Tall Tales and Damn Lies

Stretch to the summer's end
...a true story

I've had a little experience aboard a horse. Most of my summers growing up in the borderlands of Montana were spent building fences and doing other kinds of ranch work. The best time was roundup — the late summer weeks before school started. The ranch grazed its cattle on leased government land in the Gallatin Range around Wheeler Mountain during the summer. It was rugged and brushy but the cows seemed to thrive on the sweet mountain grasses. But they couldn’t stay up in those elevations when the winter snow came. We would ride up Big Bear Creek between Wheeler and Garnet Mountain south of Gallatin Gateway to bring the cattle down for “wintering over” in the fields around the ranch.

Over the years of doing this the ranch owner had figured out it would be better to keep a crew up on the mountain rather than have them going up and down each day, which was harder on the cow ponies than the crew. Two wooden platforms were constructed and during roundup we pitched two big wall tents over them. One for the cook, kitchen and chow tables, the other served as a temporary bunkhouse rigged out with cots and tin lockers. There were bets on which tent smelled worse.

Over summer the grazing cows bunch up into small groups. They also get a little wild. New calves are especially skittish. Our work was to find all the cattle and drive them into a temporary fenced holding area where we could do the branding, dehorning, castration and medicating that needed doing. The final day of roundup we moved the whole herd down to the lower pastures.

The life of a cowboy may be every kid's dream but it ain't quite what it's cracked up to be. It is hard, sweaty, dusty work. It is ticks, rope-burn, sunburn and saddle blisters. Especially for a green kid who hasn't really forked much but pleasure ponies. (That's what the crew called riding a horse.) Cow ponies are working horses and they don't cotton to somebody up top that don't know what's goin' on.

You will notice that I have lapsed into the jargon. Please bear with me.

We had a string of very experienced cutting ponies that could have brought the herd down from those brush-choked upper grazes without human help. They knew what they were about as the boys used to say. To ride one through the work day required a firm hold on the saddle horn, knees gripped tightly under the swell and boots wedged in the stirrups with heels down. When the horse went south, you leaned into the turn and pressed hard with your outside knee. I wasn't too good at anticipating course changes. As often as not I found myself adangle. A good cow horse works the cattle and watches out for the rider. They seem to have a sixth sense about low hanging branches. When they cut close to a tree trunk they allow enough room for your leg so you don’t get scraped off. The real cowboys weren't whoopin' to give the best ponies to greenhorns like me.

The crew stayed at the mountain camp through the week as I mentioned but came down to the ranch bunkhouse with the horses on the weekends to rest a bit and restock. I always had to go into town Sundays for churching and usually stayed the night. So it was that I arrived one bleary 4:30 a.m. roundup Monday at the tack shed. All the working bridles were long gone but one. I pulled it off the peg, grabbed a saddle and blanket and stumbled out to the corral. After getting the gear draped over the top rail I got one eye open far enough to see the only dang horse left in the yard was Stretch.

Stretch was no cow pony. Stretch was the nightmare residue of a young girl's daydreams. This particular young girl was the boss’s daughter. She once saw herself riding to glory at the head of some Kentucky Derby and her daddy bought her the horse to do it. Stretch was a Thoroughbred Race Horse, capitals intended. But when the daughter’s fancy turned to boys more than horses, she broke up with Stretch. He got put in the string with the cow ponies. This was not a happy turn of events for anyone. Stretch, I am dead certain, could not tell one end of a beef cow from the other and cared less. This horse did one thing. He ran full speed. He was a muscle rocket that could accelerate from zero to all out gallop in the time it took to hiccup.

The only thing that would keep Stretch from a full gallop was a spade bit. Our cowhands called it a Spanish bit, I don’t know why. It was a grotesque implement of horse torture. Picture an iron rod stuffed in your mouth that has a U in its middle that extends up to your soft palate. Then picture a disc spinning from the middle of the U. Pulling on the reins forces the disc up into the roof of the mouth. Sometimes the disc is replaced by rails but the effect is the same. Over time, a horse’s mouth gets hardened with scar tissue so more pressure is necessary to get the same control of the horse.

Stretch needed to ‘feel the wheel’ constantly to keep him just prancing instead of ripping into a gallop. His reins had to be securely wrapped around the cowboy's hand until Stretch's mouth was pulled down and his chin touched his neck. I should admit that I did not consider this especially cruel at the time, it being, as I said before, the only way to control this horse.

That morning I went about getting Stretch saddled so I could get to camp and get to work. I figured I could switch to a different horse up there. Everybody knew Stretch was no cow pony and trying to use him to pull cows would waste the day.

Anyways, I got Stretch rigged up, opened the pole gate in the corral, clambered into the saddle and started down the path. Russian thistles grew to the height of a tall man on both sides. The rocky soil prohibited pulling a duckfoot or even a small harrow through the field to weed and no cowboy ever found time to cut them down. I got put on that chore once or twice and always found something else that needed more attention. The field was shaped like a five-acre slice of elongated pizza so it wasn’t good for much else but thistles. The path followed a straight thread to the pointy end of the pizza slice where a barbed wire gate in the fence opened to a stream crossing. After crossing the stream, which ran frigid cold year-round, there was a broader trail through cheat grass leading up to the roundup camp.

As I was saying, I was jiggin’ along through the thistles with Stretch bubbling and popping wind below. I had the reins wrapped tight around my hand braced on my side of the saddle horn — one of the big roping horns that sticks up high enough to accommodate a few wraps of the lariat when you need to latch up a recalcitrant cow. I was still sleepy and squashed myself down trying to flow with Stretch's jerky gait.

Next thing I know the reins came flying back at my head attached only to Montana Big Sky above. Before I had time to think on that I felt the muscles under Stretch's saddle loosen, then those on his hindquarters coil. In less time that it takes to read this we were moving at the speed of sound. I know that because the scream coming from my mouth was lost somewhere behind us. I latched on to that big roping horn with both hands.

A horse at full gallop is a free and fierce ride, and liquid compared to other gaits. It is true joy for a young sinner, or old, and I would have been grinning like God if I hadn't noticed the path closing with the barbed-wire fence on both sides as we careened toward what would soon be the end point of this thistle field. My breath was gone, my eyes were rolled back in my head and I was prepared for death. Then that time warp peculiar to these occasions happened: Everything went into slow motion.

I calmly calculated the damage that would be inflicted by bailing off Stretch into the thistles and ruled that out.

The alternatives resulting from staying on board diagrammed themselves like they were being written out by a fourth-grader struggling with his penmanship.

1. Stretch will eventually reach the fence at the end of the field.
2. The gate will be open or closed.
3. If the gate is open, Stretch will break his legs when he reaches the boulders in the streambed. I will be thrown at full force and break my neck.
4. If the gate is closed he may try to jump the wire. See 3 above.
5. If the gate is closed he may run through and pop the wire. See 3 above.
6. If the gate is closed he may try to stop.

Just at this point in the calculations I felt a stutter in Stretch's stride that told me he was now also aware of the problem. Time resumed its normal speed and in the same millisecond Stretch downshifted - lowered himself for the jump - reconsidered - backpedaled with his rear legs - planted his front hooves - immediately and impossibly stopped.

I was crushed down onto the roping horn while Newton's inexorable laws sucked me forward and outward along Stretch's long Thoroughbred neck where I finally also came to a stop by virtue of a vicious, two-armed hammer lock behind his jaw bones.

I was looking across his nostrils into the skating pond-sized whites of his eyes when he snorted, raised his head, and flipped me like Cottonwood fluff boots over butt into the 3-foot deep waters of that damn cold stream. When I shot up out of the water to gulp air however, my jeans stayed behind. My belt buckle had been popped and the button-fly neatly undone by the roping horn. My tidy-whiteys were with them down at water level.

After a minute of sucking wind I became aware of a muffled clapping sound. Lined up on the far bank was the roundup crew, even the cook. Every one of them was clapping. Some were hoop-hooping. Many had tears running down their grizzly cracked cheeks. Their gloved hands made a soft farting sound when they came together.

I still had the reins wrapped around my own gloved hand. The ends were flipping in the stream's current, notched three-quarters through by the razor-sharp blade of a cowboy clasp knife.

Yep, I've had a little experience aboard a horse.

Copyright © 2008 K.R. Passey. All rights reserved.