COX TRADITIONS INCLUDE TALES AND CHILE TREATS - Sunny visits the historic San Augustin Ranch, where Rob and Murnie Cox share Wild West tales and homemade chile fare.

- Frontier Texas was a haven for gangsters.
- W.W. Cox lived in a cave and became a sheepherder.
- San Augustin Ranch is purchased on credit
- Grandson Rob Cox purchases ranch.
- Sheriff Pat Garrett makes an unexpected visit.
- Rob meets Murnie and falls in love - not only with Murnie - but with her wilted salad.
- The future of the San Augustin Ranch lays with J.R.
- Murnie Cox's Jalapeno Hot Cheese Grits

In the late 1800s, frontier Texas was a haven for gangsters, chief among them John Wesley Harden. U.S. Marshal J. W. Cox was hot on his trail when Harden's gang outwitted Cox, killing  the lawman and his deputy in 1873. Cox's ten-year-old son W.W. discovered their bullet-pierced bodies in the desert near his Dewitt County home. And perhaps to leave the sad place behind, W.W. journeyed west ten years later in a  covered wagon to start a new life with his wife and newborn. The Cox's became sheepherders, living in a cave at the southern point of the San Andres Mountains, not far from where W. W.'s grandson Robert "Rob" C. Cox, 76, lives today on the San Augustin Ranch.

        "It was kinda tough traveling that stretch (from Texas to New Mexico). No roads, and no nothing, and it took many days," says rancher Rob, a handsome, well-built cowboy who still wears a Stetson, old worn Levis, and cowhide boots.

        "Granddad and 'Gammy' lived in the cave for four years and when the [San Augustin] ranch was put up for sale, they bought it on credit and changed from sheep to cattle. And we've had cattle every since," he said, sipping cowboy coffee in his favorite chair in the ranch house that once served as a  fortress to ward off renegade Apaches.

Over the years, says Rob, his grandfather procured adjacent property that included homesteads and railroad lands. By 1910, W.W. ranched 150,000 acres and he and his wife had 10 children. The rambling home bears three foot thick mud walls enclosing 15 rooms reinforced by vigas - heavy wooden ceiling beams. The dwelling now sets on a 15,000-acre desert spread where tumbleweeds toss over creosote and cacti and coyote and  lions roam freely amid the Organ Mountain foothills. (In 1945, the United States government expropriated much of the Cox land for the White Sands Missile Range.)

        Visiting Rob Cox and his sprightly petite wife Murnie at the San Augustin Ranch is always a memorable occasion that predictably includes one of Rob's storytelling sessions and Murnie's homemade treats: Colossal size peanut butter cookies and on my last  visit, chin-dripping fried tacos stuffed with bits of ground beef topped with a tongue-tinglin' green chile laden sauce that Murnie and a friend can annually.

During one visit, Rob recounts his father's story of the morning Sheriff Pat Garrett, then notorious after dispatching gunslinger Billy the Kid, appeared unexpectedly at the ranch. "Dad was only three or four years, maybe five years old at the time, but he remembered it clearly. He must  have told me the story 40 times." A young drifter, about age17, appeared at the ranch. "He just got off his horse and went into the corral and just started working with everyone else. When granddad asked him where he was  headed, he answered that he was 'just drifting through the country looking for a job'. 'Well, we've got a job if you want one,' granddad told him. So he stayed. And he started out just being a gopher for my grandmother - getting wood, hauling ashes and did the chores. Then one early morning, Pat Garrett showed up and kicked the door open and said to the boy, 'You're under arrest'. He knocked him to the floor with his six-shooter. Of course, the kid was  stunned pretty good. There were no screens in those days and the windows were all open. The old dog jumped in there and started chewing on Pat Garrett's leg, and he was trying to kick the dog loose. The kid recovered enough to try  to get from the kitchen into this room, which had been the bunkhouse, and he had a gun, and he was trying to get his weapon, and they shot him going through the door, and killed him. And I still got the bullet up in my office that  the family dug out of the wall. What Dad remembered most was when Garrett loaded this kid in the buggy on his back and his legs were hanging over the tailgate, and his feet were flopping and everything. Well, it turns out this guy wasn't the same guy Garrett thought he was."

 In 1910, more than a thousand head of cattle roamed the Cox land. W.W. had prospered, but old age finally forced him to relocate to Las Cruces where he died in 1923. His  eight surviving children inherited the property. But in 1926, following a combination of circumstances, Rob's father, Jim, acquired most of the original spread.

 "The old timers had it really tough," offered Rob. "Of course, everybody did in the old days. I can remember my own momma out in that back room scrubbing clothes on the wet board. When dad found one of these old hand crank wringers he brought it home, and she thought it  was one of the greatest inventions she'd ever seen. She'd wash her old Levi's and make us hold one end, and she'd twist the other and twist us off our feet and then she'd scold, 'hang onto that thing, you're stronger than that'!"

Suffering from poor health, Rob's parents decided to move to Las Cruces in the mid '70s. "They had been thinking about selling the ranch," said Rob. "And Murnie and I thought that maybe we could buy it and spend the next twenty or thirty years there ourselves before it was time for us to move to the city. We wouldn't have to work too hard. It's a small ranch, pretty easy to operate, pretty well improved." Rob's three boys  [from a previous marriage] were out on their own, "and gone to school and got educated and smart...they found out that there's a lot better ways to make a living than ranching," said Rob.

The property was transferred from father to son on May 1, 1976. Since acquiring the spread, "things have just gotten better all along, and easier. And now, we have the best you could hope for," said Rob. "We are kinda spoiled nowadays. We've got  heaters and coolers and telephone, and television. My goodness, when I was a kid, we did our studying, reading out here with the old kerosene lamps."

Rob and Murnie's routine has changed little over the years. "Murnie, she's a pretty good cowboy and a real good cook," declared Rob.

"His favorite salad," offered Murnie, "is wilted salad...fried bacon, vinegar, sugar and walnuts. He just loves that."

"I'd never heard of wilted salad on a ranch before. I'd never seen it before Murnie made it. Very few people in Southwest know about it."

More familiar to Southwesterners like Rob is Mexican food. "Murnie had never eaten Mexican stuff when she came here from the Midwest. We eat a lot of tacos, the soft type. Of course you can't be very gentleman-like eating them. But they really taste good." Other tantalizers, he says, are Murnie's grits, made  biting-hot with jalapeno cheese, and old-fashion peach pie sweetened with red hots.

 Two of Rob's kids are now retired and have acknowledged that they have no intention of taking over the ranch when Rob and Murnie make their move to town. Rob's youngest son, Mark, an El Paso veterinarian has, however, shown interest. Mark and his thirteen-year-old son J.R. visit the ranch at least once a week. Rob is optimistic that his grandson will run the ranch one  day. "He's a dandy,"says proud grandpa. "He'll make a good hand and he'll like it. He's always in a good humor, and always hungry. Murnie fixes him up fast with a hearty meal."

Murnie Cox's Jalapeno Hot Cheese Grits (serves 6)
4 cups water
1 cup grits, uncooked
1 teaspoon salt
8-ounces Jalapeno-flavored Velveeta Cheese, cut into cubes
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs, well-beaten
1/4 cup milk

Cook grits in water according to package directions, add salt.  Stir in cheese until mixture thickens.  Add butter, eggs, salt, pepper, and milk. Pour into greased 1 1/2 quart  casserole.  Bake in 350º degree oven for 1 hour.