Bud and WinnieI worked as a boy on a Montana ranch with two old cowboys named Bud Poole and Winnie Harper. Bud and Winnie had spent thirty odd years together mending fence, birthing cows and sheep, wintering in line shacks, being occasionally drunk and, in odd seasons, doing some womanizing. Working or playing, they were a pair to ponder. Over the years, the rhythm of shared ranch work had etched itself into their combined subconscious. They could put up mile after mile of fence in every kind of ground without much more than grunted directions to each other. On roundups you would swear they had walkie-talkies as they swept consecutive ravines, dished errant cows like beans on a plate from invisible thickets, moved their horses in a tandem tag team, brought the beeves to herd. Branding was the same. Propane heated irons appeared by magic, medicine was dosed, the emasculating surgery and a now-and-then dehorning performed as a blood dusted, but elegant, pas de deus. Not much talk of the work passed between them, it’s true. But they were not silent. My, no, they were not silent.
Bud and Winnie had an ongoing dialogue about everything in the world. Even as a greenhorn kid I hated to stop their flow to get instruction for my own part of the work (which was always given in direct man-to-man tones and married with prophecy on safety and effectiveness).
“Put all your weight into that knee. You’ll keep your beef on the dance floor and won’t get a polka kick when you cut and you’ll get a good clean cut.”
To interrupt their dialogue was to stop sun, moon, earth, the history of mankind and all living things, zoological and botanical. To make them stop was like being caught permanently in that time right after you’ve sucked in the air but haven’t sneezed.
Grizzled and gnarled, these two old cowboys whistled, spat and worded their way through the complete contents of several large libraries. There was seldom agreement, but neither was there a raised voice or a pouty retreat. All sides of any deliberation were held up to the square, pondered on, usually revisited, wondered at, speculated about. In my time with Bud and Winnie I heard definitive conclusions on only two subjects: horses and fencing tools. Everything else in the universe was open to reevaluation; open to weighing a few more days lived into the balance on either side.
Not, in truth about things, that there was agreement on horses or fencing tools. But they had come to independent conclusions on these two subjects and each man’s conclusions, I noticed, were respected by the other and certain concessions made to pasture the differences.
Bud named all of his horses Pat, treated them fairly and honestly, cared for them meticulously, and trained them to respond predictably. Winnie, also an excellent horseman and trainer, chronicled characteristics and personalities of mounts going back to boyhood. At times his horses would be given new names in mid-life. He said this never confused either them nor him.
Each cowboy preferred different brand names and types of fencing accoutrement. Given that, the two streams still joined into a powerful process. Winnie’s long bar and Bud’s Hardman® post-hole digger combined to seat a butt post in less time than any team in Gallatin County and probably western Montana — maybe the known fencing universe.
I knew only vaguely I was in the presence of greatness. But youth is such an ignorance that it could never show me the real wonder of Bud and Winnie. The day-in, day-out majesty of their relationship was squandered on a pubescent 14-year-old. How could two old men get along so well? How could they continue to enrich, inspire, respect and love (a word I never heard used by either) each other in the face of heat, cold, ticks, mashed fingers, stubborn beef cows, ornery barb wire and babble prone, wet-behind-the-ears summer help?
It is true they had spent some number of years rubbing the corners off each other. But folks who knew them a quarter century before I did say they always had a simple respect for other people, as well as each other. They were both quiet and unprepossessing, some said not ambitious. But looking back I see a commitment to bring the best skill they had to the work they did, and to steadily improve it. Neither owned any property when it came to suggesting better ways for other folks, however. Advice was never given unsolicited and solicited advice was tempered heavily. Questions were always answered but I never heard sarcasm or a judgmental tone. As I said, I was too small a twig at the time and did not know how rare a thing that is.
I was not privy to their relations or communications with women. There was a long and detailed discussion one day as we were chaining downed limbs from the stream side cottonwoods out to a burn pile. The talk revolved around the economics and various costs associated with raising a family and keeping a wife. The sense of the talk was that such an enterprise was equivalent to the purchase of a fleet of horse trailers and heavily engined trucks to pull them. Plus the cost of maintaining such a fleet and replacing it over time. I didn’t know about Andrew Carnegie then, but those two cowboys had reckoned the cost of familying at Carnegie levels by the time we had cleared two acres and set the burn pile aflame.
I do know their language and their walls and secret places were clean with regard to women. I prowled and poked, apparently undiscovered, because I had worked at other ranches with other hands and hoped for and expected worse. When I later gave up ranch work for a town summer of clerking in a Helena men’s store, I was only slightly surprised to find both Bud and Winnie on the list for Pendleton shirts, a gift to the best customers of “Miss,” but really Madame, Deborah T and her female employees. Miss Deborah had two lists for house customers. Bud and Winnie were on the premium, collar-and-sleeve-sized, twice-a-year shirt list. I also know that Mrs. Mulkey, the wife of the minister of the First Christian Church, and mother of Paul, who was a friend of mine, spoke of Mr. Poole and Mr. Harper as “Good men. Good men, just out of their time. There are many worse.” She would open her eyes, which were green, very wide when she said this, and get a little crinkle that pulled her lips down. Paul’s father, the Reverend Mulkey, I never heard mention either cowboy.
Power, I was to learn hard lessons on later, is a big part of what goes on between people. Bud and Winnie had figured that one out long before I was thrown, red and wrinkled, into this cold world. Both men were about the same size, Winnie about a hatband taller, neither what you would call a big man. Both had lost, when I worked with them, their hind ends in that way that working cowboys do; their jeans took a straight dive from their belts and bunched the first wrinkle just behind the knee. Neither had much of a belly, both were corded, hard and white up to the neck where the sun had made them nut brown and eroded. Winnie would wear short sleeve shirts on occasion and the brown then moved up to mid-biceps. Bud always wore long-sleeved shirts, 110 or 30 degrees. I saw both men wrestle 2-year-old beef and always get a pin. But I also saw a bent toward leverage, toward smart strength. Always get help if you can, get a pry bar, a come-along, a two-ton jack, a hoist, a pulley, an extender handle, a wheel, a roller, use some diesel oil, a little three-in-one, use your knees, use a ramp, use a helper.
They were the only full time hands on the ranch; neither was boss, neither was foreman. That’s the way they wanted and expected it to be. They just did what had to be done. What I saw was a lot of work. What I didn’t see was much talk about how to do the work, planning the work. That’s because I usually slept in until 5 am and most of the planning talk for the day was over by then. Much long-term planning talk was done in the winter when I was at school. Unexpected tasks did get a work over before action commenced, however. A proposal was put out in the air and discussed. A counter might be offered. If it was, it was discussed. Results were calculated and risks were assessed. The conclusion always seemed self-evident by the time it arrived.
Just one more point. I remember haying on a hilly high pasture overlooked by the crags of the Bridger Mountains. The mower had struck rocks steadily and shed more teeth than we had spares. I was sent down to the shop to fetch replacements. Bud and Winnie were always hard workers, stamina was expected apparel. So I was surprised to find them both, backs to the hay, on the top of the truck stack. I started to say so, as only summer help can, but Winnie mailed me a look that sewed my lips together. Then Bud said he’d like to show me something few men see but I’d have to put back to the hay. That done, he pointed up into the sky and I sighted down his finger. Far overhead were two golden eagles, talons locked, tumbling together head over tail feathers through the sky. After what seemed hours they broke apart and swept in tandem formation to a big cliff wall where an updraft carried them thousands of feet toward the sun. Then they swooped and locked together again to plunge earthward. The three of us lay there until the sun lowered and the updraft was quenched and the eagles disappeared over the mountains to the south, flying together.
It was something.
Bud and Winnie
Copyright © 2009 K.R. Passey. All rights reserved.
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