenure with the old Bell outfit, before it was split, all the cattle were shipped by rail. There were two sets of scales on the ranch, one at the Bascom pens and another at the Dawson railroad crossing near Medio.

Before the scales, cattle were sold by the head and most steers were sold as two or three year-olds. Parts of the Bell were rough, tough country, and it was in these areas that livestock were easily missed.

Pointing off to the horizon, Tatom says, "I’ve gathered many a mavericks out of them hills there."

Some of the cowboys were more diversified than others – some were satisfied just to go along and others wanted to see what they could and couldn’t do. Tatom was one of those who liked to see just what he could do. "I thought I was pretty wild," he says.

Linda Mitchell Davis, who rode and worked with the wagon during the days her father, Albert, was general manager, says Yaqui Tatom was the best bronc rider she knew.

Riding wild broncs, Tatom says, was a way to live. He rode the rough string, the horses no one else wanted to ride, for some 12 years. There were quite a few mustang type horses.

"Back in those earlier days, horses were much louder because they weren’t corral raised. That was more fun than just the regular cowboy work," Tatom says.

Generally two men made up the rough string division. Usually the bronc rider had a swamper, or helper, who took over after the horses had been saddled two or three times. Tatom himself started out working as a swamper for Jim Grimsley, a cowboy from Colorado. He learned some of the trade from him, then polished his skills with lots of practice.

"It takes experience, patience and not enough brains to be careful," Tatom says. "Mostly it’s just you, the horse and the Lord."

The rough rider would handle about 10 horses at a time. They were staked to a rock on a long rope the first day. The next morning they were led into the bronc corral, tied to the fence, and one by one a foot was tied up and then a saddle put on.

The time it took to break a horse, Tatom says, really depended on "what you called broke. Back then we just kind of green broke them, rode them about half a dozen saddles and then turned them in with the wagon."

Asked if there was ever a horse he didn’t ride or that he never really broke, Tatom says, "Well, I wouldn’t quite put it that way. There were some that didn’t necessarily act like they were broke."

Tatom admitted that he’s been pitched a time or two and that it is hard on a cowboy’s pride, but he says he never busted his body up much. When asked about the wrecks, he says, "well, yes, there were some. Anytime you put horses and men together you have wrecks, and then with ropes added in and mad cows ... mix all that in together and stir it a little bit and you have a pretty good wreck going."

Horses back then weren’t bred up like they are today. There were always some really good horses, some good horses and some not so good horses, Tatom says. In his mind a good horse is "one that goes and stops and turns at least one way, and one that doesn’t buck you off too much."

The rough string rider was paid a little extra in addition to his regular monthly wages. When Tatom started out he was paid $3 a head; five years later he was making $5 a head.

In the days of the wagon, a cowboy had 10 to 12 horses in his mount. When the horses were put in with the wagon, the horse boss split the horses between the cowboys. A cowboy could pick a horse for his mount before it was broke, but after that, the horse boss would have to okay it, Tatom says.

He’s ridden his share of horses, but says his favorite mount was probably a Spade horse he named Levi. He started riding him in 1983, and when he retired the horse was given to him.

Tatom never rodeoed much, though he did participate in a few of the small local productions and he won a little money along the way.

He remembers competing in the bronc competition at Cimarron one year over the 4th of July. The different outfits in the area each put some of their roughest broncs in the competition. Tatom says luck was in his favor, because he drew a big old gray horse that just happened to be in his mount at the Bells.

"I split third and won 50 cents," he says. "That was about the sum of my rodeo earnings."

Besides the Bell, Tatom says he’s worked for a dozen or so other outfits over the years. He worked awhile for the new Matador outfit in Texas. He worked for them for one winter and that winter lasted 18 months. From there he went back to Plainview to take care of their wheat pasture cattle.

Once he was on his way to Arizona, "to see how cattle were raised in the desert." He got as far as Albuquerque. He stopped at a saddle shop there and found a fellow who wanted some help to move steers out of the Amos Mountains, so he hired on for a couple of months.

After Albuquerque he came back to the Bells. World War II broke out soon after that, and Tatom and three brothers who were working for the outfit planned to join up after Christmas. Mr. Mitchell, however, had other plans. He wanted Tatom at the Bells, and classified him as "essential" labor.

Tatom eventually did make it to Arizona, and he worked for an outfit in Prescott for a time. When they bought a ranch in New Mexico he came back to run it. Each time, though, Tatom eventually ended up back at the Bells.

When the big outfit sold out in 1947 and split into six different divisions, Tatom went to work for the division of buyers who bought the headquarters and the brand. It was referred to as the new Bells. It was some different, mainly smaller, but more or less the same people. He put in his last year on the Bells in 1975. After leaving there, he worked for the Chappell-Spade Ranch for 13 years before officially retiring.

The cowboy way of life, Tatom says, has changed a great deal over the years. Most changes have been in the way things are done. Raising cattle, he adds, is mostly still the same. "It’s still beef that we produce."

Tatom admits that the transition from horse power to mechanical power was something of a difficult adjustment for him.

"I kind of wanted to hang on to the old way just because," Tatom says.

The lifelong cowboy has always and continues to be respected by his peers. He’s particularly admired by those cowboys of the younger generation whose only knowledge of the old ways comes from listening to stories of the older hands. On a recent gathering, one young cowboy remarked that Bill Tatom sits straighter in a saddle than most men half his age.

Retired now for the better part of three years, Tatom no longer rides every day but he continues to work on occasion when neighbors and friends call on him for assistance.

"I doubt that I’ll ever get too far away from horses and cows," he says.