Cabe Adams, Noted Old Cowboy and Texan

LaRue Lunt, son of Clarence and LaVetta Lunt, wrote: 

Cabe Adams, a fugitive from the United States law, lived near the Villa Ranch and was a frequent visitor to our home in Corrales, Mexico.  He had a “crush” on mother and told her if she would let him kiss her he   would give her his herd of cattle.  Mom was afraid of him and often had   premonitions prior to his coming to our place and would make sure that   Dad was going to be nearby during that time.

Ora Lunt Bluth, daughter of Clarence and Marza Lunt, wrote: 

Cabe Adams was from Texas and probably a fugitive who came to Mexico to   escape the law in the United States.  He settled in the mountains above   “Devil’s Hole” in the vicinity of the Villa ranch.  Over the years he     had accumulated a large herd of cattle.  When I was a young girl, I       remember frequent visits we had from him as he’d come to our ranch in     Corrales, Mexico.  I suppose he got lonely living way off in the           mountains by himself and therefore liked to come visit our family.

My dad and Uncle Alma were good to him and would invite him into our home to visit and eat.  They even had a can of coffee on hand for such visitors and would fix it for him to drink.  It was interesting for me to sit nearby and watch him drink his cups of hot coffee, especially to see him drop in cubes of sugar to sweeten it.  He had a white mustache that curled up at the ends and was stained brown around the edges near his mouth due to his pipe smoking habit.  My mother was a young, beautiful woman and Cabe apparently fell in love with her.  She was afraid of him and kept as many of us kids as possible around her whenever he came to visit.  He once told her that if she would sit on his lap and kiss him he’d give her all his cattle.  She sometimes had premonitions that Cabe Adams would be coming and made sure that dad was not away from the ranch at the time.

Cabe Adams died on his ranch in February of 1932.  The following month, a couple of men came from Austin, Texas and had my father take them to see Cabe’s grave. They claimed they had been told to take possession of his belongings.

Florencio “Lencho” Estrada was now taking care of the Cabe Adams ranch and cattle.  He had been raised and spent his early life in southern Mexico.  At one time he’d killed a man so found it necessary to flee from southern Mexico in order to save his own life by escaping from the law or those who would seek to kill him.  He came to the isolated ranch area in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico where he lived and settled over near the Villa Ranch.  He became a good friend of Dad and Uncle Alma’s and they enjoyed their visits and association together.  Florencio worked as a cowboy for Cabe Adams for many years and accumulated a good sized herd of cattle himself.  They were among the cattle on the Cabe Adams Ranch.

After hearing that Cabe Adams had died, Roy Adams Claimed to be a relative, therefore he and others came to the mountains, went to Cabe Adams’ ranch and rounded up all his cattle to drive them to their ranches near Dublan.  At the time they came, Florencio was away from the ranch.  Upon his return, he was very upset when he learned that all the cattle had been rounded up and taken, including those that belonged to him.  He said they had no right to any of the cattle ad had taken them under false pretense.  He quickly mounted his horse and with his pistol or gun, set out to overtake them.  He quickly headed in the direction they had cone and caught up with them just before they got to “Strawberry” and told them he had come for his cattle.  They were persuaded to let him take the cattle that belonged to him. Florencio rounded them up and drove them back to the ranch. 

The following information is taken from the journal of Clarence Lunt.

Saturday, March 19, 1932

Alma went down on the Gavilan River yesterday with Delbert Palmer and Omer Cluff and camped out overnight.  I was prepared to go down to Juarez for High Council.  As I was coming from the barn to the house, after doing the morning milking, a Ford coupe drove up and stopped in front of the house and a couple of young men alighted and came over and met me introducing themselves as Misters’ Haley.  One of them proved to be J. Evitts Haley, author of The History of the XIT Ranch and the same gentleman who came down here about 2 years ago and got Mr. Cabe Adams to go out to Austin Texas as a witness in a legal trial that had been launched against the publishers of XIT History.  Mr. Haley said that he had heard of Adams death over in the “Devil’s Hole” and he claimed Adams had told him to take possession of his belongings.  Haley had come down to investigate the status of the case.  Mr. Haley said that Adams had recommended me as a guide in case he ever wanted to make a trip over to the Hole.  He wanted to know if I could furnish an outfit and animals to take him and his brother over there.  I informed him that I could.  As we happened to have four head of saddle horses here on the place it didn’t take long to make the necessary preparations to leave.  We left here about 10:00 a.m. stopping at “the bathtub” in Diablo for lunch where we found Alma’s camp.  He didn’t show up until about 3:00 p.m. We arrived at the Villa Ranch shortly after dark where we were warmly welcomed at Andres’ cozy little log cabin where we spent the night.  Andres served us with both supper and breakfast.

Sunday, March 20, 1932      

We arose early shortly after daybreak and helped Andres prepare breakfast, or at least John Haley helped with breakfast, while Evitts and I took a few pounds of flour, which we had, over across the creek and arranged with Mrs. Villa to make us up a lot of gordas to take along with us so we wouldn’t have to bother about making bread in camp.  After we had eaten breakfast, I went out after the horses, which I had some difficult in finding, thus causing us to be rather late in getting off.  While we were saddling and packing up, Seferino, Andres’ brother, came over and chatted with us taking liberal sips of “Sotol” every two or three minutes until the contents of the pint bottles had mostly disappeared and Seferino was showing very plain symptoms of intoxication by the time we were ready to leave. We invited Andres to accompany us, which he did.  Just before we arrived at Los Chales John shot a small deer which we sighted a few hundred yards from the trail.  We finally reached Los Tareces about 3:00 p.m. where we found Mr. Adams’ grave, silent and lonely, on the mound of an ancient ruin.  We all dismounted and stood in silence with bared heads as a token of respect to a noted old cowboy, frontiersman and Texan.  We then turned off into a small stream to our right following down some 200 yards and made camp.  The Haley’s and I walked on down a few hundred yards to the cabin of Florencio Estrada who has charge of Cabe Adams cattle and greeted him while Andres unsaddled the horses and started to prepare dinner.  Just as we were finishing eating our dinner an old timer rode into camp on a bay mare who introduced himself as Van Lee, Adams’ old pal.  He said he had heard of Adams’ death and had come over from Crettos Ranch to see what the status of the affair was.  We invited him to camp with us, which he did.  After chatting with Van Lee for a while, Evitts and I went down and spent the remainder of the day conversing with Florencio, listening to his account of the death and burial of Cabe Adams.  As darkness came on, we returned to our camp where we found a fine hot supper of fried venison, fried potatoes and gordas de harina.  After supper we sat round the fire and listened with great interest to the stores of Van Lee of his many experiences.

Devil’s Hole, Monday, March 21, 1932

The wind went down during the night and the same came up clear and warm and all was still bright.  After breakfast we went down to Florencio’s and had him guide us to the spot where Mr. Adams was found dead.  The said spot was about 600 years north of Florencio’s house, on a trail that leads to Adams’ cabin about 2 miles away.  It appears that Mr. Adams must have sat down in the trail to rest and while thus occupied, had been struck with heart failure or something of the sort, as he was lying on his back with his rifle across his breast and his pipe lying on the ground by his right cheek.  His hat was still on his head.  His body was discovered by Florencio the morning of the 13^th of February, while out hunting for horses.  The body lay there for 3 days as it was necessary for an officer to come from Wathenero to inspect the corpse before a burial could take place.  We found the spot marked by a long pile of stones about the length of the man.  A few pictures were taken when we all went eastward a few hundred yards to where the grave was located and we piled more stones on it after which we a few more pictures were taken.   A while after dinner, we saddled and packed our animas and took leave for our return home.  We left the trail at the top of the divide and bore northward across the ridges and mesas.  We took this detour as the Haley boys wished to do a little hunting on the way back.  We made camp in a beautiful little valley near the head of Whigley Canyon.  A full moon arose in the east, shortly after dark, making a glorious scene as it shone through the pines, throwing great blotches of mellow light between the shadows of the pine trees.  Our campfire flickered in a small grove by the edge of the clear, rippling brook.  We were all hungry and the mingled fumes of sizzling bacon and bubbling coffee pot intensified our appetites and when John and Andres yelled “come and get it,” we were not long at making the fried potatoes and bacon, gordas, etc.  disappear like magic.  After supper was over we prepared our beds and then sat around the fire for some two hours talking of the one thing and another while the little brook chatted and sparkled merrily in the moonlight and the tinkle of the horse bell became fainter and fainter as the animals fed along up the canyon.

Home, Tuesday, March 22, 1932

After a successful morning hunt we proceeded on down the trail.  We reached Villa Ranch a little after 1:00 p.m. where we unpacked, grained our animals and prepared and ate our dinner after we resumed our journey, reaching home at sundown finding all well. 

Villa Ranch photo

 Taken from Pacheco Histories and Stories

Compiled by Sylvia Lunt Heywood