Horse Lover (7 page)

Dayton and I sailed through our presentation. We have this ranch just begging for horses, and you have horses just begging to be turned out. Doesn’t solve all your problems, but it solves the issue of what to do with the unadoptable mustangs. Heads nodded. What really caught their attention was when we mentioned the sanctuary would be a great opportunity for news stories that would put the
BLM
in a positive light. No person or agency in
DC
turns down good publicity. They reminded us that we needed Congress’s approval, and we said we were on our way to getting it.

We finished our tour on schedule and left with more support than we had imagined. Years later, I figured out we could have hired lobbyists. Would it have been more effective? Not at that stage, but maybe later on. I didn’t know it at the time, but once you start lobbying, you have to continue to pet that puppy, otherwise it’ll run off and a new dog will step in. But it takes more than three days to learn the inner workings of Washington. Sometimes you don’t even learn it in four years.

6.

Hard-Won Approval

In the spring of 1989 I moved into the doublewide, which turned out to be a real pit. The previous owner’s presence lingered in the smell of tobacco and brown smoke stains covering ceiling and walls. Sue would have to put her magic touch on the place. I couldn’t wait to introduce her to the ranch, have her feel that rush, that high the land offered. Maybe to christen it, we would throw a mattress in the pickup and head off to the grove by the Little White River. She had declined my most recent invitation to visit, saying she had her hands full on Lazy B. Oh well, I thought, eventually she’ll get here. In the meantime, I was eager to get acquainted with the ranch, learn its rhythm and language, idiosyncrasies and needs.

Mornings soon became my favorite time. I’d lie in bed listening to chirps and caws and rustling leaves, then brew a pot of coffee and drink a cup on the porch. The wild turkeys would fly down from their perch and feast on a breakfast of grasshoppers. This was our private time, when the ranch and I smiled at each other. John might wander over, mug in hand, or I’d end up in his kitchen, a map of the ranch spread across the table, Debbie planning her day and directing the kids. Before I even took a sip of coffee, five-year-old Megan would be up on my lap. “What are we gonna do today, Alan?” she’d ask, happy with any answer that involved her participation.

In those first months, talking to John was like panning for gold and coming up with a handful of nuggets. I learned that the entire ranch sat atop the Ogallala Aquifer. I made it a point to inspect each of the fifteen operating windmills on the ranch. The first thing I did was taste the freshly pumped water spilling from a pipe into the holding tank. Every well had clear, cool, pure water—ambrosia to a rancher. I could have kept drinking until water spouted from my fingers and toes. Surely the horses would lap up this find. I’ve been on plenty of ranches where the water tasted salty or left an aftertaste of sulfur or, worse yet, contained gyp water that makes your stomach clench. On Lazy B we had one well that was so corrosive the cook used to claim if you threw a sack of potatoes in the holding tank and left them for a half day, those spuds would peel themselves.

John and I also spent days driving in the pickup or riding horseback to determine where we might need additional wells and water tanks for the horses. I learned that drilling a well was like pushing a straw into a juicy orange. Get Babby Well Drilling Company to haul out a portable well rig and the next day a windmill would be pumping water up from twenty to thirty feet below. I came from country where drilling for water was akin to drilling for oil under the Arctic tundra. First there was talk of drilling. This might last a year or two. Eventually a dowser, commonly known as a water witch, would be summoned to pinpoint the source of underground water. For some folks, water witching is right there with the Ouija board and psychic predictions, but I grew up watching dowsers work their wonders. Most held a forked peach tree branch in each hand and walked along until the tip nose-dived. Beneath that spot, water would be flowing. The good dowsers also could tell you how deep the water ran. Of course, then you had to dig through desert rock. One 750-foot well on Lazy B took two years to drill.

My neighbor Ralph Johnson had the gift of witching. Instead of using a peach branch, he used two welding wires bent at ninety-degree angles. When the two ends crossed, he would declare water. “Gotta drill about five hundred feet,” he’d say. Or maybe eight hundred feet. Never was it twenty or thirty feet. Once some underground pipes sprung a leak, but the fiddlefarts who had buried them were long gone and hadn’t left the treasure map of where to find them. So I called in Ralph. He located the pipeline within minutes, even tracked the bends in the pipe.

Within weeks, John and I had covered every part of the ranch except the North Ranch, a set of hills north of the Little White River that included three hundred acres of prime meadows and five good grazing pastures. So one morning I suggested to John that we saddle up and go check out that area. Megan begged to come with us. “It’s too big a trip, Pumpkin,” her father said. “We’ll be gone too long.” The promise of an afternoon horse ride erased her pout.

I chose a horse from John’s string, curried her, and cinched the saddle. The gray clouds hung low enough to touch, and I pulled the collar of my jacket up. “I’m going to have to buy a horse pretty soon,” I said. We were trotting through the heifer pasture. John nodded. I didn’t need to explain why. A cowboy bonds with his horse in a way nobody else can. It’s like having a best friend among a bunch of acquaintances. I had been contemplating bringing up Aunt Jemima, one of my favorite horses on Lazy B, but in the meantime, I wanted a horse that I could call my own. “Any idea where I might look?”

John got a knowing look on his face. “Let me see what I can do, Boss.”

We rode on down to Big Nose Flat. A mile and a half away, a sliver of the Little White River reflected the sullen sky. Behind it, the hills of the North Ranch rolled onto the horizon. Everywhere grass rippled, more grass than on all of Lazy B. I felt like a king looking at fine-spun silk. By now, I knew that a smorgasbord of twenty-six different varieties of grass grew on the meadows, and six or seven of those stretched up into the hills. I dismounted at least three or four times before we reached the river, got down on my hands and knees to examine the soil and the plants growing. I viewed the community of plants like the head of a chamber of commerce would see his town. What could that town do if everyone cooperated? How could you evoke that cooperation? At each location, I pulled up a few different seed heads and stalks and stuffed them in the plastic bag I carried in my chaps. Come evening, I would match them to a page in
The Book of Midwestern Grasses
, a gift from a thoughtful neighboring rancher. Instead of a bottle of bourbon or a plate of his wife’s warm cookies, he welcomed me with what would soon become my bible.

Our horses splashed across the Little White River and headed up the hill. We stopped on the crest and took in the panorama. Looking south, behind me, was a classic Sand Hills scene. I half expected to see an Indian camp nestled in one of the bends of the Little White with buffalo roaming beyond. Maybe Lewis and Clark had sent a scouting party that stood on this very same hill, curious to encounter the encampment. To the northwest, a meadow stretched before us. A long building stood at its far end.

“That’s the old sheep barn,” explained John. “Before my time, the ranch had a herd of three thousand sheep. They wintered on this meadow.” Well, how about that, the ranch came with a sheep barn. We rode up to take a closer look.

It was a dilapidated structure with sagging corners and weathered wood the color of the clouds. But long, probably as long as a football field. We dismounted and walked inside. A swallow swooped in front of me, stirring the mildewed air. Light filtered through cracks in the rafters and spotlighted weeds in the dirt floor. The gates on the little pens extending the length of the building stood at odd angles.

John said, “I’ve always been tempted to burn this place down. Not sure what else to do with it.”

The place had the feel of Arizona ghost towns I’ve visited, those once-bustling mining hubs now limp with decay and trafficked by rattlesnakes and tumbleweeds. I could almost hear the ghosts of sheepherders telling their stories of gathering three thousand ewes in here before the blizzard hit. I examined the wooden beams above and around me. Now here was fine, seasoned wood, protected from the piercing summer sun and winter snow and ice.

“Wonder if we could use this wood to build up the corrals back at headquarters,” I said.

“Not a bad idea,” said John. “But who are you going to get to do the work?” Good question. Available workers in this county seemed scarcer than jobs.

“Tell you what. You get the horse, and I’ll scrounge up some labor.”

On the way back to headquarters, I mentally reviewed pending projects. Tear down the sheep barn. Rebuild the road. Change pasture fences. Drill five new wells. Paint the barn. Build up the corrals strong enough to hold wild horses. Fertilize the meadows. All good ranching stuff, all stuff that could get done. So why, while riding across this open country, the wind now at my back, was I sinking into a light-gray funk? A few raindrops hit my hands. Today made a week of overcast skies. Maybe I was sun deprived. Or maybe I was Sue deprived. Or horse deprived. I craved all three—sun, Sue, and my own goddamn horse. If I were riding Aunt Jemima, I’d discuss it with her and she would advise me. Alan, she’d say, just tend to the task at hand and the rest will follow. No matter what the situation, she had a way of setting things right with the world. I set my mind on her for the rest of the ride home.

Aunt Jemima had been a handful to train. As a young colt, this little grulla-colored mare didn’t like what we were trying to teach her and was slow to offer her trust. Her older sister Tequila, a big, strong, willing cow horse, held a special spot in my string of horses at Lazy B. I was willing to put up with Aunt Jemima’s crankiness because of how much I enjoyed riding her sister. When Jemima got big enough to ride, I assigned her to Rodney, one of the ranch hands, to break. He had a way with young horses. But he had one fault: he liked to ride bucking horses. With her peppery temper, Aunt Jemima would buck if challenged, and Rodney seemed to be constantly challenging her.

I’d watch the two of them go at it in the corral. “Why do you try to make that mare buck?” I’d say to Rodney. “You’re supposed to be breaking her to be gentle. If you keep making her buck, she’ll learn how to buck harder and harder and then she won’t be good for anything.”

“Aw, I’m just having fun with her. She can’t buck hard enough to scare anyone,” he’d reply.

I finally got so annoyed with Rodney’s attitude that I took over riding Aunt Jemima. She was still young, and compared to the four or five horses in my string, much smaller. I saddled her up a couple times and rode her around the headquarters corrals. When she tried to buck me off, I pulled her head up and scolded her. “Jemima, we’re not out here to put on a rodeo. We’re here to work cattle, so get your head up and let’s do our job.” She understood me. It didn’t take long for the bucking to stop.

I had been on her only twice when I decided to take her out on the range to do what normally would be an easy job. We needed to move a herd of steers to a pasture I recently had leased at the Bilbo Ranch about fifty-five miles away. Due to distance, the moving would be done by truck. The cattle had long been gentled and we just needed to unload them and get them acclimated to the ranch. Aunt Jemima was still a green broke, if that, so the day’s activity would be good experience for her. If it had been a bigger job, I would have opted to ride Saber, my number-one horse that easily could do every job that needed to be done horseback.

It took two hours to haul our heavy load to the east side of Lordsburg, New Mexico. The crew of five cowboys and I drove the two trailers into open pasture. A forty-foot, single-deck trailer divided into three compartments held the cattle. With a roof made of pipes, it had provided an open-aired excursion for the fifty head of steers. Our horses stood in a much smaller trailer that we unloaded as soon as we parked. Though it wasn’t quite noon, the early summer air felt warm and dry. A thin layer of dust seemed to cover everything.

As I re-cinched Aunt Jemima’s saddle, I previewed the day with her.

“Jemima, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to unload those cattle. They’ll come trotting off the trailer and when they see us they’ll stop. So I need you to help hold them. Once they’re in a nice bunch, we’ll drive them to the water trough by the holding tank so they know where to get a drink. They’ll start walking around and grazing. We’ll make sure they’re comfortable before we head back home. All you have to do is keep your eye on the cattle and we’ll do just fine.” I rubbed her neck. I got the feeling she understood me.

I climbed aboard and joined four cowboys already on horseback. We formed a semicircle at the back of the trailer to act as a net to prevent the steers from spreading. I could feel Aunt Jemima’s anticipation. She was like a seventh grader getting ready for her first full-court basketball game in the school gym.

The remaining man, the gate opener, was on foot. The springs of the trailer squeaked as the cattle began shifting and impatient bawls filled the air. He swung the back gates open and stepped out of the way as the first steers burst out like they were running from a bomb about to explode. They didn’t stop once they hit dirt. There was no mistaking they were spooked. The cowboys and I gave ground, trying to stay ahead of them. But there they came at a high run, with the next group right behind them, and the third group right behind them. Within minutes they had broken through our net and were stampeding in every direction, feeding panic to the herd. No one had a chance to think what could have possibly frightened them. The cowboys had spurred their horses into a full gallop. Jemima seemed to know what to do and was in the right place.