Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Muleback from Moccasin to Kanab and Back

When I was three years old, my father Israel H. Heaton went to Australia on a mission for the L.D.S. Church. We were living in Alton, Utah when he received his mission call. My Grandfather Jonathan Heaton thought that my mother should take her children to Moccasin, Arizona to live while my father was away. Also, all the family thought it would be better if my mother were closer to her sister Maggie. My mother's sister Margaret (we all called her Aunt Maggie) was just younger than my mother. She had married my father's brother Charles C. Heaton at the same time my mother and father were married in the St, George Temple, Uncle Charl was just about two years younger than my father.

After Father came home from his mission, we stayed at Moccasin, I started school there and we lived there until I was nine years old.

Father had not been home from his mission very long until he was appointed second councilor in the Kanab Stake Presidency. This meant that he would have to travel to Kanab for all his meetings. It was twenty miles from Moccasin to Kanab. Back then the only means of transportation was by horseback, by team and buggy or team and wagon. It took better than two hours to make the trip one way. After awhile the Church authorities decided it would be better if Father took his family to Kanab to live so, that he would not have to travel so far on Sunday for his church meetings. By the time Father was able to get his business taken care of so we could move, I was nine years old.

When we moved, there were not enough children at Moccasin to qualify it for a state teacher. One more student was needed so that the State would pay the schoolteacher's wages. My family decided that I would be able to go to Moccasin to school, even though my mother really did not like the idea of my having to leave Kanab at seven O'clock every Monday morning for the ride to Moccasin and then ride back every Friday afternoon after school. I had a good horse and was a pretty good rider so I got along fine most of the time.

One Friday after school I had to use another horse because my horse was not able to make the trip home to Kanab. The day before, my cousin Leonard Heaton and I had been chasing quail after school. As there was quite a lot of snow on the ground (about eight inches), the quail were very easy to catch. Leonard and I would go out in the pasture and ride around in the sagebrush until we would scare up a covey of quail, then we would start after them as fast as our horse could run. We would watch where the quail lit in the snow and we would get there as fast as we could. The quail would light in the snow and then crawl into a sagebrush, We could see where the quail lit in the snow and where it had gone into a snow covered bush making it very easy to catch. A quail cannot fly very far - a hundred yards or so, but it is hard work for a horse when there are a lot of quail to chase. I chased so many that my horse gave out and I could not ride him home Friday after school.

My Uncle Ed Heaton then decided that I should ride Old Jinks, a black mule, Jinks was a good saddle mule and a good traveler, but he was lazy. I rode him two miles and was exhausted from beating him to make him go so I decided to go back to Moccasin and get another animal. While going back, Old Jinks would really hurry, but I had wasted a lot of time and it was getting late.

When I reached Moccasin, Uncle Ed wanted to know what the trouble was. When I told him, he cut about a dozen willow switches for me and told me to wear them out on Old Jinks and that would make him hurry.

My uncle Ira Heaton, who was working about one and a half miles south of Moccasin building houses for the Indians on the Paiute Indian Reservation, had come to Moccasin on his way to Kanab to see his wife who lived there. Uncle Ira decided he would go to Kanab with me that Friday night, He said that I would get there all right if he rode behind Old Jinks and used the willow switches Uncle Ed had cut for me. Well, believe me, we had a ride. Uncle Ira was riding a good horse and he kept that Old Jinks on a high lope most of the way. The only times we stopped were to open gates.

Uncle Ira rode with me back to Moccasin Monday morning. That was the fastest trip I had ever made from Kanab to Moccasin on horseback - I should say "muleback".

- Jonathan Delaun Heaton

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