Side Trail
The Greatest Horseback Ride I Never Had
by Terrell Brown
(from Range magazine)
Over forty years ago, through some remote acquaintances of my mother, I got a job on a cattle ranch on the eastern plains of Colorado. I traveled north out of New Mexico by Greyhound bus through Raton Pass and was picked up from the Colorado Springs depot by my employer and his wife in what was even then an old Chevy car. He and his wife were in their mid-70s and the lonesome spread of 17,000 acres southeast of Colorado Springs sprawled across the undulating range miles from the nearest town.
Though the ranch had a snubbing post, buried decades before, sprouting upwards at an angle in its pens and there were other signs of a past replete with the work of the cowboy and his horse, there remained but one representative of the equus family, and that horse had taken to running with the cattle, I suppose for company. Anyway, that’s where I primarily saw him on my travels crisscrossing the ranch.
Somewhat to my dismay, my employer had adopted the practice of using a pickup for all the tasks a horse had once been used for on the ranch in spite of the fact that it took two of us half a day, several gallons of fuel and much cursing to accomplish what one decent cowboy on a decent horse could have done in two hours. Fortunately, the boss didn’t pay me a lot of money, seventy-five dollars a month and room and board for not quite seventy hours of work per week.
Since the ranchers in that country shared labor, as has been the case in most places I’ve worked, my employer did use the services of mounted neighbors to gather the cattle and for brandings. I, however, rode standing up in the bed of the pickup whenever we worked cattle, armed with a long-handled whip. But about halfway through my first summer on the ranch, what drove me in my youth out onto the pitch-black plains one night in search of that solitary horse was, most likely, those seemingly endless barbed-wire fences on those seemingly endless plains. For several times a week I was to be found replacing posts and putting in staves, tramping across the country along miles of fence to their corners where I simply changed direction and continued on, and on, and on. Apparently the fences had been saved in their dilapidated state for me. One beneficial outcome of the experience, though, was that I learned to sing.
Who can know for sure, but in a premeditated and calculating manner I waited for the boss to finish milking his cow that evening, later than usual (the milk from the evening milking always tasted like every weed on the prairie) and head for the house. It was so late when I got out to the barn that I had to feel around on the wall to find his old bridle that had hung there, most likely, untouched for years.
I crossed the creek and headed out into the blackness on the plain, having paid particular attention where the main herd, with their nominal horse, was grazing and how I might best intercept them. I hadn’t foreseen what an absolutely black night it would be but, even so, veering leftwards kept my proper direction very well, for I eventually could hear the bawls of cows and calves calling to one another in the distance.
I moved on carefully in the direction of the sounds coming from a herd at peace with its world, even negotiating the steep banks of a creek that cut ten or twelve feet deep into the prairie on that section of the pasture. As I made my cautious way in the darkness towards the browsing herd, I began to sense a panic spreading through them as they bawled louder and louder, sensing an unknown predator -- me.
Soon, the clamor of their mushrooming fear tore at the once quiet veil of the evening until the whole prairie echoed with their terror. Then, to my horror, I felt the earth move and the dark, impregnable night roar as the cattle stampeded, along with the lone horse, I guess. And out there in the tactile darkness, the entire herd was suddenly stampeding towards me, alone and on foot on a bare plain. Turning abruptly, I sprinted towards the creek about a hundred yards distant and, without caution, clambered down its bank where I waited, breathing heavily. The herd soon veered to my right, the earthen walls of the creek bed trembling and announcing their raucous departure into the black distance.
My search for a horseback ride, consuming much of the evening already, was over. Bridle in hand, I crawled unceremoniously up the steep creek bank and began my long walk back to the bunkhouse. The plains around me still engulfed in darkness, I returned the bridle to its peg on the barn wall and slipped into bed a few hours before dawn.
The next day, I was tired and spent the day working with the boss across the highway in a large pasture where he kept a herd of crossbred Highlanders about ten miles from the ranch buildings. At least, that’s how I remember it because late that afternoon as we drove along the dusty road home, we came in view of the stampeded herd hungrily grazing a few hundred yards away.
Driving down the dusty road, the boss proceeded to shake his head and say in a perplexed manner: I don’t understand it! I just don’t understand it!
Finally, after he’d repeated himself two or three times, I said, What’s that, sir? Is something wrong?
Why, he replied, bewildered, those cattle look like they’ve been running all night!
I don’t recall that I said another word all the way back to the ranch.
|
|
