Horse Lover (3 page)

I flitted back to the possible stream of income in this wacky idea. The Bureau of Land Management had a budget in place to pay for the care of horses. We needed that first and foremost since neither Dayton nor I was in a position to give away services. Maybe we could charge a lower rate and save the government money. Could this be an industry waiting to happen? Perhaps. If nothing else, it seemed to be an opportunity to do something gigantic, something that had never been done before.

“You know, Hawk, this is a pretty interesting proposal. I might very well be able to open the door with the
BLM
. I can talk to Les Rosencrantz, the state director of Arizona, and I’ve met the national director, Bob Burford, a pretty nice guy. A rancher from Grand Junction, Colorado. I bet we could get an audience with him if we needed to. But there’s an even more interesting thing about your timing.” I leaned forward and spun the basket of popcorn. Dayton looked at me, curious.

“As it happens I’m in the process of buying a thirty-five-thousand-acre ranch in the Sand Hills of southern South Dakota.”

Stress lines evaporated from his face, and his body came to attention.

“Think a couple thousand mustangs might be able to live up there?” I asked.

I could almost see his mind holding up this piece of the puzzle, the last of the border pieces, recognizing it, and pushing it into place. The only sound that escaped his mouth was a whispered “goddamn.” After a moment of sitting stock still, he let loose a throw-your-head-back yelp that would summon any pack of coyotes. Cowboy hats swiveled. Seeing two faces plastered with three parts excitement and a shot of disbelief, they turned back to their conversations.

Then in true cowboy fashion, Dayton “Hawk” Hyde said, “Let’s order another drink and chew on this one for a while.”

Man, was I jacked on the drive from Las Cruces back to Lazy B, and not from the scotch. I had been a cattle rancher for so long that entertaining an idea not involving cattle felt exhilarating, foreign, and daring all at the same time. Not even in my wildest, far-out imaginings could I have thought up a wild horse sanctuary. But here it was, served to me on a silver platter. The miles zipped by as my mind shifted the pieces of this puzzle to see how they might fit together. Dayton had the vision. The
BLM
had the money. I had the ranching experience and business skills. The land offered space and grass. Then there were the horses, possibly two thousand of them.

The idea of working with horses felt as natural as the idea of working with cattle. After all, horses were as much a part of my life as my parents, my sisters, the Lazy B cowboys, the land. The benchmarks of my childhood and adolescence involved horses. The first time I mounted a horse without help. The first time I brought a runaway cow back to the herd without help. The first time I roped a calf and didn’t lose my rope. The first time I rode a bucking horse and didn’t get thrown.

My first horse was a little wild mustang named Chico. He had been part of a herd of twenty or thirty that ranged the flanks of Steeple Rock Mountain, just north of Lazy B. A local cowboy decided to capture and break some of the horses, but the fleet-footed animals proved too elusive and quick for him, so he decided to try to shoot one. The mustangers of that era would aim their gun at a specific spot on the horse’s neck. If they hit their target, they could stun and knock down the animal without killing him. Before the horse could recover his senses, they would throw a halter on him. It was a brutal way to capture mustangs and one that Congress eventually outlawed. Chico always had a scar on the top of his neck where the bullet creased him.

Chico became my best friend almost as soon as I could walk. A pretty bay color with a star on his forehead, he was a small horse, too small for a cowboy, but just right for a child. Chico and I lived many adventures together while he stood patiently in the corral and let me clamber over him like a jungle gym. One day I would be the cowboy chasing and catching wild cattle to the amazement of the other cowboys. The next day I was an Indian stalking game and evading the cavalry. The fact that Chico came from a wild horse herd enamored me. When I was old enough to ride, Chico would go at a speed I was capable of handling and no faster. When I fell off and cried and grew angry with him, he would stand still and patiently wait for me to collect myself and get back on. He took care of me more hours than my mother did and at least as well.

Chico and I were a team the day I became a real cowboy. World War II left my dad short of help, so he allowed me to join the roundup at Old Camp on the southern part of Lazy B. It was to be a long, hard day, just the kind of day for a five-year-old to make a hand. I don’t remember breakfast at 3:00 a.m. or the long bumpy ride in the pickup out to Robb’s Well where the horses awaited us, but I do recall the sweet, acrid smell of the horses, the squeak and creak of the leather saddles as the cowboys tossed them on the animals’ backs, the snorting and farting of the horses as the cowboys mounted. Because I wasn’t tall enough to get my foot in the stirrup, I had to lead Chico to the water trough to mount.

We all set out, Chico and I riding side by side with the cowboys. Many times, I had heard them make fun of dudes, the wannabes who could never get cowboying quite right. I was determined not to be a dude, and this was the day to show I wasn’t one. After riding a couple of miles, the cowboys split into groups to search for cows in different parts of the range. The plan was for everyone to arrive at Old Camp by noon, cattle in front. I split off with Jim Brister and another cowboy, Ira, and started the cows heading down a wide canyon. After a bit, Jim instructed me to keep the herd moving, that he and Ira were going to work Lightning Canyon and push the cattle into Rock Tank Canyon, which connected with this main canyon a mile down. They would catch up with me in about an hour.

What a big job! I sat straight in my saddle and beamed. Of course, a five-year-old has no idea how long an hour or how far a mile is. Nor does he realize that his mentors trusted the horse he rode to take care of him.

The cattle knew water awaited them at Old Camp, so keeping them going downhill proved easy work. I’m sure within fifteen minutes I thought an hour had passed, but I kept doing my job. Pretty soon, though, I started getting thirsty and I had to pee. I couldn’t dismount because I needed help getting back in the saddle. I kept Chico and the cows going, determined not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The cicadas started to buzz in the hot, dry air. They grew louder and louder until the whole world was buzzing. The buzzing crept into my head and strung itself between my ears. Certainly we had gone more than a mile and much longer than an hour. Thirst joined the buzzing. All I wanted was a drink of water and to pee. I wondered if this is what it was like to go crazy.

I started to cry. I bent over Chico’s soft neck and let tears drip onto his hide. “Chico, where’s Jim and Ira? They must have gone off and left us.” My chance to be a real cowboy was crashing in on me. I was in danger of becoming a dude. And on my first roundup. I needed to cowboy-up before someone saw me crying.

Chico didn’t seem too perturbed that we had been walking the canyon by ourselves forever. He meandered at the same pace, occasionally nudging the back end of a cow that had slowed. This helped calm me. I had wiped the tears from my face and was contemplating how to pee from the saddle when I heard cows bawl from a side canyon. A cowboy’s yell followed. We were saved!

Jim and Ira arrived a few minutes later. I’m sure they saw tear streaks on my dusty cheeks but neither said a word. And of course, Chico never let on that there had been a problem since by his standards we had done just fine.

After lunch, the cowboys branded and sorted the cattle, and then we drove them back to Robb’s Well. By the end of the fifteen-hour day, I was one exhausted, proud little cowboy. No one could call me a dude. I had made a hand.

I turned off the state highway onto Lazy B’s eight-mile ranch road that started in New Mexico and ended in Arizona. Somehow being on Lazy B made me feel that much closer to Chico. He and I had ridden over these hills and dales; he had grazed in the horse pasture through which this road curved. Even though by age twelve I had outgrown riding Chico, I never outgrew my love for him. He had taught me so many lessons, including patience and how to keep the faith.

I pulled into headquarters and parked. The new moon thickened the darkness so I could barely see the outline of horses fifty yards away in the corral. My boots ground the gravel. One of the horses snorted; another answered with a low nicker. Maybe they were reading my mind and the question simmering there. Would my love affair with horses begin with one wild horse and end with a herd of them? The moon would cycle through its phases almost fifty times before shedding light on the answer.

3.

The Dream Takes Shape

“I’m getting dizzy watching you pace in there,” said Sue. She was in the family room adjacent to my office. “This house can’t contain your excitement. We need to get out of here.” Her tone indicated there would be no arguing. “Why don’t you go throw the old mattress in the pickup and cut some steaks from that quarter of beef hanging in the cooler. I’ll pack some potatoes and wine and we can head up to Horseshoe Canyon.”

So the day after my conversation with Dayton, still afloat in a bubble of possibilities, my wife and I drove an hour across the flatlands of Lazy B to the part known as the Gruwell Ranch, then up fifteen hundred feet into a juniper-filled canyon where the ruts of the pickup trail ended in a flat, shaded area. With the nearest human at least ten miles away, this was my haven for chewing on a challenge, a dream, or a grilled steak.

We unloaded the cooler and dinner provisions and spread charcoal in the grill. I opened a bottle of wine and grabbed two glasses. “Let’s walk up there before we start the fire,” I said, pointing the bottle at a two-foot-high rock wall about a hundred yards above us.

We climbed through the mellowing light and leaned our backs against the warm stones. The wine gurgled into a glass. I handed it to Sue, then poured my own.

“Did I ever tell you this was the site of the Stein’s Pass Indian skirmish?”

“At least ten times,” she said, poking her elbow into my side.

I liked to come up here and imagine how the battle between the Apache Indians and the Seventh U.S. Cavalry might have been fought. Starting from Stein’s Pass ten miles east, the cavalry had driven the Indians to this spot, where they forced the band of Apaches higher and higher. The Indians had climbed this hill on foot and erected this rock battlement to shield them from the soldiers’ bullets. The cavalry, not wanting to storm the fortress at dusk, decided to hole up in the canyon’s bottom until morning. Shortly after sunrise, they discovered the Apaches had disappeared. In the dead of night, the fierce, small band had fled by foot over the mountains, running for miles without leaving a trace. I hoped the toughness, grit, and patience of those natives would transfer to me.

“Here’s to figuring out if we can make this sanctuary work,” I said. Our glasses pinged. The red liquid held the rays of sun. Its sliding warmth matched that of the stones. “Tell me what you’re thinking, sweetheart.”

Sue savored a sip before answering. “I’m thinking this proposition has hit some chord in you. I can hear it resonating. And if I know you like I do, you’re not going to turn your back. You’re going to throw your saddle right over this baby and run with it as far as you can. So someway, somehow, we are going to make this wild horse thing work. In fact, we’re not leaving this mountain until we figure it out. Otherwise we could be headed for a case of regrets, and who needs that?” She took my hand in hers.

Through the rest of the wine and into dinner, we carefully laid a foundation under Dayton’s grandiose plan. I racked my brain to identify all the parts we had to play to make the sanctuary a success. First, I would have to spend extended periods of time in South Dakota learning the ranch inside and out. This would leave Sue with a larger role in Lazy B’s day-to-day operations. She would need to work closely with our foreman, Greg Webb, and relay details to me every day by phone. She already was an angel caregiver to my aging mother and even more of that responsibility would fall on her shoulders. For my part, I needed to discuss this venture with my partner in the Rex Ranch, Alan Stratman. My guess was that he would want to focus his efforts entirely in Nebraska. I would continue to be involved in decisions there as we moved forward to meet our business goals, but I felt comfortable turning the reins over to him. I also needed to give John Pitkin the heads-up that the plan was to fill the old Arnold Ranch pastures with horses, not cattle. I didn’t foresee an issue there. Dayton and I would lobby the
BLM
, and somewhere along the way, I would get educated about wild horses. How exactly did one go about handling a couple thousand renegade mustangs?

As the campfire reflected off the dark walls of the canyon, Sue and I hashed out detail after detail, stacking them like the rocks in the battlement above us. Only a few embers glowed when we settled onto the lumpy mattress, a light blanket covering us. The choir of a million stars serenaded us with their sparkles. I pulled my wife close, felt her curves form into mine.

“We’re partners in this one, baby. If something’s not going right, you have to let me know,” I whispered in her ear.

“I will. I promise,” she said, wrapping her legs around me. It was our turn to serenade the stars.

I drifted into the depth of night feeling like I was on the brink of a long journey. The road stretched ahead of me like an Arizona highway, untouched by snow and ice and salt spreaders. Smooth blacktop. Bright yellow stripes. Even on freshly paved roads, blowouts occur. Here and there you see scraps of shredded tires on the shoulder of the road, sometimes in the middle, too. Hurdles that you don’t discern until the last minute. One way or another, you get around them. Sometimes you swerve, sometimes you drive over them. I would need to keep a careful eye on this road and a steady hand on the wheel.

The minute Sue and I returned to ranch headquarters the next morning, I made a beeline to my office. If there was one person in the Bureau of Land Management who would be open to an innovative idea and who had climbed the bureaucratic ladder high enough to help, it was Les Rosencranz. Les and I had developed a friendly relationship during the years Lazy B had been under his jurisdiction. He was a good listener, a straight shooter, and a kindred lover of the land.

At 8:05 a.m., I picked up the phone.

“Hey, how are you Al? Haven’t heard from you in quite a stretch. What’s going on?” His upbeat voice held a smile. We caught up on our comings and goings.

I veered into business. “Les, I’ve got an idea that involves the
BLM
. You’ve heard me think out of the box before, but I’m so far out of the box I can hardly see it.”

“Nothing like starting out the day with a little excitement, man. Lay it on me.”

I felt like I was taking a running start and leaping over the Grand Canyon. “I’m thinking about starting a wild horse sanctuary,” I said in a surreal airborne moment.

Silence, then what sounded like a coffee mug clunking against wood. “You’re right, that’s one I never heard before,” Les said. “But it’s a hell of an issue for us.”

Thump.
I had hit dirt. Whether it was pay dirt or burial dirt, I had no clue.

Les listened to my broad-brush narrative of how a privately operated, federally subsidized wild horse sanctuary could benefit government coffers, overgrazed land, and a couple thousand unadoptable mustangs, a narrative I would soon be able to recite in my sleep.

“So have I lost it or not?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not ready to call it harebrained, but it definitely is unconventional. I do have one question for you, though,” Les said. “When those horses charge off to the next county, how are you going to get them turned back and bring ’em home?”

I had been thinking about this prickly issue since the sun roused me out of a sound sleep. Wild horses balk at following directions from a two-legged alien creature wearing a funny hat. You can train a mustang individually, but it would take years to put two thousand through private lessons. I didn’t care what the government might pay, no way was I going to spend my days chasing horses around a ranch.

I said, “I’m not a hundred percent certain, but I may have a solution. It’s based on a training program we used on Lazy B to gentle the wild cattle.”

“
Gentle
wild cattle?” said Les. “Did I hear that right?”

Gentling the cattle had been one of the improvements I made on the ranch after my dad became less active in managing it. Unlike most ranchers, he had preferred to ranch on foot, so he kept horse riding to a minimum. During spring and fall roundups, the cowboys would drive a herd of cattle into the corral and he would have them off their horses faster than lightning hits the ground. They’d run their legs off opening and closing gates and getting the cattle settled. Of course the cowboys bitched. They wanted to be in the corrals on horseback. But I walked in different boots than my dad. I’d been raised around cowboys like Jim Brister, who practically lived on a horse, and like Jim, I loved working horseback. When I took over the ranch, roundups had more running than a tri-state track meet. Because our cattle weren’t accustomed to seeing a man mounted on a horse, they had become increasingly ornery and wild, and they spooked when you rode up to them in the pasture. With pastures as big as eighty square miles, the herd had a fine time playing hide-and-seek with us.

My real wake-up call came one spring during roundup. The cowboys and I spent two hard days gathering heifers out of the Cottonwood pasture, where they had spent the past year maturing to adulthood. We finally got them in the corrals at headquarters, a temporary holding spot. The next day I instructed a handful of cowboys to drive half the herd up into the Black Hills, where they would join a larger herd. I should have appointed one of the hands to take up the lead and set the pace, but I didn’t. The cowboys all hung out at the back of the bunch. They told me later that when the group started the two-thousand-foot climb up the rocky canyon, the heifers charged so fast that the cowboys couldn’t catch them to slow them down. Three cows ran themselves to death and died right in the middle of the canyon. I was horrified. I was not going to be a rancher who killed cows by running them to death. I resolved to make major changes in our handling of the cattle.

But how could we get the cattle to change their perception of us? One way was to invest in more cowboys and faster horses. But that would continue to promote unwanted commotion and distress among the animals. Another way was to bait the cattle with feed, a common practice among ranchers. During the year the heifers lived in the pasture growing from six-month-old calves to eighteen-month-old cows, we could go out with a truck, honk the horn, and spread a trail of corn or hay. Over time, the cattle would recognize the sound of the blaring horn, associate it with food, and not get all jittery. But that didn’t address the imminent problem. Cowboys on horseback would still incite panic, and off we would be to the races.

I decided the next time we weaned calves, we would put them through an intensive gentling program while they were still in the headquarters corrals. Get them to recognize us. The cowboys thought my marbles had bounced on the ground and gotten buried in the dust. But the boys wanted their paychecks. So after we weaned that next group of calves, three cowboys and I saddled up, went into the corral, and talked to those babies. Real calm, real friendly.

We held the group of 150 in a corral corner, then started driving them down the side. Of course they broke and ran all over the place, so we gathered them again, all the while chatting like we were best friends. Every time we tried to drive them, they’d scatter. Twenty minutes later, the calves were pooped. We gave them a break but came back three more times that day and went through the same drill. After four or five days, the training started to stick. They began to follow a man on horse and a horse’s butt. They no longer feared us. If a calf left the group, one of the cowboys would race after and run her hard, not harming her, just making her uncomfortable. The lesson learned? If you go off on your own, life is uncomfortable; if you stay with the herd, life is good. Pretty soon they’d follow the lead around the corral, then through the gate and out to an adjoining small pasture. It was an exercise in repetitive teaching, like teaching kindergarteners to stay in a line and file into the lunchroom. By the time we turned those cattle out for the year, they were the best-behaved bunch on the ranch.

I stopped pacing, plunked in my desk chair, and took a sip of cold coffee. “But we still didn’t have proof the training worked,” I said. Les grunted in acknowledgment. I stretched my feet up on the desk. A slice of sunshine hugged the tip of my boot. “During the next twelve months, we’d drive out in a pickup periodically to check on them, make sure the windmill was pumping water, restock their salt supply if necessary. So the time comes to gather them. I take a full crew out, not knowing what to expect because those heifers haven’t seen us on horseback for a year. In the past, when we rode within a half mile, the cattle would look up and rev up their jets. But this time, we get to the half-mile mark, spread out ready for action, and those cows? They don’t lift a head. A quarter mile, and all is calm. I’m about ready to fall off my horse. Now we’re right around the herd and some of those heifers finally glance up as if to say, ‘Oh, hello, it’s you.’ So I say right back to them, ‘Hey girls, glad to see you. Glad you waited for us.’ The cowboys defaulted into their mode for rounding up gentled cattle, and the day ended without a hitch.” My waggling boot knocked over a jar of pencils.

What had surprised me even more is that when the babies of those heifers grew up, they weren’t afraid of us either. Their mamas did the cowboys’ jobs. Training became twice as easy. The whole program fed on itself and, little by little, year by year, required less energy. We had next to no runaways. The success still warmed me. I had shaken the dice and thrown them on the table. Lucky me. They had come up a seven.

“Herd behavior modification training I called it,” I said to Les. “And I think it might just work on a herd of wild horses.” I scooped up the pencils and returned them to the jar.

A pause filled the phone line. I could almost see Les’s questioning expression. Maybe he was thinking about herds of mustangs having lived their whole life wild. Would they respond to such a program? You could argue that we wouldn’t be training the horses from the time they were colts. Or argue that we could bait them with grain. But when horses are full, fat, and happy, they won’t follow a feed truck. And what if you have to lead them across a river? How do you bait them then? We needed to make friends with the horses like we did with the cattle so they would do our bidding.