Chasing a Dream: A Horseman's Memoir Read online

  Butch and I discovered a particular cow having trouble calving. The calf was breech, coming hind legs first. Butch tied his rope to the calf’s legs and the other end to the bumper of the pickup. I’m sure he had pulled many calves this way before. The calf, however, was badly deformed and did not slip out easily. The severe strain caused the cow’s uterus to prolapse; blood and her intestines spilled onto the ground. The calf was dead and Butch didn’t think we could save the cow. “I don’t have my gun,” he said. “Do you have a knife?”

  I pulled out my small pocket knife. “This is all I have.”

  “Just cut her throat,” he said, and turned to walk toward his pickup.

  The cow, her big brown eyes rolling back into her eye sockets, lay there panting and groaning. I clicked open the little knife blade. I’m not sure I have the stomach for this, I thought. Gritting my teeth, I raised my hand high and then stabbed her through her thick hide, hitting her jugular vein. Warm blood pumped out and over my hand and turned the snow red. Steam rose from the blood and entrails. The life slowly ebbed from her eyes and she stopped breathing.

  I scooped up some clean snow and washed the blood from my hands, and then wiped them dry on her hide, still warm. As if to comfort myself, I thought, At least she’s out of her misery. But I wasn’t. While riding away with Butch in his pickup, I felt sick. Neither of us uttered a word. From now on, I thought, I’ll pack my pistol.

  The cows that survived were often paralyzed in their hindquarters from the difficult birth. A cow that cannot stand, dies, or has to be put down. In an effort to save each cow we would put a sling under it, attach the sling to an overhead gate beam, and using ropes and pulleys raise the cow in the air so she could get her feet under her. A visitor to the ranch would’ve seen a strange sight; every overhead gate on the place had a cow slung under it.

  My job, in addition to feeding in the morning, was to care for these cows. Often when I offered them food or a bucket of water they would try to charge me, pulling themselves along with their working front legs only to find the ropes and sling pulling them back as if they were caught in a child’s swing set.

  Butch shook his head. “In all my years of ranching I’ve never seen anything like this.” He asked around and found that other ranchers were experiencing similar problems. “The problem is the lupine. I guess with the wet summer we had conditions must have been just right for the plant to become toxic.” The cows had eaten the lupine at just the wrong time during pregnancy causing the birth defects. The situation exacted a huge emotional and financial toll.

  Our round-the-clock care and slinging routine continued for some time until most of the cows eventually recovered enough to be released back into the pasture. When calving was over, and the calves were all branded, I went into town to see if I could get work on another ranch because Butch didn’t offer as much cow work as I wanted. While in the Commercial Casino bar I had heard the Spanish Ranch, one of Nevada’s most historic outfits where many a buckaroo had gotten his start, was hiring. The “Span” ran ten thousand cattle on more than a million acres. If you cowboy for the Span you weren’t expected to perform any work that couldn’t be done on horseback. No haying, no irrigating, no fence building or repairing. I called the cow boss, Bill Kane, who met me in town and hired me on the spot. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

  The Spanish Ranch lies some fifty miles northwest of Elko, near Tuscarora, Nevada. They did things the old way as if the year were still 1880. They used teams of horses to pull sleds and wagons to feed the cattle in the winter.

  The bunkhouse at the Spanish Ranch was a big stone building, an old dairy barn with thick walls that had been converted into living quarters for around thirty men. A wood stove provided the only heat, and the few naked light bulbs hanging from the ceiling hardly cast any light. One hand, a former convict, said the bunkhouse was worse than prison.

  When I hired on in March, they were just starting to calve, and my job was riding the meadows to check for sick calves. The weather was still very nasty with lots of sleet and frozen rain. The horses on the Span lived up to their reputation. They were the rankest I’d every ridden. The ranch owned more than five hundred, including several bands of mares. Draft horses were used for the teams, and tough, rangy Thoroughbred-cross saddle horses were bred for riding big circles during long days.

  During a blinding sleet and snowstorm one day we moved eight hundred yearlings. At first the frisky young cattle stampeded for several miles, and with only eight cowboys it was difficult to slow them and move them in the right direction. We rode at a full gallop to keep up with and turn the herd of yearlings. The hands could hardly see anything as our horses jumped sagebrush and tried to avoid stepping in badger holes. I thought, One stumble and that could be the end, but the speed, risk, and excitement thrilled me.

  Suddenly, the wind changed direction and the sleet was stinging us in the face. The cattle slowed to a standstill, huddled, and refused to move. My wet slicker froze as solid as a board. My hat shed water but my ears were freezing. I could hardly feel my fingers and toes. I wanted to dismount and walk around to get my blood flowing and warm up, but we had to remain mounted to keep the cattle together.

  We began pressing the herd, which slowly moved against the wind. Just before nightfall we finally reached our destination where a stock truck had been left for us to drive our horses home, but the cab only allowed room for three passengers--the rest of us had to ride in the back with the horses. We bunched up and huddled next to the horses to break the wind and heat ourselves. One cowboy, cold and exhausted, looked at his horse and said, “If you step on my feet you son of a bitch, my toes will break right off.”

  The old stock truck lumbered down the mucky road, throwing horses and humans against the panels. I thought we would never make it home, but we finally pulled into the ranch compound long after dark. The driver stepped out of the heated cab, grinned, and asked, “How do you like the buckaroo life now, boys?”

  Calving season over, we started branding, the favorite work of most cowboys. I was thrilled. We would ride from daylight until dark gathering cattle from pastures and roping and branding calves with irons heated in sagebrush fires. After “mothering up” the cows and calves—making sure each calf was paired with its mother—we rode the long distance home at a trot.

  I especially enjoyed the roping and was getting more proficient every day. Each cowboy had six horses in his string, and would ride a different one every day. I had one horse called Popcorn, a big rangy sorrel with white stockings and a blaze down his face.

  I asked Bill, “Why is he named Popcorn?”

  Bill roped him and led him to me. “You’ll see.”

  Every time I jumped one of the many irrigation ditches with Popcorn, he would land on the other side bucking. Popcorn bucked me off several times before I learned to ride him.

  Popcorn was far from my toughest horse. That honor went to a gelding named Beau, who was nearly impossible to mount and would start bucking before I even got my leg over the saddle. After I had a couple of bad wrecks, Bill roped his hind leg and dallied to his saddle horn. Beau kicked out furiously but with only three usable legs finally stood still just long enough for me to mount. When he started bucking Bill took his leg away again. I was scared witless but finally Beau learned his lesson. This was but one example of Bill’s talent with horses and a rope. It became clear why he was a legend in that country.

  One day out on the range it began to rain. Beau was too spooky to allow me to put on my slicker, so I had to dismount. When he saw me approach with my slicker flapping in the wind, he wouldn’t let me near him. He skittered around at the end of my mecate rope and nearly jerked me off my feet, but I dared not let go because the walk home was a long one.

  With no one willing to tutor me, I was learning everything the hard way. Span cowboys made a sport of watching a young hand fail and laughing about it. It was cheap entertainment, I suppose, but there was a certain tone of mean-spiritedness that didn
’t sit right with me. I didn’t say anything, of course. Though I was green, I was thankful I wasn’t the greenest so I didn’t receive the worst of the ribbing.

  That went to Barry, a green hand from North Dakota. He had a horse in his string named Snake, a jug-headed outlaw with splay feet that bucked him off over and over. Barry was getting real beat up. It didn’t seem fair that an inexperienced cowboy like him had been assigned such a difficult horse. One day Snake galloped home riderless. I thought the worst might have happened, like in the movies or one of Louis L’Amour’s novels. We rode out to look for Barry and found him bedraggled, walking with shoulders slumped and head down, his nose bloodied and face badly skinned. He looked up at us in anger and embarrassment. “That’s the last time Snake’s going to buck me off,” he declared. The next day he quit and went home, and the Span didn’t miss a beat. The ranch had seen more than its share of buckaroos quit.

  Bill hired a young Indian to break the young horses. The Indian was a tall, handsome buckaroo with a gray flat-brimmed hat that covered his shoulder-length black hair. I admired him, a solid hand. But one day he tied a colt to a stout snubbing post, and the terrified young horse threw a fit, pulling back against his halter and breaking his neck. Bill said the horse breaker should have known better, and fired him. I’m sure Bill had his reasons, but the situation didn’t seem quite fair to me. The Indian buckaroo had been training the horse the only way he knew. Perhaps if someone had taught him a thing or two, I thought, the horse would have survived and the boy would have kept his job, but coddling and teaching weren’t a part of the culture on the Span.

  Most learning occurred through experience, but some came about through social interactions in the bunkhouse, a place I liked because of the camaraderie. It sure beat living alone on a frigid ranch in Cora, Wyoming.

  Mealtime around the long, wood table was like one big family. Bill Kane would arrive extra early in the morning and drink coffee. I would get up early so I could talk with him. His stories and the information he shared about cattle and horses infatuated me. I wanted to be just like him.

  One day the cook didn’t show up for breakfast. Someone at the ranch had given him a ride to town, and he had gotten drunk and hadn’t come back. Bill smoldered. “If I find out who took him to town, there’ll be hell to pay.” He filled in as the cook, and that evening a new cook, a plump, gray-haired fellow in his late 50s, arrived only half sober from his own drunk in town. When we tasted his delicious cooking, we were happy about the trade and didn’t give a hoot about his drinking.

  The new cook bunked next to me. One night I had one of my sleepwalking dreams. I was dreaming about us moving cattle out of the corral, and I kept yelling, “Get out of here! Get out of the corner! Yaah! Go ahead, mill around. Look for the gate. It’s wide open. Get on out of here!” During the dream I grabbed the cook by his collar, yanked him out of bed, and shoved him against the wall yelling, “Get out of the corner! Get out of here!”

  The cook woke me with his screaming. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me. I won’t do it again. Just don’t hurt me.”

  Embarrassed, I could only think to say, “Well, don’t let it happen again,” and I turned him loose and headed back to my bunk. The next morning when I woke up he was lying in his bed staring at me, afraid. Neither of us said a word.

  That day he quit and headed for town. When they heard the news, everyone on the ranch was furious with me. The Mexicans in particular cussed me out using all kinds of Spanish words only a few of which I understood. “What’s the matter with you? You run the cook off? Are you loco? You work all day. You work all night. When you sleep?” I knew Bill was going to fire me for sure. Embarrassed, all I could do was apologize to everyone, they ribbed me endlessly. For whatever reason, Bill did not fire me, but he had to drive to town and hunt up yet another cook.

  When we finished calving, it was time to “go out on the wagon” for two months. All of us young hands had heard stories about it and were very excited about the idea of camping out on the range like cowboys did before the wire. Gathering cattle and roping every day was a young cowboy’s dream. It was what had lured me to Nevada in the first place.

  This is what I’d been told: in the old days, cowboys would ride along with the chuck wagon and sleep out in teepees. The ranch would drive a band of saddle horses (called a “cavvy”) along to allow each cowboy to ride a fresh horse each day. Each morning the cavvy would be herded into a corral encircled by a fence comprising a single strand of rope, where the cow boss would lasso each mount as a cowboy would walk up and halter it. Each day the hands would gather around a hundred head of cow-calf pairs and rope and brand the calves. This was cowboying at its purest and finest. Somehow, after my crazy mule ride to Wyoming and my many jobs, mistakes, and dead ends, I had landed in the job of my dreams. I was making a living as a working buckaroo at a legendary outfit. How had I been so lucky?

  However, just before the wagon departed, I received a letter from John Barlow back on the Bar Cross. It read like this:

  Dear Grant,

  Remember what you said about riding for the brand, and how you’d come if I needed you? Well, I’m in a jam. I need you to get here as quick as you can.

  John

  Whatever John had planned for me on the Bar Cross would pale in comparison to going out with the wagon. My heart sank. This is the life I want, I thought. I don’t ever want to leave this place.

  I thought about tearing up the letter and pretending I never received it, but my mind felt heavy. I had made a promise. John and Elaine had taken me in when I needed them, had been like family. Louis L’Amour always had his characters keep their word and ride for the brand. Dejected, I decided I better keep my word, and be there for John and Elaine. I told Bill that I would be moving on. The next day I packed my gear in my pickup and headed back to Wyoming. The long, desolate drive across Nevada and southern Wyoming depressed me, but once over the Wyoming line I stopped at the mercantile in tiny Farson and ate one of their famous ice-cream cones. The magnificent Wind River Range, still clothed in its snowy robe, rose out of the sagebrush against a bluebird sky. I rolled down my window, stuck my head out, and breathed in the smells of sage and the crisp mountain air. It felt good to be back, and I began singing.

  10

  CORA, WYOMING, 1979

  The jam John was in was the normal spring work of digging wire out of snow-drifts. For almost a month I was working alone again, digging out wire and splicing it together. I saw no reason why this task had been important enough for John to call me back and prevent me from going out with the Spanish Ranch wagon, and my resentment grew. Finally I declared, “As soon as we move the cattle to summer range, I’ll be moving on.”

  “I had hoped you would stay the summer and irrigate.”

  No farming for me, no thanks. I was a buckaroo now. I believed John had used me, and I told him as much. My forthrightness and leaving strained our relationship terribly.

  But in June I headed back to that emerald valley and the Big Sandy Ranch, which I first laid eyes on when riding Jack and Kate to Wyoming. Little did I know I was about to meet a person who would shift the orbit of my life.

  11

  BOULDER, WYOMING, 1979

  Renny told me about a girl named Locke Corson who was living at Buckskin Crossing cow camp on the Big Sandy River, seven miles down the road toward town where the old Oregon Trail crossed the river. He said, “Grant, she’s your kind of girl, good with a horse. Packs mules and chews tobacco. And cute to boot.”

  I had never heard of a girl like that. She sounded like my type, all right, and I laughed. “Oh yeh. I’ll have to check her out.”

  The next Saturday night my curiosity got the best of me. I climbed into my pickup and drove the seven miles of gravel and dirt to Buckskin Crossing. At her turnoff I sat arguing with myself about whether to turn left toward her place or bag it and drive on to Pinedale. I thought, She’s probably not even home. “Oh, what the heck,” I said, and tu
rned toward Buckskin Crossing down the two-track through the sagebrush.

  I slid out of my truck at her gate, which was constructed from old, sagging lodge pole pine logs. An Australian shepherd barked. A girl with reddish-brown hair stood atop a trailer load of hay tossing bales to the ground. I thought about turning around, but she glanced up and saw me. I felt a bit foolish. I thought, What excuse can I come up with? Oh, I know. I can offer to help her unload the hay. Nervous, I walked to the trailer. “I’m Grant. I work for Renny Burke on the Big Sandy up the way.”

  Even up on that trailer Locke seemed short, about five feet two inches. Her light complexion was burned red. She wore a red-and-white plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves that revealed well-defined biceps. From under the brim of a worn felt hat, beautiful blue eyes sparkled down at me. She was chewing tobacco. The perfect Wyoming cowgirl. I tried to slow my heartbeat.

  “I know who you are,” she said, “Renny told me about you. You’re the one who rode your mules up from Colorado.”

  “How ’bout a hand?

  She didn’t say a word, just started tossing down bales, which I stacked.

  When finished we were both sweating and breathing hard. I said, “I’m headed for town. I heard there’s a band at the Cowboy Bar. Want to come along?”

  Her face showed no expression. She spat a stream of tobacco juice. “Sure, why not? I ain’t been to town for a spell.”

  My heart pounded harder. We finished her chores and drove the forty miles to the Cowboy Bar in Pinedale, a favorite hangout of the local cowboys. A long mirror ran behind the bar like the saloons in western movies. A country-western band was playing, and a fog of cigarette smoke wafted through the bar.